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BIG CYPRESS

County offered land for off-roading
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jun 20
The solution to Collier County's off-roading problem could be 750 acres of old tomato fields, officials suggested today. The South Florida Water Management District formally offered the farmland to the county to make good on a 2003 promise. County commissioners agreed to give the water management district 30 days to work out the details to allow off-road vehicles on the property. Consultants need to review recent environmental tests to confirm the land issafe for recreation, said John Dunnuck, director of land management and operations for the district. The potential off-roading park is about a mile south of Sabal Palm Road, a few miles east of Collier Boulevard, in Belle Meade.About 50 off-roading enthusiasts cheered speakers who spoke in favor of a quick solution. All-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes and swamp buggies have been shut out of nearby Southern Golden Gate E ...

Flaws in permit system shut out recreational gator hunters
Byron Stout /News Press /Jun 28
Florida alligator managers admit the process they tried for this year's statewide alligator harvest unfairly shut out many recreational hunters. New rules and computer problems allowed commercial operators to scoop up all the permits before many recreational hunters could apply. Permits went on sale June 15. The problem arose when: ¸ The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission decided to issueadditional permits to hunters who wanted them. ¸ Commercially inspired guides and skinners decided to cash in on a strong market for hides due to hurricane-reduced alligator harvests in Louisiana. The result was the computer used by the state’s license vendor crashedduring the opening-hour onslaught of applications. Plus, a glitch in its program allowed some buyers to snag as many as 95 permits. The state sold out in four hours. That shut out recreational hunters lik ...

Water managers say developers will help restore natural flow
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jul 1
State and local water managers want luxury home developers to help restore severed water connections in Belle Meade, a growing exurb east of Collier Boulevard.Today, rain that falls on rural Belle Meade quickly ends up in canals and agricultural ditches, experts say. That water then gushes into Rookery Bay and Naples Bay, along with ecosystem-damaging pollutants. An upcoming report, unveiled in nearly finished form Friday, calls for watermanagers to spend nearly $14.5 million on seven Belle Meade restoration projects. But those water managers want developers to bear the brunt of that expense. Eager to appear sensitive to environmental issues, developers will line up to comply, officials think. "The developers will work with you," said Clarence Tears, director of the Big Cypress Basin, the local arm of the South Florida Water Management District."They just want ...

Developers back to the drawing board on plans for golf course communities
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Jul 2
It was once promoted as a regional restoration project: a manmade channel that would wend its way through wetlands north of Immokalee Road. Now, with the project running into environmental roadblocks, developers are scratching plans to include the channel as part of proposed golf course communities at Mirasol and Parklands-Collier. The move isn’t placating a coalition of environmental groups trying to keep golf courses and homes out of a key wetland flowway that straddles the Lee-Collier county line. Three projects — Mirasol, Parklands-Collier and Terafina — would affect 1,100 acres of wetlands directly and would indirectly affect hundreds more, according to permit applications. “The wetland impacts are way too high — unacceptable,” said Brad Cornell, Big Cypress policy associate for Collier County Audubon Society and Audubon of Florida. Other groups in ...

Lake dredging will continue; Phase two begins on Lake Trafford
Patty Bryant /News Zap /Jun 2006
Immokalee’s Lake Trafford is going backwards. The three square mile, 1,600 acre lake gained unwanted notoriety in recent years as the location of numerous fish kills. Hydrilla dying and accumulating at the bottom of the lake, coupled with nutrient runoff from the surrounding area, sapped the oxygen from the water, killing fish by the score. Lake Trafford became the example, the test case, for many other lakes in central and south Florida n all of which Director of Big Cypress Basin SFWMD Clarence Tears said are experiencing similar problems. The dredging operation that has been vacuuming up muck from the bottom of the lake has been very successful Phase one, the open part of the lake, was completed by the end of Mayn eight months early. The muck at the bottom of Lake Trafford varied from 2-8 feet thick; the lake itself varies from 8-12 feet deep and averages 4 feet in depth. Phase ...

Gargantuan gator still guards Big Cypress
Kevin Lollar /News Press /Jun 23
Superman was a 14-foot, 1,500-pound alligator that had been on display at Billy's Swamp Safari on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation. The big gator died a year ago, and the tribe contacted Griffin to see about having it mounted. "I've been doing this 36 years, and I've been hunting alligators since the state started hunts in 1989," said Griffin, who lives in North Fort Myers. "I killed a 13-foot-4-inch, 770-pound alligator and I thought he was big. When I saw this son of a gun, it was unbelievable." The Seminoles captured Superman and had him on display for 13 years. When the gator died they put him in a freezer for three weeks until Griffin could pick him up. "He was too big for the freezer, so they bent him into a U-shape to get him in," Griffin said. "We like to never got him out of there — it was1,500 pounds of dead weight in a place where you couldn't get a hold o ...

