The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners.
As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i
Managing High Water Levels In Florida's Largest Lake: Lake Okeechobee
-
2018
-
Series: EDIS publication no. SG154
[PDF-1.43 MB]
Details:
-
Personal Author:
-
Corporate Authors:
-
NOAA Program & Office:
-
Sea Grant Program:
-
Description:Lake Okeechobee is a large natural lake that is a central feature in the south Florida regional ecosystem. It now is encircled by a dike, and it has become the main surface water storage feature for water supply in south Florida and for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program, or CERP. The CERP is a multi-billion dollar federal-state project to restore the Everglades and ensure the water supply for the growing human population of southeast Florida. The CERP also is intended to reduce harmful releases of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee to estuaries on the east and west coasts of Florida. The extent to which the CERP is successful in achieving its restoration goals depends in part on how much water can be stored in Lake Okeechobee each rainy season for subsequent use in hydrating the Everglades in the dry season. The amount of water stored in Lake Okeechobee and how it is released also affects the ecological health of the lake and the east and west coast estuaries that are connected to the lake by man-made canals. To ensure that water levels in Lake Okeechobee do not weaken the Herbert Hoover Dike—the levee that almost completely surrounds the lake and that is the lake’s main flood protection mechanism—the US Army Corps of Engineers (henceforth “the Corps”) follows a regulation schedule, a set of rules stipulating when water must be released from the lake at a given time of the year and how much water to release each time. More water is released just before the summer rainy season, and less is released going into the winter dry season. Regulation schedules are not perfect, and sometimes they cause controversy. In the case of Lake Okeechobee, the major controversy is about releases of lake water into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries to prevent failure of the Herbert Hoover Dike. Large amounts of fresh water as well as harmful nutrients are transported from the lake to the estuaries during those flood-control releases. This can cause harm to the estuaries, which rely on a delicate combination of salt and fresh water to stay healthy, and which can develop noxious blooms of algae when nutrient levels become high. Yet flood water from the lake must be sent to the estuaries because of major physical constraints in the way the region’s flood control system is built, as well as legal constraints to sending phosphorus-rich water south to the Everglades. This article provides a history of Lake Okeechobee regulation schedules and an overview of the risks, constraints, and trade-offs that the Corps must consider when deciding to release flood water from the lake.
-
Series:
-
Sea Grant Document Number:FLSGP-T-18-002
-
Document Type:
-
Rights Information:Public Domain
-
Compliance:Library
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
