Water-Related News

Army Corps provides update on Lake Okeechobee projects

It took more than a century of mismanagement and bad decisions to put South Florida in a water quality crisis last summer.

However, with a changing of the guard at the South Florida Water Management District, long-awaited improvements in Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades and ideas to combat algae, the hope is that long-term solutions are finally in the works.

That is what experts said on March 26 at a water quality meeting held in Cape Coral that featured updates provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Among the speakers was Lt. Col. Jennifer Reynolds with the Army Corps; new South Florida Water Management District Chairman Chauncey Goss; Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Natural Resource Policy Director Rae Ann Wessel; Daniel Andrews, with Captains for Clean Water; and Jeff Pearson, Cape Coral's director of Public Works.

Reynolds provided a history, saying the problems started when humans decided to change the state's natural water flow to encourage agriculture and development nearly a century ago. This diverted water from the Everglades and sent it east and west.