SOUTHWEST COAST

Mack, Foley push for Glades restoration, cleaner waterways
Kate Spinner /Naples Daily News /Jun 24
Trying to spark the U.S. Senate's action on a bill that would set off a second wave of Everglades restoration projects, two Florida congressman spoke Friday from the troubled shores of the Caloosahatchee River. Lamenting the toxic algae blooms and muddy waters that have plagued the Caloosahatchee River for years, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV, R-Fort Myers, and U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, called for the Senate to pass the Water Resources Development Act. The act would give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authority to construct approximately $1.5 billion in Everglades restoration projects. "We're working hard every day to push the Senate to do the right thing to protect our waterways and protect our quality of life," Mack said. The projects, which include the Indian River Lagoon restoration on the east coast and the Picayune Strand restoration near Naples, ...

Algae makes foul return to Southwest Florida coast
Kate Spinner /Naples Daily News /Jun 28
Red and green, microscopic and massive, algae of all sorts have returned to Southwest Florida. Globs of a toxic algae are fouling miles of northern Sanibel Island’s shore and traces of red tide are growing in the Gulf of Mexico offshore of Boca GrandePass to Big Carlos Pass and in the mouth of San Carlos Bay. Up the Caloosahatchee River, east of Olga and in Lake Okeechobee, patches ofblue-green algae have slicked the shoreline pea-green. And on beaches from Sanibel to Naples red drift algae has been washing ashore for months. The rotting seaweed landed on most area beaches, but Fort Myers Beach got the worst of it, following rain from Tropical Storm Alberto.The onset of the rainy season is sending decayed red drift algae offshore, but the weather also is washing more algae-causing nutrients into area waterwayswhile the red drift blooms dissipate other forms of algae ar ...

Red tide returns to choke area waters
Kate Spinner /Naples Daily News /Jul 1
When Eric Davis, a captain with Extreme Fishing Charters, launched from Lovers Key State Park on Friday morning, he saw mullet, catfish and a lot of bait fish washed up dead on the boat ramp. As he cruised out of the estuary, he encountered more dead fish — at least athousand of them floating in ruddy waters from Estero Bay to about three miles offshore and from Fort Myers Beach to Sanibel Causeway. The killer is red tide. Karenia brevis, the microscopic algae that causes red tide, gives off a toxic gas when it dies. That gas kills fish, causes ear, nose and throat irritation in people and, if concentrated enough, can kill dolphins and manatees. The Florida Wildlife Research Institute on Thursday tested for Karenia brevis in the Caloosahatchee estuaries. The results, released Friday, showed medium levels of red tide in the mouth of San Carlos Bay. Medium concentra ...

FGCU marine science program reaches out
Matt Conn /News Press /Jun 26
As they do a few weekends each year, volunteers and FGCU students and faculty soon will throw bags of shells into the Caloosahatchee River and Estero Bay. The shells inside these biodegradable bags may help create a habitat for oysters, which can benefit the entire ecosystem, says S. Gregory Tolley, director of the Coastal Watershed Institute and marine science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. Oysters need to attach to a hard base to grow. Otherwise, they’re washed downstream or become buried by sand, he says. Each oyster acts as “a big, biological filter,” says Aswani Volety, chairman of the university’s department of marine and ecological sciences.Just one oyster can filter from 4 to 40 liters of water per hour, depending on its size and the temperature, he says. And once the oysters establish a colony of about 2,000 to 4,000, they not on ...

Red tide still lurking around northern tip of Bonita Beach
Mark Krzos /News Press /Jul 3
Pete Korovesis of Livonia, Mich., spent Monday morning hunting for shells walking Bonita Beach with his young daughter. They had to watch where they stepped, especially near the northern end of Bonita Beach. "There's a lot of dead fish around the point," he said. "As far as thesmell goes, today's the worst it's been." So far, Korovesis' vacation plans of beachgoing haven't been hampered too much by red tide. "We were coughing yesterday and we had to get off the beach," he said. "We went to the pool and the coughing stopped." Red tide is caused by the toxic single-celled alga Karenia brevis. Under normal concentrations, less than 1,000 cells per liter, K. brevis causes no problems. But when the organism undergoes a population explosion, or bloom, the concentrated toxin can render shellfish poisonous and can kill fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and marine birds ...

