Letter to editor on Plan 6 from Ted Guy of Stuart, Florida

Dear Editor:

Your editorial today “ No Everglades victory yet” is good, but just scratches the surface. All the CERP projects and Acceler8 projects combined will do little, if anything, to relieve the devastating, toxic algae laden discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers estuaries—over 500 Billion gallons sent to those estuaries in both 2004 and 2005, very wet years. All those projects can contain only a drop in the bucket compared to that volume of wasted water.

In 1994, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in its “Central and Southern Florida Project Reconnaissance Report Comprehensive Review Study”, recommended Plan Six as the only way to relieve the necessity for such devastating discharges. I’ve attached a copy of Plan Six to this letter as a pdf, and I hope you’ll publish it too.

Plan Six calls for a storage flow way from two miles North of the Bolles Canal in the EAA between the North New River Canal and the Miami Canal, varying from seven to 13 miles wide, conveying up to 6,660 cfs. “Cfs” stands for cubic feet per second, approximately the rate of out flow during Lake Okeechobee overflow storm water releases from the C-44 (St. Lucie) and C-43 (Caloosahatchee) canals. The current discharge structures from the Lake to those canals would have to be enlarged to accommodate the flow, and three 1,000 foot bridges for roadways that cross would have to be constructed.

The over flow would drain by gravity down to the WCAs to the South, where it would have to be lifted in to them by the existing pumps, since this part of the EAA is only about 11 ft elevation. Thence, the water would slowly flow through the WCAs and STAs and on to the Evergades, where it used to flow before man interfered and cut off the “River of Grass”. Remember the “River of Grass”? Remember Marjorie Stoneman Douglas?

 While Plan Six would require Big Sugar to give up a little of its land leased from the State to share in the adversity, it is the only Fix for the Estuaries that Big Sugar is ruining, by insisting on no Lake water flowing South where it used to flow. Plan Six will not flood any towns; it flows between South Bay and Clewiston. Big Sugar would have you believe otherwise, but they are wrong. The South Florida Water Management District, dominated by Big Sugar, is wrong in opposing the Corps of Engineers Plan Six.

The Rivers Coalition is promoting Plan Six as the only Fix.

Sincerely,

W. E. “Ted” Guy