The question of what was killing the Gulf Stream coral reef was no deep mystery, even if it was happening far below the ocean surface.

Still, more than three years after a group of divers notified state environmental officials that a growth of pollution-fed algae was suffocating the reef, help has yet to arrive. More than two years after the group supplied evidence that a pipe spewing a brown cloud of partly treated sewage into the ocean off Delray Beach was fertilizing the growth, officials say they have no answers to what is killing the reef.

Bob Shanley/The Post

Ed Tichenor pours a water sample into a bottle held by Terry St. Jean during a recent Palm Beach County Reef Rescue excursion.

That is because the state agency charged with enforcing the federal Clean Water Act locally did not begin until late last year to discuss the matter with the municipal plant that discharges its waste through the pipe. Now, as officials mull proposals to monitor the pipe's outflow, the plant continues to operate on an extension of an expired permit that sets no limit on the amount of polluting nutrients it discharges into the ocean.

Yet the same officials say that the plant that uses the pipe, which began belching waste into the ocean 30 years ago, would be rejected if it applied for a permit now.

As volunteer divers begin a fourth year of testing the waters around the reef, some say the real mystery goes beyond the reef they call Palm Beach County's hidden gem, and the pipe they call the area's dirty little secret.

"The real question is, why isn't the Clean Water Act being enforced?" said Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, a nonprofit group the divers organized.

Tichenor, a retired environmental scientist whose work focused on contamination investigations, is familiar with the Clean Water Act, enacted in 1972. It requires plants to demonstrate they would not harm the waters where they discharged waste.

A recreational diver, Tichenor also is familiar with the reef.

After he and other divers noticed red clumps of Lyngbya algae flourishing on the section of the Gulf Stream reef known as Lynn's reef, Tichenor compiled data on the bloom in a 27-page report he sent to the state Department of Environmental Protection in September 2003.

The report noted that the reef, which supports a chain of endangered sea life, had been severely damaged in the preceding six months. The report suggested officials examine the algae, its surrounding waters and any active waste discharge permits in the area that the department oversees to identify what was feeding the deadly bloom.

Instead, DEP officials did nothing.

'Canary in the mine shaft'

"After reviewing it, we found that it really didn't have conclusive evidence," DEP Water Resource Administrator Linda Horne said recently. "We reviewed the data. Other than that, we didn't respond to it."

Tichenor was surprised.

"Initially I thought I was just alerting them to a problem and they would just run with the ball," he said. "Even if we didn't have any reports, even if we just picked up the phone in 2003 and said, 'There's a problem out here,' you'd think they'd come out and look at it."

Along with other Reef Rescue volunteers, he continued to record observations. He also pored through files at the DEP's West Palm Beach office to learn who had a permit to discharge waste into the ocean.

His next report in February 2004 identified the outfall from the South Central Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant as a likely source of the nutrients fertilizing the deadly algae bloom. The discharge pipe, which releases about 13 million gallons of treated waste into the Atlantic Ocean each day, is directly up current of the reef.

It is one of six sewer pipes discharging into the ocean off South Florida. All should be be taken out of use someday, officials say, with plants turning increasingly to water reuse and deep well injection. The South Central plant already sells some of its treated water to golf courses for irrigation, and environmental officials have praised its plans to expand that reuse. Right now, though, it is the only one that discharges directly upstream and within a mile of a living coral reef.

Janet Phipps, an analyst with the Palm Beach County Environmental Resource Management Department, has referred to the reef as "the canary in the mine shaft" that sends a warning of what waste discharges unmonitored for nutrient levels can do to marine life.

Phipps and the Reef Rescue volunteers were not alone in their concern.

"It's impossible to dilute sewage adequately for a coral reef," says Peter Bell, an environmental engineer from Australia. He has studied the effects of pollutants on the Great Barrier Reef and traveled around the world analyzing algae blooms on reefs, including those in Florida. "You would have to treat the water to the point that you can drink it."

The discharge from the South Central plant's pipe is not treated to that extent. Dense with nutrient-rich solids, it draws schools of fish that crowd around the pipe to feed on sewage, in turn drawing fishing boat captains who have learned the catch is always plentiful near the outfall. A slick of sewage simmering to the surface from 90 feet below helps captains find the spot.

