Lake Okeechobee levels were still rising slightly Thursday, and the lake is at the highest elevation its been since December of 2005
The Army Corps of Engineers on Friday morning will start sending nearly 70,000 gallons of water per second down the Caloosahatchee River.
Record rains in January dumped nearly a foot of the wet stuff on the 16-county region in the South Florida Water Management District, which basically covers the historic Everglades. Stormwater runoff from lands north and south of the river and Lake Okeechobee discharges turned coastal waters brown, close to black in some areas over the past week.
Lake Okeechobee levels are higher than they've been since December of 2005, after a series of tropical storms and hurricanes dumped rain across much of the state.
"All we need is a small (rain or storm) event and we could have a record event on Lake Okeechobee," said Jim Jeffords, who heads the district's operations division.
The district, on average, has received about 10 to 18 inches of rain over the past three months, when the dry season started. That's about a foot more than on average through Feb. 3.
Release rates will be 9,300 cubic feet per second, or 69,569 gallons per second, to the Caloosahatchee River while flows to the St. Lucie river and east coast will be as high as 7,700 cubic feet per second (or 57,300 gallons per second), the Army Corps announced during a press conference Thursday.
The lake is still rising, according to Army Corps and South Florida Water Management District records.
Critics of water management practices say the agencies should have been better prepared for this event, especially because federal meteorologists have predicted El Nino rains for months now.
Sanibel Mayor Kevin Ruane said the state and region need more places to store water — massive fields or reservoirs to keep water on the landscape instead of flowing into ditches and canals.
The South Florida Water Management District last week back pumped water off lands south of the lake and back into Okeechobee, a controversial practice that some say violates the Clean Water Act.
Ruane said farmers are getting a bad reputation over local water conditions. Much of the water flowing to Sanibel and miles out into the Gulf of Mexico is from the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area. Those flows, however, do not differentiate the pollution levels in runoff from local development versus those of Lake Okeechobee water.
"Organic material, mangroves, those are the elements that are making the water brown," Ruane said.
Mangroves produce tannins but do not cause waters to suffer from turbidity or low oxygen levels. These trees are major filters of pollution, and water in mangrove areas under normal circumstances is clear — although the bottoms of rivers and streams are brown from mangrove leaves, bark and limbs.
It's unknown how long the releases will continue, although it will take weeks or even a few months to lower the lake in preparation of the rainy season, which starts in June.
"It all depends on how much water we get out of the lake," Jeffords said.
During heavy rain events, water can enter the lake three times faster than it can be discharged, Jeffords said.
Meteorologists expect an El Nino pattern to bring even more rain in the next two or three months. More rain means more lake releases and stormwater runoff — the top contributors to local flows.
The Army Corps keeps lake levels at 12.5 to 15.5 feet above sea level. The lake has been kept higher in past decades, but water levels of 17 or 18 feet can destroy vegetation in the lake and kill the fishery. Higher water levels also mean more pressure on the dike. More pressure, in turn, leads to seepage, leaks, and, eventually, a breach.
Look what's happening around Lake Okeechobee
the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
The El Nino weather system that helped keep hurricanes away from Florida last summer has put coastal regions under siege again. By responding to this latest emergency, the Legislature can head off others.
According to the South Florida Water Management District, the November-January period was the wettest since record keeping began in 1932. In January, the district's 16 counties got more than three times the usual rainfall. El Nino winters tend to be cooler and wetter.
All that rainfall has raised the level of Lake Okeechobee to more than 16 feet, a point where it threatens the Herbert Hoover Dike on the lake's south shore. When that happens, the Army Corps of Engineers releases water to the east through the St. Lucie River and to the west through the Caloosahatchee River.
Those discharges carry pollution from the lake, fouling the rivers, the estuaries — brackish areas where marine life breed — and even the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The longer the discharges last, the greater the damage. Unfortunately, the discharges last week got larger will last for a while. To ease pressure on the dike, the level must drop to at least 15 feet and perhaps lower.
Worse, to prevent flooding of farms and towns south of the lake, the district just pumped water from canals back into the lake for four days. The effect was to put more pollution into the lake, making the discharges even dirtier. It was only the ninth back-pumping since 2008. Four of those came after tropical storms.
Florida faces a frustrating paradox in trying to restore the Everglades water system that begins with the Kissimmee River headwaters south of Orlando and ends at Florida Bay. There is too much freshwater where we don't need it — flowing untreated into the lake — and too little where we need it — flowing clean into the bay.
Though the state has spent much on Everglades restoration, the state must spend much more to restore the system. Some immediate and longer-term help can come from the Legislature.
Citing the discharges, Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, asked for $7.5 million that would increase areas for storing and filtering water before it flows into the lake. Despite opposition from key senators, Negron is likely to prevail since he's set to be Senate president next year.
That one-time money would help, but Negron is sponsoring another bill that would help even more. Senate Bill 1168 would allocate as much as $200 million through 2024 toward the state-federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. The money would come from Amendment 1 funding.
Negron's co-sponsor is Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers. Her district includes the Caloosahatchee River, which is getting nearly 6 billion gallons of discharges per day, roughly 1 billion more than the St. Lucie River. Rep. Gayle Harrell, who also represents the Treasure Coast, is the House sponsor.
On Tuesday, the Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee will hear Negron's legislation. Chairman Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, wants more money to help the freshwater springs in his north-central Florida district. Environmental advocates are urging a compromise that preserves the Everglades money.
On Friday, Negron told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board that he expects to reach that compromise. "I believe that we will find some Amendment 1 money for springs," Negron said. "The bill is a work in progress, and we have to work out the distribution formula." The emergency money would expand from 300 acres to 4,000 acres a successful water storage project on a Martin County farm. Negron said the site could hold 30 billion gallons of water.
That's about a week's worth of discharges at the current rate. Negron acknowledged that the project is just one of many needed to prevent assaults on the St. Lucie. Still, he is "optimistic long-term," and he may be right — if the Legislature and Congress keep the money coming. New legislation would automatically authorize — though not fund — Everglades restoration projects the U.S. Corps of Engineers considers ready in the next five years.
Construction soon will be complete on the A-1 reservoir in western Palm Beach County that can hold 60,000 acre feet of excess rainfall. Groundbreaking looms for a reservoir that would divert polluted water from the Caloosahatchee River. Construction has begun on a similar reservoir in Martin County. Negron said the work will take about six years.
So there is progress since the last St. Lucie River emergency in mid-2013. Audubon of Florida Director Eric Draper, however, makes the right point when he says, "The water system in South Florida is geared around the Everglades Agricultural Area, and we have to talk about that."
Correct. Beyond the money, if the state's new water policy doesn't force farmers to adequately clean water flowing off their fields, these emergencies — and the resultant damage — are inevitable.
