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Army Corps of Engineers Comes to Algae-Laden Cape Coral

Rachel Iacovone
/
WGCU
Cape Coral resident S'iva Goodman hoists a sign outside of the Cape Coral Yacht Club beside her 11-year-old daughter, Shelby, who is also carrying a sign protesting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and symbolically wearing a surgical mask.

Southwest Florida has been feeling the effects of water releases from Lake Okeechobee for weeks now – most obviously in Cape Coral where the canal-based grid system of the city means many of its residents have backyards that dip down into the water, which is now filled with toxic blue-green algae. 

So, the city invited the Army Corps of Engineers to come give a presentation at the Cape Coral Yacht Club Tuesday – where the only thing stronger than the stench of the water were the voices of the outraged citizens.

Tim Thompson carried a sign that read, “Don’t slime us."

Credit Joanne Kreise
Algae covers the water surface of a Cape Coral canal behind resident Joanne Kreise's home.

"That’s what they’re doing," Thompson said. "I could use a word I don’t usually use, but what they’re doing is sliming on us. They’re doing other things to us too, but I wouldn’t say that.”

Thompson has lived in Southwest Florida for 31 years, but in spite of the handmade sign in his hands, he  said he didn't consider himself an activist.

Many of the couple hundred people standing outside of the yacht club said the same – though the meeting inside was at its 500-person capacity, and outside, it was smelly, sticky and starting to storm.

S’iva Goodman and her 11-year-old daughter, Shelby, were both symbolically wearing surgical masks. Goodman said, rain or shine, they were sticking it out until the end because she had some words for the Army Corps of Engineers.

“It seems like they’re always telling us they’re repairing the dikes," she said, "but the levels never change as to how high the water levels can go.”

Goodman used to live in Stuart, which regularly experiences similar algae blooms from the releases sent down the St. Lucie River to the east coast of the state.

“There’s no worse over here than it is over there. It’s all bad," Goodman said. "But, the deterioration here is happening very rapidly, and people aren’t as educated. So, it’s worse here because people don’t know what’s going on.”

Turned out, the outcome of the meeting wouldn’t bring relief to either coast any time soon. The Army Corps of Engineers simply restated a stance familiar to Florida’s coastal communities: there’s nowhere else the water can go but east and west.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.