In late 2020, I stood at the edge of Lake Okeechobee, watching as rain from Tropical Storm Eta rushed into the lake. This storm was the culmination of an above-average wet season that flooded the Central Everglades south of the lake. With the Central Everglades unable to receive any more lake water, lake levels rapidly rose to an unhealthy high of 16.45 feet in November 2020.
Lake Okeechobee’s watershed north to Orlando is vast, flat, and over-drained. Rain that falls on the 2.6 million-acre watershed enters the lake some six times faster than it can be released to the east, west, and south due to constraints in the water management system. Further, Lake Okeechobee’s capacity to hold water is not limitless — too high, and it threatens the collapse of the lake’s ecology and the integrity of the Herbert Hoover Dike.
When lake levels are dangerously high and the water conservation areas south of the lake overfill, the only outlets available to the Army Corps of Engineers are to the estuaries to the east and west. The Caloosahatchee needs and wants some lake water to maintain optimal salinity, and the St. Lucie does not need or want any water from the lake, but in times like these, both get more water than is healthy.
With lake levels this month still well above 15 feet, conditions are lining up to create a “perfect storm” for harmful algal blooms and high-volume discharges to the estuaries in the coming wet season. While we look to solutions like the EAA Reservoir to increase our capacity to send water south, we also need water management projects north of the lake to prevent the lake from overfilling in the first place. These solutions are the only way we can break the cycle of disastrous discharges driving algal blooms that decimate both our wildlife and our coastal economy.
Needing more water storage and retention capacity north of the lake is not a new concept. Reports by the University of Florida Water Institute and planning exercises by the South Florida Water Management District have estimated that one million acre-feet of storage north of the lake (equivalent to one million eight-lane swimming pools) is needed to buffer lake levels during storms and reduce discharges to the estuaries. Water storage and retention in the Lake Okeechobee watershed is essential to reduce algae bloom-fueling phosphorus flowing into the lake and ultimately into our estuaries.
We need more projects like Archbold Biological Station’s Buck Island Ranch. Like all ranches, it is full of wetland basins connected by drainage ditches. Unlike other ranches, Buck Island’s ditches aren’t operated to rush water off the property, but rather, wetlands are allowed to fill. These wetlands are full of birds by day and frog songs by night, because they hold their water. Dispersed water management (DWM) projects can help meet the storage and retention needs of the watershed and provide a number of other benefits as well — much needed shallow-water storage and retention, reduction in phosphorus loading, and groundwater recharge.
DWM programs come in many forms; the common theme is that they engage the community in the solution. Public/private partnerships engage landowners as part of the solution and keep privately owned lands on the tax rolls and producing food and fiber. Revenues received by landowners through these partnerships are a powerful incentive to resist the temptation to shift properties to more intensive uses. DWM projects are also an important complement to large public-works projects because they can be implemented more quickly without incurring the expensive capital expenditures associated with land acquisition and deeper storage.
By rehydrating historic wetlands in an overdrained landscape, dispersed water management projects will slow, store, and clean water on its way to Lake Okeechobee. And this same landscape dotted with glistening water and wetlands will also provide a safe haven to birds and wildlife. The storm clouds of future rainy seasons over Central Florida’s prairies can spell a too-deep lake and suffering estuaries, or a constellation of healthy wetlands adorning a vibrant working landscape.
The choice is clear. Strategic dispersed water management can help Florida sustain agriculture and wildlife, protect the health of Lake Okeechobee and its estuaries, and realize the full potential of a restored greater Everglades ecosystem.
Doug Gaston serves as Audubon Florida’s Northern Everglades Policy Analyst, helping to solve issues affecting the Lake Okeechobee Watershed and the greater Everglades ecosystem.
