02/16/2024
Thank you, Nyla Pipes, for a great summation of the damage being done to Lake O by groups posing as friends of the environment while acting as fund raising and propaganda frauds.
Some FACTS for you:
A) Captains for Clean Water, The Everglades Foundation, and many of their affiliated groups have been the ones advocating for keeping Lake Okeechobee too high by supporting LOSOM, the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual. The Army Corps has been basically following LOSOM .
😎 As the lake began to rise these groups begged for discharges to be held off even though we were expecting a very wet El Nino winter. Smaller releases over time would have been less damaging.
C) All of this is on public record at many, many meetings.
D) We CAN'T send more water south because everything is already flooded south; it rains there, too!!
E) Farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area are a part of the "treatment train" and reducing nutrients before water goes into the stormwater treatment areas and water conservation areas. Water they receive from Lake Okeechobee is far higher in nutrients than what leaves their land. Without the farmers, we would not be getting water clean enough to send south. All of this is by design and codified into law with the Everglades Forever Act of
1994.
F) The state cannot afford to buy up all the farm land and if they could, they couldn't afford to operate all the infrastructure that would be required to keep urban areas from flooding; going "back the way it used to flow" is not feasible. That's why things were decided in the Everglades Forever Act and in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan the way they were.
G) These so-called environmental groups needed to create a boogeyman for fundraising purposes. So-labeled "Big Sugar" fits the bill. The Everglades Foundation is composed of billionaires; many are developers. They dole out money to all these other groups and there is an entire cottage industry built on "saving" the Everglades. The Captains are making over 90k a year and it's all marketing and fundraising while they lie to the public.
H) Agriculture representatives actually told everyone keeping Lake Okeechobee too high would result in bigger, dirtier discharges. They did NOT ask for the higher lake level. Again, this happened at many public meetings!
I) Without storage north of Lake Okeechobee and infrastructure in place to open up the blockages to send more water south, these discharges will continue.
J) I know I'm saying things that are difficult to accept. I encourage you to do your own research. I just ask you to hold off on donating to various organizations who have offshore accounts but aren't paying to build us any reservoirs!!!