Q&A: Karen Smith, SFWMD Martin-St. Lucie Service Center
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jun 5
As director of the Martin-St. Lucie Service Center of the South Florida Water Management District, Karen Smith often finds herself in the hot seat — especially recently.Pollution has plagued the St. Lucie Estuary, Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee, and it is Smith's job to work with local governments to improve water quality and educate Treasure Coast residents. Q: Is there work that the South Florida Water Management District doesthat you think residents might not be aware of? A: "Since 2002, the taxpayers in Martin and St. Lucie county have paidapproximately $73.5 million in taxes to the district. During that sametime, however, the district reinvested $390.5 million back into the community on water resource and environmental restoration projects. I think that's a pretty good return on investment, and the taxpayers should know about it. "Residents often are n ...

Feds refusing to release flood water maps of Lake Okeechobee if dikes breached
AP /Sun Sentinel /Jun 7
WEST PALM BEACH -- The federal government is refusing to make public maps that show detailed diagrams of where flood waters would extend if Lake Okeechobeebreached specific points of its earthen dike, citing concerns about a terrorist attack. However, the maps produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are being shared with emergency responders in counties and cities along the lake for use in developing evacuation plans, Steve Duba, chief of engineering for the corps'Jacksonville office, said Wednesday. The Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake in the heart of Florida's Everglades has been the focus of scrutiny since May, when state-commissioned experts found the structure is highly vulnerable to breaches caused by hurricanes and heavy rains.That report prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to order state and local emergency managers to craft a mass evacuation plan for residents living n ...

Dike work halted at Lake Okeechobee after problems with sand
AP /Bradenton Herald /Jun 8
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Construction to strengthen the leaky earthen dike around Lake Okeechobee has been halted after problems with sand entering repair work. Work on the project was halted about 10 days ago, according to an official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Engineers were trying to fortify the dike by cutting into it and inserting a clay material called bentonite, which expands when wet to form a barrier. Steve Duba, the corps' chief of engineering, said that the dike's sandy nature created problems that weakened work being done. "We call it a slowdown," corps spokeswoman Nanciann Regalado said. "I can't tell you how much the project will be delayed at this point. I can't tell you how much the extra costs will be."The corps is considering other methods of embedding a 36-foot-tall, 2-foot-thick concrete wall inside and under the dike, Duba said. The ...

Upfront about Big Easy, but denial about Lake O
Editorial /Palm Beach Post /Jun 7
Nine months after Katrina submerged New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers finally has admitted its mistakes in designing and building the city's failed levee system. But the corps remains in denial about problems an engineering panel has identified with the Herbert Hoover Dike that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The corps' own study and report on what went wrong in New Orleans are remarkable for what can be an arrogant agency. It admits flaws in the design of the levee system, failure to consider sinking soils that lowered levee heights and failure to build for a strong hurricane. The corps offers no apologies. Still, admitting mistakes is better than the usual know-it-all attitude, though the corps stops Unfortunately, the turnabout regarding New Orleans hasn't inspired the Florida branch of the corps to be less defensive and more forthright about problems with Lake Okeechobee's 143- ...

With hurricane season here, work to shore up Lake Okeechobee dike is halted
Mike Clary /Sun Sentinel /Jun 8
Just days into the summer hurricane season, work to shore up the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee has come to a halt after the contractor encountered problems with the method being used to fortify the earthen barrier. "We know we need to move quickly," Nanciann Regalado, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Wednesday. "But we kind of hit the pause button," she said, after construction crews working near Port Mayaca discovered that excessive sand in the dike was compromising the integrity of a 36-foot wall being inserted into the levee. More than 40,000 South Floridians live near the lake, protected by a 140-mile dike built in the early 1930s after a powerful hurricane and flood killed 2,000 people. The $300 million project is being halted even as a consulting firm charged earlier this week that local and state emergency planners were downplayi ...

