Environmentalists say a new federal playbook for managing Lake Okeechobee’s water levels could reduce the size and frequency of red tide incidents off Naples, Marco Island and other Gulf Coast communities. 

The new standard, known as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, or LOSOM, will help reduce the nutrient-laden discharges as well as blue-green algae and pollutants down the Caloosahatchee River—the lake’s western release path—and into the Gulf. 

Army Corps Jacksonville District Commander Col. James L. Booth calls LOSOM “without a doubt the most important water management effort” in the region. The Corps says it could reduce high-volume, harmful discharges to the Caloosahatchee River by 60%, a decrease of 48 billion gallons per year. That’s good news, says Matt DePaolis, policy director with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. 

“It definitely will help,” he said. “We receive huge amounts of polluted water, full of nitrogen and phosphorus, down the Caloosahatchee River.” 

Capt. Codty Pierce

Though the freshwater, blue-green algae from Lake Okeechobee can die when it hits the saline waters of the intracoastal and the Gulf, the nutrients remain dangerous in the Gulf. 

“You’ve still got all the toxins that were in the bloom after it dies,” DePaolis said. “All the dead cells and other nutrients can now be consumed as red tide, which leads to fish kills.” 

In fact, when nutrients are released into an active red tide zone in the Gulf, it scales into massive red tide blooms, DePaolis said. “Those feed off the coast and could travel south to Naples and Marco Island.” 

Under LOSOM, if there’s an active red tide in the Gulf and blue-green algae in the lake, the Army Corps can decide against releasing water from the 730-square-mile freshwater lake until things improve, said Capt. Codty Pierce, the waterkeeper in the Calusa Waterkeeper organization. 

“The primary change is the governance and how they react when the lake is at a certain level,” Pierce said. “We’ll see more severe storms that deliver more rainfall in shorter amounts of time, and that makes it harder to manage Lake Okeechobee. This could improve the ability to [have] fewer high-volume nutrient discharges.” 

Capt. Ray Bearfield

Capt. Ray Bearfield of Naples said the key is reducing nutrient loads in Lake Okeechobee in the first place, which it receives from sugarcane fields, cattle ranches, orange groves and other human activity upstream. Red tide and other toxic blooms kill profits in Marco Island, Naples and other Gulf Coast destinations. 

“The Waterkeeper Alliance as a whole comes down very strongly on the notion that you cannot remediate damage as inexpensively as you can prevent damage,” said Bearfield, waterkeeper and executive director of Collier County Waterkeeper Inc. 

The new program also sends three times more Lake Okeechobee water to the Everglades, which will divert it away from industrial and other uses that draw on the water. Beneficial flows to the Gulf during the dry season will maintain proper salinity in the estuary. 

“While the risk of transporting a bloom exists, the danger of releases persists whether or not a bloom is present,” DePaolis told The Naples Press. “Without a bloom, there won’t be toxins transported down the river, but the nutrients present in the polluted lake water still can have the same exacerbating effect on a red tide or another algae bloom.” 

LOSOM, which the Corps will use to manage Lake O’s water levels over the next five to seven years, replaces the Corps’ Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule 2008, or LORS08. The new plan took effect in August after five years of meetings, public hearings and planning that saw opposition from the sugar industry and other special interests. 

“Most environmentalists are celebrating the signing, but getting consensus was difficult and I’m sure some stakeholders still feel that they are not represented in the plan,” DePaolis said. 

The lake, however, will continue to be treated as a reservoir and be much deeper than its naturally occurring depth, he said, which will impact submerged aquatic vegetation and associated ecosystems. 

Two known sugar lobbyists infiltrated the LOSOM project delivery process to influence the outcome, but they were identified and removed, according to captainsforcleanwater.org. 

This story was published in The Naples Press on Sept. 6.