Army Corps commander explains Lake O wet season strategy

By Col. James Booth, USACE Jacksonville District Commander:

The start of the wet season is a key moment in any water year, and it is here for 2023.  We have seen the weather shift into wet season patterns across south Florida and over Lake Okeechobee.  When the system is in a transition, we work together to assess the current system conditions, look back at what’s happened, and evaluate trends moving forward.  Let’s review the 2022-2023 dry season and outline our strategy for the 2023 wet season.

During the dry season, our collaborative approach with our partners at the South Florida Water Management District was to use water “banked” in Lake Okeechobee to send the water to the northern estuaries and the Everglades as needed while meeting the needs of water supply users and helping Lake Okeechobee’s spring recession. 

We were able to make approximately 125,000 ac-ft of releases over what the Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule (LORS 2008) called for by utilizing the banked make-up releases from last fall. These releases allowed us to lower the lake from 16.3 to 13.7 feet NGVD over time while maintaining beneficial releases.  This strategy allowed downstream estuary salinities to remain in optimal ranges through the majority of the dry season and yielded record-breaking Everglade Snail Kite nesting on the lake and healthy oyster spat in the estuaries.

Lake Okeechobee enters the wet season just below 14 feet NGVD, which is higher than most recent years. As we look forward, this higher level means there is an increased risk of lake stages entering the upper bands of LORS 2008 even under normal rainfall and inflows. Right now, we are seeing an increased risk of above normal rainfall for the next several months and have already begun to see water levels rise from their low point in late May. LORS 2008 includes multiple sub-bands within the Operational band which help to outline releases from the lake. If lake stages rise into the upper sub-bands of the Operational Band and into the High Lake Management Band, we would have minimal flexibility to pause or delay releases.