Billions of gallons of polluted water are flowing down the St. Lucie Canal into the St. Lucie River and the Indian River Lagoon. Our citizens are rightly infuriated at the all-too-frequent destruction of our precious natural resources.

There is no use in pointing fingers of blame at the Army Corps of Engineers. They bear the sole responsibility for preserving the integrity of the Herbert Hoover Dike built rapidly and with porous material around Lake Okeechobee in 1928. Thousands of our citizens live south of the dike, and some of their lives would be threatened if the dike should fail. None of us should forget the failure of the low dike in 1928, when a wall of the lake's water killed thousands of residents and farm workers.

The solution to the ongoing, vast discharges of polluted water is not rocket science.

Competent engineers and hydrologists have proposed a solution that is expensive but achievable in a relatively short period of time.

First: Forget blaming the Army Corps and the South Florida Water Management District's board and staff. They have no options but to lower the lake that has risen to a very dangerous level due to record December-through-January rainfall. The district staff and board follow directions from Gov. Rick Scott.

Let us concentrate on solutions.

Excess water from the lake must be flowed south, possibly through one of the existing major canals, delivering the flood of water into a major reservoir. The size — acreage — of the reservoir is dependent on how much land can be acquired. The more land, the less expensive the dike will cost to contain the millions of gallons of the lake's excess water.

It will be expensive to acquire the land, widen the existing canal, construct the dike and connect it to a vast system of cleansing marshes — and will require major work on the ill-conceived corps' central Everglades design, which includes canals, levees and dikes that prevent clean water to flow south.

Historically, the River of Grass always received excess Lake Okeechobee water. The lake overflowed south through miles of sawgrass, slowly arriving at Florida Bay. The natural system worked and must be replicated.

If our presidential candidates agree that sugar industry price supports are not only outdated but totally unwarranted, land values will rapidly decrease.

If Amendment 1 funding is properly allocated by the Florida Legislature, funds will be available for land acquisition and probably for matching federal funds to widen the delivery canal, build the reservoir and assist in correcting the engineering errors in the central Everglades system.

It is doable!

There is no reason why 'we' should have to wait 40 years to accomplish a goal that is far simpler than flying to the moon or far less expensive than fighting a continuing war in Afghanistan.

Governor Scott is responsible for all of the major decisions involving the Department of Environmental Protection and should be concerned about the amount of polluted water that is entering the lake and being discharged from the lake. The governor should take a leadership role in proposing support for the obvious solutions.

There are major issues involved in financing an effort to restore the battered Everglades system, but this state can afford to impose an "Everglades Restoration Tax" — it has many different options — and provide millions of dollars to hasten the restoration project.

The billions of gallons of polluted water should be held, cleaned and released into a reconstructed central Everglades, recharging the all-important Biscayne Aquifer that supplies drinking water for 8 million Floridians and millions of tourists.

What is missing is vision, leadership, commitment and a sense of passion to restore what man unwisely destroyed: one of the great natural water systems anywhere in the world.

Nathaniel Reed, of Jupiter Island, is former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and vice chairman of The Everglades Foundation.