Pipe dreams by gimleteye

In the Miami Herald, a letter writer suggests the answer to the drought is building a pipe to ship water from wet areas of the state to dry areas, like southeast Florida where water mismanagement has put millions of citizens at risk.

This hair-brained idea bubbles to the surface from time to time like a toxic oil slick. (Never mind that the entire state is now experiencing extremely dry conditions, by any historical standard.)

One of the most recent incarnations of the idea came from the US Army Corps of Engineers itself: ship water to Miami from Lake Okeechobee through a pipe buried in the Miami Canal.

But today or yesterday, the level of Lake Okeechobee plunged to the lowest since government began measurements in 1931. So for the time being, the pipe dream is just that.

Corps engineers are biting their nails, knowing that every day the drought persists, past policies and actions will be subject to more and more withering criticism.

Under its mismanagement (and the SFWMD) Lake Okeechobee has turned into a very large brown cesspit whose emissions have destroyed estuaries and near-shore waters on both the west and east coasts.

A cesspit: that is how the liquid heart of Florida looks today from an image captured by Google Earth. Don't take my word for it: download and view for yourselves.

Who would want the cost of cleaning up Lake O water to drinking water standards, even if drinking water standards were protective enough of human health and even if there were enough water to “pipe”?

The notion that there is “excess” water in North Florida to feed developers’ thirst in South Florida is insanity that Florida just keeps rewarding.

During the terms of Governor Jeb Bush, the engineering, development and agriculture lobby succeeded in passing new laws that allow one water basin to ship water to another and to take money meant for purchasing environmentally sensitive lands and use it for pipes and pumps to service growth. A story you haven’t read in the Miami Herald.

“Mining” prehistoric waters in the Floridan aquifer is already resulting in predictable consequences. Water tables are dropping in heavily developed Pasco and Hernando counties, taking springs with them. (Homeowner insurance costs are skyrocketing-- not because of hurricanes, but because of soil subsidence and sinkholes.)

We don't have sinkholes in South Florida, the bottom line is that we are in the midst of a drought despite the fact that our area receives more than 55 average inches of rainfall a year.

The principle culprit for the current system of water mismanagement is the sugar industry that farms nearly 1 million acres south of Lake Okeechobee.

You can sugar-coat the problem with dreams of pipes, but Lake Okeechobee has to be fixed, a big portion of sugar lands south of the lake must be converted to water storage and aquifer recharge, and counties and municipalities have to tighten down on water quality, consumption, and re-use.

Irrespective--because of decades of inattention by government in order to keep the costs of growth artificially low and keep campaign contributions from Big Sugar flowing into the pockets of elected officials--urban users will be paying for water through the nose.