Lake Okeechobee Pollution suffers from significant nutrient pollution, primarily phosphorus and nitrogen, originating from agricultural and urban runoff. This decades-long issue has led to severe environmental and health problems, including frequent and toxic blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) blooms.
Primary Sources of Pollution
- Agricultural Runoff: This is a major source of pollution, as fertilizer and manure from dairy farms, cattle pastures, and sugarcane fields are washed into the lake.
- Urban Runoff and Human Waste: Runoff from developed areas, including lawn fertilizers and faulty septic systems, contributes significantly to both nitrogen and phosphorus levels.
- Legacy Pollution: Decades of nutrient accumulation mean that there is enough phosphorus already in the lake sediment and surrounding soil to fuel algae blooms for many years, even if all new inputs stopped immediately.
- Water Management Practices: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the lake level with a dike system (Herbert Hoover Dike) for flood control. When water levels are high, polluted water is discharged into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers and estuaries, which then carries the toxins to the coasts, harming those ecosystems as well.
Impacts of Pollution
- Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs): Excess nutrients fuel massive blooms of blue-green algae, which produce cyanotoxins that are dangerous to humans, pets, manatees and wildlife.
- Ecosystem Degradation: Algae blooms block sunlight from reaching native aquatic vegetation, which then dies off. The decomposition of this material consumes dissolved oxygen, creating “dead zones” where fish and other aquatic life cannot survive, leading to a decline in biodiversity.
- Human Health Risks: Exposure to toxins from the algae can cause skin rashes, respiratory issues, and other serious health problems, and can contaminate drinking water sources.
- Economic Damage: The pollution crisis cripples local economies that rely on tourism, fishing, and recreation, due to the presence of foul-smelling algae and dead fish.
Mitigation Efforts
Both the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are involved in restoration efforts and management. These include:
- Building new water storage reservoirs and stormwater treatment areas to limit harmful discharges and capture pollutants.
- Implementing water quality programs in the lake basin to reduce phosphorus loads.
- Engaging in large-scale Everglades restoration projects, with over 75 milestones reached since 2019.
However, some experts and advocacy groups argue that current regulations lack enforcement and that more needs to be done, including holding polluters accountable and potentially changing land management practices.
What strategies are being used to combat pollution in Lake Okeechobee?
Strategies to combat Lake Okeechobee pollution involve a multi-pronged approach focused on reducing nutrient loads, increasing water storage and treatment capacity, and restoring natural water flows. Key initiatives include:
Harmful Nutrient Source Control
- Best Management Practices (BMPs): State regulations require agricultural and urban areas to implement BMPs, such as responsible fertilizer use, manure management, and constructing berms to retain stormwater on-site, which significantly reduce the amount of nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) leaving farms and residential areas.
- Phosphorus Source Control Grant Program: This program provides funding for innovative technologies and practices to reduce phosphorus at the source, including advanced filtration and chemical treatment systems on dairy farms and ranches.
Water Storage and Treatment
- Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs): These are large, constructed wetlands designed to filter pollutants from stormwater runoff using natural vegetation and settling processes. The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) operates several STAs, including the Lakeside Ranch STA and an expansion of STA-1 West, which together treat a significant volume of water.
- Reservoirs and Flow Equalization Basins (FEBs): New reservoirs are being constructed (e.g., the EAA Storage Reservoir Project and the Lake Okeechobee Component A Reservoir/LOCAR) to capture and store excess water during wet periods. FEBs store peak stormwater flows and deliver them to STAs at a steady rate to optimize treatment performance.
- Dispersed Water Management (DWM) Projects: Public-private partnerships, like the El Maximo Ranch and Partin Family Ranch projects, involve retaining stormwater runoff on private lands to reduce flow and discharge of nutrients into the lake and its tributaries.
Ecosystem Restoration and Management
- Restoring Natural Flow: A primary goal of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) is to restore a more natural southward flow of water from the lake through the Everglades, rather than discharging polluted water to the coasts.
- Kissimmee River Restoration: This project involved restoring the channeled river back to its natural meandering form, which helps re-establish wetland habitats and improves water quality in the lake’s headwaters.
- In-Lake Treatments: While large-scale in-lake dredging was deemed not feasible, targeted efforts include removing nutrient-laden muck sediment from specific tributaries and canals that drain into the lake.
- Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) Mitigation: The state is piloting new technologies for immediate bloom response, including the use of hydrogen peroxide-based products to target toxic cyanobacteria and advanced filtration systems.
Monitoring and Regulation
- Water Quality Monitoring: Extensive programs are in place to monitor nutrient levels and the presence of cyanotoxins in the lake and surrounding waterways.
- Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs): The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) has developed BMAPs, which are enforceable plans outlining specific actions and projects required from all stakeholders to meet water quality standards.
