Q With
rainfall totals slightly above average, why do homeowners in Weston,
A Miami-Dade,
Broward and part of
To a large extent,
everybody is hooked into the same plumbing -- a flood-control and
water-delivery system that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed in the
1950s and '60s.
Water flows south
from the
So if the state's
biggest, thirstiest counties sprinkle less, there will be less need to tap the
lake to replenish populated coastal areas and more water left to protect things
more difficult and more expensive to replace than sod and shrubbery.
For starters, a
deeply dried-out
Yards alone slurp
six out of every 10 gallons in the suburban supply.
''If you think
about the volume of water that millions of people put on their lawns, you can
start to draw the system down and create problems elsewhere,'' said Chip
Merriam, deputy executive director of the South Florida Water Management
District.
That's one reason
the district is considering year-round watering restrictions.
When restrictions
are followed, which isn't always the case, they can produce fast and measurable
effects, said hydrologist Scott Prinos, who monitors
groundwater levels across the region for the U.S. Geological Survey.
''I can see spots
where they've really had an impact,'' Prinos said.
``As soon as they decide water restrictions for an area, things that were
heading down all of a sudden level off.''
Q Why
does the water level in
A For
better or worse, the flood-control levee and canal system has converted the
giant lake into the region's water barrel. It's the main source for surrounding
communities and the state's sugar industry, but also gets dipped into from time
to time to resupply coastal cities to the south.
The water is
gravity-fed through three large canals at the south end of the lake into three
marshy conservation areas stretching from north of the Tamiami
Trail in western Miami-Dade to western
With the level of
''The issue we're
facing is there is no Okeechobee water for the coast,'' said John Mulliken, director of water supply planning for the
district. ``The lake is down that low, and it's just not going to be there.''
Q Two
years ago, everyone was concerned that
A
What happened is that the Corps
and the water district, which co-manage the lake, both ordered releases that
dropped the level several feet during the last year -- most of it in
anticipation of tropical deluges that never came.
The lake isn't
supposed to stay at one depth. The Corps tries to let it rise and fall within
''natural'' seasonal zones -- a long-debated, repeatedly tweaked balancing act
intended to ensure an adequate water supply for the region, keep the lake's
plants and renowned fishery healthy, and absorb hurricane flooding without
exposing the aging dike to the risk of a breach from high water.
After four
hurricanes in 2004 filled the lake to nearly 18 feet above sea level -- the
edge of the danger zone for dike failure -- the Corps dumped water as quickly
as it could. Still, by the June 1 start of the 2005 hurricane season, the lake
remained more than a foot above a target height of 14 feet.
By the end of that
intense storm season, the lake shot up again, peaking just above 17 feet.
Facing the
forecast of a third straight hectic hurricane season, the Corps again lowered
the lake, but this time under a ''temporary deviation'' from regular operations
that allowed the agency to dump water twice as fast. The lake hit 14 feet by
mid-April of last year.
That same month,
the district also asked for the first of a series of smaller but steady
releases down the
The result: On
That foot and a
half of water -- hundreds of billions of gallons -- wouldn't be enough to
offset the drought, but it could be a source of emergency relief.
Q So,
are the state and federal agencies partly to blame for the crisis?
A The two agencies defend their decisions to drop lake
levels, saying they made the best calls they could with the information in hand
at the time. They blame
''As water
managers, we absolutely cannot forecast the future,'' said Susan Sylvester,
operations manager for the water district. ``We have no control over Mother
Nature.''
But public,
political and engineering concerns about the 143-mile-long dike -- all of which
were elevated by the 2005 levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane
Katrina -- also clearly played a key role. The 70-year-old structure was, said
Merriam, ``this risk out there.''
Last May, the
state released a sobering consultants' report that concluded the dike was at
high risk of failure from hurricane flooding, making it a ''grave and imminent
danger'' to 40,000 people who live near its southern rim.
In July, one Corps
official told an interagency group that the lake should be kept below 17.25
feet in the interest of public safety. The Corps is revising plans for repairs
that could take decades.
John Zediak, chief of water management for the Corps' district
headquartered in
Looking back now,
he said, ``People tie all of these things together and come to their own
conclusions.''
But the criticism
wasn't only in hindsight.
Environmentalists,
anglers and other critics, who have long fought for lower lake levels that help
plants, fish and wildlife, objected to the volume of dumping because the surge
of polluted runoff from cattle pastures and farms trashed estuaries of the
Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers at either side of the state.
Sugar growers and
farmers also urged caution, contending that the agencies were dumping too much
too fast. It was the same worry that farmers expressed in the spring of 2000,
when water managers lowered the lake a foot to revive a drowning ecosystem as
the region was entering the last big drought.
