Guest columnist: Environment and public deserve focus on facts concerning
Lake Okeechobee

Malcolm S. Wade Jr.

WADE'S CREDENTIALS
Malcolm S. Wade Jr. has been part of the Governor's Commission for the
Everglades, Water Resources Advisory Committee, Lower East Coast and Lower
West Coast Water Supply planning committees, Everglades Technical Mediation
Group, Everglades Agricultural Area Environmental Protection District and
Caloosahatchee Water Management Advisory Committee. He worked to help
develop and pass legislation for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration
Plan and works to secure funding for CERP projects, including the Indian
River Lagoon Plan.

March 4, 2006

I have been involved in Lake Okeechobee and Everglades issues for more than
20 years. As part of the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South
Florida, I have worked with most of the stakeholders involved in the ongoing
restoration efforts. My message here is based on an extensive and in-depth
understanding of Florida's restoration issues.
To date, environmental restoration is succeeding for the most part because
we demanded that science and technical information, rather than hearsay and
accusation, drive the decision-making process. Understanding the technical
details of the ecosystem and how it works has been the key to building
consensus and making progress.

In the process, those of us involved learned to move past the
finger-pointing and instead focus on the facts. Credible science and
detailed technical data were critical to designing, building and
implementing the highly successful restoration projects in the Everglades
Forever Act. As part of that effort, farmers implemented best management
practices to reduce phosphorus in the water leaving the farms, and six
storm-water treatment areas were built to further clean farm, urban and Lake
Okeechobee water.
As a result, we now have clean water containing less than 40 parts per
billion of phosphorus flowing south from the farms and filter marshes into
the Everglades. The current Lake Okeechobee standard is 40 ppb of
phosphorus.

Perhaps if there had been as much focus on Lake Okeechobee as there was on
sugar farming and the Everglades, we would have placed the same type of
cleanup program north of the lake. I believe that if we had, the current
problems with the lake and the estuaries might have been resolved by now.

THE PROBLEM'S NORTH OF 'LAKE O'

Instead, there is now strong public outcry over nutrient-laden fresh water
flowing from the top of the system into the lake and then out to the
estuaries. Unfortunately, technical data and factual information have been
missing or blatantly ignored in much of the public's discussion of Lake
Okeechobee and the coastal estuaries.

As a result, people still believe that you can solve the river and estuary
problems by concentrating efforts south of the lake. I can assure you that
storing water in the Everglades Agricultural Area will not solve the
problems with Lake Okeechobee or prevent massive discharges to the estuaries
during wet years.

Technical data from the South Florida Water Management District clearly
indicates that 97 percent of the water flow (and the resultant phosphorus
loading) comes from the northern half of the Lake Okeechobee watershed.

Put another way, less than 3 percent of the water and the phosphorus in the
lake come from farming communities south of the lake. Data also shows that,
historically, less than 9 percent of the water flow and phosphorus in the
lake came from the south.

The lake and estuary problems are not caused south of the lake and cannot be
fixed by merely relocating polluted Lake Okeechobee water there. Water
flowing south eventually reaches the Everglades, and the phosphorus-laden
lake water would destroy all the restoration progress we have made and would
doom any hope of returning phosphorus to natural levels.

IT'S TIME TO TAKE ACTION

Years have been wasted dwelling on storing water in the agricultural area.
Studies show that more than 60,000 acres of storage south of the lake would
start to create more environmental problems than it would help.

Currently there are 40,000 acres of treatment areas and 60,000 acres slated
for reservoirs and additional treatment in the EAA. I support this. All of
the modeling and technical data used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and
the South Florida Water Management District (based on both wet and dry
cycles) shows that additional storage in the farming area makes no sense in
the system we have today.

Rather than just continuing to study, the state also is taking action. In
response to damaging lake releases that had to be made to the estuaries over
the last two hurricane and rain-soaked years, the state of Florida launched
a series of projects to accelerate restoration.

Gov. Jeb Bush committed the state to begin building more than $1 billion
worth of projects, igniting the state's half of the state-federal
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan partnership. The SFWMD already has
broken ground on many of these "Acceler8" projects, which place additional
storage north, south, east and west.

