By Tyler Treadway
September 22, 2016
TC Palm
With Lake
Okeechobee water levels too high and rising, polluted discharges to the St. Lucie River will increase to more than 1.1 billion gallons a day, the Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday.
The new flow rate, which begins Friday, is the same amount of lake water the Corps sent to the St. Lucie in May and June. Those discharges carried a huge algae bloom in the lake into the river, causing widespread toxic algae blooms in June and July, with thick mats of foul-smelling algae in some marinas and canals.
There’s no algae visible in the lake now, said Terrie Bates, director of water resources for the South Florida Water Management District. And no algae blooms were seen in the river Monday during a weekly inspection by Martin County staffers. However, a green slick of algae was seen just upstream of the St. Lucie Lock and Dam, where Lake O water enters the St. Lucie River.
Although it’s not blooming, there’s lots of algae spread throughout the river, Deborah Drum, Martin County’s ecosystem restoration manager, told county commissioners Tuesday.
“We may not see the algae bloom like before,” said Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart. That’s because algae thrives in water with low salinity and high temperatures. The extra freshwater from the lake will lower salinity in the naturally brackish river, but water temperatures are lower than in June.
“It’s still a lot of bad water coming our way,” Perry said. “And it probably will keep coming for a long time, at least until the end of the dry season.”
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