Manatees In Hot Water: How the Florida Manatee Became Dependent on Power Plant Warm Water Outfalls

Authors

Michaela Morris

First Page

63

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Each winter in Florida, thousands of manatees gather in the warm water outflows of power plants. These refuges play a crucial role for the Florida manatee: when ocean temperatures drop, manatees shelter at these artificial sources to survive. But in recent years, thousands of manatees wintering at the Florida Power & Light Company’s Cape Canaveral Clean Energy Center have died. The reason? Seagrass beds––a primary food source for manatees––are vanishing, killed off by pollution from agricultural, industrial, and residential sources.

This Article documents the historical, political, and regulatory conditions that led to manatees’ reliance on power plants. First, the political commitment to private property facilitated wide-scale transformation of the Florida landscape during the 19th and 20th centuries. These changes led to the decline of the natural warm water springs. Then, during the 1970s, environmental legislation rewrote the relationship between private property and governmental control.

To manage costs under this new environmental law regime, Florida Power & Light Company—a Florida-based power utility with plants that used once-through cooling systems to discharge warm water—examined multiple options. Part of its response included founding an environmental affairs department and funding studies that showed manatees’ reliance on power plants’ warm water discharges. EPA granted Florida Power & Light Company’s request for exemptions from the Clean Water Act’s prohibitions based, in part, on these studies that demonstrated benefits to manatees. But in the long-term, reliance on artificial discharges proved damaging to the overall health of manatee stocks. Taken together, the historical, political, and regulatory context leading to the Florida manatee’s decline exemplifies the importance of managing conflicts-of-interest in regulatory decision-making today.

Recommended Citation

Michaela Morris, Manatees In Hot Water: How the Florida Manatee Became Dependent on Power Plant Warm Water Outfalls, 31 Buff. Envtl. L.J. 63 (2025).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/belj/vol31/iss1/2