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Officials Monitor Pollution In Creek

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 19, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - Environmental officials from Hillsborough County say they haven't seen any downstream impacts from the plume of muddy water that polluted Cypress Creek last month.

The pollution happened when muddy water from the Cypress Creek Town Center construction site overflowed a retention pond in late January. Since then, regulators from Pasco County, the state and federal governments have put Richard E. Jacobs Group's project under intense scrutiny.

That scrutiny also includes a new program of water sampling by the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County.

Commission scientists recently began sampling the creek above and below the site of the future regional mall to watch for other pollution problems. They plan to draw water samples biweekly during dry periods and daily during rainy ones to check for increases in silt entering the creek, said Bob Owens, a supervisor in the EPC's water division.
Cypress Creek rises in the Darby region of north-central Pasco and flows south into Hillsborough County to join the Hillsborough River. Regulators and environmentalists worry that storm runoff from Jacobs' project will ruin the creek and harm the river, which provides Tampa with drinking water.

In their 2004 development deal with Pasco County, Jacobs officials pledged to take extreme measures to safeguard the creek where it borders their property. Those measures failed after more than 5 inches of rain fell on the 510-acre construction site at the junction of State Road 56 and Interstate 75 on Jan. 22.

Another downpour in September created a similar problem with muddy runoff polluting the creek.

The two pollution incidents prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to suspend its permits issued last summer that let Jacobs fill 54 acres of wetlands on the site.

As happened after the September incident, January's muddy water seems to have been limited to the area of the creek adjacent to the mall site. In the weeks since the latest pollution event, no muddy water has turned up where Cypress Creek enters Hillsborough County at County Line Road, Owens said.

The reason for that may have to do with the nature of Cypress Creek itself. For much of its length in Pasco County, the creek meanders through a shallow, swampy channel.

Just north of State Road 54 and the Cypress Creek Town Center, the creek becomes a narrow body of dark water between two steep banks. It stays like that as it sweeps south and west around the mall site before passing under Interstate 75.

East of the interstate, the creek returns to its swampy nature as it bends north toward S.R. 56 then turns south. At County Line Road, the creek returns to a steep-sided channel where it stays for the rest of its journey to meet the Hillsborough River.

The creek's slow pace means suspended silt falls to the bottom of the creek bed. Anything that gets carried downstream is likely to get filtered out in the swampy section between I-75 and County Line Road, said Pasco County biologist Bob Tietz.

But the biology of the creek doesn't excuse polluters, Tietz said.

"The bottom line on it is that it's an Outstanding Florida Water. You're not supposed to contribute anything to it," Tietz said.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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