12 October 2007

2 minute read

North America

Sugar cane growers, the Seminole Tribe of Florida and South Florida water managers question a proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers to keep Lake Okeechobee about a foot lower than normal year round.

The corps proposes holding less water in Lake Okeechobee -- South Florida's primary backup water supply -- because of safety concerns about the aging earthen dike that surrounds the 730-squre-mile lake.

But opponents argue that lowering the lake threatens to leave less water available to bail out growers and other water users during future droughts.

As this year illustrated, a drought leaves less lake water to refill irrigation canals and replenish underground drinking water supplies.

"I believe it causes more water supply shortages," said Malcolm Wade Jr., a vice president for U.S. Sugar Corp. and a member of the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District. "The flexibility is already gone."

The Seminoles are considering whether to continue cattle operations and could hold off on sugar cane plantings because of water supply concerns, said attorney Michelle Diffenderfer, who represents the Seminoles.

The Seminoles rely on lake water at their Big Cypress and Brighton reservations and "that right is being eroded," Diffenderfer said.

"There are grave impacts," she said.

The corps contends this would be a temporary change in lake management, needed until work is completed to strengthen the 140-mile-long dike that surrounds the lake.

The concerns succeeded in delaying the proposed lake management plan for about a year, but on Wednesday corps representatives laid out a plan to put it into place by February.

"As the Corps proceeds with dike rehabilitation, we will reassess the potential for additional [water] storage in Lake Okeechobee," Col. Paul Grosskruger, the corps' district commander charged with leading the dike project, said in a written statement released Wednesday.

Water managers decades ago turned Lake Okeechobee into a giant reservoir, surrounding it with a dike to contain water that once naturally overflowed its banks and replenished the Everglades.

A combination of drought and decisions to lower the lake in advance of hurricanes that never came dropped the lake to an all-time recorded low of 8.82 feet above sea level July 3. On Wednesday, the lake measured 10.09 feet, 5 feet below normal.

The district's governing board Wednesday called on the corps to agree to boost the allowable water levels in Lake Okeechobee as soon as ongoing repairs aimed at strengthening the southern sections of the dike are completed.

"The impacts [on] water supply are going to be real," said governing board member Michael Collins. "We are going to have to take the water from somebody else."

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