Captiva asked to help fight for improved LOSOM plan
A presentation by the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation last week encouraged the Captiva Community Panel to push back on the current Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual plan, so the Army Corps of Engineers will further optimize what was presented.
“The Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule is called LOSOM, Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, which will be a little more of a comprehensive approach in managing lake levels and discharges out of the lake,” SCCF Director of Environmental Policy James Evans said during the panel meeting.
Some of the changes they are looking for in Alternative CC includes all flows measured at Caloosahatchee estuary at the Franklin Lock; cap regulatory maximum 2,100 cubic feet per second with equitable distribution throughout all outlets; allow for beneficial dry season releases to the Caloosahatchee and Everglades to all zones; target reductions for damaging flow and minimize, or eliminate back flowing from St. Lucie to the lake.
“Those are the things that your community can help us message to the Army Corps of Engineers. These are all the things we are asking for in the call of action,” Evans said.
He said the Army Corps is supposed to come back at the end of October, beginning of November with improvements, if any. The record of decision will take place on Nov. 26 when the plan will take affect.
“The Army Corps of Engineers are to come back and present some modeling to show they took into account of our concerns,” Evans said hopefully with a more balanced current plan. “If not, we have to challenge the plan, challenge the Army Corps process and challenge from a legal standpoint. These processes are very hard to challenge and to beat the Corps in a challenge like this would be difficult. We hope the Corps improves the plan enough to where we can live with it.”
LOSOM would be in affect until the next major project comes online.
Hydrologic Modeler Dr. Paul Julian said the process for LOSOM started in 2019 to update how the water is managed, with scoping meetings and public workshops.
“Back in 2019 it started and we are still in the midst of it today,” he said.
LOSOM went from 120,000 model runs to six different plans.
“Honestly. no single plan was a great performer for the Caloosahatchee,” Julian said, as it did not fully perform a better outcome for the future.
With that said, the best plan is called Alternative CC, which still has several concerns. Julian said they have water supply and flood control constraints that put pressure on the estuary, which are major outlets for the lake.
“High water we get it. Low water we don’t get any. The way the water is distributed in the system is that there is a particular band in that management schedule where we pretty much get all the water,” he said. “St. Lucie has discharge of zero and it puts pressure on us.”
Julian said the current alternative increases regulatory flows to the Caloosahatchee by 9 percent. Nitrogen and phosphorus increases are about 12 percent.
The only decreases in Alternative CC, Julian said are in the damaging flows, discharges that are stressful or damaging to the estuary. He said although they can take a little bit of stress, they cannot take damaging flows frequently.
“We have been pushing back pretty hard. the Corps has committed to going back and optimizing the plan,” Evans said, adding that they want to see them try to shave off some of the high volume discharges. “To cut back on the total volume. We will see whether or not they will get there. It is unacceptable to cut off all flows to St. Lucie while we are getting flows exceeding 2,500 (cubic feet per second). We can get up to 5,000 cubic feet per second. We find that completely unacceptable and we want that changed.”
With there being a lot of politics going into the decision making, he said anything they can get from the Captiva community would be beneficial.
“We need the entire Southwest coast to push back on this plan. To get more pushback to get the Corps to adopt beneficial changes,” Evans said. “We will be dealing with this schedule for the next decade and we cannot afford to get discharges under the proposed plans, especially when you add climate change to make conditions more extreme — dryer, dry, wetter, wet.”
Evans provided background information about the water system at the beginning of the presentation to give the panelist a better idea of how the water system works.
“The Caloosahatchee and coastal water quality is affected by both the Caloosahatchee watershed, which makes up of about 850,000 acres of land, and Lake Okeechobee discharges. Because of the ditching and draining of the entire system and all of the water control structures that have been put into the system, we are now directly connected to Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee watershed, which expands the boundaries of the watershed for us and the volume of water that we can receive on any given day pretty dramatically,” he said. “The watershed expands just south of Orlando. South to Lake Okeechobee and down to the Everglades. East to the St. Lucie and west to the Caloosahatchee. I just want to point out that the Caloosahatchee is approximately 70 miles from Lake Okeechobee from San Carlos Bay, whereas the St. Lucie is about 15 miles from Lake Okeechobee to the East Coast.”
There are different systems put into place. For example the Caloosahatchee River can take more water, while St. Lucie sees direct impact with a lower body of water. In addition, the freshwater discharges to the Caloosahatchee are regulated by three water control structures. Those include Moore Haven Lock & Dam, which controls water out of the lake and into the Caloosahatchee. The second, the Mid Basin structure, and the third the Franklin Lock and dam structure. This lock separates the fresh water of the river from the estuary, which is what regulates the flows that are discharged into the tidal basin into the Caloosahatchee estuary.
A major problem that stems from the Caloosahatchee River, Evans explained is when they get water, it is rainfall within the system. He said the system is very “flashy,” which means the water lands on the landscape and goes into a canal and moves very quickly out into the coast.
During the rainy season, Evans said a problem they often have is they get too much water because the direct connection the lake and the ditching and channelizing of the river with the connection with Kissimmee Lakes.
“We get a lot of water into the system very quickly because it comes to our coast in large volumes and untreated,” Evans said. This will result in fresh water plumes that extend out into the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes as far away as 18 to 20 miles out into the Gulf like we saw in 2005, 2006, and 2018. It brings the dark tans and organic matters and it also brings nutrients that can form harmful algae blooms.
Due to the way the system is ditched and drained, the Caloosahatchee depends on the discharges for the estuary. With ditching and draining, the fresh water springs that used to feed the estuary has been eliminated.
“As a result of the lack of water getting into the system, we have seen a pretty significant loss in habitat,” Evans said.
He then explained how the Caloosahatchee discharges impacts Sanibel and Captiva Islands.
“When the nutrients come off of the landscape, or come out of the river and estuaries, and if there is an existing red tide bloom, it will exaggerate the bloom and prolong that bloom and make it worse. That is what we are really concerned about when we look at the discharges and their relationships between Lake Okeechobee discharges, runoff from the watershed and harmful blooms, like the red tide blooms,” Evans said.
The regulations schedule for Lake Okeechobee was developed in 2008, which he said did not perform very well for the Caloosahatchee River.
To maintain the ecology of Lake Okeechobee the lake levels have to be between 12-1/2 to 15-1/2 feet. The new targets are between 12 to 18 feet.
Evans said he would much rather see the lake maintain lower levels than higher.