Charles Sobczak

One hundred and twenty-five years ago the marshy headwaters of the Caloosahatchee River began near Lake Hicpochee in southern Glades County. Eleven miles to the east, across a vast swamp, lay Lake Okeechobee, forming the headwaters of one of the most unusual watersheds in the world, the Everglades. Aside from sharing a huge marsh, these two systems operated separately, and the ecology of both systems — from the plant" Ufe, the fisheries and Hie wild life — flourished.
In 1881 that began to change. Lacking roads, an expanding Florida needed water routes to facilitate trade and transport people across the peninsula. A small navigational canal was dredged from Lake' Hicpochee through to Lake Okeechobee for ferries and barges, hi 1947, under the Army Corps of Engineers, that canal was dramatically expanded. The Caloosahatchee River would be dredged to a 65-mile-long, 425-foot-wide and 25-foot-deep channel, hereinafter to be called the C-43 canal.
Studies done soon thereafter, in 1954, verified that the new found flow of freshwater caused many fish to flee our estuary. Fort Myers was still a tiny cow town in the fifties and no one questioned the government's authority to do what they and the South Florida Water Management District did, to change the natural flow of water out of the Big O. Up until the past decade it was considered by most of us to be just the way it was.
But so much has changed since 1947 that we have to revisit the entire concept. The Everglades have all but collapsed from lack of water while our estuary, from the wide, shallow mouth of the Caloosahatchee to San Carlos Bay and up through Pine Island Sound, is drowning under it. Exacerbating the problem is the tremendous growth of Lee County over the past 50 years. Where wetlands once absorbed the summer rains, we now find pavement. Development has added millions of gallons of nutrient-rich run-off into
the river, with no end in sight.
Since June,'in an effort to bring Okeechobee down from an historic high water mark, the Army Corp of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District have been dumping the toxic, nutrient-rich waters of Lake Okeechobee into our Caloosahatchee. Pumping 33,662 gallons a second, 2.9 billion gallons a day, 87 billion gallons a month, one quadrillion gallons a year into our estuary. While we do nothing but watch and tally the death count of pelicans, manatees and mullet. The stench of death these past few weeks on Sanibel and all along the river speaks for itself.
Plans are presently in place to not just continue the 33,662 gallons a second, but increase that amount as needed to dram down the second largest lake in America. The unprecedented outflow will continue until July of next year, provided we don't have any more hurricanes or another year of record rainfall. Because if we do — and given the latest meteorological forecasts, we will for the next decade or so — I can promise you Pine Island Sound will completely, perhaps irreversibly die. A death from polluted water that up until 125 years ago never touched the pristine shorelines of our Caloosahatchee.
We don't need any more studies about the relationship of algae blooms to red tide to freshwater/saltwater intrusion ratios,
etc., etc., etc. Not from Mote Marine, not from the SCCF Marine Lab, who is funded predominantly by the South Florida Water Management District, or from the EPA or anyone else. They will study Pine Island Sound until it's a graveyard, then announce its death hi a press release. Go to the SFWMD's web site and visit then: weekly update, they state clearly that the water quality in both St. Lucie and Pine Island Sound is poor.
As an angler who has fished for over twenty years in the back bay, I can tell you that the water quality in the sound isn't poor, it's a disaster. The turtle grass and all the aquatic plant life is dying beneath the black cloud of Okeechobee's tanic-stained water. Offshore, the dark water can still be found forty-five miles from Sanibel, and in it you find lifeless, bloated loggerheads, rotting porpoises and 100 million dead fish. We are already in the death throes of an environmental catastrophe and the repercussions for everyone living hi Lee County will be disastrous. Tourism will suffer and property values collapse while the freshwater releases continue unabated.
We need a court-ordered injunction to cease and desist all freshwater releases into our river immediately. The cities of Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, Naples (yes, the freshwater i's already effecting you) Sanibel. and Cape Coral should file for this injunction as soon as possible. We need to RESTORE OUR RIVER. In this case ASAP means by Oct. 1, 2005.
If we cannot get this done we have, at least two more options. The first option is that we should boycott all Florida-grown sugar. These huge-corporations play a heavy hand in the destruction of our estuary and our lifestyle. Their sugar cane grows where Lake Okeechobee once flowed. The second option is far more drastic. I think we should form a citizens posse of like-minded anglers, environmentalists, politicians, school children, bud lovers, boaters, divers, swimmers, property owners and the like, pick a cool afternoon hi
Photo by Charles Sobczak Dead fish on the first Causeway island.
mid-October, drive east of Lake Hicpochee and proceed sandbag shut the C-43 channel. If we don't have the tax-paying right to save our estuary, then who does?
For over a decade I've listened patiently to the talk. Now I suffer — we all suffer — the stench of inaction. The Caloosahatchee did just fine for tens of thousands of years without a drop of water from Lake Okeechobee. We don't need the Army Corp of Engineers to micro-manage the freshwater/saltwater salinity. God is far, far better at it. We need to RESTORE OUR RIVER — 2ERO RELEASES! Leave the channel open to nothing more than boat traffic or if need be, close it completely. Contact. everyone you know, from your local representatives to the Governor, and let them know you're not purchasing Florida sugar and you're stockpiling sandbags and sand for the future. Let them know immediately.

