The problem with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's voluminous report on mankind's impacts to the Peace River is that it fails to zoom in on particular problems and solutions.

That's the opinion of Dr. William Dunson, a retired biology professor who critiqued the study. Dunson, an Englewood resident, sits on a scientific peer review panel that also provides critiques for a Peace River water quality monitoring program.

He described the DEP's study as "far too long, burdened with overly detailed and sometimes irrelevant and inaccurate information, often lacks objectivity, and could become a substitute for identification of actual solutions to serious immediate problems."

Dunson said the study should have been focused on solving such problems as the loss of fish and other species in the river, occasional crashes in oxygen levels, lingering impacts from phosphate mine spills, increasing occurrences of red tide, massive growths of drift algae that now clutter beaches and the adverse effects of freshwater withdrawals on the Charlotte Harbor estuary.

Rick Cantrell, deputy director of water resources for the DEP, could not be reached for comment Friday.

But Dee Ann Miller, a DEP spokeswoman, said Dunson's assertions indicate he "has missed the point of the study."

She pointed out the Legislature in 2003 required the DEP to study the cumulative impacts from a broadscale, watershed-wide perspective.

The DEP was directed to study "changes to landform and hydrology and how this impacted habitat, etc.," Miller said.

The study concludes that, just since the 1940s, phosphate mining, agriculture and urban development have each caused drastic changes to the once-natural landscape of the Peace River watershed.

The river's flow and quality have declined as a consequence.

Overpumping of well water by phosphate mining decades ago now causes the upper Peace River to drain down sinkholes, according to the study.

The mining industry has also eliminated hundreds of miles of streams and thousands of acres of wetlands -- and mitigation often has failed to make up for the losses.

Agriculture also drained its share of wetlands and streams. Farmers now pump so much well water to irrigate fields and groves that seepage has caused a decline in water quality in Shell, Prairie, Joshua and Payne creeks, according to the study.

Urban development also wiped out natural wetlands and streams, including in Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda, when those subdivisions were built in the 1950s and 1960s.

More wetlands have been lost since, despite regulations requiring mitigation.

"There's plenty of blame to go around," said project manager Ralph Montgomery of the Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan Inc. firm. The firm was hired by DEP to conduct the study.

Montgomery said the river was studied, in essence, from a high-altitude perspective because that's what the DEP ordered.

"It is what it is," he said.

However, studying impacts on a broader scale provides benefits over analyzing impacts "on a project-by-project scale," Montgomery added.

"More and more, people are realizing you need to understand how individual things combine to interact on a larger scale," he said.

Dunson, however, argues that the study failed to encompass the most downstream portion of the Peace River's watershed -- Charlotte Harbor and its coastal beaches.

Deficient flows of fresh water can affect the estuary, and nutrient pollution can spur the growth of algae and red tide, Dunson suggested.

He cited a recent study commissioned by Lee County as an example of a problem-focused study. The county hired two scientists from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, located in Fort Pierce.

The scientists found evidence of escalating coastal "eutrophication," which is a depletion of dissolved oxygen levels, often due to nutrient pollution and algae blooms.

The study also found that nitrogen from sewage was spurring the growth of the drift algae, a stringy, red-colored vegetation that washes onto beaches.

"A similar study of the effects of nitrogen and other plant-growth-stimulating substances entering the Gulf of Mexico from Charlotte Harbor and other nearby sources could be of great benefit in protection of the coastal ecosystem," Dunson said.

One concern is that increased withdrawals from the Peace River Water Plant could result in a decline in plankton, crabs and juvenile fishes in the Charlotte Harbor estuary.

The study provides some inaccurate information about those concerns, according to Dunson.

The study states that the withdrawals, which average about 20 million gallons per day, have not been associated with significant changes in the level of saltwater in the river.

But Dunson said his peer review panel concluded in 2004 that the monitoring program under way to determine the impact was "inadequate." Panel members recommended more accurate sampling methods.

Most of those recommendations were not adopted by the agencies responsible for the testing -- the Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

Dunson said he found it "strange" that the cumulative impact study didn't mention the peer review panel's recommendations.

The DEP's impact study also provides a "spin" in its analysis of the impacts of phosphate mining that's favorable to the industry, according to Dunson.

Dunson cites the fact that Charlotte County, in the course of $12 million in litigation, documented "huge detrimental effects" of phosphate mining.

The DEP's report, however, made little mention of such impacts. The report referred to them as "possible" rather than "highly likely," Dunson complained.

Montgomery, however, pointed out that a detailed analysis of the effects of phosphate mining was beyond the scope of the study.

The DEP's study was intended to provide a "look back" at environmental policies of the past and their results in order to plan for the future.

He said Florida's population is projected to more than double by 2050.

The study verifies that the counties in the Peace River watershed were "in the process" of turning a rural area into an urban one, he said.

"The question is, can we do that and not completely obliterate the quality of life we came her for?" Montgomery said.

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