President Trump signs law authorizing reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges

Tyler Treadway , Ali Schmitz | Treasure Coast Newspapers

Show Caption Hide Caption 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.

Building the reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges is now federal law.

President Donald Trump signed the federal Water Resources Development Act Tuesday. WRDA includes a nationwide list of water projects that included the reservoir south of Lake O.

The law authorizes but doesn't allocate money for the feds to pay their half of the $1.6 billion Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir.

The appropriation process could take a couple of years to get money rolling.

In late spring 2017, the Florida Legislature approved, and Gov. Rick Scott signed into law, both the proposal to build the reservoir and a mechanism to pay for it.

With "consistent funding," designing and building the 16,600-acre project will take nine to 10 years, said South Florida Water Management District spokesman Randy Smith.

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The water management district's preliminary design for the project includes a:

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

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.

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Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, spearheaded the project in the Florida Legislature. He applauded the president for signing the bill into law. In a statement, he urged state and federal officials to complete the reservoir within three to five years, saying if federal and state officials are not "up to the task," they should outsource the project to a private partner.

“I predict that one day a few years from now we will look back with pride on how we stopped dispatching excess water from Lake Okeechobee east and west into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers and instead sent it south to the Everglades and Florida Bay via the Southern Reservoir," Negron said. "A groundbreaking this fall is in order. Let’s get it done.”

The Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg agreed, saying the project came "almost two decades late."

“If the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can repair the Mosul Dam in Iraq in one year, this critical Florida reservoir should not take another decade," Eikenberg said. "It now falls on Congress to appropriate the $200 million annually that is needed to construct the reservoir and move other critical Everglades restoration projects forward quickly. Be assured, the people of Florida will be watching.”

The U.S. Senate approved the bill earlier this month.

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The U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill twice: its own version June 6 with a "placeholder" for the reservoir project and Sept. 13, as the bill stalled in the Senate, a compromise version worked out to jibe with the expected Senate version.

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Sen. Marco Rubio called the bill signing an "an important step toward solving Florida’s water challenge."

"This water infrastructure bill, which includes key projects that will address Florida’s growing water challenges, authorizes the new EAA Storage Reservoir that will reduce harmful discharges to Florida’s coasts and enhance the promise of Everglades restoration. I thank my colleagues for advancing this bipartisan effort and President Trump for signing it into law.”

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Palm City, also celebrated the bill becoming law.

"This was a community effort, and together, I am confident we will keep up the momentum to ensure the funding we need for this infrastructure and make health and human safety the top priority once and for all," Mast said.

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