The algae covering the Gulf Stream reef didn't grow there overnight, but once it bloomed about 50 feet beneath the surface, it flourished. Within a year, the growth's long red strands began to suffocate the life out of the scenic spot.

Developments on land came slower.

More than four years after a group of weekend divers noticed the red strands and nearly three years after they notified the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that waste-fed algae were blooming on one of the last healthy stretches of coral reef in North America, the agency says it has yet to determine what is feeding the growth.

The divers and other environmentalists say the culprit is 13 million gallons of partly treated waste water from Delray Beach and Boynton Beach that is discharged daily immediately upstream of the reef.

But the agency has failed to reach an agreement to get any more information out of the South Central Wastewater Treatment Plant, which operates the discharge pipe.

The problem? DEP officials have said because the plant's permit did not require it to monitor the impact of its discharges, the agency has no conclusive evidence the outfall is harming the reef.

As a result, talks between the DEP and the plant, which began months before the plant's permit expired in December, have been stalled for nearly a year.

And this week, DEP officials said, they discovered that tests scheduled to begin in August that could determine to their satisfaction whether waste water from the plant is feeding the growth will be delayed until February. In the meantime, divers, as wells as those concerned with the economic, biological, shore-protection and storm-shielding benefits of the reef they call Palm Beach County's hidden treasure, wonder how many more months or years of negotiations the reef can withstand.

Discharge clear, not clean

"Common sense tells you that it is the discharge. There is nothing else that would cause the bloom. Algae love this stuff," said George Cavros, Florida representative of the National Environmental Trust, a group that recently released a report on threats to the reef stemming from air pollution and global warming.

Although a waste-water treatment plant processes the sewage it treats to the point that it runs clear from taps at the plant, it leaves nitrogen, phosphorous and ammonia.

"That might not meant a lot to regular folks, but it is super fertilizer for algae that will eventually smother the reef and kill it," Cavros said. "I'm just surprised that the Department of Environmental Protection hasn't demanded that the utility clean up this discharge."

DEP officials counter that progress toward a solution has been ongoing. Although the agency did not respond to a series of reports on the algae bloom from divers, who organized to become Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, DEP officials noted the group's findings in their July 2005 response to the plant's application for a new permit. Since then, a series of letters document attempts between plant and DEP officials to agree on a plan to monitor the pipe's discharge. Plant officials have protested that other pollutants contaminate the waters near the reef.

They have agreed to tests tracking the outfall discharge to see whether it travels to the reef. They have contracted with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for those tests. In April, volunteers from Reef Rescue helped NOAA scientists place a device underwater to record the current.

In its most recent response to the sewer plant's application, DEP officials said they would issue a short-term permit requiring the plant to monitor the levels if they could not reach an agreement to test the levels of pollutants coming from the outfall. Throughout, the agency has continued to praise the plant for its cooperation and has pointed to the plant's plan to start reusing 100 percent of the waste-water it treats within the next 10 years.

Plant officials have told the DEP the cost of alternative waste-water treatment or disposal methods would cost from $25 million to $30 million.

Plant Operations Director Dennis Coates says the need for that has not yet been shown.

"We need to verify the path of outfall plume," he said. "We can't even say we intersect with the Gulf Stream reef."

Further study, Coates said, "is something that has to be worked out between the Department of Environmental Protection and ourselves that's going to give the most beneficial information" He does not believe the current impasse will lead to fines, he said.

What will happen in the meantime remains in question, though.

Failure to test criticized

Reef Rescue Director Ed Tichenor, who wrote his first report alerting officials to the algae bloom in September 2003, calls the DEP's response "foot dragging."

And a former DEP staff attorney who now runs the Florida chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility wonders why DEP officials didn't attempt to track the source of the pollution feeding the algae when they first learned of it.

"They should be testing it themselves," PEER Director Jerry Phillips said. In March, his Tallahassee-based group released a report showing a decline in enforcement actions by the agency in recent years. "They have a statutory obligation, a duty to do these tests."

DEP spokesman Anthony DeLuise said the agency has not tested the waters because "NOAA is much better equipped with the resources and experts to conduct the sensitive tests required to determine if a relationship exists between the outfall and the algae bloom."

DeLuise said the agency did not ask NOAA to conduct tests immediately after receiving Reef Rescue's report because the agency was then awaiting the results of another study on outfalls. That study focused on waste-water reuse. It has not been released, DeLuise said.

Cavros, who recently wrote a letter to the DEP asking it to speed action on the outfall, said the agency needs to reexamine its approach.

"Eliminating sewage outfall is the single most important thing we can do at a local level," Cavros said. "We can't do anything about global warming, or the fact that our oceans are becoming more acidic because of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. We need federal leadership for that. But what state leadership can do is mandate an end to ocean sewage discharges, or at least mandate that the nutrients are removed and that the utilities cannot renew their permits until the nutrients are removed."