http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/governor-declares-state-of-emergency-as-harmful-algae-blooms-cover-south-fl?platform=hootsuite 

It could fail if the water is already at a high stage and a storm hit.

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As far as the pollution/algae bloom problem.

The water coming down the Kissimmee to Lake O needs to be cleaner. That requires a lot of changes in practices upstream from storm water retention and treatment to how lawns are maintained in up in the Kissimmee/St. Cloud area. This is another source of nutrients to the lake in addition to the "back pumping" from adjacent ag properties.

Then aside from the nutrient sources there is another layer of complexity added by managing Lake O for both flood control and agricultural water supply. It would take a massive TLDR post to describe all the water managment challenges starting up in Kissimmee cascading all the way down to the Lake O locks.

Finally, we can't just by the sugar land and dump excess water south. There has to be an extensive dyke expansion enclosing that sugar land so that it can store the water without flooding all of the development along the east side. You can't just blast that water south through the glades to Florida Bay unless you want to wreck Florida Bay. That water has to be stored and treated.

 

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There are proposals/plans to manage the water flow south, I'm sure you know about that. Those ''engineering'' needs are one of many reasons why even if the US Sugar land was purchased tomorrow, it wouldn't solve the immediate problem.

But we've got to start somewhere on a plan to restore more natural function of the south side of Lake O and the upper 'Glades. The other ''alternatives'' just don't provide the multiplicity of functions.

The history of water management and the Everglades is filled with ''engineering solutions'' gone awry. The best work the Corps is doing in Florida is undoing some of these previous debacles.

There are many projects being constructed right now, to store and treat some of this water.
It is amazing how much the AG industry gets away with, and without paying, but rather getting paid by the government.

Yep, there's a big holding area west of Palm Beach under construction, for instance. It gets TLDR real quick when you start talking about CERP stuff.

In the meantime the IRL rots while Lake O discharges continue....

Have you read about the "water farm" proposal for Fellsmere as a means of cleaning up water that currently discharges to Sebastian River via that canal that runs parallel to C-54?

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https://cyndi-lenz.com/2015/06/26/who-owns-u-s-sugar/

 

 

 

good info

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Not recently,
I know SFWMD is doing much of the same, but in a different way. They call it the dispersed water storage program. Landowners get paid to take and store wet season water that would otherwise be discharged.

I heard SJRWMD requires demonstration of nutrient removal before paying. Probably makes sense. The IRL problem is different than down here where we have storage issues and too much fresh water in the wet season is killing estuarine habitat faster than eutrophication

There are two big projects in the Kissimmee river right now. One is the blocking of an offshoot canal which is causing water to remain on the floodplain. The other is the re-bending of the river south of 98.

The re-bending was on the books ten years ago, but was shelved. We built, then raised sites that were to be used in the project.

Looks like a prime case of closing the barn door when the horse has run out.

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I was right.

SJRWMD is footing the bill to build the water farms and then turning them over to the private entities to maintain and operate. If it happens, the SJRWMD will pay per pound removed once the sites are operational. The sticking point for me is that the disrict is footing so much of the bill for set up and that the growers will effectively be paid to remove the nutrients that they put there in the first place.

Most of the IRL storage issue is passed on to the St. Johns, which is good since it is all St. Johns water anyway. If they can get the C1 rediversion working so that Palm Bay water heads west that will be a big help. And then the last big out of basin source of fresh water will be that canal that runs parallet to C54. Those out of the way and all that will be left will be lawns and septic within the IRL catchment. Of course that is no small task. People are fertilizing hard here in Rockledge and I watched people blow clippings straight over the seawall and into the storm drain this morning while we were out running.

Anyway, storage of water in basin is a trick because they SFWMD doesn't like to let the Kissimmee Chain fluctuate (or I should say that riparian owners don't) which means that they don't send enough water to Lake O in dry years and they send too much down there in wet years. Add on top of that, Lake O is managed so that it is supposed to be higher in winter during the dry season to keep water around for ag and then draw it down for summar flood storage. That means that if there is a wet winter/spring that discharges during draw down are much bigger than they would be if the lake were managed on a more natural hydroperiod or if there were basins around the lake where water could be stored.

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