Red tide outbreak ebbing
Kevin Lollar /News Press /Jul 3
A red tide that threatened to foul beaches for the Fourth of July has not developed into a reeking wrack of dead fish.Water samples taken Saturday indicate that red tide concentrations areslightly below levels from samples taken Thursday, so holiday revelersshould have a good time on the beach. Last week, masses of dead fish were reported at Bonita Beach and in nearshore waters, but Monday, the only red tide reports of any significance were from Sanibel’s Gulfside City Park and the north end of Bonita Beach. “It’s not a huge outbreak,” Steve Bortone, director of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Marine Laboratory, said of Sanibel’s red tide. “We have noticed dead fish. Some of the staff has reported water with a brownish-reddish tint, and some people are coughing a little. There are fish every few feet. It’s not like they’re all piled up.” Fish species repor ...

LAKE OKEECHOBEE

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 ...

Dike May Not Hold Lake Okeechobee In a Big Hurricane
Peter Whoriskey /Washington Post /Jun 21
BELLE GLADE, Fla. -- One of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history happened in this farming community beside Lake Okeechobee, and for people here, the Hurricane of 1928 is an inescapable piece of city lore. A prominent statue at the city's crossroads depicts a family running from the floodwaters that gushed through the lake's dike, and the popular novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" hitched literary fame to the disaster that claimed more than 2,000 lives. But people had always assumed the danger was long past. Now engineers hired by a state agency are reporting that weaknesses in the vast dike around the lake again pose a "grave and imminent danger to the people and the environment of South Florida." Every year, according to engineers, the dike has a 1 in 6 chance of failing. "I was stunned -- for all these years, there's been no red flag ever raised,th ...

Stop turf war with growers; restore Everglades flow-way
Editorial /Palm Beach Post /Jun 21
In his recent letter "Flow-way into Everglades has been studied, and it won't work" (May 29), George H. Wedgworth, president of the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida, dismissed the viability of a storage flow-way reconnecting Lake Okeechobee to the Water Conservation Areas through the Everglades Agricultural Area. His attempt to refute the concept of reestablishing a flow-way south of Lake Okeechobee as the solution to water-related issues in South Florida is fraught with erroneous assumptions and a rush to judgment on the Army Corps of Engineers draft EAA Project Implementation Report and Environmental Impact Statement. In fact, the planning and documentation for the EAA project is not complete. A third draft of the report is to be released in the fall. Not only that, Lee County has submitted comments that the corps and the South Florida Water Management District have failed ...

Lake O at lowest level in 4 years
staff /News Press /Jun 21
The water level of Lake Okeechobee is at its lowest level in four years, so water managers are saying they are in good shape to manage the lake and the Herbert Hoover Dike for the rest of the 2006 hurricane season. The lake level stood at 12.12 feet on Tuesday. That's the lowest levelsince June 22, 2002. In 2004, when four hurricanes struck the state, the lake stood at 12.71 feet on the same date. And on June 20, 2005, the level was 15.3 feet.John Zediak, chief of the Jacksonville District Water Management Section, said: "Let's put it this way. From this point in time it would take more than nature dealt us in each of the past two years to give us serious trouble with the lake or Herbert Hoover Dike." Zediak said that the fact that the Kissimmee River basin and the lakes in the basin are not full allows storage of runoff water from heavy rainsbefore it impacts the Lake ...

Engineers race to fix Lake Okeechobee dike before hurricane hits
Brian Skoloff /Bradenton Herald /Jun 24
PAHOKEE, Fla. - Rest easy was the message. Engineers had completed 85 miles of the dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee to ensure history would never repeat itself. Thousands died in two 1920s hurricanes when the lake broke its banks. "This dike has cured the bad habit of tropical hurricanes of using this lake as a weapon of destruction," former President Herbert Hoover said at the 1961 ceremony dedicating the southern portion of the dike that bears his name. "Since this great dike was built, five evil hurricanes have tried their best at destruction around this lake, but they have been foiled in every attack," he said. Today, fears are renewed as the aging earthen wall is undergoing a massive restoration by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A recent study by a state-hired panel of experts revealed the dike is in imminent danger of failing in another major hu ...

