TREASURE COAST — A long-anticipated Everglades restoration effort is advancing as state and federal leaders push forward on a major reservoir project designed to change how water moves through South Florida and reduce environmental impacts along the Treasure Coast.
At the center of the effort is the Everglades Agricultural Area reservoir, part of the broader Central Everglades Planning Project, which aims to redirect water south from Lake Okeechobee instead of sending excess flows east and west into coastal estuaries.
Jason Kelly, deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, described the scale and significance of the project.
“The Central Everglades Planning Project, CEPP, is the crowning jewel of the comprehensive Everglades restoration plan. This project will deliver 370,000 acre-feet of new water south every year. Water that today is lost to time. That's enough water to cover the city of Orlando in about four and a half feet. It'll restore flow across more than 1.5 million acres, revitalizing habitats, rebalancing ecosystems, and reversing decades of decline,” Kelly said.
The reservoir is expected to play a key role in reducing harmful releases from Lake Okeechobee, which for decades have sent nutrient-rich water into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries, fueling toxic algae blooms and red tide events.
Kelly said the project is designed to significantly cut those discharges while strengthening the broader water management system.
“It'll reduce damaging discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries by up to 80 percent, and it'll strengthen the resilience of a system that serves 9 million people,” he said.
The new system will store water on roughly 10,500 acres and move it south, where it can be treated and sent into the Everglades, helping to limit pollution in coastal waterways.
Adam Telle said major construction efforts are already underway.
“The Army has embarked on an unprecedented multi-billion dollar contract to complete not just the foundation of the EAA, but also to complete the embankment structure and the water control structures,” Telle said.
Officials say the project is now on an accelerated timeline, with a target completion date set several years earlier than originally planned.
Kelly pointed to that revised schedule as a significant challenge for those involved.
“The Army has challenged us to complete the Everglades Agricultural Area, to complete this reservoir by December 31, 2029. That's a formidable goal, and we're on track to meet it with full alignment and full commitment,” he said.
Ron DeSantis said the updated timeline reflects increased funding and coordination between state and federal partners.
“With these contracts executed, with the money that's now been dedicated to bring this completion, not in 2034, which is what it was scheduled to do under the previous administration, but five years earlier, 2029,” DeSantis said. “That means from the time we set out during my first week as governor in 2019, that it will have been a 10-year period to do not just the state's promises, but also the projects that the federal government. And let me tell you, nobody thought that was possible.”
He added that the project is part of a broader environmental funding push by the state.
“We've dedicated $8 billion over the last seven years for Everglades restoration and water quality improvements. That's a massive, massive increase of what Florida hadn't been doing prior to that,” he said.
Brian Mast, whose district includes parts of the Treasure Coast, framed the project as one that affects residents across the state.
“What we're dealing with here is what connects all of us in Florida. Water connects all of us. Whether we like to sit at a restaurant and eat on the water, whether we've got a home on the water, we've got a dock that goes out on the water, we like to be out on a vessel fishing or just out at a sandbar somewhere, whether it's the water that flows from the Kissimmee into the lake, down through the River of Grass and into the Everglades and feeds the Everglades and Florida Bay and Everglades National Park, every single one of us, we are connected by the water in the state of Florida,” Mast said.
Eric Eikenberg reflected on the years of planning and advocacy that led to the current phase of construction.
“On Aug. 9 of 2016, then State Senator Joe Negron stood in a community center in downtown Stewart and called for the authorization and construction of a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee. Senate Bill 10 passed during the 2017 legislative session and off we went. But at that point it was on paper,” Eikenberg said. “This project finally links Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades that Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote about, the River of Grass, and then down to the park and Florida Bay. This is a moment that we have been waiting for for decades.”
Once completed, the reservoir is expected to store more than 78 billion gallons of water and send up to 470 billion gallons of treated water annually to the Everglades through a 6,500-acre stormwater treatment area designed to remove nutrients before the water continues south.