Essential No. 3—Provide Drought Storage

The Background

When the southern reaches of the Hoover Dike were completed around Lake Okeechobee in 1933, the Everglades lost most of its water supply. Without water from Lake Okeechobee's watershed, the Everglades became much drier, causing reduced productivity in Florida Bay as well as in the Gulf Coast estuaries. Water that historically flowed south was directed to the east coast by the St. Lucie River and the west coast by the Caloosahatchee River. This caused the coastal estuaries to bear the brunt of huge amounts of damaging fresh water releases from Lake Okeechobee.

Decades of relentless drainage of the Everglades marshes coupled with lowered Lake Okeechobee water levels have decreased the amount of space available to store water - the amount of water the natural systems need to get them through the dry season, and through times when the rainy season does not bring its usual bounty.

As a consequence of not being able to save water, the remnant Everglades ecosystem is very susceptible to floods and droughts.

If the Everglades is to survive, the storage that was inherent in the vast spatial extent of its natural wetlands must be recovered. This need to store additional water is of paramount importance to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). CERP calls for huge increases in storage - about 10.6 million acre-feet in new storage which is roughly equivalent to the amount of water in four Lake Okeechobees.

The fate of CERP relies on the plan's ability to provide this storage. Yet the 2000 plan suggested that 90 percent of this new storage could be provided by Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) wells. Beyond the ASRs, CERP also planned to store another 3 percent of the water necessary in "reclaimed" rock mines. Today both technologies are recognized as extremely risky and of highly uncertain feasibility.

Long-promised ASR contingency plans have not been delivered by the state and federal partner agencies; Essentials #3, #4, and #5 propose just such a contingency plan. The concepts of storage and flow are linked.

During wet years, three actions must occur:

First - store sufficient water in a surface reservoir to supply the Everglades with enough water during droughts. (Essential #3)

Second - after treating the water to remove pollutants, send as much water from Lake Okeechobee as possible to the Everglades. (Essential #4)

And finally - construct enough additional storage to prevent damaging discharges to the estuaries, and use this water for drought supplies to the lake and for other water needs. This is the operational strategy that minimizes storage need, but restores the estuaries and the Everglades. (Essential #5)