Bills to fix Lake Okeechobee, algal blooms, Everglades need support
The Florida Senate is pushing ahead legislative proposals that every Floridian should support to speed up the decades-long effort to restore the Everglades, while improving Lake Okeechobee’s health and moving us closer to fixing our algal bloom problem.
Although a new law may not seem adequate to solve these three water challenges, it will be. The proposals would speed up a plan to build wells north of Lake Okeechobee, a project under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan of 2000. That federal-state agreement to heal the River of Grass is proceeding, but many parts have languished for years, awaiting funding and approvals.
If you want to protect our tourism industry and the $90 billion a year it brings in, not to mention the millions of jobs in tourism and other industries that rely on smart environmental policy, urge everyone you know to encourage their elected officials to jump at this chance.
If, like me, you are one of the roughly 7 million people who lives in South Florida — 5 million of whom are Hispanic — ask your legislators to support this. Why? Because it will clean up the water going into Lake Okeechobee, which is most of our backup water supply.
Senate President Wilton Simpson has prioritized these legislative proposals, and Florida has already committed $100 million to the plan. It calls for digging wells north of Lake Okeechobee using a science-backed technique called Aquifer Storage and Recovery. Florida has safely done this before, treating water collected during the rainy season and injecting it into the aquifer wells, then treating it again before releasing it in dry seasons.
The treatment is a bonus because it protects our drinking water and cleans it before it reaches Lake Okeechobee, which right now receives 95% untreated water. That is a root cause of the algal blooms plaguing the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.
We need the fastest possible solution. The North of the Lake project is it.
It is also financially and environmentally responsible, since it will cost about $500 million and be finished in three to five years. If added to existing CERP efforts, it would cut down harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges more than 70%, and give water managers greater flexibility to control and secure our water supply.
Another project, the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee, is also on the CERP drawing board. It will take, by the Army Corps’ estimate, as much as $3.8 billion and a decade to complete.
The northern project will not derail that endeavor, but it will store nearly twice as much water and be finished in half the time — all to the benefit of our environment and quality of life. Even better, it will hasten Everglades restoration by providing enough water for that important work.
Given the competing budget priorities the pandemic has created, choosing the least-cost, fastest method to solve three water challenges at once is an easy decision. Let’s make our voices heard in support of it.