St. Andrew and St. Joseph Bays Estuary Program awarded nearly $750,000 EPA grant

The St. Andrew and St. Joseph Bays Estuary Program (SASJBEP) received a $749,998 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The funding will launch "Bay Guardians: Citizen Science for Clean Waters," a comprehensive three-year initiative designed to expand water quality monitoring and increase public awareness across the St. Andrew and St. Joseph bays watershed.

The estuary program is a partnership between Bay County and Florida State University and his housed at FSU Panama City.

The "Bay Guardians" project addresses a need for consistent, widespread data on the health of the watershed’s waterways. By using community involvement, the program aims to protect the aquatic systems that drive the local economy, tourism and biodiversity.

The grant will support the creation and expansion of two citizen-based monitoring programs. In St. Andrew Bay, the project will bolster the long-standing efforts of St. Andrew Bay Watch with a dedicated effort to recruit and coordinate volunteers across the Bay. The SASJBEP will add 5-10 new monitoring stations in St. Andrew Bay, specifically upstream in the bayous to evaluate the existing water quality monitoring stations. This targeted approach will help to assess the ideal location for future stations that will ensure consistent monitoring and accurate representation of bay water quality. 

In St. Joseph Bay, a brand-new citizen science monitoring program will be established in partnership with local charter captains and residents who will be trained and equipped to monitor water quality. In total, the program targets monitoring at a minimum of 80 stations across both bays for 2.5-3 years, tracking vital physical parameters (such as temperature, pH, salinity, and dissolved oxygen) and nutrient levels looking at total nitrogen and total phosphorus.

This grant will also support the creation of a public Online Water Quality Dashboard. This new dashboard will compile data from the Bay Guardians project, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), and St. Andrew Bay Watch into a user-friendly, interactive platform. This tool will allow residents, local officials, and researchers to view up-to-date assessments of the bays' conditions and recommend management actions. 

“Bay Guardians will give us the opportunity to support citizen science efforts in both bays while also filling in important gaps of information and ensuring we can continue to understand water quality conditions when funding is limited,” said Jessica Graham, Ph.D., the executive director of the St. Andrew and St. Joseph Bays Estuary Program.