NAPLES NEWS

May 24, 2007

Dry days helping officials clean some of Okeechobee's lake bed

Trucking out the muck from Lake O

By Julio Ochoa

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/may/24/truckloads_muck_being_removed_lake_o/

The receding waters of Lake Okeechobee are uncovering one of Southwest Florida 's darkest problems — thick, chocolate-colored, nutrient-laden muck.

The muck, which cakes the lake's floor, up to three-feet deep in some places, has built up from decades of plant decay and fertilizer runoff. It became Southwest Florida 's headache when hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 stirred up the bottom and water managers flushed the muck west down the Caloosahatchee River , where it fed algae blooms.

Now another drastic weather event is making it possible to clean up the mess.

The lake's bed has become so dry around the edges, that bulldozers, cranes and dump trucks are able to drive out and scrape up the muck.

“Muck-removal projects are a testament to creative minds that we're able to find a silver lining in one of the worst droughts in our history,” said Tim Rach, assistant southeast district director for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Thousands of acres of lake bed have been exposed since the drought brought the lake's level down to just over nine feet — a good three feet below normal for this time of year and just a few tenths of a foot above the all-time low.

The South Florida Water Management District is spending $11 million to scrape thousands of acres of lake bed in six different areas.

At one site, more than 27,000 truckloads, which carry about 20 tons of dirt with each trip, will remove 500,000 cubic yards of muck.

When the job is done, the muck scrapings could fill Dolphin Stadium. The district will distribute the mixture on landfills and pasture lands, whose owners have expressed interest in using the nutrient-rich soil on their property.

It's a massive job, but one that is literally just scraping the surface.

The huge machinery used to do the work is dwarfed against the backdrop of the 730-square-mile lake.

It would take years to scrape out all of the muck, if that were even possible.

District officials have two or three months to do the job before the rainy season fills the lake back up, said George Horne, deputy executive director for the South Florida Water Management District.

They are focusing their energy on inshore areas where the muck is the thickest. Wave action and hurricane winds pushed the muck to shore, where vegetation trapped it, Horne said.

Workers use bulldozers to scrape the muck off the lake bed and push it into rows, where it dries in the sun. Excavators load the dirt into waiting dump trucks that pile it at the lake's edge to be removed later.

Under the muck, the natural sandy bottom is revealed.

“When you pull that muck out, you can get a resurgence of nature,” said Susan Gray, Lake Okeechobee program director for the South Florida Water Management District. The water becomes clearer and cleaner, natural grasses sprout and fish return to spawn.

The effect is localized at first but can improve the overall health of the lake, which can have a domino effect.

“First the water quality in the lake improves, then it moves out to the estuaries,” Gray said.

The water management district would scrape the muck every year if it could but the ground must be extremely dry, as it is in a drought, for vehicles to drive on it, Horne said.

The last time that happened was during the 2001 drought. For the first time that year, the water management district removed muck in some areas.

Local fishermen saw almost immediate improvements, said Capt. Michael Shellen, owner of Shellen Guide Service in Okeechobee.

“The fishing was terrific,” Shellen said.

The work restores areas where fish spawn and Shellen believes fishermen are still catching large fish today that hatched in the restored areas.

The natural grasses that rebound also attract fish.

“Those are fish magnets,” Shellen said.

Though the lake is now too low to fish, Shellen said he looks forward to testing out the new areas once the water returns.

“This is still the best bass fishing in the United States ,” Shellen said. “I know this will improve the fishing.”