Sarasota County approves USF contract for Water Atlas website

Sarasota County commissioners approved a $225,000 contract with the University of South Florida Board of Trustees to enhance the Sarasota County Water Atlas website Tuesday.

The  program educates the community about the county's water resources. USF created the program, and has also partnered with other communities in the state to gather and store data for 7,700 different water bodies in Florida. The county's atlas was created in 2003 and has been regularly updated since.

Part of the contract approved today included funds to help USF upgrade the website and allow it to become more user-friendly and add in new information, included data on green infrastructure, improvements to pages with volunteering information, and more data on the county’s Total Maximum Daily Limit (TMDL) for watersheds, or pollution information.

John Ryan, environmental manager for the county, praised the board’s approval of the contract during his presentation on the county’s current state of TMDL. Ryan updated the board on the restorative efforts he and community groups have been tackling over the last years in some of the county’s waterways which had experienced pollution, including the septic system replacement project in the Phillippi Creek area. Before the initiative, 9 million gallons of sewage ranthrough the wterway every day, and with the replacement project, that issue will be relieved, he said.

“We’ve done a lot of things over the decades to get where we are today,” he said.