U.S. won't release Lake Okeechobee flood maps, citing security
Brian Skoloff /Herald Tribune /Jun 7
The federal government is refusing to make public maps that show detailed diagrams of where flood waters would extend if Lake Okeechobee breached specific points of its earthen dike, citing concerns about a terrorist attack. However, the maps produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are being shared with emergency responders in counties and cities along the lake for use in developing evacuation plans, Steve Duba, chief of engineering for the corps'Jacksonville office, said Wednesday. The Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake in the heart of Florida's Everglades has been the focus of scrutiny since May, when state-commissioned experts found the structure is highly vulnerable to breaches caused by hurricanes and heavy rains.That report prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to order state and local emergency managers to craft a mass evacuation plan for up to 60,000 residents living in t ...

Okeechobee disaster plan: Run real fast
Mike Thomas /Orlando Sentinel /Jun 11
The 1,600 graves share a common granite marker. It is next to a rusty flagpole in the remote Port Mayaca Cemetery east of Lake Okeechobee. It says: "To the 1,600 pioneers in this mass burial who gave their lives in the 1928 hurricane so that the Glades might be as we know it today." They are just some of an estimated 3,000 people who drowned when the huge storm toppled a dike on Lake Okeechobee. It remains Florida's greatest natural disaster though little was made of it because many victims were black migrant workers.The lesson engineers took from this tragedy was that the Lake Okeechobee dike was not big enough. And so they made it bigger, much bigger. The Herbert Hoover Dike is more than 140 miles long, about 30 feet tall and 300 feet wide at the base. From the top, the lake looks like the world's largest toilet bowl, an apropos analogy given its pollut ...

Wetlands to be discussed as solution to development-related pollution
Rachel Simmonsen /Palm Beach Post /Jun 12
Last year, St. Lucie River activists grumbled as water managers unleashed a deluge from bloated Lake Okeechobee, saying the lake was dangerously high. Weather played a hand, said Patrick Hayes, supervisor of the Martin Soil and Water Conservation District. But it wasn't the lone culprit. Too many houses, shopping centers and parking lots have cropped up where wetlands or agricultural land with canals used to be, so more and more storm-water runoff, much of it polluted, makes its way to waterways such as Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie River, he said. "We're draining off in the wet season, then drilling down in the dry season to the aquifer," Hayes said.So what to do about? Hayes hopes to come up with possible solutions Friday during a workshop hosted by the soil and water district at the Martin County Fairgrounds in Stuart. "What we're hoping to do is drum up enough general publi ...

Q&A: Paul Gray, biologist
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jun 12
About 20 years ago, Paul Gray focused his doctoral work on Florida's mottled duck. But residents near Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie Estuary consider him an expert on much more. A biologist for Audubon of Florida and member of the Rivers Coalition,Gray works with water managers to restore local waterways and improve the environment for ducks and humans alike. Q: How would you describe the current health of Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries? A: Both systems have been severely damaged by recent wet years. Biological systems have remarkable abilities to recover, but for Lake Okeechobee, the recovery process — regrowing plant communities and their animal dependents — probably will take until about 2010. The estuaries might be able to recover somewhat sooner, but still will take several years. Q: Do you predict a summer similar to last yea ...

Belle Glade gets OK for boat lock study
Mitra Malek /Palm Beach Post /Jun 14
BELLE GLADE — The third time's a charm. Belle Glade tried twice to persuade federal and state officials that a boat lock to Lake Okeechobee belonged on its turf. Twice it failed. Now, more than two decades later, the governor has signed off on $1.5 million for the economically depressed city to use on an engineering study for the lock.City and state officials say the lock could spur ecotourism and attract developers. Locks provide a holding area for boats to move between different water levels. Eight of them are along Lake O's edge — but none in Palm Beach County, where boats instead launch from marinas inside the three-story dike that surrounds the lake."We're just trying to get the city moving and going forward," Mayor Ray Torres Sanchez said.The city recently completed a feasibility study on the project. That report says the best place for the lock is on the Hillsboro Canal, ri ...

Water cleanup tax lacks support
Daphne Sashin /Orlando Sentinel /Jun 14
KISSIMMEE -- Osceola County commissioners made clear this week they will oppose a property tax boost being floated by some South Florida politicians as a way to raise money for Everglades-related projects.A nine-county coalition lobbying to improve the water quality of Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries is scheduled Thursday to discuss a plan to raise $65 million for the South Florida Water Management District by increasing property taxes in the 16-county district by 10 cents for every $1,000 of taxable property value.In Osceola, where most properties fall within the South Florida district, the owner of a home valued at $200,000 with homestead exemption would see the water-district portion of the tax bill rise from $122.50 to $140, if the increase were approved. But the water agency's board, which would have to take up the measure and ap ...

