Guest opinion: Army Corps must optimize Lake O plan to address toxic discharges to the Caloosahatchee
Anyone who has been following Florida’s water issues for any amount of time has heard the term “LOSOM.” Simply put — LOSOM will ultimately affect the health of South Florida’s waters for the next decade.
LOSOM is the process in which the Army Corps of Engineers revamps the Lake Okeechobee operations schedule, the rulebook that dictates how the lake’s water will be managed. LOSOM will determine when they will discharge toxic water into our community for at least the next ten years. This process has been on-going since 2018 with numerous public hearings and opportunities for stakeholder input.
As part of LOSOM, the Army Corps and South Florida Water Management District undertook an extensive modeling process, simulating thousands of different plans and ultimately narrowing them down to one preliminary selection, “Alternative Plan CC.” Plan CC is a starting point, not the finish line.
The next step in the process is Iteration 3, the optimization phase, and this is where public input is absolutely critical. The previous iterations were led by project delivery teams made up of local, state, and federal officials. But now the Corps is listening to the public, and the impacts this has to our communities.
The Army Corps of Engineers told us in a meeting last week that the project delivery teams determined the #1 priority for the Caloosahatchee was giving us the beneficial flows we need during the dry season. Although these are important, by far the most important part is alleviating the damaging high-volume toxic discharges. That’s why we founded Captains For Clean Water.
More:Guest opinion: Will LOSOM get the water right?
The high-volume discharges are like getting hit by a baseball bat, and the Corps is saying here’s a lollipop (dry season flows), but they’re still hitting us with the baseball bat. The lollipop is nice, but what we want is for them to stop hitting us with the bat.
The Army Corps must act with the utmost sense of urgency to optimize Plan CC to address the damaging discharges to the Caloosahatchee and avoid extra nutrient load to our estuary. Red tide on Florida’s Gulf Coast is becoming a serious problem, and one that’s exacerbated by nutrient pollution. A final operations plan that would put us in a worse position than the current lake schedule is absolutely unacceptable.
The good news is the South Florida Water Management District already proved it is possible to optimize Plan CC to be a significant improvement over the current regulation schedule for the Caloosahatchee, St. Lucie and the Everglades in a recent model run called SR3.5. These optimizations are well within the scope of what the Army Corps can do in Iteration 3.
As the Corps works toward the final announcement of the three to four focus areas they will use to model in Iteration 3, we are urging them to adopt the following focus areas as optimizations for Plan CC to provide the greatest benefit to stakeholders:
- Significant reduction in harmful discharges to the Caloosahatchee
- Allow beneficial flows to the Caloosahatchee and the Everglades across ALL bands
Colonel Andrew Kelly, the Jacksonville District Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, visited Southwest Florida on Monday as part of a listening tour to meet with various stakeholders and representatives and hear their desires for Plan CC optimization.
During his meeting with Captains For Clean Water, Colonel Kelly participated in a Facebook Live Q&A where he encouraged supporters to keep sending their input to the Army Corps and assured them he is listening.
This is your golden opportunity to help safeguard our waters. Submit your comments to the Army Corps by emailing LakeOComments@usace.army.mil.
Captains For Clean Water has made it easy to take action with a pre-written email. You can simply fill out a form on our website, review the email to the Army Corps, and hit send!
The Army Corps is expected to make a final announcement of their preferred alternative including optimization specifics in early August. The final plan will be documented in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Water Control Plan which is scheduled for public comment and implementation in 2022.
Capt. Daniel Andrews is the co-founder and Executive Director of Captains For Clean Water.