By Editorial Board
January 11, 2017
Tampa Bay Times
There should be no doubt that the Florida Legislature should move forward with a sensible plan to create more water storage space south of Lake Okeechobee to achieve the goals of the multibillion-dollar Everglades cleanup effort. That is critical for easing the dumping of toxic lake water onto the eastern and western coasts, replenishing South Florida’s drinking water supply and increasing the flow of water to replenish the Everglades basin. The science is settled and the money exists, and lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott should act in the interests of public health and the state’s economy.
Wednesday’s workshop by a Senate committee marked the first serious airing of a proposal by Senate President Joe Negron to build a new reservoir south of the lake. Unusually heavy rains last year forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release tens of billions of gallons of tainted water from the lake into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries, a flood control effort aimed at stabilizing lake levels and protecting property owners to the south.
The releases spawned massive blue-green algae blooms that presented serious health risks and damaged property values and tourism. Faced with beaches and parks coated in muck, Scott declared a state of emergency in four counties. But those steps were more about the governor trying to blame the federal government for not repairing an old dike on the lake rather than a genuine effort to address a decades-old problem — the lack of a safety valve to take water from the lake at high tide, clean it and redirect it from the estuaries to water-hungry South Florida.
Negron, R-Stuart, proposed in August that the state buy 60,000 acres for new water storage south of the lake. While Negron identified two tracts that would take advantage of other infrastructure that is part of the cleanup effort, he has suggested he is open to other locations if they have environmental and cost benefits. Under the federal-state cleanup effort, he envisions a 50/50 split on the $2.4 billion cost, leaving the state’s portion at $1.2 billion. Negron would use money allocated through Amendment 1, the environmental land initiative that voters overwhelmingly adopted in 2014.
This is a practical, timely and affordable approach for dealing with a problem that has existed for decades. There is no doubt additional storage is needed south of the lake, both to ease the pressure to discharge dirty water from the lake and to increase the water flow to the Everglades. The scientific community has agreed on those goals for years, and the question has not been whether to increase storage, but where and when. New research and the impacts of climate change also suggest that water storage will become even more important to the success of the Everglades cleanup effort.
Opponents say the state should focus on cleanup projects already in the works and stick to a schedule laid out by the Army Corps to wait until 2021 to deal with the reservoir. But the Corps is willing to fast-track the plan, and a proposal to replace leaky septic systems north of the lake should have no bearing on this decision. This is, after all, an evolving cleanup effort, and the state and federal governments need to go where the science leads. As a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine noted in December, officials can take a fresh look at the work schedule without slowing down projects or “overall restoration progress.” There is enough in the pipeline for work to continue as the state ensures the restoration effort is on the right course.
Negron and environmental advocates are right that there is no sense in waiting to construct a reservoir this project needs. Nearly halfway into the timeline for the Everglades project, less than 20 percent of the costs have been funded. And there is still “no long-term downward trend in phosphorus loading” to the lake, the National Academies found in December, meaning there is enough existing phosphorus to maintain elevated loads “for the next 50-120 years.” How does waiting help the estuaries, the people who live and work on the east and wests coasts or Florida’s image as a tourist destination? It’s time for lawmakers to act.