Tens of millions of gallons of wastewater flowed into Tampa Bay waterways during Hurricane Milton

The biggest spill reported was 20 million gallons into the Manatee River in Bradenton.

Wastewater treatment plants were offline, manholes overflowed and tons of waste contaminated waterways throughout the region.

Justin Tramble, executive director of Tampa Bay Waterkeeper, a non-profit conservation group, said these spills are no longer resulting from so-called 100-year rain events, and sewage treatment plants need to be upgraded - now.

"We need to reinvest in our infrastructure, or else every time we have these tropical events, we're going to be harming our watershed, which really hurts our economy. So we're playing with fire," he said.

Tramble said they haven't heard any reports of fish kills or strong smells in the bay - yet - but they are sending a team into Tampa Bay to look for any effects of the spills.

"We cannot continue to let these happen because there comes a time where we will have to realize as a community that these storms are becoming more frequent," he said. "With these storms, we continue to have this significant rainfall. So it's no longer an excuse that these are, you know, 100-year events. It's happening a lot."

Tramble said we need to face the problem and invest more money in keeping sewage treatment plants from becoming overwhelmed every time we have a major storm.

"I do think that there has been some focus to invest in the infrastructure, but it's not enough," he said, "and I think it's important for folks that engage with the water, which is everybody here that lives in the Tampa Bay region, whether directly or indirectly, continue to speak up so that the can doesn't get kicked down the road."

"Because we can't keep having these events, and we can't keep blaming the rarity of the event," he said. "At some point, that argument needs to go away, and we need to face the problems and fix this so that we can protect our our water."

The reported spills do not include any from the city of St. Petersburg, which shut down two of its three sewage treatment plants before Milton struck.

"The city made the very difficult decision to take two sewage plants offline, the Northeast one and the Southwest one, and this was because the conditions, the wind conditions, had gotten so bad that we were up against a deadline to try to rescue the plant workers safely, get them safely out of the plant, and also to prevent any damage to the plant," said St. Petersburg spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez.

During Hurricane Helene, Pinellas County reported more than 800,000 gallons of wastewater overflowed from manhole covers. Half of that was in St. Petersburg.