Does Florida's flood lurk behind this wall?
Tamara Lush /St Pete Times /Jun 17
BELLE GLADE — Teresa Miller doesn’t have a job, a phone or a car. She also doesn’t have a hurricane evacuation plan, and because her trailer is less than 2 miles from Lake Okeechobee, she’s scared. Miller, 41, has heard about the cracks in the dike that holds the water backfrom the land. She wonders how much Hurricane Wilma eroded the earth berm around the lake last year. And she worries that if there is a fierce enough storm, the dike could give way and the lake’s entire southeast shore could become another New Orleans — flooded and destroyed. “There’s going to be a lot of deaths if that thing breaks,” Miller said. As the 2006 hurricane season begins, officials in a dozen counties are worried about the same thing. One reason for the anxiety: a recent report by three engineering experts said that the dike “bears a striking resemblance to Swiss cheese” and that it p ...

2 Holes May Be Sinking Lake
Diane Allen /The Ledger /Jun 16
LAKELAND -- Trees were still slipping into Scott Lake on Thursday morning, but the appetite of two apparent sinkholes slowed after more than two days of shoreline havoc in one of Lakeland's most prestigious neighborhoods.County and state water management officials visited the South Lakeland lake Thursday. They suspect two sinkholes are causing the lake to shrink and ruled out drainage problems caused by pipes or other manmade structures. But neither the county nor the Southwest Florida Water Management District plans to do anything about the vanishing lake, other than making sure homes are habitable. "I see our interest right now as primarily public safety," said Deputy County Manager Jim Freeman. The home of Glenda Fontaine and Steve Beebe on Pier Place Drive began cracking Tuesday, and it appears to be slipping toward the lake. Freeman said the county will continue ...

Officials need to release maps
Editorial /TC Palm /Jun 18
What is the more immediate, realistic danger? Is it the threat of flooding or the threat of terrorism? This is the issue federal officials should be grappling with regardingtheir decision not to release flood maps detailng the impact that a breach of the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee would have on communities in the floodplain. Oh, the federal government is sharing the maps with emergency management coordinators in the potentially affected areas. But, citing terrorism concerns, officials have refused to make the maps public. "We just don't believe there's a great need for the public to have them because we're giving the information to the (emergency coordinators) and they're the ones that would translate the information into an evacuation plan," said Nancy Regalado, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which produced the diagrams. We beg to ...

Coalition mulls tax to mend Lake Okeechobee
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jun 16
OKEECHOBEE — In a quest to find recurring funding for Lake Okeechobee restoration, a panel made up of commissioners from the nine counties surrounding the lake on Thursday considered a proposal to increase property taxes throughout South Florida.Instead of relying on the extra $60 million to $90 million the South Florida Water Management District received from increased property values last year, members of the Nine County Coalition agreed to look for another way to secure a guaranteed pot of money to pay for new environmental projects. Glades County Commissioner Alvin Ward proposed increasing the district's property tax rate 10 cents for every $1,000 of taxable value — an amount he said could raise $63 million a year throughout the 16-county district, which includes Martin and St. Lucie counties. While district officials on Thursday said the governor might not approve ...

Lake O disaster now looms in your backyard
William Margerum /News Press /Jun 19
A nasty odor and foul liquid appears in your bathtub. A muddy, smelly puddle appears in your yard. For the first time, you think about your septic tank. It is, unfortunately, true that most of us pay no attention to the septic system till it has invaded our home and yard. Lake Okeechobee is almost exactly the same as that septic tank in yourbackyard. Lake Okeechobee is the septic tank of Central and South Central Florida's septic system with the Everglades as the system's drainfield. For decades, agricultural interests flushed their phosphate- andnitrate-laden dirty water back into the lake. While this has been stopped to a large degree, it was far too late to prevent a muck buildup of several feet on the lake's bottom. Then each and every year the land of theme parks released millions upon millions of gallons of partially treated effluent into the Kissimmee chain of l ...

EVERGLADES RESTORATION