Local View: Congress expedites Lake Okeechobee dike fix.
Last Friday, Congress approved a $400 billion budget that reflects the work of many talented people who advocated for a rational, effective and prompt solution to the dilemma facing Floridians who live and work in the coastal communities along the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. That budget includes approximately $770 million to expedite the repair and remediation of the Herbert Hoover Dike along the south side of Lake Okeechobee, which is listed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as one of the 12 most dangerous dams under its jurisdiction within the entire nation.
Why is this so important to the citizens of Florida, particularly those communities to the south of the dike and those coastal communities to the east and west of Lake Okeechobee?
Certainly, as a matter of public safey, the dike needs to be fixed as fast as possible, and certainly before its previously hoped-for completion date of 2025.
But there is a very important environmental reason. Fixing the dike now provides the flexibility for the Corps, which regulates the water level of Lake Okeechobee, to increase the level of the lake by up to 1 ¼ feet for short periods of time. So the Corps won’t have to the make the disastrous discharges into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers to the east and west of the Lake that have caused the bluegreen algae that has destroyed the environment, economy and quality of life of the communities in and around St. Lucie, Martin and Lee counties.
The 2016 Report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine regarding restoring the Everglades confirms the need to repair the dike in order to change the Corps’ discharge schedule into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers. It also strongly confirms that just small changes in the 730-square-mile lake level will provide massive relief to those communities affected by the Corps’ existing discharge schedule – a schedule that was revised downward in 2008 as a result of the dangerously weak dike. As the report states in its conclusions, “[t]he process to revise the Lake Okeechobee regulation schedule should be initiated as soon as possible in parallel with” the dike repairs.
The planned completion of a reservoir to the south of the lake will admittedly take 15 or more years. The residents and businesses of the communities to the east and west of Lake Okeechobee can’t wait 15 to 20 years for the completion of waterstorage reservoirs to the north or south of the lake.
Irrespective of whether Florida pays up to $200 million of the cost of the dike repairs, along with the approximate $770 million now appropriated by Congress, the near- and long-term goal of stopping the devastation caused by the massive discharges by the Corps into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers is now within reach.