Lee County Commissioner Bob Janes and other leaders of our community are sounding the alarm. Our way of life as we know it is slipping away in some areas of the county. The impact of the quantity, quality and timing of freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee is dramatic and far-reaching.

The release of freshwater from Lake Okeechobee poses three problems for our area’s ecosystem:

• Lake water is fresh. It lacks salt. Where rivers meet oceanic waters, estuaries form. Estuaries require just the right mix of fresh water and salt water to support the sea grasses and aquatic life that thrives there. Lake freshwater releases are displacing marine life and killing grasses. They do this by diluting the salinity in the estuaries in periods of high rain when freshwater needs to be released from the Lake. Similarly, the releases contribute to overly high salinity levels in periods of low rain or drought when freshwater is withheld or used for agricultural irrigation and public water supply, allowing salt water from the Gulf to move into the estuaries. This imbalance leads to the death of seagrasses in rivers and estuaries where endangered manatees and other marine life reside.
• Lake water is cloudy with sediments stirred up from the Lake’s bottom by heavy rains in 2004 and 2005. The cloudiness blocks sunlight from underwater grasses and contributes to their death. Plants need sunlight to synthesize food. When the plants die, the marine life that feeds on them dies or moves elsewhere; and the shore birds that feed on the marine life also relocate.
• Sediments in Lake Okeechobee are loaded with nitrogen and phosphorous pollutants — fertilizer byproducts. The fertilizers upset nutrient balances in the estuary and the Caloosahatchee River. When too much nutrient is introduced to a water way, algae takes over. When excessive water is released from Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee River and St. Lucie Canal become blanketed with blue-green algae; and the rivers and Gulf experience more frequent and more severe outbreaks of red drift algae. Scientists also have begun to explore a possible correlation between higher nutrient levels and more frequent and longer-lasting incidents of red tide.

As a result of these three factors, the incidents of dead oyster beds, wilted sea grasses, toxic algae blooms and fish kills have increased in our coastal estuaries and rivers. The area’s estuary needs time to recover from the extreme discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee. The timing of releases is as important as the quantity and quality of the water. At this time, 10,000 acres are at risk of being permanently destroyed, which would lead to a complete demise of the area’s entire estuary. In addition to the impact on estuaries, at peak discharge periods, hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico marine environment also are affected by the freshwater plumes emanating from the Caloosahatchee River. Perhaps all of these factors are why American Rivers, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., has listed the Caloosahatchee River as America’s #7 most endangered river for 2006. Click here for details.