In addition, the Lake Okeechobee and Estuary Recovery Plan will focus on
storing and cleaning water north of the lake.

Together these initiatives will continue to improve the system, from top to
bottom.

As a member of the Governing Board of the South Florida Water Management
District and an executive of a major South Florida business, I fully support
these efforts. We cannot afford to waste more time, effort and money on
litigation and confrontation.

If we are going to fix these problems, we need to get out there, roll up our
shirt sleeves and start moving earth and building projects that will get the
job done.

Wade, a Clewiston resident and senior vice president of U.S. Sugar Corp.,
has been employed by the company for more than 23 years and on its senior
management team for almost 15. He has been involved in developing and
overseeing the company's environmental responsibilities for more than 20
years.

 

KARL WICKSTROM

Guest columnist: 'Sugar propaganda mill' churns out generalizations Stuart
News By KARL WICKSTROM Guest columnist March 9, 2006

Little wonder that Malcolm S. Wade Jr., who, strangely, is both a Big Sugar
executive and an appointed member of the public's Water Management District,
wants "finger-pointing" stopped.
As a main pointee, his private company and public district increasingly find
themselves at the wrong end of the pointed finger. For good reason.

Wade's chest-thumping analysis of great achievements supposedly accomplished
for Everglades restoration cover the same array of generalizations that have
allowed so much damage to Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries for these many
decades.
It's especially disheartening to consider that the sugar propaganda mill is
financed by the public through the district's $1.1 billion budget and Big
Sugar's record-depth pockets. The spin mill likes to perpetuate the notion
that nearly all of the lake's water comes from the north. Using
finger-pointing of its own, the "Drainage Establishment" blames
Kissimmee/Disney and north. In truth, the 5,000-year-old watershed had shed
its volumes of water long before Mickey was created. And the fact is that
more than half of the lake's water comes directly from the sky in a
phenomenon called rain. The claim that damaging lake releases "had to be
made to the estuaries over the last two hurricane and rain-soaked years" is
tiresome as well.

Endless lamenting about rain events as culprits ignores the fact that
government's damaging releases to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee have
degraded our waters periodically for decades. No hurricanes needed. Acts of
God are much less a problem than man's own manipulations.

The discharges to east and west man-dug canals (855 billion gallons last
year) are made to keep sugar fields dry, so indeed it's true that the water
gushed to us didn't come from sugar, since it never got there in the first
place. The water came our way instead of going where nature naturally
intended.

Understandably, from his position, Wade makes no mention whatsoever of the
oft-stated need for the lake elevation level to be managed with a much, much
lower schedule, making small releases during the dry season to prevent many
of the horrendous, killer releases in the wet months. Could his omission be
because Big Sugar steadfastly fights and prevents lower-water management, on
grounds that the cane fields might need irrigation water from a higher lake
in case of drought? Wade similarly dismisses the increasingly popular
concept of taking back part (just a fourth, say) of the Everglades
Agricultural Area to serve as a storage flow-way. That could prevent some of
the discharges to tide and capture water for the aquifer. Not practical, he
states, straight-facedly.

He says we wouldn't want to send that polluted water south. Better,
apparently, to discharge it east and west, as it is now, to Stuart and Fort
Myers. Worst of all, the drainage spinners assure us that the Comprehensive
Everglades Restoration Program will fix all, with its $10 billion-plus in
dirt-moving and hole-poking. Don't count on it.

Sadly, while it may seem un-American to raise questions about CERP, it
appears to a growing number of well-informed citizens that the myriad
projects will do next to nothing to stop the discharges east and west to
sea.

A new book, "The Swamp" by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster), provides an
excellent summary of the Everglades background and politics. At one point,
the author summarizes: "CERP is designed to feed South Florida's growth
addiction, not to cure it. The project aims to supply enough water to help
the region double its population, which will increase the demands on
aquifers and wetlands that prompted the project in the first place."

So on it goes. Drain, grow, pollute and dump. Then be proud about it.

Wickstrom, founder of Stuart-based Florida Sportsman Magazine, has long been
active in numerous environmental groups. E-mail him at
kywickstrom@yahoo.com.