TCPALM.com STUART — Suspected blooms of blue-green algae continue to spread in the backwaters, creeks and canals around the St. Lucie River, showing up for the first time Wednesday along the eastern shore in Stuart.
With the Memorial Day holiday just days away, the Florida Health Department in Martin County is awaiting toxicity test results to decide whether to issue warnings to stay out of the algae-laden water, spokeswoman Renay Rouse said. Those results are expected by the end of the week, Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said.
Two new suspected blooms reported Wednesday were in Poppleton Creek and the Riverland Mobile Home Park marina just north of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, both in Stuart. Pushed by strong southeasterly winds, blooms found earlier this week were in Palm City on the west side of the river.
A bloom behind Mike Berger’s Overlook Drive home, he said Wednesday, was smaller than those in Poppleton Creek in 2005 and 2013, years of significant discharges of Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie River.
“It’s all pretty much the same,” Berger said. “Once they start dumping the lake, they (the blooms) happen.”
The blooms started showing up slightly more than two weeks after the Army Corps of Engineers resumed discharges of Lake Okeechobee water to the river after a monthlong hiatus. The discharges restarted May 1, despite DEP confirming a large toxic algae bloom in the lake and western end of the canal leading to the St. Lucie River.
‘Bring to the forefront’
The algae bloom next door to Kevin Powers’ home on Poppleton Creek demonstrates the “urgency” to complete water quality projects, the South Florida Water Management District board vice chairman said Wednesday.
Powers specifically cited the C-44 Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area under construction in western Martin County. The project is designed to store and clean local runoff into the C-44 Canal, the conduit for Lake Okeechobee water to the St. Lucie River.
The project also could take lake water from the canal, according to the water district. Construction on the $625 million project is scheduled to be complete in 2019.
“I don’t think there’d be algae blooms in the St. Lucie and in my backyard if the C-44 project was online,” Powers said.
The water district’s projects don’t include a proposed reservoir on U.S. Sugar Corp. land south of Lake Okeechobee. Earlier this month, Powers made the motion and the board unanimously agreed to reject the state’s option to buy land south of the lake from U.S. Sugar Corp. A number of Everglades and Indian River Lagoon advocates say a reservoir built on the land would dramatically reduce discharges from the lake.
That project would be “so far out, 20 years in the future,” it has no relevance to the river’s current condition, Powers said. “The problem could have been fixed if these other project had been on a higher priority.”
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