Drought prompts officials to pump polluted water into Lake Okeechobee

By Neil Santaniello, Staff Writer

Link

Putting human welfare in front of ecology, state environmental regulators have given water managers the go-ahead to continue to pump up Lake Okeechobee with polluted farm water as a way to bolster water reserves during the drought.

That permission came in an emergency order issued late Friday by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

It drew criticism from environmentalists, who argue that further tightening of water restrictions would be a better way to protect water supplies for South Florida.

The order allows the South Florida Water Management District to violate water-quality standards temporarily and back-pump dirty floodwater from farm canals in the Everglades Agricultural Area into the 730-square-mile lake during the summer rainy season.

That emergency procedure could continue through Nov. 1 under the order and would automatically expire if summer showers push the lake -- now at 9.5 feet -- to 11 feet or higher for 80 days, said DEP spokesman Kris McFadden.

"It's unfortunate, but right now we just don't see another way to get through this record-breaking drought," said McFadden, in the DEP's regional office in West Palm Beach. "We view this as a balancing act."

Audubon of Florida has joined the Florida Wildlife Federation and Friends of Lake Okeechobee in seeking a hearing before the water district board to challenge back-pumping.

Audubon criticized the state's order, which would sanction the infusion of large amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen into the lake.

Both are fertilizers that can degrade lake water and trigger algae blooms harmful to the aquatic life.

The water district should instead do more to ration lake water delivered to farmers and tighten lawn-sprinkling allowed on urban landscapes, Audubon officials said.

"I think this is very poor management," said Paul Gray, Lake Okeechobee Sanctuaries manager for Audubon of Florida. "We don't think the district has been austere enough in their water allocations."

Farmers have received 32.4 million gallons of lake water since April 1, while three days of back-pumping that ended April 1 returned less than 3.6 million gallons, Gray said.

The water district says back-pumping can potentially add such a large volume of water to the lake that it cannot be sidestepped during the drought.

In return for the DEP's permission to pump dirty water into the lake, the water district will be required to sow 62,000 aquatic plants called bulrushes on the lake bottom, vegetation critical to the health of juvenile fish populations.

The water district also must pay $200,000 toward a project to scrape away a short wall of sediment that has formed a kind of inner shore along the lake's west side, barricading open water from marshes important for fish-spawning.

Water managers are also under orders to monitor closely the effects of the polluted farm water on water quality and aquatic life in the lake.

Gray said those programs are just "routine management" steps for which water managers are responsible regardless of back-pumping but are being labeled as mitigation.

Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6625.

Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

[South Florida has been getting some much needed rain in the last couple days. See next story.]

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

Answers

Unusual weather system brings welcome rain to S. Florida

By Ken Kaye, Staff Writer, Posted May 1 2001,

Link

South Florida and the rest of the state could see drought-easing rains this week, thanks to an unusual weather system that is clogging the atmosphere.

It amounts to this: A high-pressure system over Georgia and a low- pressure system over the Gulf of Mexico have trapped moisture over this region.

"I'm not saying we'll have a hurricane or anything, but there is the potential for moderate to heavy rains within the next week," meteorologist James Lushine of the National Weather Service in Miami said Monday. "I'm a little worried about the Air and Sea Show this weekend."

Forecasters had expected stormy weather to move in Monday, but the day turned out to be more cloudy and windy than wet because a band of showers remained 50 miles away over the Bahamas.

The best chance for local rain, perhaps 1 to 2 inches, will come in the form of afternoon thunderstorms today and Wednesday, said meteorologist Joel Rothfuss.

"This is a real strange system," he said. "It's a little hard to forecast. But there is plenty of moisture in the atmosphere."

If the rains come, it would help reduce fire danger and raise ground water levels. But unless several inches fall in Palm Beach County and north of it, Lake Okeechobee's level likely will remain precariously low -- and drought restrictions will remain in place.

"We don't expect it to end our drought concerns," said Tommy Strowd, operations director for the South Florida Water Management District.

Even if the region doesn't see much rain, the cloud cover helps save water, said Geoff Shaughnessy, the district's meteorologist.

"It's kind of virtual rain," he said. "It cuts down on the evaporation."

So far this year, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach have seen about 2 inches less rainfall than normal.

On Monday, there were no major wildfires in South Florida, although the fire danger remained at four on a scale of one to five, said Florida Division of Forestry Duty Officer Caren Radel.

The National Weather Service plans a news conference today to discuss the drought and whether the region can expect relief soon.

Lushine said the current weather system, technically called "Rex block," might be a precursor to the rainy season, which normally starts in the third week of May. During the rainy season, thunderstorms pop up almost every afternoon and dump rain throughout South Florida.

One way or another, more rain is in the offing. A similar pattern, where two pressure systems concentrate rain in one area, is forecast to develop in two weeks.

Staff Writer Neil Santaniello contributed to this report.

Ken Kaye can be reached at kkaye@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7911.

Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

Of course any rain we get will have no effect on the idiots that run their sprinklers all the time. They cannot be bothered to go and shut them off or reset the timers/sensors.

On the upside, a warehouse area near where I work did not have their sprinklers running last night. A first since I have started driving down that road after work each night. Either the timers are 'off' or someone told them to shut them down/reset them.

On the downside, people around here always forget how to drive in the rain, or on wet roads, so accidents are bound to increase.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001