Everglades restoration work to create reservoir will help Caloosahatchee River

Workers build the pump station at the Lake Hicpochee Shallow Storage and Hydrologic Enhancement Project. The reservoir is being built on 670 acres and is estimated to be completed in October 2018.

Tom McKernan stands at the highest point in Hendry County, looking down on a road that bears his name.

McKernan Highway is not long for this world.

Within a few years, it and other roads crisscrossing more than 10,000 acres just south of the Caloosahatchee River will be under 20 feet of water.

The road network is a first step in the construction of the massive C-43 reservoir, likely the largest project ever undertaken in the South Florida Water Management District. The reservoir will be a key component in the plan to restore the Everglades to something closer to its natural state.

At 18 square miles — larger than Naples — the expanse of the reservoir will be breathtaking. The hundreds of pieces of heavy equipment that soon will be putting 16 million cubic yards of dirt in precise formations around the reservoir's 19-mile perimeter will need roads with names for the drivers to find their way around, McKernan said.

“You can easily get lost. Everything looks the same,” he said from his perch atop Hill S-474.

At the end of a summer marked by headlines of blue-green algae and red tide fouling the waters of Lee and Collier counties, McKernan and his colleagues at the water district are eager  to show off their work at the C-43.

It won’t be finished until 2022, leading to frustration from residents and businesses fed up with the noxious blooms that undermine Southwest Florida’s vaunted quality of life and tourism trade.

More:Florida could spend $1 billion on Everglades reservoir project, but will it work?

'Why does it take so long?'

But it and dozens of other projects either finished, under construction or in the planning stages offer promise of cleaning the water going into and coming out of Lake Okeechobee. The projects could provide flexibility in when those discharges occur, helping maintain the balance of freshwater and saltwater in the coastal estuaries.

McKernan understands the impatience. Better than most, he also understands the complexity of the problem.

A map depicting the Caloosahatchee River and estuary watershed with a section in light blue showing the placement of  West Basin Storage Reservoir.

“People ask, ‘Why does it take so long?’ When they see the size of it, they’re like, ‘Wow.' There’s a lot going on out here."

And it isn’t just the size. The C-43 requires feats of engineering difficult for a layman to comprehend.

The 27-foot-high embankment will have built within it two additional retaining walls to prevent seepage of the 55 billion gallons of water pressing outward. There will be two large pump stations capable of moving more than a billion gallons a day, 14 water control structures connected to 15 miles of perimeter canals that will allow the movement of water into and out of the reservoir and to nearby farms, where the existing means of irrigation have been irrevocably altered by the project.

“We had to make them whole,” said Phil Flood, regional representative for the Water Management District’s Fort Myers office.

How to build an Everglades restoration reservoir

The very existence of Hill S-474 and six others like it helps demonstrate the enormity of the task.

Sixteen feet under the former farm fields is a layer of clay. The clay holds water, and before heavy structures can be built on it, it must be compressed so the ground above it doesn’t shift under the new weight.

Beginning in 2015 the engineers loaded each of the future construction sites with 285,000 cubic yards of dirt.

“It (the clay) is like a sponge. We compressed all the water out of it,” Flood said.

When it’s time to build the pump stations and other major components, the mounds will be moved again, with the dirt going into the perimeter levee.

More:Editorial: No time to ease up on throttle for new reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee

The West Basin Storage Reservoir will capture and store runoff.

For comparison, Collier County’s 2013 beach renourishment project involved about 215,000 cubic yards of sand moved via 15,000 dump truck loads.

Nearly all the dirt used will come from the reservoir site, dug from the perimeter canals and elsewhere.

“Sixteen million cubic yards is a lot of material. That’s what this project is, moving material,” McKernan said.

Conservancy says more needs to be done

As massive as the C-43 reservoir will be — from atop Hill S-474 the eye can just make out tree lines in three directions that will mark the water’s edge — it isn’t the answer.

Its primary purpose is storing water, not cleaning it. And even it may not be enough to prevent unhealthy doses of nutrient-bearing freshwater from flowing into the Caloosahatchee River and Southwest Florida in the rainy season.

"It's an important component, but it's not the only storage reservoir we need," said Marisa Carrozzo, senior policy specialist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. "It's going to be very important during low flow periods."

But she added: "We need a water quality component. Something adjacent or very close to the C-43 itself." 

More than 50 projects from as far north as Orange County just south of Orlando to the tip of the Florida peninsula will work together to improve water quality in Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee to the west, the St. Lucie River to the east and the Everglades to the south, water managers said.

“These projects all build on one another,” Flood said.

Big plans, big money

All told, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan could cost $15 billion to $20 billion, a cost to be shared equally by federal and state governments.

Since CERP was first introduced in 2000, funding has been inconsistent.

