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Ailing Lake Okeechobee to be lowered
dramatically, despite fears for 'Glades, bays
By NEIL SANTANIELLO
Sun-Sentinel
Web-posted: 1:03
a.m. Apr. 26, 2000
South Florida water managers took more
aggressive action on Tuesday to lower bloated Lake Okeechobee despite fears that
estuaries and the Everglades will pay the ecological price.
Choosing their "shared adversity" plan, the South
Florida Water Management District board voted in an emergency meeting to start
dumping dramatically more water into estuaries near Stuart and Fort Myers, and
to increase releases into the Everglades and urban canals.
That move surprised lake angler Larry Harris, who has seen
years of high water in the lake nearly destroy the marshes vital to its fishery.
"I didn't expect they would do it, but I'm really happy
they did," said Harris, a North Palm Beach resident and member of the
Friends of Lake Okeechobee.
The water board hopes its action can lower the 730-square-mile
lake about two feet by June 1 -- to 13 feet above sea level -- and hold it there
for two months. That should help the lake's near-shore marshes begin a recovery,
water district officials say.
Tens of thousands of acres of lake vegetation have been
smothered by above-normal rains and water management practices that use
Okeechobee as a reservoir.
Young fish hide in those patches of eel grass, pepper grass
and bulrush to evade predators.
Reaching the 13-foot goal hinges on weather. It is still
unclear how well battered marshes would respond, district officials say.
Activists along one of the two main drainage conduits, the St.
Lucie Canal to the east, were dismayed by the district's decision.
The increased volume of fresh water released could harm
oysters and seagrasses in the St. Lucie Estuary and chase away its juvenile
marine fish, water district and state scientists said.
"I think there is going to be a lot of noise of a
disapproving kind in Martin County," said Max Quackenbos, with the St.
Lucie River Initiative. "The downside is the estuary is going to take
another whacking."
After a huge expulsion of lake water into St. Lucie in 1998,
following El Niño rains, fish in the river and Indian River Lagoon grew sick
and developed sores.
Water managers promised to move cautiously and monitor the
ecological ripples of discharges into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers so
they can reverse course if damage is too severe.
"Timid actions are not going to help," said water
district Executive Director Frank Finch. "There's really only one option to
get the lake down to 13 feet. There will be a lot of opportunity for mid-course
correction."
The stepped-up releases into the Everglades will bring more
pollution -- phosphorus from the lake -- to fuel cattail growth into western
Broward and Miami-Dade wetlands. The Miccosukee Indian Tribe has pressed water
managers not to send that pollution their way, into Water Conservation Area No.
3.
"There is nothing shared about this: We are taking the
brunt of it," said tribe spokesman Gene Duncan.
After admitting their agency had not acted swiftly enough to
help the lake in years past, board members argued against a more conservative
proposal for draining the lake that would have fallen short of their desired
goal. That option had broad public support.
Municipal water officials did not want to see their backup
water supply emptied too much. To appease them, water managers said they won't
call for water-use restrictions as quickly next year if water sources are
reduced by dry weather.
Board chairman Michael Collins said the agency cannot
continue to manage the lake by reacting to one crisis after another and said
water managers will be prepared to act faster the next time water levels appear
to be harming lake plants.
"We're trading off one environmental value for another
because we did not plan this year," said Paul Gray with the Florida Audubon
Society.
Estuary advocates, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission and water utilities had backed a less aggressive water release plan
discussed by the board, a kind of compromise between safer releases and damaging
ones.
The plan approved unanimously by the water district board has
an 80 percent chance of lowering the lake to a goal of 13 feet by June 1. It
would push an average of 1,963 cubic feet per second of water out the St. Lucie,
3,172 cubic feet per second out the Caloosahatchee and 1,375 cubic feet per
second out four canals into the Everglades.
"For now, it's an acceptable approach," said Mark
Robson, the conservation commission's Everglades region director.
Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello@sun-sentinel.com
or 561-243-6625.
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