Col. Brandon Bowman, the new Army Corps commander for the region that includes Florida, is going to truly open the floodgates on both sides of Lake Okeechobee next month, discharging water east and west to drop the level of the lake by 4 feet during the following three months.
The goal is to drop the lake from its current depth of 16 feet depth to 12 feet or fewer.
The reason for the urgency is this: Hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as other tropical systems that dropped incredible amounts of rain this summer, have raised the lake to a level where the underwater vegetation is too far below the surface and is dying off. That threatens not just the world-class bass fishing at Lake Okeechobee, but its entire ecological balance.
Big-time releases like this were not supposed to happen anymore.
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, introduced a grand new plan to regulate the lake level that was approved this summer.
Not only does so much freshwater coming from the lake foul up the salinity levels of the bays and estuaries at the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico ends of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, respectively, but also, blue-green algae is endemic in the lake and travels wherever the water goes.
The Caloosahatchee River normally receives a steady amount of water from the lake this time of year that is actually beneficial to its estuary, although the Army Corps plans to release slightly more than what marine scientists who focus on the delicate balance of the river want to see.
On the St. Lucie side, environmental groups have been trying to clean up the Indian River Lagoon after decades of just these types of heavy releases from Lake Okeechobee, as well as urban runoff and leaky septic tanks, have decimated the waterway.
“We’re disappointed,” said Gil Smart, head of VoteWater, a clean-water nonprofit in Stuart. “We understand the lake’s in bad condition but unfortunately, the estuaries are also in bad condition. On this side of the state, the St. Lucie estuary has gotten a ton of runoff. The water quality is terrible and discharge is only going to add insult to injury.”
Smart said if the state sees a wetter-than-anticipated 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 this wisdom of this,” he said. “If you're not going to be able to achieve your goals, what's the point of inflicting all of the pain on the estuaries rather than opening the floodgates and pounding the estuaries now?
“This is going to make a bad situation worse.”
