Florida Officials Drain Lake Full Of ‘Toilet’ Water To Coast

[KamaAina]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/25/3753365/okeechobee-beach-water-pollution/

With tourist season just around the corner, Florida’s beach communities would normally be preparing for a happy, healthy summer. Instead, they’re reeling from polluted water that is likely to inflict severe damage to the local economy and environment.

Lake Okeechobee, a large inland lake in southern Florida, is experiencing its highest water levels in nearly a century due to heavy rains that fell during the month of January. This should not be suprising, because heavy rainfall events are increasing as the planet warms. But after water levels reached a foot above normal, public officials began to worry that the excess water was putting too much stress on the lake’s aging dike. Officials then made the decision to drain the lake out toward Florida’s coasts. There was one problem: Lake Okeechobee’s waters are toxic.

Local industry has long been using Okeechobee’s waters as a dumping ground for an assortment of chemicals, fertilizers, and cattle manure. David Guest, managing attorney of the Florida branch of the environmental law group Earthjustice, called the lake a “toilet.” While the pollution was once confined to the lake, it now flows toward Florida’s coastal communities via local rivers. The water, which is flowing out of the lake at 70,000 gallons per second, will soon pollute the ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

This pollution has immediate consequences for southern Florida’s environment and economy. The untreated water contains toxic chemicals and fertilizers that are harmful to local flora and fauna, and the fertilizers and chemicals found in the water are known to cause algal blooms, which are known to poison shellfish and make life difficult for the marine food chain. Dawn Shirreffs, a senior policy adviser at the Everglades Foundation, told ThinkProgress that there have been reports of dead fish being found along the coastline. This is especially concerning since many species will migrate to Florida to seek comfortable water temperatures this time of year.

[dhill926]

1. we are shitting in our own bed....

this could have dire consequences, as Florida is a very fragile environment...

[0rganism]

2. from "Toilet Lake" to "Toilet Ocean"

maybe in a few years we'll have the privilege of dining on "Toilet Fish", assuming sea life is still on the menu by 2020.

[KamaAina]

4. Is there a Springfield in Florida?

[madinmaryland]

3. That's what happens when businessmen run the government.

[1939]

5. If they don't drain the lake, the first hurricane will burst the levee

There is an inadequate levee there that will not stand up to a hurricane. When the hurricane season approaches, they try to keep the lake down to a certain level. If the levee fails, there will be massive deaths by drowning in the largely African-American communities surrounding the lake (it happened back in the 1920s or 1930s). The fish die off is largely the fact that the fish are salt water fish and the massive flow down from the fresh water lake kills them off.

Edit to add: Here is an article about the 1928 hurricane.
http://www2.sptimes.com/Weather/HG.2.html

[dmr]

7. That would be bad if it happens. But there must be some sensible solution.

I imagine the decision makers just don't care. Let those who are affected deal with their new water problems.

[1939]

10. There is

The Corps of Engineers has to spend most of its entire budget rebuilding the levee/dyke and making it more substantial and higher. If that levee goes (and it is just getting minimal maintenance, the surrounding area could be 20 feet deep in water come a big one. Not sure how many in Congress (R or D) wants to defund stuff in their districts to fund a dyke in one county in one state.

[elias7]

6. Regulations:: bad

We will never learn

[Rex]

8. We like to shit in our own bed and then just move over to a clean spot.

Then we get ill and pretend not to know why. As the poster above me said, regulations are there for a reason. Mix business and government and this is what happens, I wonder how many will now get sick from the industrial runoff?

[quaker bill]

9. Nobody likes the discharges anymore,

but local conservation activist groups asked for the discharges to begin now. One might ask why.

The reason is actually simple, if they start now, the discharge can run at a lower rate. The lower rate results in less environmental damage than waiting and then opening the flood gates wide. Both cause damage, but one is less damaging than the other.

The best choice is to undo 50+ years of "drainage improvements" made by major land developers and the US Army Corps of Engineers. This is the only way to get enough storage and water quality treatment to allow the lake to discharge to the south, to the Everglades, as it did once.

Slow flow through shallow marshes is the way to improve water quality as the plants consume the nutrients, but we are still billions of dollars from getting this done.

At one point the headwaters of the St. Johns River did much the same thing for the same reasons. It was discharged through a massive flood control structure and did heavy damage to the Indian River Lagoon. The Lagoon still has big problems, but less problems now because the levys have been removed and the water just floods formerly drained ranch lands that were bought by the State. A quarter million acres of wetlands were restored to get it done.

While that was the largest environmental restoration ever undertaken in its day, it is tiny by comparison to what must be done to fix the Lake Okechobee / Everglades basin. We are a long way still from getting it done.