The dark brown water pours out of five open gates at the St. Lucie Lock. It stinks of dirt and poopy fertilizer. I know the smell. I hate it. Tan waterfalls of Lake Okeechobee’s nutrient-laden waters pound into the St. Lucie River. Globs of dirty foam bob in the current.
Sally Swartz
The St. Lucie River River is in hell again.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District have been dumping Lake Okeechobee’s overflow into the St. Lucie River in Martin County for weeks. They’re also sending the brown water west to the Caloosahatchee River.
And as bad as the river water is now, it will get worse. No end to the discharges is in sight.
The lake is at 14.77 feet, almost three feet higher than this time last year. A tropical storm or a hurricane could fill it to dangerous levels in a heartbeat. With a decade of work to shore up the dike around the lake ahead, water managers don’t want to court the disaster of a dike break.
Aerial photo shows dark, polluted water near Jupiter Island. (Photo by Jacqui Thurlow Lippisch)
As usual, there are no good choices. The water can’t go south because it isn’t clean enough to send to the sensitive Everglades. Contrary to all those cheery sugar industry TV ads, the water that crosses sugar industry land isn’t fit for the Everglades.
So the lake’s polluted water, combined with local runoff, has made the St. Lucie sick again. The Martin Health Department has posted warnings telling residents not to touch the river at Sandsprit Park in Port Salerno, the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart, Leighton Park and east of Bessey Creek in Palm City. High levels of bacteria could cause upset stomach, diarrhea, eye irritation and skin rashes for anyone who comes into contact with the water.
It’s an old story residents know too well. Polluted lake water has made fish, birds and residents sick in the past.
Aerial photo shows dark, polluted water near the St. Lucie Inlet. (Photo by Jacqui Thurlow Lippisch)
And, as usually happens when the dumping starts to cause problems, people are angry. Residents sign petitions, write letters to the editor blaming water managers, and as they did in the late 90s, show up at public meetings. The Stuart News is leading the charge this time, with columns, editorials and public forums.
It’s deja vu. The Post’s Stuart Bureau led a similar campaign during the 90s. Under then-Bureau Chief Glenn Henderson, reporters put together a special section that schools and others used to explain the problems and the solutions to get the water right. Forums of state and federal water bureaucrats crammed stages in local school auditoriums to reassure crowds of 400 and more. Groups produced videos about water problems and reports on the economic impact of Lake O discharges.
The result: State money for river cleanup projects in Martin. That’s good, but it didn’t stop the discharges.
Local folks have protested the river-killers for years.
Martin oldtimers remember when many of today’s prominent river warriors were young kids in high school, railing against the assaults on the river and staging mock funerals for it. Now those teens are old and gray and teaching their own and others’ children and grandchildren the art of protest.
Another Martin native, Sewall’s Point Town Commissioner Jacqui Thurlow Lippisch, is administrator for the River Kidz, a division of the Rivers Coalition. She has been flying with her pilot husband, Dr. Ed Lippisch, to shoot aerials of the river every week or so to show what’s happening to it.
Local runoff plus the lake discharges create the brown plume so clearly visible in the river.
So who’s to blame? Water managers only do what politicians tell them to do.
Blame the politicians who take money from the sugar industry. As long as that continues, nothing changes.
The sugar industry spends money on expensive television ads saying it is “part of the solution,” rather than actually cleaning up water on industry-owned land south of the lake.
And while it’s nice that state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, plans to hold hearings about the river, talking isn’t a solution. Neither is listening. Nor spending another pile of money to study the problems.
We know the solutions. Stop sending water east and west. Make farmers stop back-pumping water polluted with fertilizers into Lake Okeechobee. Make the sugar industry clean up water on its land and send clean water south to the Everglades.
The alternative seems to be what we’re now doing: Training upcoming generations how to fight a losing battle.
Sally Swartz is a former member of The Post Editorial Board. Her e-mail address is sdswartz42@att.net
Posted with permission from The Palm Beach Post