Toxic algae could return to St. Lucie River
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jun 28
Mosquitoes, sea turtle nests and afternoon thunderstorms are all part of the Treasure Coast summer. Toxic blue-green algae might be the newest annual tradition. The same kind of bloom that painted the St. Lucie River neon-green last summer has been found again in the Caloosahatchee River — and local activists say it's only a matter of time before Treasure Coast residents are again warned to stay out of the water. "It will be a big problem like we had last time," said Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society. "It's unfortunate." Dean Powell, director of watershed management for the South Florida Water Management District, said state water quality monitors found the toxicalgae near the W.P. Franklin Lock and Spillway, about halfway between Lake Okeechobee and the Gulf of Mexico.Small blooms also were reported in Lake Okeechobee and in ...

Controversial plan to link canals bubbles up
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jun 29
PORT SALERNO — The proposal seemed amenable enough: Create new ways to move excess Lake Okeechobee water around the Treasure Coast so it can be stored and used on farms in St. Lucie and Martin counties instead of gushing into the St. Lucie River. But the idea — just one of nearly 50 under consideration by a committee of the South Florida Water Management District's Water Resources AdvisoryCommission on Tuesday — is the specter of a controversial concept thatsplit the local environmental community and became one of the most debated issues in the $1.2 local Everglades restoration plan. A connector canal, which would channel excess water from the St. LucieCanal in Martin County to the C-23 canal in St. Lucie County, has beenconsidered for nearly 50 years as both a possible savior for the estuary and yet another demand for irrigation water that would force the lake into be ...

Okeechobee dike deemed safe for now; the long haul is another story
Curtis Morgan /Miami Herald /Jun 29
PAHOKEE - The 35-foot-high mound of shell, soil and sand that keeps Lake Okeechobee from washing away this rundown little town doesn't rank near the top of Mayor J.P. Sasser's worry list.''To be honest, we give a rat's ass about the dike,'' Sasser said. ``We have a lot more pressing issues in Pahokee.'' Two months ago, state consultants pronounced the 143-mile-long Herbert Hoover Dike a ''grave and imminent danger,'' prompting Gov. Jeb Bush to urge immediate federal action to shore it up -- a call he repeated Wednesday in Washington, with an appeal to speed work now slated to take decades. But along much of the big lake, residents' anxiety over a catastrophic levee collapse clearly has faded, despite the arrival of hurricane season. That's largely because the risk of a breech -- a probability thehighly publicized expert engineering analysis pegged at 50-50 over ...

Questionable dike around Lake Okeechobee to get $40 million for repairs
staff /Sun Sentinel /Jun 30
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved close to $40 million to help pay for repairs on Lake Okeechobee's Herbert Hoover Dike, Sen. Bill Nelson said. The money, which will be applied to next year's budget, comes a month after a report written for the South Florida Water Management District warned that the dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee is in extreme danger of failing, risking the lives of 40,000 people and threatening urban water supplies to the southeast. Gov. Jeb Bush has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for nine measures to stave off disaster, such as speeding up repairs, inspecting the dike daily and keeping the lake at lower levels in hurricane season. In January, the Corps began the $300 million project to strengthen the dike,which ground to a halt this month after a contractor encountered problems with the method being u ...

ISSUE: Senate appropriates money for dike around Lake Okeechobee.
Editorial /Sun Sentinel /Jul 3
The tragedy of New Orleans brought on by Hurricane Katrina has apparently taught members of Congress a lesson: Pay now for strengthening dikes and levees, or see the cost rise many times when the barriers are breached by water driven by high winds. The cost would come not only in dollars, but also in lost lives. The Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee is one of the structures on the federal government's radar screen. This week, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved $40 million for repairs to the dike. The money, part of a$300 million multiyear project, will be carried over into next year's budget. In another piece of good news, repair work on the dike is scheduled to resume soon. It was halted last month when it was discovered the material being used to build an impermeable barrier inside the dike wasn't providing the necessary strength. Engineers ...

EVERGLADES RESTORATION

Work continues in Everglades restoration
staff /News Zap /Jun 2006
PALM BEACH COUNTY — Marking Florida’s ongoing commitment to Everglades restoration, State Sen. David Aronberg, State Rep. Richard Machek, and State Rep. Shelley Vana joined Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Colleen M. Castille and South Florida Water Management District Governing Board Member Lennart E. Lindhal to break ground on the fourth Acceler8 project in just six Part of the State’s plan to fast track the restoration of America’s Everglades, the $33.6 million Water Preserve Area/Acme Basin B Discharge Project near the village of Wellington in Palm Beach County will improve the quality of water flowing into the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.“The Acme Basin B Discharge Project will divert stormwater runoff north and to a treatment wetland before flowing into the Wildlife Refuge, leading the way for water quality improvements,” ...

