U.S. House committee chairman commits to Lake Okeechobee reservoir

The chairman of a key House of Representatives committee is "committed" to getting the reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges through Congress this year.

U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also urged the Army Corps of Engineers chief to speed up its approval of the project so that can happen.

"Authorization of this storage reservoir is a priority," Shuster said in a May 22 letter to R.D. James, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, adding his committee is "committed" to getting the project in the Water Resources and Development Act this year.

The reservoir project has to be included in the bill, known as the WRDA, to get federal funding. Florida legislation authorizing the project calls for the state and federal governments to split the estimated $1.4 billion cost 50-50.

Also signing the letter were:

U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Palm City Republican and vice chairman of the subcommittee

Mast arranged a meeting Friday with Shuster, James and Graves to talk about the reservoir.

More: Read the letter

The project is on a tight schedule:

The Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott authorized the reservoir last May.

The South Florida Water Management District submitted a plan for the reservoir to the Corps in late March.

The Corps is scheduled to approve the plan and send it to Congress by early October so it can be among the water projects authorized this year.

Failure to do that could postpone the project by two years or more, whenever the next batch of water projects is approved by Congress.

Even after it's approved, Congress has to appropriate money to pay the federal share.

Detailed design and construction of the project could take seven to nine years, according to water district chief Ernie Marks.

Marks hinted during this year's legislative session in January the state could "go ahead on our own" and let the Corps catch up on its part of the work.

More: Lake Okeechobee reservoir could be completed in 7-9 years

The project designed by the district would, when used in conjunction with other existing and planned projects:

Reduce the number of damaging discharge events from Lake Okeechobee to the the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers by 63 percent

Send an average of about 120.6 billion gallons of clean water south to the Everglades

The plan includes a 23-foot-deep, 10,100-acre reservoir to store up to 78.2 billion gallons of excess lake water and a 6,500-acre man-made marsh to clean the water before it's sent south to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.

More: Rain could spur St. Lucie River algae bloom without Lake O water

The project would store and move water year-round, so it could handle three to four times the reservoir's capacity over the course of a year.

Tuesday, the Corps sent slightly more than 2 billion gallons of water from the C-44 Canal through the St. Lucie Lock and Dam into the St. Lucie River.

It's not Lake Okeechobee water: The gates at the Port Mayaca Lock and Dam, which send Lake Okeechobee water into the canal, are closed.

The water is rainfall runoff from western Martin County that drains into the canal; and since May 15, more than 7 billion gallons of it has entered the river's estuary.