Army Corps says Everglades will get ‘massive’ water increase with new Lake O plan
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers picked a model for a new management plan for Lake Okeechobee that aims to reduce harmful discharges to the east and west coasts, and allow for more water to flow south to boost the health of the Everglades.
Now that a $1.8 billion upgrade of the Herbert Hoover Dike is nearly completed, the Corps will have more flexibility in how it manages the lake, which will be kept at higher levels and won’t have to be emptied as often for fear the dike might fail and flood surrounding areas. There will be a bigger focus on storage and making more water available for environmental benefits and water supply, Col. James Booth, the Corps commander in Florida, said during a video conference on Tuesday.
“The lake will spend the majority of its time in a larger operational zone, which will provide benefits to the system as a whole,” unlike the current model that’s been in use since 2008 and is more focused on constraints and limitations to lake levels, he said.
The plan “improves conditions for Central and South Florida communities while meeting the congressionally authorized project purposes of flood control, water supply, navigation, recreation, and preservation of fish and wildlife resources,” he added.
The Corps has spent the last three years discussing, planning, modeling and analyzing thousands of alternatives for managing the lake, taking into account conflicting needs from groups as diverse as sugar growers, Everglades restoration advocates and residents of towns east and west of Lake Okeechobee who have suffered with persistent algae blooms because of polluted discharges.
The chosen model, which still needs to go though an environmental analysis to evaluate impacts on endangered species, water quality, land use and Native American tribes, among other parameters, is expected to be approved in early 2023, according to the Corps.
LOSOM (Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual), as the plan is known, aims to eliminate releases to the St. Lucie estuary 95% of the time, compared with 37% in the current model. Releases to the Caloosahatchee won’t go over 2,000 cubic feet per second, an improvement compared with discharges of more than 6,000 cubic feet per second that were made in the past when the lake level was high.
Flows to the south will have a “massive annual increase” of about 203,000 acre feet per year, Booth said. The new operating plan will also guarantee more water to the Seminole Tribe and reduce damaging dry downs on Lake Okeechobee.
“This is the first time since 2008 that water managers are changing their approach in managing Lake Okeechobee’s water, and it is a major improvement from the status quo for the overwhelming majority of Floridians,” Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg said in a statement.
Lake Okeechobee will likely be kept at higher levels for longer periods of time under the new management plan, guaranteeing more water to users, including the sugar industry, which has vast fields around the lake. The lake is usually kept between 12.5 feet (to guarantee water supply) and 15.5 feet (to protect the dike). Under the new plan, it could go higher than 17 feet and stay at around that level for more days.
Reducing pollution in the lake and lowering the risk of harmful algae blooms that have plagued Florida’s coasts and hurt local economies are also goals of the new plan.
While most groups that want a piece of Lake Okeechobee have said the new plan is an improvement compared with current operations, some believe it still disproportionately protects irrigation and drainage for hundreds of thousands of acres of sugarcane fields.
“The bar was set very low,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “Part of the problem is LOSOM envisions a ‘conservation mode’ that would cut off helpful flows to the Everglades and Caloosahatchee during dry periods in order to stockpile water for sugarcane corporations south of the lake — resulting in more damaging discharges east and west during the wet season. That’s not balance,” she added.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said the Corps is working to manage the lake in a more balanced way, and that the new plan is a “win win” for Florida.
“We can’t just be spewing these discharges into these coastal communities, it creates huge problems; let’s have some balance,” he said at a press conference in Naples on Tuesday. “Let’s hope this plan will take into account all the different priorities that we have. “
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 1:53 PM.
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