Our View: Value of bay already known

Sarasota Bay is part of what makes Sarasota, Sarasota.

It contains two of our three coastlines, is lined with beautiful homes and natural habitat and is enjoyed by kayakers, boaters, Jet Skiers, fishermen and many more. It is an enormous asset and, as such, needs protection from inadvertent damage.

After suffering pollution problems during early community growth, the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program was created in 1989 through an act of Congress, literally, to improve water quality, increase habitat and generally enhance the natural resource of the bay for public enjoyment and asset protection.

The bay has such collective value that there is a role for a quasi-governmental organization such as the Bay Estuary Program to be overseeing its health.

Now the Bay Estuary Program has commissioned the first-ever economic value study of Sarasota Bay. Paul Hindsley, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, will be paid $21,000 to study the economic value of the bay during the next year.

“The decision to do an economic-value study of Sarasota Bay is timely given its importance to our region,” said Mark Alderson, SBEP director. “This is the first major economic study focused on the key assets associated with Sarasota Bay.”

This is where things get a little worrisome.

The purpose of this study is to give economic credence to the Bay Estuary Program’s future requests for public funding. No longer will it be that seagrasses are dwindling and algae blooms are blooming and so (fill in government body) should provide funding to expand sea grasses and limit algae.

Instead, or in addition to the environmental sway, the argument will be that the bay is an economic asset worth a bazillion dollars and so how can (fill in government body) not be willing to fork over a few hundred thousand dollars to grow seagrass and prevent algae blooms? We can’t risk our bazillion-dollar asset!

It will be an extra level of arm-twisting to leverage the most public money possible for the bay.

Such studies, we have seen, can be notoriously padded with assumptions on economic spin-offs, dollar multipliers and so on (see baseball spring training economic impact studies).

A similar study of the Indian River National Estuary Program in 2007 found a value there of $3.7 billion — whatever that means. After all, that body of water, like Sarasota Bay, could not be bought privately.

The happy truth of the matter is Sarasota Bay has been getting steadily cleaner and healthier for decades.
In 2010, the Bay Estuary Program’s annual report found that there has been a 64% reduction in nitrogen pollution since 1988, which has contributed to a 24% increase in seagrass coverage, the re-establishment of bay scallops and new oyster colonization.

Of course, part of this success — perhaps a large part — must be attributed to Sarasota County’s large-scale replacement of septic tanks with central sewer systems in the low-lying Phillippi Creek watershed. That has reduced fecal pollution and other wastewater contaminants considerably at the south end of Sarasota Bay. Further, the county has enacted stricter fertilizer laws to reduce nitrogen runoff into the bay.

Elected officials need to recognize the purpose of this number when asked for future public funds from the Bay Estuary Program.