On Dec. 13, Rae Ann Wessel, natural resource policy director at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and Congressman elect Francis Rooney joined forces to give the public an update on Southwest Florida’s ongoing water quality issues. Wessel focused on giving the public the history of Lake Okeechobee’s water flow, discussed storage plans and clarified what’s science and what’s a myth when it comes to the lake. Wessel said that the timing of the meeting couldn’t have been more perfect.

“It’s a really opportune time with Congressman elect Rooney coming into office. We have some really good opportunities to move things forward,” Wessel said.

Wessel said that the landscape of Lake Okeechobee changed in the 1880s once Hamilton Disston arrived and channelized a connection between the Caloosahatchee, the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Okeechobee.

“It was a connection that never existed,” she said. “The idea was, the governor’s family was in the steamship business and they really wanted a way to get from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. This big peninsula was very inconvenient to navigate around, so the idea was they would connect to Lake Okeechobee and then they would head north to Kississmee and connect to the north flowing St. Johns River to get to the Atlantic. That piece never happened. They missed it by about 10 miles,” she said.

Disston began connection small lakes to rivers north of Lake Okeechobee. This in turn changed the sheet flow of the lake. His sole purpose of channelization was to dry up the land to make way for crops and cattle.

The Caloosahatchee River and St. Lucie River historically, were never connected to Lake Okeechobee. So, instead of water flowing south into the Everglades like it naturally once did, the water flows to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries instead, which in turn creates discharge because both rivers are receiving the water at such a fast rate.

To solve this problem, Wessel proposes that storage must be created north, south, east and west of the lake so that the water from Lake Okeechobee can be properly treated.

“What they’re looking at now is a project called Lake Okeechobee Watershed. This is north of the lake and it’s a series of basins. They’re looking at a series of reservoirs to hold water. There are 80 wells that they are looking but they’re also looking at the deep well injection. That is the cheapest alternative and you don’t have to buy land and everybody thinks that sounds great but the problem is that it doesn’t do anything to get water to the Everglades and it throws away our water supply when we’ll need it during the following season. It took us 15 years to evaluate ASR, but we didn’t have any time to evaluate this. There’s a lot of concern over the deep well injection piece of this. But the biggest problem is that this project is being looked at in isolation. It’s not incorporating the south of the lake storage,” Wessel said.

Wessel noted that storage north of the lake will be useful in slowing down water but we really need to provide storage on all sides and essentially send the water south. The most important aspect of storage south of the lake, according to Wessel, is that the water is being moved.

“This ability to move water south and have storage here allows us to not only bring water out of the lake to keep a lower lake level, you can reduce estuary discharges then move the water down to the Everglades and that’s an added benefit. Then, you’re gaining storage with every movement and that will affect lake levels, reduce estuary discharges and will provide water to the Everglades,” Wessel said. “South of the lake storage is the one project that will serve all these different interests and stakeholders. It will reduce pressure on the dike and protect communities that live around the lake.”

Some of these projects that will help with storage and that will address the quality of water includes the Restoration Strategies Regional Water Quality Plan which will create 6,500 acres of new stormwater treatment areas and 116,000 acres of additional water storage through the construction of flow equalization basins. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) includes over 68 civil works to be designed and built over a 30 year period at a cost of $16.4 billion to be shared 50/50 between state and federal governments. The plan will have 217,000 acres of new reservoirs built and wetland based treatment areas and over 300 underground aquifer storage and recovery wells. By 2014, eight CERP projects were authorized.

The Integrated Delivery Schedule, which Wessel and others are trying to speed up, plans, designs and constructs CERP and non-CERP projects. The planning for one of the projects, the EAA Reservoir isn’t set begin until 2020, Wessel and others are trying to speed up that process.

“The Integrated Delivery Schedule lays out all the projects and their time frames; when they begin and how long they last. It’s the business plan for how we move projects forward. The EAA Storage Reservoir which provides storage south of the lake it shows that it doesn’t start until 2020. That’s four years from now. Add to that, you got three years of planning, now add seven years, you’ve got three years of design and permitting, now you’re at 10 years. Then, you’ve got to get the federal authorization and procreation, that’s at least another three years. We’re a decade and half out from getting everything started. There’s no excuse for that. This is something that can be started today instead of four years from now,” she said.

The Army Corps of Engineers is on board with all these projects, the state sponsor, the South Florida Water Management District has so far refused to come to an agreement with the COE.

One of the projects that is already underway is the C-43 West Basin Storage Reservoir which hold 170,000 acre-feet of excess stormwater during the dry season, which in turn will help the Caloosahatchee estuary with excess water. Wessel is trying to reach an agreement to add a water treatment component to the reservoir as well.

Congressman elect Francis Rooney said his short term goal is to work with Wessel, the Everglades Foundations and others to get the appropriations to fund the projects discussed by Wessel at the meeting.

“We need to keep the heat up,” Rooney said.

Rooney also announced during the meeting that he will be working closely with the Trump campaign to prioritize the projects. Rooney is hoping to increase water and energy appropriations so that by 2019, the state will have more than enough money in their budget to finish all the necessary storage projects.