Sugar rush in 'Glades
Kate Spinner /Naples Daily News /Jun 26
The northern Everglades could become this region's next energy hub. But the dormant power source isn't beneath the muck soil; it's growing on top.Where sawgrass marshes daunted explorers a century ago, sugar cane now dominates about 450,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee. The same crop that soothes America's sweet-tooth could soon feed the nation's growing appetite for fuel. Bradley Krohn, president of U.S. EnviroFuels, will break ground in August onFlorida's first ethanol plant, which will be located in Port Sutton, near Tampa. While the plant will start by processing ethanol from corn, Krohn plans to eventually make the switch to sugar cane and other high-sugar crops that better fit Florida's climate."We believe we have a solution to making the sugar process as economic, if not more economic, than the corn model for ethanol," Krohn said. To environmentalists and the a ...

Water project blasting opposed
Natalie McNeal /Miami Herald /Jun 27
A $250 million state project to help stop flooding and restore the Everglades may require blasting to keep the cost down, water managers said Monday. But West Broward cities banned the practice of using explosives to prepare land for development after homeowners complained of cracked foundations and other damage during previous development booms. Miramar and Weston officials said Monday they still oppose it. As early as September, the South Florida Water Management District could start work on the project. It would create three, 2,000-acre impoundments, similar to reservoirs, in the Broward strip of theEast Coast Buffer -- the area between the western edge of populated Broward and the Everglades. The Water Preserve Areas Project, which includes Palm Beach County, is a collection of multipurpose water storage and filtration marshes on the east rim of the Everglades. ...

'Glades experts rejected flowways
Tom Perry /Sun Sentinel /Jun 28
Lately, there has been a great deal of public discussion about the benefits of a flowway from Lake Okeechobee through the Everglades Agricultural Area. A Thursday letter, "Flooding farms," stated a storage flowway will do "worlds of good" for the east and west coast estuaries and claimed this opinion was shared by "the best independent experts in Florida." The letter writer is correct only in that this issue has been studied for over a decade. However, the two lead agencies on restoration issues, the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, both looked at the flowway concept in detail and rejected it. Considering the impact of flowways on the entire ecosystem, they concluded that it was not in the bestinterest of the environment or the taxpayers. These conclusions are part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) ...

Bush meets on drilling, dike, Everglades in Washington
AP /Bradenton Herald /Jun 28
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday he would support more offshore drilling protection than offered by a bill pending in the U.S. House, but that Florida should take what it can get before it's too late. The Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act, which could allow drilling as close as 50 miles from Florida's beaches, may come up for a vote as early as Thursday. "The tide has turned against Florida's interest," Bush said before meeting in Washington, D.C. with U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam. The Bartow Republican negotiated the Deep Ocean bill with House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., before his panel approved it last week. The governor also met with federal officials to discuss the Everglades restoration project and efforts to strengthen a dike around Lake Okeechobee that could cause massive flooding if it should fail. The Deep Ocean bill ...

ASR groundbreaking held
Pete Gawda /News Zap /Jun 2006
“A small piece of the restoration process,” is how Dennis Duke, program manager for ecosystem restoration for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), described the groundbreaking ceremony at Okee-Tantie Campground and Marina Thursday morning. South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and COE officials participated in a groundbreaking ceremony marking the start of construction on the Lake Okeechobee Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) pilot, a Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) project.The program was made memorable by blazing heat, a troublesome sound system and the noise of airboats. “Today’s celebration marks a significant milestone along our journey to help restore the Everglades,” Mr. Duke went on to say. “This pilot project is vital in determining the feasibility of using this technology to achieve successful ecosystem restoration.” He said the proposal c ...

Let's preserve green spaces and our future
Andrew McCloud /Miami Herald /Jul 3
All told, between 1880 and 1900, a total of 17 million acres of ''useless'' lowlands were sold by the state with the intention that they be ''reclaimed'' by private interests. Sixty years later, a new era beckoned. As Florida boomed from two million people during World War II to six million in the mid-1960s -- and neared 10 million in 1980 -- we decided to change course and buy land. A modest $20 million state bond measure in 1964 was followed by the Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, Conservation and Recreational Lands Program, Save Our Rivers andSave Our Coast -- all state initiatives to buy natural resources for the benefit of the public. We created Preservation 2000, an unprecedented, 10-year, $3 billion acquisition and restoration program. In 1998-1999, that program was extended and modified -- through a combination of a constitutional amendment (passe ...



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