Water-Related News

Blue-green algae a concern as Army Corps increases Lake O releases

The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation is monitoring the region’s water quality with a focus on releases from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River.

Blue-green algae quite often first shows up at the Alva and Davis Boat Ramps, which taken as a pair are way upstream and are the nearest large public boat ramps to Moore Haven where the Big Lake’s water is released into the river.

More than a century ago, the Army Corps of Engineers linked the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee by digging a canal through the river’s swampy headwaters west of the lake.

These days, that waterway is the most common one the Army Corps uses to release water from Lake Okeechobee when levels are high. Problem is, the lake water is hopelessly polluted with nitrogen and phosphorus that’s flowed into it from more than a century of fertilizer use by industrial-sized agriculture operations and people wanting the grass to grow around their homes.

In 2018, heavy releases of lake water into the river are believed responsible for a massive blue-green algae outbreak that fouled the greater Caloosahatchee River estuary all summer. That summer was also the first after a big Hurricane Irma churned up the lake bottom in 2017.

Also called cyanobacteria, blue-green algae has already bloomed in the lake this spring and things are shaping up for a repeat of 2018 in the river this summer after Hurricane Ian set in motion the same events as Irma.

On a weekly basis, the SCCF gives its Ph.D-level recommendation to the Army Corps on how much water, and when, should be released from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River. Or not.

This week, the group’s tone turned serious:

“Recommendation: Entering into the rainy season, Lake Okeechobee is at a concerningly high level and has already started to develop worrisome cyanobacterial blooms. This sets up a potential scenario where the Caloosahatchee will experience damaging high lake-discharge events in addition to watershed runoff, resulting not only in increased nutrient loading and decreased salinity, but the transportation of harmful algae” into the Caloosahatchee River.