Progress With the Everglades Restoration Plan & Lake O’ Discharges

Recently Governor DeSantis announced a huge step forward with the Everglades Restoration Plan with the groundbreaking of the new inflow pump station as part of the EAA Reservoir project which is aimed at permanently ending harmful east-west discharges out of Lake Okeechobee. Two of the southern reservoirs with the EAA project have been completed and the final key piece that will be central to sending effectively all water south into the Everglades, which is the natural flow. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Two sides to the story. There's only one side to
the facts. Welcome to the Brian Mud Show and.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Thank you for listening as we take a look at
progress with the Everglades Restoration Plan and Leco discharges. Recently,
Governor Desant's announced huge step forward with the Everglades Restoration Plan,
the groundbreaking of the new Inflo pump station as part
of the EAA Reservoir project, the final piece of that
project that would send first retain and then send water
south through the Everglades the natural flow from Laco with

(00:34):
the potential to essentially eliminate the harmful east west discharges.
We found out that as part of this process, the
state now getting the upper hand and doing these projects,
taking that away from the federal government. We've been able
to bump up the timeline for the completion of the
reservoir system by five years to twenty twenty nine. In

(00:56):
the meantime, I was taking a look at the discharge
Get Joel and what's been going on this year And
despite the controversial decision by the Army Corps engineers to
ignore their operating manual Loansome that they agreed to an
August of last year, discharging water between December and spring.
The most recent data available suggests East West discharges have

(01:16):
been approximately fifty nine percent lower year over year, so
that's a real win. And also lake levels at about
thirteen point six feet most recently entering the dry season,
running well below the historical average of about fifteen feet
for the date. So it's unclear if the Army Corps
will decide not to move forward with discharges through dry season.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
What's clear is they absolutely do not need to.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
So we've had a lot of progress already this year,
and there's reasonably that it will continue into next year,
and you have the permanent solution not too far out
as you start taking a look at twenty twenty six,
and by twenty nine we're talking about the entire EAA
system being completed