More Lake Okeechobee water pumped south this year, instead of out to sea

Three times as much Lake Okeechobee water flowed south through drainage canals this year than a year ago, sparing the east and west coasts from another damaging deluge of lake dumping..

South Florida benefited from well-timed rain and a renewed focus on pumping that water managers say helped them send more lake water south.

That meant 70 billion gallons of lake water flowing south during the wet season, enough to fill about 100,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to South Florida Water Management District pumping totals released this month.

"We had a good year," said Jeff Kivett, the district's operations director. "We were able to capitalize on moving the water."

Moving more lake water south and filtering out the pollutants it picks up along the way is good for the health of the Everglades, boosts South Florida drinking-water supplies, and eases lake flood-control concerns.

The problem is that even after this year's water management success, just one big storm could push lake levels too high, triggering billions of gallons of lake water being drained into rivers that flush it out to sea.

For example, in 2008 water draining into Lake Okeechobee following Tropical Storm Fay raised the lake 4 feet in just one month. When water levels rise, draining the lake helps ease the strain on the lake's troubled dike, considered one of the country's most at risk of failing.

"We never stop worrying," Army Corps spokesman John Campbell said. "I would caution people about doing any sort of touchdown dance."

Lake Okeechobee's water once naturally flowed south, overlapping its southern rim and sending shallow sheets of water rolling toward Florida Bay and replenishing the Everglades along the way.

But as farming and development spread across South Florida, Lake Okeechobee's waters were corralled by a large dike. Canals were dug linking the lake to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, creating east and west outlets for lake water to be dumped out to sea for flood control.

While that helps protect South Florida from flooding, the periodic dumping of lake water into the rivers can create huge environmental problems that turn into economic problems for coastal communities that rely on clean water for fishing and tourism.

In 2013, months of draining hundreds of billions of gallons of freshwater from Lake Okeechobee into the normally salty St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries was blamed for scaring away fish and killing the sea grasses where they breed. Also sediment and pollution washed in with the lake water darkened the estuaries and fueled toxic algae blooms that made some waterways unsafe for swimming.

This year, even during a rainier-than-usual rainy season, the Army Corps was able to avoid draining lake water into the St. Lucie River, while making low-level lake water releases into the more resilient Caloosahatchee River.

Moving more water to the south helped avoid dumping more water into the rivers.

That was possible, water managers say, because South Florida didn't get as much heavy rainfall during the spring and early summer in 2014 as it did the previous year.

That left more capacity in drainage canals, stormwater treatment areas and water conservation areas south of the lake to hold more water from the lake, according to the water management district.

Also, the troubles of 2013 helped persuade the state to free up more money for pumping water this year to take advantage of that storage capacity.

The amount of lake water moved south through the drainage system was an "unprecedented" accomplishment that required "24-hour-a-day effort," said Blake Guillory, the district's executive director.

Of course, water managers can't count on another summer of helpful rain patterns and dodging hurricanes to help ease Lake Okeechobee flood-control concerns.

Slow-moving Everglades restoration plans to spend billions on storing, cleaning and moving more lake water south are billed as the long-term solution to the lake draining problems. The Army Corps completing the decades-long effort to strengthen Lake Okeechobee's dike would also help.

Jump starting two long-planned reservoirs, one southeast of the lake and the other southwest, could help reduce future lake discharges to the coast and are among the state's priority Everglades restoration projects.



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"We have got to continue to do everything we can to get [water] storage," district Board Member Mitch Hutchcraft said.

Lake Okeechobee water levels going into this winter-to-spring dry season are still higher than preferred, according to the Army Corps. That puts the lake level in a little higher position than the months that led up to the 2013 storm season, which led to the disharges to the east and west coasts.

Lake Okeechobee's water level has been slowly declining in November, leaving it just above the 12.5- to 15.5-foot-above-sea-level range targeted by the Army Corps of Engineers.

"It's still the same water management system that's in place," Campbell said. "We are making progress. It's slow progress."

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