PalmBeachPost.com

June 3, 2007

Lake O businesses share one lament: 'When the lake gets broke, it hurts everything'

By Susan Salisbury

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/06/04/c1bz_lakeobiz_0604.html

Steve Siegel figures his timing couldn't have been worse.

Three years ago, the avid bass fisherman decided to act on his long-held dream of owning a boat dealership. He opened the Okeechobee Marine Center in May 2004.

“Now we're in the second-worst drought in Florida history," Siegel, 51, said recently, surrounded by 80 shiny new bass-fishing boats, with nary a customer in sight, at his business on Highway 78 in Okeechobee.

To get an idea how bad things are right now, Siegel points to February 2006, a month in which he sold 22 complete packages - boat, motor and trailer - priced from $10,000 to $50,000. This February, he sold just one, to a customer in Fort Pierce.

"I've sold one pontoon boat in Okeechobee this year," Siegel added.

Just behind Siegel's shop sits the heart of the problem: Lake Okeechobee, the nation's second-largest freshwater lake at 730 square miles. A 1-in-100-year drought has reduced the lake level to 8.94 feet, an all-time low, according to the South Florida Water Management District.

That in turn, has crippled the $100 million Lake O fishing industry and the businesses that serve it. In some places, the lake has receded as much as 3 miles, making it much more difficult to get to the water.

As of Friday, a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico looked sure to bring South Florida a long-overdue drenching, but experts say it would take weeks of rain to ease the drought.

In the meantime, the businesses are feeling panicky.

"People don't come here to eat at Wendy's or to watch sugar cane grow. They come here to fish on Lake Okeechobee," said Harlan Griggs, sales manager at the marine center at Roland & Mary Ann Martin's Marina & Resort in Clewiston, on the south side of the lake.

Some people are fishing in canals where there is still enough water. Others are hiring guides who know the area to take them out onto the lake, although access is limited.

Jeff Barwick, executive director of the Hendry County Tourist Development Council in Clewiston, said the south end of the lake is better off than some other spots because there is access at a public ramp in Clewiston.

Bass boats are able to enter the lake via an 18-inch deep canal by "trimming" their motors, which means placing the propeller at a 45-degree angle, Barwick said.

But that's only a temporary measure.

"If we lose another half-foot out of the lake before it starts filling up again, we will be in big trouble," he said.

Homer Greene, a Hobe Sound resident who owns the Buckhead Ridge Resort in Buckhead Ridge at the lake's northern edge, puts his situation bluntly.

"We are virtually out of business," Greene said.

Greene said his restaurant's business is down 65 percent, overnight lodging has declined 80 percent and boat storage is off 70 percent.

Winter guests showed up this year, employee Linda Shank said recently from the empty restaurant, but it doesn't look like they'll be here for the coming winter.

"For next year we don't have the reservations," Shank said. "Our summer trade from Palm Beach and Fort Myers are canceling because there is no water."

Benita Whalen, the Okeechobee Service Center director for the South Florida Water Management District, said when the lake is as low as it is, nothing can be done to help the businesses.

"When it is this extreme, there really is not," Whalen said. "When we fly over, there is no water. The water is three miles out from this area. It is hard for people to understand."

Water regulators - both the SFWMD and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - have come under fire from lake businesses, which contend that the lake - which is controlled by a series of locks - should not have been lowered by several feet last year, when the forecast was for an active 2006 hurricane season.

No hurricanes troubled Florida that year, but the drought set in soon afterward and has made the shortage of water at Lake O more acute.

"Hindsight is hindsight. You don't have that luxury when you are trying to make the decisions," Whalen said. "You are trying to make them for protection of lives."

On May 25, Gov. Charlie Crist asked President Bush to declare a federal emergency for the state as a result of wildfires and severe drought conditions. The declaration, which had not been made as of Friday, would make it easier for affected businesses to get federal loans.

But many businesses owners, still reeling from hurricane damage in 2004 and 2005, say they don't want to take out a loan because they are already burdened with debt.

Despite a good year in 2006, and for some, good business in the first three months of this year, the slowdown this spring has hit them hard.

"Business is dead," said Kandy Anderson, 48, a cook at Pat's Lakeside Café in Okeechobee. "When the lake gets broke, it hurts everything."

Farther south on Torry Island in Belle Glade, Howard Kleman, an employee at Slim's Fish Camp, shares the pain. On a busy day in the past, he might sell $700 worth of shiners for bait fish.

"Today I've sold six sodas," Kleman, 49, of Belle Glade said on a recent afternoon. "I used to catch bait fish until the water got so low. Now there's no water to catch them in."

Slim's was closed for repairs from Hurricane Wilma in late October 2005 until Jan. 2 of this year. Now the exposed mucky silt on the lake bottom sits 10 feet deep and the docks are gone.

"Hopefully, somebody will wake up and clean up the lake," Kleman said. "We depend on our tourists, but we don't have any tourists coming down."

Lynn Topel, director of the Sebring-based Heartland Rural Economic Development Initiative, said her nonprofit is working to strengthen and broaden the economies of six counties, including Hendry and Okeechobee, and four rural communities: Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay and Immokalee.

Projects under way include helping businesses export products, improving the transit system and bringing life sciences and medical companies to the region.

That would help diversify the economy away from tourism and fishing, she said.

"We want to balance the economic opportunities so when we have a drought, everything is not dependent on that," Topel said.

Over at Everglades Adventures RV & Sailing Resort in Pahokee, Mary Dobrow is gator-watching from her Key West-style cabin. The expanse of land a big alligator is perched on was once under water.

"There's huge ones out there," she said, peering through her binoculars.

Next door, her neighbor's boat propeller is missing.

"It was torn off when he went out in the lake," said Dobrow, 60, of Pahokee.

Boat captain Richard "Capt. Tadpole" Brown stops by. He's still taking people out on the lake because he knows where the hazards are, which isn't true of recreational boaters.

Despite the slowdown, Jim Sheehan, one of the resort's owners, is bullish on what's to come once the 112-slip marina, swimming pool, restaurant and other facilities are completed this fall.

"Once this is done, there will be a lot of neat activities," Sheehan said. "This is such a great place, and the people are so nice."

Greg and Karen MacLean, owners of bait-and-tackle store Okeechobee Fishing Headquarters, said they still had a good year, partly because they sell merchandise to customers across the country.

Greg MacLean, 45, blames the economy and high fuel prices for some of the slump.

"You fill up your boat and your truck and it costs 150 to 160 bucks," MacLean said. "Our business is down compared to if the water were up. It's not awful. It's still sustaining."

Officials have been carting away lake muck in six areas on the north and west sides of the lake, and that will rejuvenate it once the rains come, he said.

"It gets us back to sandy bottom and allows the native vegetation to grow. The fish spawn in it," MacLean said.

John Zediak, chief of the water management section for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said what's needed is rainfall each day for many weeks.

"There is no real guarantee that it will get better," he said. "That is the unfortunate thing, really, to know that there are people who depend on the lake for their livelihood."

Whalen, of the water management district, said droughts like this can't be avoided in this part of the country.

"People need to know that Florida cycles through these things," she said. "It is part of living in Florida."