Preliminary work begins on EAA Reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges

Tyler Treadway | Treasure Coast Newspapers

WEST PALM BEACH COUNTY — Bulldozers pushed over sugarcane plants, exposing near-black soil as preliminary construction began Wednesday on the long-awaited reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges.

The work comes about 18 months after the Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott authorized the project to store excess Lake O water to keep it from going to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, clean the water and send it to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.

It also comes less than a week after the South Florida Water Management District board approved extending a lease on most of the reservoir site to a subsidiary of Florida Crystals.

District officials said the quick action shows their determination to move forward with the long-awaited project.

More: Water district board OKs leasing reservoir project land

Critics said the district may be moving too quickly on a lease that was approved with little or no public scrutiny.

"This was a stunt, fake news," said Eric Eikenberg, executive director of the Everglades Foundation. "It's damage control because the district got caught last week approving a lease that's bad for the people of Florida."

Even U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, who said he was speaking for Ron DeSantis as well, asked the board to wait a month before voting on the lease.

The lease was posted on the district website the night before it was approved.

“Delay is not an option,” district board Chairman Federico Fernandez said Wednesday, standing on the recently cleared site. “Every day we’re not working here is a day we’re not moving forward.”

EAA Reservoir: What's been done? What's ahead?

The district's preliminary design calls for the project to include:

A 23-foot-deep, 10,100-acre reservoir to store up to 78.2 billion gallons of excess lake water

A 6,500-acre man-made marsh to clean the water before it's sent south to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay

The reservoir project is expected, when used in conjunction with other existing and planned projects, to reduce the number of damaging discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers by 63 percent.

It also will send an average of about 120.6 billion gallons of clean water south to the thirsty Everglades and Florida Bay every year.

More: Water district gives reservoir plan to Army Corps of Engineers

The project will take about eight years, said Eva Valez, district director for Everglades policy and restoration: two to three years to complete the design and another five to build it.

Video: 'No Silver Bullet': Projects to help cut Lake O discharges Environmentalists and state officials agree there's "no silver bullet," no single project that will seriously curtail discharges of excess Lake Okeechobee water east to the St. Lucie River and west to the Caloosahatchee River. A suite of projects north, south, east and west of the lake are either under construction or in the planning stage to help solve the problem.

The state and federal government each are to pay half of the project's expected $1.8 billion cost. Congress and President Donald Trump have approved the project, but federal money hasn't been appropriated for it.

TCPalm editorial: A project we must support

The state can begin work without federal funding in place by tapping into $64 million a year set aside by the state Legislature for the project, Marks said.

The bulldozers working Wednesday were clearing a 560-acre tract within the project site to store 800,000 cubic yards of rock to be used in the 30- to 40-foot-tall dike surrounding the reservoir. That work will take from four to six weeks.

More: With Trump's signature, EAA Reservoir becomes law — but relief remains far off | Our view

The rock currently is stored in an adjacent shallow reservoir known as the A-1 Flow Equalization Basin.

The previous lease would have run out March 31. The new lease allowed the district to immediately start using the 560 acres in the middle of the project site.

District officials said as much work as possible needs to be done in the winter dry season when the rock is still accessible in the A-1 site, which will be full of water during the summer rainy season.

Above-average rainfall is expected during the winter, said district Executive Director Ernie Marks, "so getting a head start is important."

Critics of the lease said the entire reservoir site should be used for storing excess Lake O water if there are heavy rains while the project is being designed and built.

"I don't want to downplay the importance of getting started on the reservoir," said Celeste De Palma, director of Everglades policy at Audubon Florida. "It's good to see progress. But what kind of progress is it when get 560 acres when at the same time you're locking 16,000 acres of the people's land into a lease rather than using it for its best possible purpose?"

Eikenberg added: "Renting some heavy machinery and clearing out sugarcane isn't building a reservoir. Are people in Stuart who keep getting ravaged by discharges bringing them toxic algae supposed to think this is progress?"

State law is “very clear,” Fernandez said, that the land remain in agriculture until its needed for construction. "I don't know why there's any confusion."