Lake Okeechobee discharges foul St. Lucie, Indian River Lagoon again. Will madness stop?

It's been two weeks since Lake Okeechobee discharges into the St. Lucie River began, with another round slated.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the timing and rate of water flowing out of Lake Okeechobee. The South Florida Water Management District works closely to advise the feds.

When released, the lake's freshwater pounds through the seven flood gates at the St. Lucie Lock and Dam into the St. Lucie River, normally a mix of freshwater and saltwater.

Water quality:Nothing's faster than DeSantis nod, so why the dilly-dally on replacing Thurlow-Lippisch?

If you're new around here, this is the little secret your real estate agent didn't tell you: Every three to five years, the tea-stained St. Lucie River gets turned to mud when billons of gallons of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee gets shunted there.

Some summers — four since 2005 — the surface of the river turns fluorescent green. A toxic algae the color of antifreeze coats everything that touches the water — docks, seawalls, boats, bridges, shorelines and waterfront restaurants, where some Martin County residents go to drown their sorrows.

Welcome to Stuart!

So far, 15 billion gallons of gunky water have been let loose into the river. After a short break, 15 billion more will come. If the Corps gets its way, 15 billion after that, too. Oh, and even more is going west into Fort Myers. Our misery has company.

Corps Col. James Booth told the Rivers Coalition he's to blame for the decision. Booth's stopping the buck may be admirable, but it doesn't change the fact that this archaic, 110-year old plumbing system favors the 344,000 acres of agriculture south of the lake. The crops grown on rich fertile soil from thousands of years of a naturally overflowing shallow lake get ideal irrigation or drainage whenever it's needed.

Meanwhile, estuaries, such as the St. Lucie, then the Indian River Lagoon to the east and Caloosahatchee River to the west, suffer from water that used to flow to the south before land barons drained Florida.

And it's not pure freshwater from some natural spring. It's water mixed with contaminants from local farms and dairies or runoff from Orlando-area roads that makes its way into the Kissimmee River and heads south into the lake.

The Corps, by the way, is doing some funny numbers-crunching this year. It sandwiches several days of high-volume discharges with four days of zero discharges to obtain it's "daily average" of 1.2 billion gallons per day.

The river doesn't subscribe to Corps math. It and the organisms that call it home know when and how badly they're being abused.

By the way, there remains no Treasure Coast representation to look out for us on the South Florida Water Management District governing board. This seat was vacated June 19, 2023, when Stuart resident Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch was not confirmed to her second term by the Florida Senate.

To this day, neither Thurlow-Lippisch nor TCPalm has received an official explanation from Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, or anyone else as to why. Thurlow-Lippisch was dismissed without so much as a "thank you" for her four years of service after Gov. Ron DeSantis' appointment in 2019.

The governor still hasn't replaced her. If you live on the Treasure Coast and care about our waterways, you should be steamed. Maybe the governor will listen to you.

This could be a terrible season to own a boat and use it in Palm City, Port St. Lucie or Stuart. Why would anyone want to boat, fish or try and enjoy the Stuart Sandbar with billions of gallons of cruddy, muddy lake water drifting over the flats? Instead of snook and tarpon, croaker and sheepshead, Roosevelt Bridge anglers will be talking about the bass, bluegill and armored catfish bite.

Any day now, we'll be getting reports of algae, according to Ed Killer, our outdoors columnist and member of our editorial board. The health department is already posting "don't touch the water" signs around Stuart.

It sure feels like we're on the cusp of another Lost Summer.

Editorials published by TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers are decided collectively by its editorial board. To respond to this editorial with a letter to the editor, email up to 300 words to TCNLetters@TCPalm.com.