By Roger Williams
September 28, 2016
Florida Weekly
IT’S THE YEAR OF WATER IN FLORIDA. Unprecedented winter floods swept into Lake Okeechobee from the north, cascading into the delicate estuaries on Florida’s east and west coasts, cooking up the worst summer algae blooms and fish kills in memory.
It was international news. Vacationers stayed away. All businesses touched by tourism reeled from revenue losses.
A fever pitch of frustration resulted in scores of new advocacy groups, petitions, rallies and protests. Following the heaviest rains ever recorded for the month of January — 10 or more inches above the average 2 inches, in many places — releases from the lake into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers began in February.
When the lake level gets too high, its aging dike — which protects nearby communities like Belle Glade, Clewiston and Pahokee — is in peril of collapsing. The Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the dike, issues the orders to release the water.
So far this year, 614 billion gallons have been released, about double the quantity in calmer years, making this the third worst year since 1963. With much more rain it could become the worst year.
Experts, advocates and volunteers of every stripe have waded into the debate about what to do.
A 2015 study by scientists at the University of Florida Water Institute calls for a comprehensive re-engineering of theEverglades system, with action on every side of Lake O.
But the pressure from his constituents led State Sen. Joe Negron of Stuart — the place in Martin County perhaps hit hardest by the inches-thick “guacamole algae,” as some call it — to propose a state and federal buyout of 60,000 acres in the lake’s traditional southern flow way. That land would capture, treat and transfer water into the Everglades.
Despite repeated requests over a four-week period for an interview with Florida Weekly, Sen. Negron declined to answer telephone calls or emails.
His plan has prompted a hot debate whether government should buy or take land from farms or cane fields, or whether water should be first captured and cleaned to the north, before moving it into the lake and south.
On the environmental side, Captains for Clean Water, the Everglades Foundation,One Florida, Audubon, Riverwatch, 1000 Friends of Florida, the Florida Oceanographic Society and the many signers of the Now or Neverglades Declaration have shared their voices. They want water stored, treated and transported from south of the lake to Florida Bay, as soon as possible.
On the agricultural side, U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals and numerous farm and lake-area businesses with well-versed town and county politicians have been equally vocal. They want water stored and treated north of the lake.
Real estate, tourism, and service-industry voices, perhaps having the most to lose, just want the bad water to be dealt with elsewhere, but not in the coastal communities where they’ve thrived for decades.
If Floridians agree on one thing, it’s this:
Florida’s hydrological wonder, the vast water system stretching 200 miles south from the Chain-of-Lakes near Orlando to Florida Bay, is in dangerous disrepair. And it’s getting worse, even with decades of study and local fixes.
The ecological, economic and geographic future of Florida — the single American state most deeply defined and shaped by water — now hangs in a precarious balance between natural torrents difficult to control and clean, and the 1,000-person-a-day torrent of humanity moving into the Sunshine State, where 20 million residents could become 33 million or more by 2070, demographers say.
“A saga of errors created this monstrosity,” says Nathaniel Reed, chairman emeritus of 1000 Friends of Florida. He’s describing a tale of engineering dating back to the 1880s. Mr. Reed served as assistant secretary of the interior for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and worked under several Florida governors, helping to shape water policy.
This saga and its solution matters to every single Floridian and future visitor, for a simple reason: humans require potable water. And if more water can’t be stored north and south, then cleaned and delivered into the Everglades, we won’t be able to drink or bathe without multi-billion-dollar desalinization engineering.
“If we don’t have water in the Everglades, you don’t have water in your tap. We’re on our own. We’re on a peninsula and can’t borrow water from another state,” explains Shannon Estenoz, director for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Everglades Initiatives. A Florida native, she previously served on the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District.
Delivering enough clean groundwater south into the Everglades will guarantee that the shallow Biscayne Aquifer remains fresh — that saltwater does not destroy it. That Aquifer is the single water source for millions of residents and visitors to Florida’s urbanized southeast coast.
In addition, Lake Okeechobee itself is the back-up water supply for about 6 million people living in the region, water managers say.
With a national election only weeks away, the politics and hydrology of the Florida water problem seems to change almost every day.
But if we continue to bandage the problem or do nothing, finally, the system will continue to degrade — nobody disputes that.
And those likely to be stung by the economics of bad water or patchwork solutions will continue to argue the economics.
Even in the current form, those numbers are impressive. U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals and others boast some 14,000 employees and a $2 billion economic impact from farming cane on about 440,000 acres in the 700,000- acre Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake O. They don’t want to surrender that largesse, now.
But that doesn’t compare to the recreational fishing industry in Florida, which boasts $9.3 billion in economic activity and 123,000 jobs, its advocates say. Or the commercial fishing industry which may also depend on clean water fixes and supports more than 67,700 jobs.
From the real estate perspective, things are even worse than the numbers suggest:
When water clarity increased by just one foot by single-family waterfront homes, property value increased in Lee County by $541 million and in Martin County by $428 million, a report by Florida Realtors found. The 155,000-member trade group released the study last year after monitoring the impact of water clarity on the value and sales of single-family home sales in coastal Lee and Martin between 2010 and 2013.
But chief economist Brad O’Connor was even more dire, since the study looked only at single-family homes.
“My feeling is the true economic impact is much, much greater than those numbers,” he said.
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