U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) urged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to finalize its selection of a new plan to manage Florida’s 730-square-mile Lake Okeechobee.
The Corps on July 19 announced the selection of the Balanced Alternative CC plan as its preferred choice for the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual to determine when, where and how much lake water is sent to coastal estuaries and south to the Everglades.
“Today is the outcome we’ve been working towards for years, but it’s far from a checkered flag, and we can’t let our foot off the gas,” Rep. Mast said in a statement.
Following the Corps’ announcement, Rep. Mast also sent a July 19 letter to Army Corps Jacksonville District Commander Col. Andrew Kelly reiterating his support for the selection and warning against a “bait and switch” proposal that would increase discharges to the St. Lucie. The Corps will finalize the selection at the beginning of August and make further optimizations to the plan until mid-October.
“I am deeply concerned about a proposed bait and switch that would see Balanced Alternative CC not just optimized but radically altered to undermine the performance of the current plan,” wrote the congressman, who called the alternative plan “a major compromise for the St. Lucie” as compared to the Balanced Alternative AA plan, which he said “performed far and away the best for Florida’s east coast.”
Rep. Mast also called on the Corps to incorporate elements of the Balanced Alternative AA plan during the optimization process to further reduce discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Estuaries by sending more water south in the dry season.
“Now is not the time to back away from the chance to make a once-in-a-decade improvement to the massive injustice of Florida’s water management,” Rep. Mast concluded in his letter. “The foremost principle for the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual should be ‘do no harm,’ and the same should be true of optimizations made during Iteration 3.”