Q&A of the Day – What Changes with the New Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Finally! It’s about time the Army Corps followed through on what they promised to do. It’s been so long since the new discharge plan was proposed I don’t remember how it works. Can you share that with us?
Bottom Line: Finally, is right. Yes, this week the Army Corps of Engineers finally signed off on the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, known as LOSOM, that will represent the new release schedule for Lake Okeechobee discharges going forward. The high-level overview of what it will do is significantly reduce unnatural eastern and western releases of water from Lake Okeechobee, known to cause devastating environmental effects in critical estuaries and waterways, prioritizing instead, natural southern discharges through the Everglades and into Florida Bay. The change is a culmination of over five years of work on the LOSOM plan alone, a plan that was to originally have been in place last year. There have been revisions to the plan since it was first proposed, with the most recent changes adopted in July of 2022. According to the Army Corps of Engineers there are nine performance improvements that will take place with the new manual and subsequent release schedule in place:
- Lake O will be more dynamic under LOSOM meaning stages will fluctuate to take advantage of storage when it is needed to keep water in the system and to provide valuable water for the environment and water supply.
- LOSOM has a large operational zone “Zone D”, where the lake will spend most of the time (nearly 80% of the period of simulation [POS]), that provides benefits to the whole system.
- LOSOM will eliminate lake releases to St. Lucie under normal conditions, sending zero lake water to the east 95% of the time during the POS.
- LOSOM will eliminate releases to the Caloosahatchee River from Lake O that could contribute to estuary stress and provide lake flows that are compatible with estuarine ecology as recommended by the most recent science.
- LOSOM will perform better for water supply for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Lake Okeechobee Service Area, and the Lower East Coast Service Areas than LORS08 in the POS.
- LOSOM specifically considers water quality, especially blue green algae during the water management decision making process.
- LOSOM will increase flows south to the Central Everglades to an average annual of 200,000 acre-feet per year and allow the release of water south all the way to the water shortage management line in coordination with the SFWMD unlike LORS 08 which stopped releases south at higher lake elevations.
- LOSOM will maintain the safety of the millions of people in South Florida who rely on the Herbert Hoover Dike for flood risk management.
- LOSOM will reduce damaging dry downs on Lake O.
If that all sounds like an improvement, that’s because it is. To boil it all down The Everglades Foundation has identified that the new operating schedule which achieve these effects:
- Reduce high-volume harmful discharges to the Caloosahatchee River by 60 percent, a decrease of 48 billion gallons per year;
- Reduce harmful discharges into the St. Lucie River by 75 percent, a cutback of 25 billion gallons per year;
- Reduce harmful discharges into the Lake Worth Lagoon by 81 percent, a decline of 15 billion gallons per year;
- Increase total flows from Lake Okeechobee to America’s Everglades by 242 percent, an increase of 46 billion gallons per year;
- Increase dry season flows to the Everglades by 185 percent, or 27 billion gallons per year.
The adoption of LOSOM is a huge step in the right direction. The final and next goal is the elimination of east-west discharges as any of the unnatural releases are damaging to waterways and habitats. With continued progress that’s being made on the EAA Southern Reservoir Project for additional storage and cleaning of excess Lake O water, that will also be sent south through the Everglades, there’s reason to believe it’s possible to achieve the ultimate goal over the next decade.