Delays, delays, delays! Waiting, again, for Lake Okeechobee strategy decision intolerable

Treasure Coast Newspapers
·4 min read

Sometimes the waiting is the hardest part. But when there is no end to the wait, people can simply lose their ever-loving minds.

In some cases, the waiting potentially can contribute to destruction. In the latest big waiting game on the Treasure Coast, if decisions aren't made soon, the environmental health of the St. Lucie River, Indian River Lagoon and its inhabitants could be jeopardized.

That's the potential as we wait for the Army Corps of Engineers to roll out its Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, LOSOM for short. The system includes guidelines on how much water, often polluted, could be released from the lake into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.

The guide that will steer Army Corps lake water management decisions for the next decade, maybe more, is well beyond four years of its assembly process. Residents who live in Palm City, Stuart and Port St. Lucie and neighborhoods like Lighthouse Point, North River Shores, Harbor Ridge, Ballantrae, Rio, Sewall's Point, Rocky Point and Sailfish Point, are tired of being put off by delays caused by never-ending red tape and bureaucratic dawdling.

Mark Perry. (left), Florida Oceanographic Society executive director, discusses Lake O discharges with Eric Eikenberg, Everglades Foundation CEO, at the St. Lucie Lock and Dam on Tuesday, July 25, 2023, in Martin County. The purpose of the meeting was to assess the current situation, rally support for the necessary funding to continue progressing with restoration efforts and to discuss the imminent blue-green algae discharges from Lake Okeechobee.

The latest problem has been with holding up the process for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA-NMFS).

So you can keep score of the bureaucratic madness, here's the recent timeline of tentative LOSOM deadlines and reported setbacks:

August 2022 deadline: Tell Army Corps of Engineers how to operate Lake Okeechobee at meeting Feb. 19 in Stuart (story date Jan. 31, 2019)

November 2022 deadline: Stakeholders must let Army Corps do its job on Lake O management plan (Sept. 10, 2021)

June 2023 deadline: "We're expecting to have it ready by June," Col. James Booth, Jacksonville commander, communication with TCPalm columnist Ed Killer at Herbert Hoover Dike rehabilitation ribbon-cutting (Jan. 25, 2023)

December 2023 deadline: Army Corps delays LOSOM for another federal agency's input five years into the process (April 24, 2023)

Who knows deadline? NOAA missed deadline, delaying new Lake O plan for 2nd time; Army Corps should move on (Sept. 7, 2023)

The latest delay centers around the Army Corps' request from NOAA-NMFS on a biological opinion about the Endangered Species Act and how it will be applied in the Caloosahatchee River watershed. It's part of a required environmental impact statement for LOSOM, which began only in November 2022 (although we weren't told about it until March).

Bureaucratic gobbledygook from the federal agencies does little to clarify the timeline:

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to complete the Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in order to include it in the final Environmental Impact Statement  (EIS) and before the Record of Decision (ROD) can be signed. Once we receive the Biological Opinion (BO), the Final EIS/Water Control Plan will be completed and sent out for final 30-day National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review. After the review is completed, a final decision on LOSOM will be made by the Corps’ South Atlantic Division (SAD)," J.P. Rebello, Army Corps public affairs officer, told TCPalm Sept. 8.

National Marine Fisheries Service offered this:

"On August 28, USACE-South Atlantic Division leadership requested NOAA hold the BiOp (biological opinion) and not release it on August 30th, so we can work through some details together. We (ACOE and NOAA) are still working though those details and do not have an exact release date yet," Allison Garrett, communications specialist for the Dept. of Commerce, told TCPalm Sept. 8.

Talk about a commitment to meeting deadlines important to our community!

The entire rigmarole of LOSOM is mind-numbing. It's supposed to reduce the frequency and volume of destructive discharges that flow from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River. It is supposed to store in the lake more water, which eventually will flow south to the $3 billion Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, a project launched by former state Sen. Joe Negron as he left office in 2018. That was the last year Stuart received algae-tainted water from Lake Okeechobee.

It's long past time for NOAA and the Army Corps to finalize things. Sign the record of decision and put it into action.

Residents of the Treasure Coast can't wait any longer.

Editorials published by TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers are decided collectively by its editorial board. To respond to this editorial with a letter to the editor, email up to 300 words to TCNLetters@TCPalm.com.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Army Corps, NOAA keep us waiting for Lake Okeechobee management plan