Lake Okeechobee pollution deadlines missed, Everglades still at risk

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. (WINK)—Lake Okeechobee is South Florida's water hub, feeding the Everglades, but experts say the heavily managed reservoir still moves polluted water through the region despite decades of restoration efforts.

Back in 2004, Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe went to court to enforce pollution limits in water from Lake Okeechobee that flows into the Everglades. Now they say those deadlines hit this month, and the state is still far from meeting them.

Water moves from Lake Okeechobee through a network of canals and eventually down to Florida's east coast through the St. Lucie River, the Everglades, and to Southwest Florida through the Caloosahatchee River. Along the way, Friends of the Everglades says it picks up extra "fuel"—nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, largely from agricultural runoff, including sugarcane fields around and south of the lake.

When those nutrients build up, they can ignite harmful algal blooms in freshwater and even help fuel conditions that intensify red tides in coastal waters. To clean it up, Florida built massive man-made wetlands called stormwater treatment areas.

The idea was simple: let nature filter the water before it moves south into the Everglades. But Friends of the Everglades says the system is now being pushed past its limits, with too much nutrient-loaded water coming in for it to fully process, leaving impacts across connected waterways statewide.

"The water leaving those stormwater treatment areas can't be over 13 parts per billion in any one year, and it can't be over 19 parts per billion in three out of five years," said Eve Samples, Friends of the Everglades.

"One of these stormwater treatment areas, STA 5-6, that's the worst-performing STA. It's up in the 50s now," Samples said.

"Really, the magic bullet that remains out of reach but could be attainable is more land acquisition to clean the water and to send it to the right places at the right time," Samples said.

WINK News reached out to the Florida DEP, the South Florida Water Management District, as well as Florida Crystals, U.S. Sugar, and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative for responses to the findings, but is still waiting to hear back.