South Florida - Monday June 6, 2023: The U.S. Army Corps has announced their ‘wet-season’ strategy for controlling releases from Lake Okeechobee, hoping to avoid any toxic algae releases this year.
Already, algae is blooming on Lake Okeechobee, at one point last week, satellite images showed a moderate to high bloom potential over 70% of the Lake, and the lake level is just over 14 feet, 1-and-a-quarter feet higher than this time last year.
It’s cause for anxiety on both the east and west Florida coasts where many are concerned that the corps may be forced to release algae laden flows into either the Caloosahatchee or St. Lucie Estuaries before the wet season ends.
Army Corps Colonel James Booth told reporters Friday it all depends on how much rainfall we get in the next several months and how high the lake gets. “Where we start to look towards high flow releases is when your well north of that sixteen-and-a-half feet level. We’ll see what mother nature does, but we see that risk towards later in the wet season if that rainfall materializes, we’re certainly nowhere close at this point.”
There have been no releases of Lake O water into the St. Lucie Estuary since April 15. Last Saturday the Corps upped its releases west down the Caloosahatchee to two-thousand cubic feet per second.
“In a nutshell," said Col. Booth, "our wet-season strategy is to manage Lake Okeechobee by making beneficial releases to downstream environments for as long as possible. This will allow us to get some water out of the Lake if we have some drier condition.”
The chances of avoiding toxic releases are stronger this year said Col. Both because the Hoover Dyke rehabilitation work is done. “Herbert Hoover dyke has had billons of dollars of work over the last many years, and no its stronger. And so, we can hold water in the lake longer with more confidence. That allows us more flexibility in those releases, and the timing of those releases.”
In addition, Southwest Florida Management District Executive Director Drew Bartlett said that they have rapid response teams that can respond within a day to an alae outbreak and apply oxygen laden pellets that will dissolve the algae.
“We have a product in pellet form and when it hits the water it dissolves and puts very high amounts of oxygen in the water and it kills the algae off," said Bartlett. "If we end up having to release from the lake we’ve got those teams in place to treat those conditions. We’re just in a lot better place to manage those conditions this year.”