August 8, 2007
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8QSTSV80.htm
TALLAHASSEE,
Fla.
Farmers around Lake Okeechobee
will face serious financial difficulties if officials can't figure out a way to
get its water level up, state Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said.
The lake stores irrigation water
for about 700,000 acres of normally highly productive farmland in South
Florida, but it has been about 4 feet below its normal levels during an
18-month drought.
Water managers said last month
that the Kissimmee River basin that feeds the lake needed about 5 feet of rain
just to catch up. While South Florida has been getting more rainfall of late,
it's still not back to normal levels, Bronson said.
He said the drought has already
caused more than $100 million in losses this year, and that some estimates
predict losses could exceed $1 billion over the next two years if the dry spell
does not end. Continued crop losses will also likely increase food prices, he
noted.
He said most farmers do not
believe there is sufficient water in the reservoir to get them through the
state's dry season over the coming winter, threatening production of winter
vegetable production as well as citrus and sugar crops.
Some likely won't plant in the
fall, Bronson added.
"Think about it -- would you
invest hundreds of thousands of dollars planting crops with the prospects of
having an insufficient water supply to keep them alive?" he said.
"If there's any hope of
avoiding a financial meltdown, it's absolutely essential that the state, the
South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers do
everything possible to increase water levels in Lake Okeechobee," he said
in a statement.
Water management district
spokesman Randy Smith said agency officials are trying to determine if there is
anything they can do in the short term to increase the amount of water flowing
into the lake. But he said lake level ultimately is determined by rainfall,
which the agency can't control.
Smith said that money lawmakers
set aside earlier this year for more water storage in the river basin area
north of the lake will help in the long run, but that is not an immediate fix.
The agency plans to meet
Wednesday to consider its options.