Pipe's location disputed

As the Reef Rescue divers continued to gather information on the bloom and the nutrients coming from the outfall, dive boat captains donated their time and the use of their vessels. Others contributed equipment and money. One property owner, initially disbelieving that treated sewage was being dumped into the water a little more than a mile from his oceanfront home, wrote a $1,000 check when he learned the location of the pipe.

Tichenor sent DEP officials a third report in April 2004 and, in September 2004, a fourth report that showed the amount of waste coming from the pipe correlated with the amount of algae growing on the reef. In June 2005, he sent DEP a report documenting the damage to the reef. He also enclosed a stack of letters from others concerned about the reef's damage.

One came from environmental scientist Thomas Goreau, who had taken part in a study that showed the recovery of coral in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, from severe overgrowth by algae after sewage discharges were diverted from the reef.

Tichenor still received no response from the agency that would consider the plant's request for a new permit in the months that followed. The plant's permit was set to expire in December 2004. In the meantime, the agency had no grounds to take any action, DEP wastewater permitting supervisor Tim Powell said.

"We didn't feel we were in a position to force the utility to do something," Powell said, adding that the plant's last permit didn't require it to show that it was not polluting the water.

As a result, the plant has never tested the effects of its discharges on the waters or marine life surrounding its outfall pipe. In addition, the plant's permit sets no limits on the amount of polluting nutrients the pipe can discharge into the ocean.

The permit also says the outfall extends a mile and a half farther out to sea than its actual location, Tichenor points out.

Horne recently said, "As far as I'm aware, it hasn't been an issue."

Tichenor responds that, if the pipe carried its outfall to the point the permit says it does, its discharge would not flow toward the reef.

In July, Miami-based DEP Coral Reef Program Manager Chantal Collier wrote to the West Palm Beach office that the reports "provide sufficient data to warrant serious consideration" that the sewer plant's discharges could be harming the reef. She pointed out that reef-related spending brings $194 million a year to Palm Beach County and sustains 6,000 jobs.

She also noted, "Each meter of reef is estimated to protect $47,000 in property values by mitigating the effects of coastal erosion and storms."

She suggested that the West Palm Beach office enforce the Clean Water Act by requiring the plant in its next permit to monitor discharges from the pipe, to show it was not harming the nearby environment and to limit the amount of nutrients discharged into the water.

A week later, Powell responded to the plant's application for a new permit with a request that it produce a plan to monitor the waters surrounding the outfall.

That proposal remains in limbo. Plant director Robert Hagel responded that other factors could contribute to the algae bloom, including global warming, ocean upwelling and discharges via the Boynton Inlet of polluted waters from the Lake Worth Lagoon. The plant agreed to dye tests to track the direction of discharge from the pipe, a concession DEP officials first said was helpful, but later rejected.

The plant's permit expired Dec. 14. In the past, the plant has run three or more years on an extension of an expired permit, Hagel said. DEP officials say they "hope" reaching terms this time will not take that long.

Still, they project that testing won't begin until summer and will take more than a year to yield conclusions. Then DEP officials will determine whether they must limit the amount of polluting nutrients from the pipe, they say.

It's not that complicated, Phipps said. She has seen the damage during dives.

"Department staff has visited the Gulf Stream Reef and observed the Lyngbya bloom as well and noted the loss of habitat on the reef caused by the algal blooms," Environmental Resource Management Director Richard Walesky wrote in a letter to the DEP in August. "This once-beautiful reef is only a shadow of its former self."

Like Tichenor, Phipps points out that damage to the reef is isolated to the area crossed by current traveling from the outfall.

"Ocean upwelling does occur, but not in one tiny little spot," she said.

As to the influence of lagoon pollutants harming the reef, she questions why the damage has occurred only in the spot down current from the pipe, while reef areas closer to the inlet have remained healthy.

And dye tests are inconclusive and "muddy the water, so to speak," said Brian Lapointe, a Harbor Branch scientist who has studied algae blooms on coral reefs for more than 20 years.

Lapointe, with the county Environmental Resource Management Department and Reef Rescue volunteers, began in August regularly sampling and testing the waters around the reef and the outfall. The algae itself provide the best monitoring tool, he said.

"You can discriminate nitrogen from sewage and other sources," he said.

History provides an impetus to move quickly, said Lapointe, who directed the Harbor Branch field station in the keys for nearly 10 years.

"The coral reefs in the Florida Keys have now been declared a dead zone. It used to be the No. 1 dive destination in the world. They basically lost their chief asset.

"They missed the opportunity to do the right thing."