Bad Water
Florida takes the top spot for nation’s most polluted lakes and streams ARTICLE COURTESY OF: Florida…
Lake Okeechobee Pollution
Emily Reisinger, Contributing WriterApril 6, 2023 ARTICLE COURTESY OF THE WAVE The majority of Floridians are…
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to start harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges on December 7, with no end in sight. These releases, which could last until June 1, will bring polluted water and sediment to the fragile northern estuaries that have already suffered this wet season, on top of years of abuse. READ THE FULL ARTICLE...
Army Corps to stop sending polluted Lake Okeechobee water down Caloosahatchee River
WGCU | By Tom Bayles – Article Courtesy of: WGCU
The high-volume discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee down the Caloosahatchee River that have been a mainstay for months to lower the depth of the lake before hurricane season will come to an end this weekend.
The high-volume discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee down the Caloosahatchee River that have been a mainstay for months to lower the depth of the lake before hurricane season will come to an end this weekend. For nearly four months, the spillway in Moore Haven that allows water from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River has been wide open to lower lake levels before the rainy season.
The water gushes out at billions of gallons a day, looking like class three rapids.
That’s about to come to an end.
Col. Brandon Bowman, who is in charge of the Army Corps of Engineers operations in Florida, called for the releases to stop Saturday.
He said the main reason to lower the lake level was to give aquatic plants the right amount, but not too much, water so they thrive and not drown.
“Lowering water levels allows light to penetrate to the bottom and allows submerged aquatic vegetation to germinate and regrow during the spring and summer,” Bowman said in a press release. That is “key to the health of the lake fisheries, and improved water quality within the lake benefits the estuaries if significant releases are necessary in the coming seasons (and) years.”
That spillway in Moore Haven has been wide open since early December, which is when the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that manages Florida’s liquid heart, decided the lake level needs to be lowered by four feet before this year’s hurricane season.
READ THE LAKE OKEECHOBEE FULL ARTICLE – CLICK HERE
Florida Department of Agriculture
ARTICLE COURTESY OF: ABC Action News Florida Department of Agriculture Pushes Water Polluters to Clean Up MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing pouring millions of dollars into combating Florida’s water quality crisis in the new year, as the state recovers from rounds of red tide and other harmful algae blooms. By: Kylie…
Everglades Cleanup
As U.S. Sugar quietly expands north of Lake Okeechobee, environmentalists fear that the Everglades cleanup is losing out to farming. ARTICLE COURTESY OF: FLORIDA BULLDOG Cane fields in the backdrop at U.S. Sugar’s Area 7 site off State Road 621 east of Lake Istopkoga in Highlands County. The sugar grower has leased about 14,000 acres…
SWFL WATER CLEANUP
New water SWFL water cleanup project aims to improve the health of SWFL water systems. ARTICLE COURSTESY OF: WINK NEWS The South Florida Water Management District announced a new water quality project to protect Lake Okeechobee and our coast. The plan is to clean water before it enters the lake. The project will use wetlands…
The Florida Vacation Store is a Proud Sponsor of Lake Okeechobee Pollution!
Lake Okeechobee is the largest freshwater lake in the U.S. state of Florida. It is the tenth-largest natural freshwater lake among the 50 states of the United States and the second-largest natural freshwater lake contained entirely within the contiguous 48 states, after Lake Michigan. Lake Okeechobee Pollution is a serious problem today and for future generations.
LAKE OKEECHOBEE – Courtesy of Wikipedia
Okeechobee covers 730 square miles (1,900 km2) and is exceptionally shallow for a lake of its size, with an average depth of only 9 feet (2.7 meters). It is not only the largest lake in Florida or the largest lake in the southeast United States, but it is too large to see across. The Kissimmee River, located directly north of Lake Okeechobee, is the lake’s primary source. The lake is divided between Glades, Okeechobee, Martin, Palm Beach and Hendry counties. All five counties meet at one point near the center of the lake.
HISTORY
The earliest recorded people to have lived around the lake were the Calusa. They called the lake Mayaimi, meaning “big water”, as reported in the 16th century, by Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda. The name Okeechobee comes from the Hitchiti words oki (water) and chubi (big). Slightly later in the 16th century, René Goulaine de Laudonnière reported hearing about a large freshwater lake in southern Florida called Serrope. By the 18th century the largely mythical lake was known to British mapmakers and chroniclers by the Spanish name Laguna de Espiritu Santo. In the early 19th century it was known as Mayacco Lake or Lake Mayaca after the Mayaca people, originally from the upper reaches of the St. Johns River, who moved near the lake in the early 18th century. The modern Port Mayaca on the east side of the lake preserves that name.
On the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee, three islands—Kreamer, Ritta, and Torey—were once settled by early pioneers. These settlements had a general store, post office, school, and town elections. Farming was the main vocation. The fertile land was challenging to farm because of the muddy muck. Over the first half of the twentieth century, farmers used agricultural tools—including tractors—to farm in the muck. By the 1960s, all of these settlements were abandoned.
