Lake Okeechobee Management Model Announced
The Army Corps of Engineers announced the optimized lake schedule model run for the future
Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual (LOSOM), which will serve as the framework for the final operational plan.
The new model signals improvement for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers and the Everglades, and appears significantly better than the current operational plan, which for the past dozen years has plagued said Florida estuaries with harmful discharges of nutrientrich lake water during rainy season and starved them during the dry season, greatly affecting both water and salinity levels. But this is not the end of the process. For the next year, the Corps will “wrap the words around the numbers,” turning the selected scientific model into a usable operations manual that outlines how the plan will be written and what it will mean for the distribution of water in South Florida.
Captains for Clean Water urges the public to stay involved until the end of the process.
Highlights of the announced model include a 37 percent reduction in harmful discharges and 100 percent more beneficial flows into the Caloosahatchee River; a 37 percent reduction in harmful discharges into the St. Lucie River; and three times the current water flow sent south to the Everglades.
Aside from finalizing the operational guidance that will accompany the selected model and writing the water control plan to create a usable manual, over the next year the Corps will also work on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required by the National Environmental Protection Act.
“The release of the draft EIS for public comment is scheduled for April 2022, the release of a final EIS by October 2022, and a Record of Decision in January 2023 so that we have the plan ready to implement as soon as the Herbert Hoover Dike Rehabilitation is complete,” says Tim Gysan of the Army Corps.
Though unlikely, significant changes to the way the plan will distribute water are still possible until the final operations manual is released in late 2022 or early 2023, so Captains for Clean Water, a fishing and boating advocacy group entrenched in the battle to restore key Florida estuaries, urges the public to stay involved till the end of the process.