A water level gauge, marked as measuring in North American Vertical Datum of 1988, stands near the C-43 West Basin Storage Reservoir project pump station on Townsend canal. The reservoir is being built to provide environmental water supply benefits to the Caloosahatchee River estuary by storing water that now is released from Lake Okeechobee and damages the downstream environment.

Editorial:Midyear report: Slow path on environmental protection

This year both the state and federal governments stepped up, with the state allocating $248 million and the federal government $139 million, according to an analysis from Audubon Florida.

As of July the state had contributed a total of $2.3 billion toward Everglades restoration, the federal government about $1.3 billion, according to state figures.

Some of that money has gone to the C-44 reservoir, a smaller storage area that will perform a function similar to the C-43, only on the St. Lucie River. Construction there is further along than at the C-43.

The Lakeside Ranch Stormwater Treatment Area, another project east of Lake Okeechobee recently opened to accept and clean up to 840 million gallons of water that won’t have to be dumped into one of the two rivers.

In Glades County the Lake Hicpochee Hydrological Enhancement Project is weeks away from completion. One square mile, it will allow rehydration of Lake Hicpochee, a long-forgotten lake drained by Florida’s early pioneers to create farmland.

That, in turn, should provide cleaner water flowing into the Caloosahatchee, which runs nearby.

Multiple causes for state of Everglades

Just as no one project will fix the Everglades, no one source is causing its woes.

Starting in the early 1880s, pioneers like Hamilton Disston began buying millions of acres of Florida wetlands from the government at prices as low as 25 cents an acre.

They dug canals to drain the land and provide navigable waterways. “The mindset at the time was what good are wetlands? You can’t live on them. You can’t farm them,” Flood said. “The state of Florida was in the drainage business.”

Work continues on the Lake Hicpochee Shallow Storage and Hydrologic Enhancement Project's pump station. The hydrological enhancement project is estimated to be completed by October 2018.

Natural flowways were disrupted. Nutrients and other forms of pollution were added to the system as farming and development took off.

After nearly a century, the damaging effects of the changes began to come into focus.

Now there are two distinct challenges facing the water managers — phosphorous and nitrogen.

Both flow into and out of Lake Okeechobee from all directions. Although sugar farms to the south are often fingered as culprits, most of the inflow of both pollutants comes from the north and west.

For example, 52 percent of the phosphorous coming into the lake comes from the Upper and Lower Kissimmee basins and the Taylor Creek Slough to the north while only 4 percent of the phosphorous comes from land directly to the south. It's a similar story with nitrogen, with 46 percent coming from the north and 7 percent from the south, according to Water Management District data.

Water treatment areas built to the south of the lake are showing results, with phosphorous loads reduced from 119 parts per billion as water leaves the lake to the federally mandated 9 parts per billion entering Everglades National Park, according to Water Management District measurements.

“We know how to get phosphorous out. We’re killing it with phosphorous,” Flood said.

But he added, “Nobody knows how to get nitrogen out.”

Over the years of the C-43 reservoir project, multiple threatened and endangered species have been located on site. To preserve them in their natural habitat all workers are given training, and signs have been put up by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to make people aware. The project's various recreational benefits are expected to draw boaters, walkers, cyclists and nature lovers.

'Things are improving'

Tom Van Lent, vice president for science and education for the Everglades Foundation, said his group sometimes takes issue with how the water management district calculates phosphorous levels but agreed the levels are coming down.

"The water quality data is good news. It's a decreasing trend. Things are improving," he said. Water quality treatments areas south of Lake Okeechobee are proving effective, making the argument for one near the C-43 that much stronger, Van Lent said.

Searching for an answer, the Water Management District is partnering with Lee County on a 1,700-acre treatment area experimenting with different kinds of plants to see which ones best reduce nitrogen levels.

That’s one more bit of work being done outside the public eye.

Everglades projects could take until 2030 to build

But the big one right now is the C-43. The first three of four phases, totaling about $60 million are done or under construction.

The contract for the fourth phase, the construction of the levee, main pump station, water control structures and perimeter canals, should be awarded early next year.

Flood expects it to cost around $500 million, which he said would make it the largest contract ever awarded by the Water Management District.

When finished, the C-43, Lake Hicpochee and other sites will be open to the public for hiking, cycling, canoeing and other passive recreational uses. “I think this will be a birder’s paradise,” he said.

All the projects on the Water Management District's list could take until 2030 to build, and Flood said changes to the plan are likely to arise as more is learned.

He said it’s important for people to know that restoration work is in progress — and that it has its limitations.

“We have been able to build a lot of infrastructure in the last 10 years. We are never going to be able to build the whole Everglades back. But at least we can build some of it,” he said.