While our hearts go out to the people of the Bahamas and others affected by Hurricane Dorian and relief efforts are underway, the storm is a stark reminder that Mother Nature can be a cruel schoolmaster.
Leading up to Dorians’ shift northward, our federal, state, and local government officials and agencies — including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District — did an admirable job preparing for the worst the storm might deliver.
Their never-ending diligence is good news, as there still could be extreme weather before the hurricane season is over. Hopefully, we will not see Mother Nature’s worst.
Lake Okeechobee, the “Liquid Heart” of the Everglades, was spared Dorian’s worst. Early weather forecasts predicted Dorian would come close to or reach Lake Okeechobee as a Category 4 storm and cause the lake to rise 3 feet to 17 feet above sea level.
At 17 feet, Hoover Dike integrity becomes a major concern, prompting the Corps to make high volume releases to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries to bring the lake back down to safer levels.
The estuaries are already inundated with water flowing in from local basins and don’t want or need additional water from the lake.
Fortunately, this scenario didn’t come to pass, the lake received minimal rainfall from the storm and the Corps isn’t planning to release water to the estuaries at this time.
Earlier in the year, the Corps used its operational flexibility to lower lake levels to allow for ecological recovery from Hurricane Irma and to create additional storage capacity in anticipation of the storm season. Doing so was good for the lake, estuaries, and dike safety.
But Mother Nature has a mind of her own. Heavy rains in July and August caused lake levels to quickly rise more than two and a half feet, leaving lake recovery and storm planning in jeopardy.
With South Florida at the epicenter of climate change and trends pointing to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, Everglades restoration is more important than ever.
Water managers need all available tools at their disposal for retaining and storing water — reservoirs, flow equalization basins, stormwater treatment areas, and healthy wetlands — and moving water to where it needs to be and when it needs to be there.
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) has all of these tools, but accelerated implementation is essential.
In addition to critical ecological benefits such as reduced discharges to the estuaries, improved flows to Everglades National Park, improved timing, distribution, and quantity of water deliveries to Florida Bay, restoration will improve flood control and help ensure sufficient water supply for 8 million residents and growing.
Everglades restoration won’t protect against all of the devastating impacts extreme weather events can bring or solve all of our water management challenges.
But restoration can give water managers better tools to cope with the sudden influx of water from extreme weather events and protect against drought conditions more effectively and efficiently.
Now is the time to push restoration projects across the finish line and break ground on priority projects in the pipeline. Mother Nature cut (some of) us a break with Hurricane Dorian. She may not be so benevolent the next time around.
Doug Gaston is North Everglades Policy Analyst for Audubon Florida.
