[greenbean36191]

I'm familiar with how that works. The fact that there is a connection doesn't mean anything about where the nutrients end up though. The fact that the water doesn't just flow straight from the Everglades onto the reefs is a huge part of why the nutrients aren't getting there. They have to pass through miles of mangroves and sea grass before they ever get to the reefs. Even in areas of the keys that have sewage wells that percolate straight out to the reefs the water is back to oligotrophic levels within about 500 yards of the source and even there, the main source of P is upwelling from offshore, not the sewage. Everglades pollution making it out to the reefs in the Keys in significant amounts still remains to be demonstrated.

Just take a look at where the actual reefs are in the Keys. Notice that the reefs never formed on the bay side of the islands or very extensively in the middle keys where there are lots of large passes for bay water to come through. That's because that water has always been bad news for the reefs. For the last 5,000 years since the reefs formed they've been periodically knocked back by inimical water from the bay without any help from pollution. They only formed where they were sheltered from the water in the first place. You see the same pattern on Andros Island in the Bahamas.

The loss of the reefs in the Keys doesn't seem to have any historical precedence, and man-made causes are definitely contributing. However, even though runoff from the Glades seems like a common sense cause, things generally aren't that simple. It makes a good story, but it's hard to make a compelling case for it based on the real-world research.