Commentary on “Mitsch et al., 2015, Protecting the Florida Everglades wetlands with wetlands: Can stormwater phosphorus be reduced to oligotrophic conditions?”

Constructed wetlands have been utilized with varying levels of success in an effort to reduce nutrient concentrations entering waterways. In south Florida, stormwater treatment areas (STAs) have been utilized to remove excessive phosphorus (P) from surface waters for more than two decades with remarkable results. Even though the STAs have been operational for more than two decade, further improvement of P removal performance is necessary to achieve the desired outflow concentrations. This commentary critically reviews a recently published manuscript concerning the ability of alternative vegetative communities' ability to improve STA treatment efficiency. The commentary provides clarification of Everglades STA effluent limit and the total P water quality criterion established for the Everglades Protection Area. The commentary also addresses fundamental issues with the authors' experimental design and interpretability in light of the studies treatment fidelity, controls and scalability.