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Sanibel League of Women Voters discuss water quality

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South Florida Water Management District, and vice president for real estate of King Ranch and Consolidated Citrus. MEGHAN MCCOY

Last week the League of Women Voter’s of Sanibel held a luncheon at Sundial that focused on water quality through presentations from the South Florida Water Management District and Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.

Barbara Joy Cooley, the chair of the League of Women Voters of Sanibel said in 1992, the League of Women Voters of Florida joined the Everglades Coalition. She said the league supports the restoration of the entire Everglades system as much as possible to its original state.

“And the league has an overall position of supporting measures to reduce pollution in order to protect surface water, groundwater and drinking water,” Cooley said.

Mitch Hutchcraft, board member of the South Florida Water Management District, and vice president for real estate of King Ranch and Consolidated Citrus, said they need storage in all of the basins – east, west, north and south.

He said he has heard lots of people say just send the water south during the extreme rain last year. Hutchcraft said they had more rain than they ever kept record for at the beginning of last year.

“What people don’t understand is the Everglades, water conservation areas, storm water treatment areas, they were all full of water and above regulation,” he said. “The water conservation areas . . . we were concerned about losing wildlife and the deer dying. There wasn’t any place for them to go. It was truly a critical issue. Every where you could put water there was already water.”

Currently, Hutchcraft said water goes into Lake Okeechobee five to six times higher than what they can get out. He said when they have rain events like last year the lake goes up very fast.

Storage can be built, Hutchcraft said, but unless it is connected to conveyance that is attached to water quality they cannot move the water south. In other words, he said if they build storage first and it does not have conveyance or water quality, the system does not work.

He said the vast majority of storage is south of Lake O with about 300,000 acre fields, but when looking north of Lake O there is only 23,000 acres. A study from the University of Florida said they need about another million acre field of storage.

“We got to build more storage north of the lake. Ninety-one, 92 percent of the water that comes out of the estuary comes from north of the lake,” Hutchcraft said. “So it comes in six times the rate and we have no way to store it. So if we can store it, slow it down, treat it, it gives the water management much more flexibility on how we manage the system and cleans out the lake as well.”

As far as projects, he said the South Florida Water Management District has $1.3 billion worth of projects that are already permitted and ready to go. The missing piece to those projects is the funding.

“I’m not here to say we don’t need more storage. I am saying lets build the ones that are already permitted,” Hutchcraft said.

Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation Natural Resource Policy Director Rae Ann Wessel said the South Florida Water Management District was created in the 1940s after a set of floods. She said the system was designed for about two million people. In South Florida, Wessel said there are about six to eight million people.

She said they have about as much water as average as they ever have, but there is less than half of the space to put it in because everyone has moved into the area.

“We are asking the landscape to do a whole lot more with less and it’s not working,” Wessel said. “One of the challenges that we have is dealing with the high side, when we have too much water, and the low side when we don’t have enough water and to equally deliver that water to various uses.”

Historically, Wessel said Lake O was a lot deeper and larger than it is now restrained behind a dike. She said they are managing the lake between 12-1/2 to 15 1/2 feet.

“The marsh that is inside the lake, these green areas . . . that is our natural filtration for the west coast. It is the living system for the lake itself. The fish habitat. All of the water treatment. All of the oxygen. If you drown that not only do you kill the lake, but the water quality that is being provided free.”

By having southern storage, Wessel said there is a new place to move the water out of the lake, which can change the discharge out of the estuaries.

“There are needs for storage north and south and they have very different functions and very different capacities,” she said.

After the presentations, those in attendance had time to ask questions.

One dealt with the water quality impacts, if any, that comes from the Big Sugar property.

“Less than 3 percent of water in the Lake Okeechobee comes from the land south of the Lake Okeechobee,” Hutchcraft said. “That is not a sugar cane water quality issue associated with the Caloosahatchee. If you look at the water quality moving south. The water quality moving into the EAA, or the STA’s, the water conservation areas, we are at 100 percent of compliance with water quality. Ninety-percent with the stormwater treatment. We have built lots of natural stormwater treatment areas to clean that water.”

He went on to say that he thinks people in agriculture will be the first to say they want to do better to improve the water quality.

“It is interesting to find someone to blame for all of the problems,” Wessel said. “When you point a finger you realize there is one big thumb pointing back at yourself. We all contribute to the problems that deal with water quality.”

The highest loading today is coming from the lake, old dairy and agriculture, she said. The northeast water coming into Lake O is by far the worst water, Wessel said.

Another question dealt with Senate Joe Negron’s Senate Bill 10.

Hutchraft said he was not in favor of the plan.

“We already own land that we haven’t fully utilized. I am concerned that people want to think lets put more money in it. We don’t have all the money. My very difficult job is to prioritize those dollars and how we are going to get the most affective long-term solutions,” he said. “I want to see construction continue to go forward. I am concerned that we have to buy land, wait for it to get designed and permitted. While we are doing that waiting we are spending that money. I am not against the storage, but I don’t want to see us buy land that would preclude us from finishing.”