Imagine being able to see both huge spillways on either side of Lake Okeechobee at once as they crank open wide to allow more than one billion gallons of water a day to roil out of each floodgate to lower the lake’s depth.
Then imagine being at the places where the water flows into the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the west. It would be easy to determine when the lake water arrives as the light blue water turns dark.
The lake water heading east flows down the St. Lucie River, a 35-mile waterway that has been straightened, dredged, and bermed by human activities to benefit agriculture and commercial and recreational navigation. In turn, that attracted residential and business development all around.
Down the St. Lucie flows water filled with agricultural chemicals such as phosphorus and nitrogen, as well as the plethora of everyday pollution generated by millions of people that flows into the lake from suburban Orlando via the Kissimmee River.
From the development surrounding the waterway flows seepage from faulty septic systems and animal waste that includes bacteria and viruses, toxic heavy metals like lead, zinc, and cadmium from vehicle emissions, and pesticides, antifreeze, microplastics, and litter of all types.
Lake Okeechobee’s spillway to the west leads into the Calossahtachee River, a 67-mile waterway with a nearly identical blueprint in terms of its history and current influx of pollution.
On December 7, both spillways were opened wide to release more than one billion gallons of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into each river. All day. Every day. For three months.
“This is going to make a bad situation worse,” said Gil Smart, head of VoteWater, a clean-water nonprofit in Stuart.
'disappointed'
Historically, water releases from the lake have been a contentious issue due to their environmental impacts, particularly of the pollutants in the nutrient-rich water that can lead to harmful algae blooms in downstream estuaries.
A new set of guidelines concerning how, when, and where water should be released from the lake was made official this summer and hailed as a shift in operational philosophy towards a more balanced approach that considers environmental impacts alongside flood control and water supply needs.
Called the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, the guidelines were developed after extensive public consultation with an aim to reduce harmful discharges to coastal estuaries while increasing beneficial flows to the Everglades and Florida Bay.
The strengthening of the Herbert Hoover Dike in January 2023 was the catalyst for the new operating manual, nicknamed LOSOM. A hard-fought win for environmentalists was those key components the nonprofits believed would reduce the need for emergency discharges that have previously caused ecological damage.
At least that was the indication environmentalists from both sides of the state said they got when the Army Corps, which manages the lake along with the South Florida Water Management District, finalized LOSOM.
Col. Brandon Bowman, the new Army Corps commander for the region that includes Florida, said last week his decision to begin lowering Lake Okeechobee’s level on Dec. 7 -- from 16 feet to 12 feet or less in 90 days – is necessary to improve the lake’s health after rainfall from the hurricanes and other tropical systems this year has flowed in the lake and raised the water to a level where the underwater vegetation is too far below the surface.
Now tape grass, pondweed, and bulrush are among the species dying off, which threatens not just the world-class bass fishing at Lake Okeechobee but its entire ecological balance.
The Army Corps’ decision came less than six months after the fanfare when LOSOM was finalized with what many of the environmentalists involved in drafting the plan thought were implied limits on such major releases. That has left some of them, especially on the East Coast, feeling miffed.
“On this side of the state, the St. Saint Lucie estuary has gotten a ton of runoff. The water quality is terrible and discharge is only going to add insult to injury,” Gil Smart of VoteWater said. “We understand the lake’s in bad condition, but unfortunately, the estuaries are also in bad condition. “We’re disappointed,”
Smart said if there is more rainfall than expected during the dry season, which is typically the first four months of the year, getting the lake down to 12 feet or less is not going to happen.
“We question the wisdom of this,” he said. “If you're not going to be able to achieve your goals, what's the point of opening the floodgates and pounding the estuaries now?”
Jason Engle, an Army Corps engineer, said LOSOM allows for dual releases to manage lake levels, albeiot in ways that more effectively while balancing environmental considerations.
“The lake is supposed to vary up and down through the year,” he said. “It's actually a very important part of the ecology of the lake that the lake doesn't just stay at the same water level all the time.
We want to get the lake down, if possible, below 12 feet for three months, and that would allow the submerged aquatic vegetation in Lake Okeechobee to recover.”
Engle is aware opening the spillway to the west is highly controversial. The Army Corps can slow or stop the releases as any upcoming situations may warrant, he said.
“The St Lucie stakeholders have said in the past any releases from the lake are regarded by them as potentially harmful, “he said. “We are listening to that feedback very carefully.”
‘SCCF will be monitoring’
Before profiteers arrived in Southwest Florida in 1800s to try and drain the Everglades the headwaters of the Caloosahatchee River were miles to the west of Lake Okeechobee, but a canal was dredged through the swamps and lakes separating the two to complete a navigational shortcut through the state known today as the Majorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway.
That allows for the Caloosahatchee River to also be an escape hatch for excess water in Lake Okeechobee, which can foul up the salinity levels of the bays and estuaries at the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and the endemic blue-green algae in the lake goes wherever the water does.
That is a concern for the environmental groups on both coasts dealing with the water coming from Lake Okeechobee.
One difference from the St. Lucie side is that the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and other nonprofits based in the greater Fort Myers region request that the Army Corps release billions of gallons of water from the lake in the dry season to make up for the dearth of freshwater caused by decades of manipulating the Caloosahatchee River.
Mixing the lake’s freshwater with the saltwater flowing into the river at high tide is beneficial for the flora and fauna in the intertidal region of the Caloosahatchee.
The additional water being proposed by the Army Corps for the Caloosahatchee starting Dec. 7 “is still in the upper end of the optimal flow envelope for the Caloosahatchee Estuary,” the nonprofit wrote in an online newsletter. “And SCCF will be monitoring water quality conditions after the releases.”
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