With a new irritant causing distress, Army Corps must end carnage and stop discharges

Gil Smart
Treasure Coast Newspapers
Dan Nickols of Port St. Lucie relaxes Sunday, Sept. 30, 2018, at Bathtub Beach in Martin County as a single red flag on a lifeguard stand warns of high surf. Lifeguards at Bathtub and Hobe Sound Beach also ar on the lookout for a unknown irritant that, like red tide, has caused beachgoers to complain of respiratory problems.

Sunday afternoon my wife wanted to try out our new paddleboards and my youngest son wanted to go fishing. Wary of what might be in the water, I checked conditions online. The latest report for the Indian River Lagoon looked good.

So we went over to the Jensen Beach causeway. Within two minutes of putting our boards and hooks in the water, I saw the first dead fish float by.

Then another. Then another. Then a young guy walked up and said: Do you think that's from the red tide?

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That is, the suspected red tide which forced lifeguards on Martin County beaches to flee Sunday and closed beaches from the Martin County line to Kreusler Park in Palm Beach County.

Nah, it couldn't be red tide, could it? Maybe the fish were killed by blue-green algae.

Or maybe a meteor, plague of locusts, famine and pestilence are sure to follow.

Our lost summer is going from bad to biblical. 

It's bad enough that blue-green algae flushed down the C-44 canal from Lake Okeechobee has coagulated in canals, closed beaches, killed at least one household pet and sent area residents to emergency rooms. Now we have something else out there causing respiratory distress.

It may not be red tide; though red tide has plagued Southwest Florida all summer, there have been no confirmed sightings here.

But whatever it is, it's hard not to feel staggered by the one-two punch of blue-green algae, now this.

On Sunday, environmental activist Erin Brockvich visited Stuart and pledged solidarity with local clean-water activists. Hopefully, the attention she can bring to the cause will make a difference.

Environmentalist activist Erin Brockovich and U.S. Congressman Brian Mast speak to a crowd at Flagler Park advocating for clean water on Sunday, September 30, 2018 in Stuart.

Meanwhile, though, the discharges from Lake Okeechobee — water laden with nutrients that feed algae blooms, and sometimes algae itself — continues flowing our way.

This, even though it's been a dry summer in Martin County. The water level in Lake O, as of this writing, is 14.53 feet, nearly a full foot below where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants the lake to be by the end of the rainy season — that is, by the end of the month.

Why shouldn't the discharges be stopped now?

To be sure, the rainy season isn't over and the tropics are still active. Yet this must be weighed against the damage they're causing, the fact the discharges are feeding the blue-green algae blooms both here and on Florida's Gulf Coast; they're suspected of being a factor in the red tide blooms there as well, and could be contributing to the new irritant off our beaches.

It's good to be cautious, but the Corps, which manages the Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake, is arguably being too cautious. And we are paying the price.

As Stuart resident Michael Conner noted in a recent letter to the editor, the discharges are literally poisoning people in this area. Conner was among 70 local residents tested by Harbor Branch for exposure to the toxin microcystin, present in blue-green algae. All 70 tests came back positive.

The Corps is an arm of the U.S. government, tasked with protecting communities south of the lake. But in preventing harm to these communities, the Corps harms us.

Your government, in other words, is poisoning you.

It's nothing personal, merely a matter of policy. The Corps is simply following the Lake Okeechobee regulation schedule, which dictates how high or low the lake must be, and when.

But the effect is the same.

Congressman Brian Mast's "Stop Harmful Discharges Act" would force the Corps to consider the health and safety of people along the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers when considering discharges. It's necessary for this to pass, but this remedy lies in the future.

The Corps can stop the carnage by ending the discharges now.