''History is now
repeating itself,'' said Judy Sanchez, spokeswoman for U.S. Sugar Corp.
Before the current
drought, the Corps was pondering dropping average lake levels about a foot
year-round, aiming to let it rise and fall 12 to 15 feet seasonally. But the
water shortage, which could come with high environmental and economic costs,
may increase pressure to hold it higher.
Zediak said there has been ''some second-guessing on our
part about how to do things better,'' but stressed that water managers try to
strike a difficult balance between public interests and environmental
protection.
''What we saw in
2004 and 2005 is the reason we want to have a lower lake,'' Zediak
said. ``As bad as they were, we would have been in really bad shape, knowing
what we know about the dike.''
Q If
the water shortage is such a crisis, why does the district keep issuing
water-use permits for new homes, condos and golf courses that use more water?
A The majority of those permits come with a catch, said the
district's Merriam. The new developments have to identify and tap an
''alternative'' supply, such as deeper aquifers, treated wastewater,
desalination or other new sources.
''We're not
letting anyone else stick any straws in the ground,'' he said. ``The future is
only alternative.''
State water
managers stress that they have no authority to ban new development, and until
recently, the maxed-out water supply didn't play a big role in growth
management. It wasn't until 2003, for instance, that the district began to
require large farm operations to meter water use, a rule being slowly phased in
with renewed permits.
But with both
spiraling growth and
Water managers say
they have been weaning communities off overstressed natural sources for years
-- particularly in
Although the
regional population has swelled about 25 percent between 1995 and 2005, Merriam
said water demand has not risen nearly as rapidly and water managers believe
the system can produce more than enough to go around -- except during severe
droughts.
''When we issue
permits, we're issuing them against normal resource availability,'' he said.
``We don't issue for a drought.''
Q We've
had two droughts in the span of six years. Is that normal or an effect of global warming or
spiraling development in
A
Droughts frequently mark the
5,000-year-old calendar of the
He won't speculate
on the possibility of global warming increasing extreme weather events. As for
development, more condos and gated communities wouldn't have any effect on the
weather.
But they might
make the system more vulnerable, deepening and lengthening the effects of
droughts when they do come.
Q The
district is in charge of restoring the
A
Tapping the
If those wells get
too salty, the utilities are not equipped to treat to drinking-water health
standards. Once the wells are tainted, it can take years to flush them, or cost
millions to add desalination equipment.
On Thursday, 13
environmental groups sent a letter urging the district to impose even tougher
water-use restrictions, including limiting lawn
watering to once a week and taking other conservation steps before lowering
water levels in the
Merriam said water
managers are doing everything they can to protect the natural system, holding
extra water in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge to support a thriving
rookery of ibises and wood storks. This month, the district also adopted a rule
capping
The Corps granted
a similar deviation in 2001 and the marshes rebounded, even producing
record-setting wading-bird nesting in the wake of the drought.
Merriam said only
a ''worst-case scenario'' would demand a deviation, but ``we want to make sure
we have [federal approval] in our back pocket if we need it.''
Q How
much rain would it take to end the drought?
A
Starting from a regionwide deficit of 15-plus inches,
it would take a lot more than normal. Water managers can't give a precise
figure for a full recovery, but stress that it must come in the right places
and at the right times, preferably not all at once.
A tropical deluge
over Miami-Dade, for instance, helps keep lawns green locally, but most of that
water winds up going out to sea through drainage canals, and what the ground
can't quickly absorb evaporates.
''It's going to have
to come over a long period of time,'' Merriam said. ``It's not going to be a
rain over
Even a good rainy
season may not be enough.
Q You
can walk through any neighborhood in the morning and find water-use
violators. There's even one guy posting violations in
A The
district focuses its monitoring energies on the biggest users -- utilities,
farms, golf courses and other commercial operations -- and relies on local
police or code enforcers to write up residential or other local violations.
Last week, for
instance, water managers slapped 84
''We don't have
enough staff to do house-by-house enforcement, nor do we have that level of
authority,'' Merriam said.
The result is
widely varying enforcement, with some communities making it more of a priority
than others. Merriam believes that peer pressure and public education may be
the best tools.
'Frankly,
neighbors' word-of-mouth helps a lot,'' he said. ``Not turning people in, but
telling them this is a time when we need to share adversity, when we need to be
concerned.''
Q Are
there any long-term answers?
A
''Restore the
Ultimately, the
$12 billon state-federal effort to restore the natural flow of the
Critics, in fact,
have long argued that it's too front-loaded with projects to boost the public
supply. The district is constructing a series of massive reservoirs from
western
Other projects
still decades away are intended to help both the