Released by U.S. Congressman Brian Mast’s Office …
Wanted to flag a few statements from scientists and engineers as you continue to cover the policies surrounding the management of Lake Okeechobee:
Dr. Paul Gray from Audubon Society: “Basically we’ve lost about 60 square miles of plants in Lake Okeechobee just due to deep water….In order to get the sunlight to the areas where they grow – they grow down at the nine-, 10-, 11-foot contours – we gotta get the lake all the way down to 11 feet.”
Lt. Col. Jennifer Reynolds from the Army Corps of Engineers: “The algae is part of the result of having high lake levels year after year and part of the result of having turbidity in the lake and turbidity in the rivers from storm events, having significant amounts of runoff from your basin and the lakes, all of those things have caused significant harm, and we know that.…So the more storage that we have at the beginning of the wet season the less likely it is that we have to release any water when we have an algae bloom on the lake.”
Also Lt. Col. Reynolds: “We’re really trying to focus on the science and engineering and doing what we can do….We are lowering the lake within the operational band predominantly for the health of the lake so that we can regrow some of the aquatic vegetation and take advantage of doing some controlled burns”
Dr. Susan Gray from South Florida Water Management District: “When the lake is high in the spring, algae blooms in the lake are high in the summer.”
The experts agree: we need lower, not higher, lake levels before wet season this year to benefit the ecology of the lake and help prevent discharges.
Or, as Former SFWMD Board Member Brandon Tucker put it…. “If the science from Audubon and all those people out there that are much smarter than me says…everything’s great, I would support that.”
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Brad Stewart
Deputy Chief of Staff
U.S. Congressman Brian Mast (FL-18)
2182 Rayburn House Office Building
(202) 225-3026 | www.mast.house.gov