As many of our county residents, my family has been blessed to reside adjacent to one of the most beautiful and vital County waterbodies, Palma Sola Bay, since 2000. Since 2016, north of the Manatee Avenue causeway has been used by private companies to provide horseback riding in the bay.
Individual horse owners had brought their horses to the causeway for many years prior to 2016, but it was infrequent. In 2016, when I saw and read about the private companies starting to provide rides in the bay, I found out that these companies were banned from their prior riding operation in Pinellas County, by the Pinellas County commissioners, due to that county showing that the operation was degrading water quality and destroying seagrasses in that part of Tampa Bay.
In 2016-17, the FDEP told me they agreed there would be negative water quality impacts and seagrass destruction. I was told that the Secretary of FDEP believed this was a “local issue”. As I sit here today and every day and look out my window, I know that these horses (as many as 15 or more) are not being treated properly in this operation as they are land animals, not aquatic animals, and that horse droppings float by my dock regularly, even though the operators of the business have been trying to scoop the poop both on land and in the water…