Guest columnist: The St. Lucie River: Lake Okeechobee runoff may be greatest threat yet

By BUD JORDAN (guest columnist)
February 2, 2007

The first column of this series focused on the history of the St. Lucie River and reasons for its decline from 1900 through 1990. The second focused on how widely supported local efforts since 1990 were coordinated to improve water quality and the timing of local drainage to the river. We believe these efforts since 1990 are unprecedented in any watershed, and certain to bear fruit in terms of improved river health.

Despite all these efforts, the river and lagoon are now threatened as never before by Lake Okeechobee discharges. Even if all our local drainage were perfectly clean and perfectly timed for maximum river health, we will still be unsuccessful in cleaning up the river due to the way Lake O is being managed.

Massive discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee to the river in 2003, '04 and '05, totaling more than 1.4 million acre-feet (460 trillion gallons) have overwhelmed all the local efforts to improve the river and Indian River Lagoon. The coup de gras came in 2005, when the State Health Department recommended that no contact be allowed between river waters, humans and their pets, and swimming in the river was banned.

The damages done over the past three years will take many years to recover from. Florida Oceanographic Society reports that grass beds are entirely gone from the river and from the lagoon north to Jensen Beach. Grass beds further north in the lagoon have deteriorated to the point many are now dominated by algae rather than seagrass. These grass beds are the nursery for most of our inshore and near shore fisheries, and without grass beds, these fisheries and all the species that depend on them will suffer further declines.

Harbor Branch Foundation reports an alarming increase in the incidence of cancerous lesions in bottle-nose dolphin — from 3 percent to 42 percent since 2003 — in the population that lives in the St. Lucie River and south end of the Indian River Lagoon. Fungus lesions on dolphin also are skyrocketing. These dolphins are the last "canary", heartbreaking confirmation that the Health Department warning that our waters are unsafe is an understatement.

Water management policies designed to maximize irrigation supply for the Everglades Agricultural Area and sugar farmers have kept water levels too high in Lake Okeechobee, destroyed 50,000 acres of Lake Okeechobee grass beds, and damaged the Herbert Hoover Dike around it. Not only is the lake in the worst shape ever with respect to water quality and habitat, the dike has become so leaky that independent experts have judged it likely to fail within the next six years if water management policies are not changed.

The Caloosahatchee River on the west coast has suffered at least as much as we have, receiving over 3 million acre-feet of Lake O discharges in 2004-05, with massive grass bed destruction and huge algae blooms even more widespread and devastating than those we faced in 2005. We have more scientific proof of damages done over here, but the West Coast is mobilizing multiple scientific studies and is catching up fast.

Over the past several years, cooperation and coordination between east and west coast estuary advocates has greatly strengthened a growing appreciation of the environmental, economic and social destruction caused by using Lake O as a reservoir for the Everglades Agricultural Area.

Bud Jordan, an investment broker, is president and a founder of the St. Lucie River Initiative, a citizens action group that advocates river restoration. Contact him at floyd.d.jordan@smithbarney.com