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The Southwest Florida coast can’t afford to wait until 2015 to see results from water-quality initiatives, residents told federal officials Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency held a public meeting in Fort Myers to give a progress report on the statewide project to create pollution limits in watersheds.

The EPA used examples taken from the Lake Okeechobee tributaries because pollution limits for the Caloosahatchee and Estero Bay watersheds will not be ready until at least 2008.

Once limits, called Total Maximum Daily Loads, are in place, local jurisdictions will then have to clean pollutants, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, from their watersheds by 2015.

By then, it may be too late, said Ellen Peterson, a longtime Estero activist and member of the local chapter of the Sierra Club.

“We keep spinning our wheels,” Peterson said. “We want you to do something. We want our waters cleaned up.”

One study commissioned by the South Florida Water Management District found that every basin that discharges into the Estero Bay watershed and all but two basins that discharge into the Caloosahatchee River watershed contain so many pollutants that massive remediation would be required to bring them up to standards, said Wayne Daltry, director of Lee County’s Smart Growth.

The study will help Lee County and the state get a jump-start on cleaning up the watersheds before federal rules require them to do so, Daltry said.

“It gives us something so we can start spending money and start figuring out decent projects to get going on,” Daltry said. “It’s not good news but at least you know you have a cold and a fever and if you don’t take medication you’re going to get pneumonia.”

Some said Wednesday that the situation is already dire.

“We are a tourism-based economy,” said Pete Quasius, a member of the Collier County Audubon. “If we can’t deal with water-quality issues, we are going to have to start looking for another way to make a living.”

Until federal regulations are in place, Lee County officials can’t force people to clean up watersheds but can prevent them from making the situation worse, he said.

New developments should not be allowed to contribute any pollution to an impaired watershed, Daltry said.

Improvements to watersheds will include replacing aging septic systems and building devices to filter polluted water.

The costs of such improvements will be significant, Daltry said.

Some money will be available from federal and state coffers but most will have to come from local public and private sectors.

State leaders estimated it will take $1.5 billion and several years to bring Lake Okeechobee into compliance with pollution limits.

“We’ve impacted the lake for a long time,” said Susan Gray, deputy department director of watershed management for the water management district. “It’s going to take a long time to repair.”

In recent years, heavy loads of nutrients flowing from the lake and watershed down the Caloosahatchee River have caused algae blooms and other harm to local estuaries.

The sooner Lee County starts to cleanup its watersheds, the sooner locals and tourists will start to see results, Daltry said.

“It’s your home,” Daltry said. “If we can reduce the bad things a couple years earlier because someone gave us a study now, then it’s up to us to use it to reduce the problem.”