By Tyler Treadway
August 21, 2017
TC Palm
The feds are planning to send rainwater runoff in western Martin County east to the St. Lucie River, and leaving the door open for possible discharges from Lake Okeechobee.
For most of the summer, the Army Corps of Engineers has allowed runoff into the C-44 Canal to flow west into Lake O.
From January through July, more than 27 billion gallons of water flowed from the C-44 into the lake, 15 percent of the total flow into the lake.
On Sunday, about 152 million gallons of water flowed into the lake from the canal, which collects water primarily from farmland in western Martin County.
With the lake rising quickly over the past few days, Corps water managers say they could send runoff from future rain toward the South Fork of the St. Lucie River, which is typical this time of year.
“When the lake level was lower, we wanted to capture the water to ensure we had enough to get us through the dry season” next winter, Luis Alejandro, the Corps’ chief of the Water Management Section for Florida, said in a prepared statement.
Adding runoff from the canal will make water quality in the St. Lucie River “go from bad to worse,” said Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart.
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