Thanks to the drought, Florida's Lake Okeechobee is flourishing

LAKE OKEECHOBEE — Water once clouded brown now runs clear with sunshine glinting off underwater fields of verdant eel grass and coaxing long dormant seeds to burst with life.

Newly planted native bulrush grows in contented clumps in Fisheating Bay.

Freshly uncovered sand scraped clean of up to 20 inches of black muck invites wetland loving spikerush, purple blooming pickerelweed and meadows of water lilies to put down roots.

In Lake Okeechobee, this year’s prolonged drought that withered parts of Florida is leading to a renaissance as water levels lower and sun reaches submerged plants that are the ecosystem building blocks in the largest lake in the southeastern U.S.

For the first time since 2007, the retreating water allowed state agencies to access and dredge portions of the lake this summer — areas that should be clear water over a sandy bottom but are instead coated in muck from decades of manure- and fertilizer-laden runoff.

The muck smothers native plants, sprouting a motley tangle of cattail and willow when water recedes.

“Right now, things are flourishing and it’s wonderful to see,” said Paul Gray, an expert on Lake Okeechobee for Audubon Florida. “If the lake doesn’t go up really fast and leave young plants in the dark, we should have a super strong recovery.”