Florida’s Water Issues: Time for Talk is Over

By Rob Moher | Conservancy of Southwest Florida President & CEO

Recently, the Governor declared a state of emergency for a number of Florida counties being impacted by the toxic blue-green algae in Lake Okeechobee through canals and rivers out to the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean. It really is great to see our politicians recognize this severity of this situation but the time for talk is over. What we need now is our state leadership to take the actions needed to prevent it from continuing.

As one of Florida’s largest science-based conservation organizations working to protect Southwest Florida’s water, land and wildlife, it is our responsibility to advocate and inform the public about the deep roots of this crisis and the fact that our current political leadership has done little to address its causes. In fact, the Conservancy along with water and community advocates from all over the State converged last week on West Palm to urge the top brass from state and federal agencies to move forward on more water storage and treatment in the Everglades Agricultural Area as the critical missing piece needed to fix this situation. Despite our advocacy efforts urging that planning EAA storage begin immediately, the state remained deafeningly silent and inactive to doing so.

The science clearly shows that acquisition of a portion of EAA lands to add over a million additional acre feet of storage and treatment is essential if we are to ever be able to stop the harmful discharges to our estuaries. Such an acquisition would hardly put Florida’s sugar industry out of business as it would require a relatively small portion of the existing sugar producing lands. We are spending billions of state and federal tax dollars to accelerate major Everglades restoration projects, but if the water cannot be cleaned and allowed to flow south to those projects, they will not be able to provide their full ecological benefit.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida has long advocated for a multi-pronged approach to addressing the source of our water problems, which has had a negative ripple effect on our economy, environment, fish, wildlife and quality of life. However, the State of Florida has been systematically and continually weakening water pollution regulations along with employing a consistent and destructive practice of weakened enforcement of pollution laws. All this has taken place while the State has been rapidly growing at a rate of up to 1000 people a day without the guidance and controls once provided by the State growth management agency, which was eliminated under this administration. Not unexpectedly, this rapid development has caused more pollution from inadequate stormwater treatment and increased destruction of wetlands placing further pressure on our already stressed coastal ecosystems.

So what can be done? The Governor should supplement the now minimal dedicated amount for Everglades funding (set with the passage of Legacy Florida last year) to advance Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) projects that lessen the harmful discharges to the estuaries (i.e. C-43 Reservoir) and/or move more clean water south of Lake Okeechobee. He should also direct the state Department of Environmental Protection to set nutrient pollution standards for both Nitrogen and Phosphorus (a significant contributor to harmful algae outbreaks) for all upstream flowing waters flowing down into Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee and the Everglades so the pollution is controlled at its source.

The failure of the State in undertaking these key actions have played into our declining water quality statewide and need to be addressed if we hope to restore the health of our coastal estuaries. Nonetheless, buying EAA land south of the lake to divert and cleanse the polluted water currently coming out our estuary is the single most important step our Governor could take right now to address this recurring water crisis.

To learn about all of the pieces to the puzzle needed to restore the Caloosahatchee and what you can do to help, visit www.conservancy.org.