Estero community battles polluted water

Water is a highly used source; people use it daily to drink, clean, bathe, and treat waste plants.

Recently, a neighbor who lives at the Cascades in Estero noticed something fishy in her pond and brought it to the attention of a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

“Someone who lives in the Cascades community contacted me about this concern about her ponds,” said James Douglass, a Marine Science Professor at FGCU. “She shared a report that a water quality testing company had given them on their ponds that showed really high levels of nutrients, and cyanobacteria and those were levels that were just kind of off the charts.”

Douglas considers these levels dangerously high. In the test shown, Douglass realized that the bacteria in the pond didn’t start there.

“The levels that we were seeing in this pond were so high that even that normal source of pollution seemed unlikely,” said Douglass. What emerged as the likely source of this pollution is wastewater sewage from a neighboring community where there’s an aging and failing sewage treatment plant that’s apparently leaking into this community,” said Douglas.

After doing some digging, we found a pond in the Cypress Bend RV resort, which is adjacent to the Cascade community.

What we discovered was a waste RV resort’s waste plant filled with algae. WINK News spoke to a few people who live at the RV resort, who told us this has been an ongoing problem for over a year.

The people we spoke to requested to remain anonymous and conceal their names to protect their identity.

“It was supposed to been done last year in the summertime, and it never did happen. Then they said it would be done in October of this year,” the anonymous person said. Nobody’s ever been down there. It stinks; I mean, sometimes, the smell is so bad. I can smell it on the other side of the park.”

The person we spoke to says the problem is affecting their daily use of utilities.

“I mean, I’m having trouble with my toilets and I have to buy gallons of water. The guy next door to me or two doors down is having trouble with his,” said the anonymous person. They had a meeting a couple of days ago, and they said now it’s further back. So I have no idea when its going to be.”

The person we spoke to anonymously is referring to the Village of Estero. A municipal government organization that works alongside Lee County Utilities Department to provide water and solid waste disposal services.

WINK News has reached out to the organization for comment on this issue and has yet to hear back.