There is a cruel equality to environmental degradation. It has to do with the web of life — the tolerances of any given " environment and the creatures that inhabit it. Like Ihe beautiful fighter in Million Dollar Baby, mother nature can withstand only so many hits to the head before she falls for the last time. Our estilary is crumbling beneath a man-made waterfall of dark, toxic fresh water. If we don't stop the flow from Okeechobee soon, she may never recover. Ever.
Environmental degradation is non-partisan, non-denominational, ignores socio-economic classes and is non-racial. If you're having a hard time breathing while strolling down the beach, then so is the person walking in front of you who voted for the other party a year ago. You both suffer and you suffer equally. Your children suffer. Children who can no longer go swimming in the Caloosahatchee. It doesn't matter if the children are Republican kids who live beside the dying stream, or a couple of Hispanic kids living off of Palm Beach Boulevard who hike down to the river in the heat of the day to jump in and cool off. .
Because, according to recent health postings from the Lee County Health Department, no one should even go near the Caloosahatchee River for fear of potential liver damage or lung disease from the continuing spread of harmful blue-green algae. They, shouldn't splash their feet in the water for fear of breaking out in a rash or developing skin lesions.
Everyone going over the Sanibel causeway or walking along the shoreline surrounding our coast these past few months can smell that water and the smell is wrong. That's the universal impact, the tragedy of the commons, of environmental degradation — it's deplorably fair to everyone.
So what can we do? First and foremost we have to flood the water over the sugar-cane fields. Declare an environmental emergency, because that is exactly what we have right now in Lee, Charlotte and
Collier counties, an environmental emergency.
Using huge pumps not unlike those currently draining New Orleans, we have to force the water over the dike and onto the cane fields. We have to reduce the lake's record height (nearly 16 feet) by two feet or more. If the EPA or the SFWMD object, stating the water is too toxic and nutrient-rich to do such a thing, then ask yourself why it's OK for the South Florida Water Management District to dump the Big O's water on us? If we don't get as much rain as we did this spring, perhaps they can replant the sugar cane fields the following year.
Secondly, we have two options: 1) We restore the Everglades to their natural flow, which means that we will have to use eminent domain on Big Sugar and condemn the majority of Florida's sugar farms; or 2) Pipe the water elsewhere — perhaps the orange groves of Florida or the peach and peanut farms of south Georgia.
I've suggested pumping Lake Okeechobee's water all the way to Las Vegas. Water is a precious resource in the arid west and out there it has a huge economic value. Why is it that we can pump oil and natural gas across vast distances like Alaska or the continental U.S. but we can't conceive of the idea of pumping fresh water to sections of the country that are in desperate need of this precious commodity.
Far and away the best idea is to restore the natural sheet flow of the everglades and bring back Marjorie Stoneman Douglas's River of Grass. As of a few weeks ago the Bonita Bay Group has put an option on a vast tract of sugar cane land for another massive housing development. This will only exacerbate the problem and ultimately condemn the Caloosahatchee to being a permanent drainage canal.
What else can we do? Support commissioners Ray Judah and Bob Janes in their proposal to withhold millions of your tax dollars that go to help fund and support the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) until the releases stop. Every person on the Board of Directors of the SFWMD was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush. One of those appointments, Mr. Malcolm S. Wade, is the senior vice president of U.S. Sugar. Another member is a lawyer who works on the behalf of Cuban-American sugar companies. The foxes are guarding, the henhouse.
We could enjoin the legal action getting underway in Martin County, Florida. There, The Rivers Coalition is in the process of filing a lawsuit to defend both the St. Lucie and Indian Rivers (which are dying). Go to www.riverscoalition.org and you will quickly discover that their rivers are as troubled, if not worse, than our Caloosahatchee. They have recent photos of the blue-green algae invasion posted that will turn your stomach and give you a clear indication of the future of the Caloosahatchee River. Read their mission statements and please sign their petition while you are on the site.
If our elected representatives won't do anything about this nightmare, then we must work with The Rivers Coalition to financially defend our estuary and our personal health.
Don't be fooled by the fact that the sighting of dead fish along our shores will diminish soon. Of course we won't see as many dead fish — we've killed the vast majority of them. And what's left to die? Our seabirds and pelicans will likely start to starve to death in the coming months from the lack of baitfish. This time around don't stop until the sluice gates are closed, until canal C-43 is open to navigation only, if that. If you stop, the dark, tanic- stained water, the red tides and the toxic algae will return this winter, next spring, next summer or next fall, ad infinitum. There are no plans to cut back the 2.9 billion gallon a day outflow until July 2006 at the earliest.
Environmental degradation is every man's curse. It's time for every man, every woman and every child to take a stand and restore our river — zero releases.