Lake Okeechobee reservoir will not clean water bound for Everglades, foundation says

A proposed reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges will do a pretty good job holding and moving water, but a lousy job cleaning it, the Everglades Foundation says.

That's the nonprofit's analysis of the South Florida Water Management District's plan to curtail discharges harming the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee river estuaries.

More:Uncooperative Florida Crystals holds key to Lake Okeechobee reservoir expansion | Analysis

The report claims the project doesn't have the capacity to remove enough phosphorus from Lake O water to meet federally mandated standards before the water is sent south to the Everglades and Florida Bay.

It also claims a recent modification to make the project's reservoir a source for crop irrigation will result in farms and the Everglades competing for water.

"The project the district has come up with has some pretty significant benefits, no doubt about that," said Thomas Van Lent, the foundation's director of science and policy. "But we have some real concerns about how it treats — or doesn't treat — water."

The Everglades Agricultural Area Storage Reservoir was authorized last spring by the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott to curtail Lake O discharges like those that caused toxic blue-green algae blooms in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers in 2016.

After several months of planning and modeling several variations of the project, district engineers chose a configuration that includes:

• A 10,100-acre reservoir that's 23 feet deep with 37-foot levees to hold about 78 billion gallons of water.
• A 6,550-acre stormwater treatment area to clean water from the reservoir before it heads south toward Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.

MORE:  SFWMD picks smaller reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges

Turn down the volume

The project, when combined with other water projects under construction and in the planning stage, will cut the volume of Lake O discharges by about 56 percent, according to district data.

That's about right, according to the foundation, but those other projects do most of the heavy lifting. The reservoir itself will cut discharge volume to the Caloosahatchee by 33 percent and discharges to the St. Lucie by 18 percent, the foundation says.

The foundation lauded the district's plan for:

• Delivering an average of about 117 billion gallons of water a year to Everglades National Park, "particularly in December and January, which is beneficial to a system that often dries out by the end of the dry season.
• Moving "significantly more flows to Florida Bay," including a 25 percent increase during the dry season when the bay suffers from too much salinity.

The problem, according to the foundation, is the water won't be clean.

Clean it up

Under a federal court order, water entering Everglades National Park is supposed to contain no more than 10 parts per billion of phosphorus.

The stormwater treatment area, or STA, attached to the reservoir isn't big enough to meet that goal, the foundation claims, and would reduce phosphorus to only 28 part per billion, more than twice the limit.

The foundation said the STA needs to be at least 13,000 acres.

MORE: Everglades Foundation says its reservoir plan will clean water

To meet standards with a smaller STA, about 60 percent of the water coming out of the reservoir will be sent to several existing structures for cleaning, said Melodie Naja, the foundation's chief scientist.

The existing structures, including an adjacent shallow reservoir and two other STAs, are already being used to clean water coming off farmland south of Lake O, the foundation report says, and won't be able to sufficiently clean so much extra water.

"They need to send all the new water coming from Lake Okeechobee to the new stormwater treatment area," Naja said.

Water war?

To "optimize" the environmental benefits of the proposed reservoir, district engineers made the project "multipurpose," meaning about 26.7 billion gallons of water a year would be available to irrigate area farms.

That will set up "a direct competition for water" between farms and the Everglades, the foundation claims, especially in the dry season when both need water the most.

"The district says a multipurpose reservoir that provides water for agriculture will improve flows to the Everglades," Van Lent said. "We don't understand how that would work and have asked the district to make sure they're correct."

District: It's clean

The science behind the district’s plan "achieves water quality standards," spokesman Randy Smith said Friday in an email.

Smith didn't address the foundation's specific claims.

District scientists have submitted the reservoir plans for independent technical review, he said, and issues with the project will be addressed as part of the final report to the head of the Army Corps of Engineers at the end of March.

The district's plan likely will change before it's submitted to the Corps, Van Lent said.

"We're raising these issues, and the scientific basis for our claims, for the district to look at," he said. "We're trying to be as constructive as we can be." 

After decades of harmful discharges, "we're finally on the verge of getting some action," said foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg. "The project needs to work or we will have missed a tremendous opportunity."

The project could be designed and built in as little as seven to nine years, district Executive Director Ernie Marks told a state Legislature panel in January.

MORE: Lake Okeechobee reservoir could be completed in 7-9 years

If you go

What: Presentation on proposed reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee
Who: Steve Davis, wetland ecologist at Everglades Foundation
When: 6:30-7:45 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 20
Where: Wolf High-Technology Center, Indian River State College, 2400 S.E. Salerno Road, Stuart