I wanted to personally thank the South Florida Water Management District for their awesome new website “Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir Project, A Timeline Toward More Water Storage South of Lake Okeechobee” that tracks Senate Bill 10 and the EAA Reservoir’s progress. I saw many people Tweet and post on this wonderful new tool, and wanted to share also and say THANK YOU!
6-28-17 JTL
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Note below from District, what a nice gesture!
Jacqui:
Hello, I’m not sure we have ever been formally introduced. My name is Jerry Eisenband and I’m the Comms Director at the SFWMD.
I was on your website the other day and saw this posting about SFWMD deadlines in relation to the EAA Reservoir.
I wanted to reach out and make sure you saw our latest and greatest webpage dedicated to this exact topic. Our goal is to keep the public informed.
I hope you like this website and encourage your followers to utilize it. If you can give us any help to promote it, we would be extremely grateful.
https://sfwmd.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=4d9807e424894aec9e9c1f74d323f17e
PRESS RELEASE:
West Palm Beach, FL – The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) today launched a new webpage, featuring an interactive map and milestone tracker to allow the public to follow the progress of the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee.
“This project was approved by the Florida Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott, as part of an effort to reduce harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries,” said SFWMD Governing Board Chairman Dan O’Keefe. “This new web page allows citizens to see how their tax dollars are being spent on this project, as well as track the progress of this reservoir.”
The Water Resources Law of 2017 — Senate Bill 10 — calls for SFWMD to construct a reservoir that can hold 240,000 acre-feet of water on about 18,000 acres of state-owned land in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) south of the lake. This property was originally purchased with the intention of building a shallow Flow Equalization Basin (FEB), which would have been known as the A-2 FEB.
The project was included in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, as well as Central Everglades Planning Project to improve the conveyance of water south from the lake to Everglades National Park. Instead, the land will now be used to build the much deeper 240,000-acre foot reservoir. The EAA Reservoir is intended to help reduce damaging estuary discharges from the lake.
The web page displays to the public where the reservoir will be located, what steps required by the Legislature have already been completed and what key points remain. To date, SFWMD has identified the approximately 3,200 acres of land it owns (currently leasing to private entities) that would be used for the project and about 500 acres of privately owned land that would need to be acquired. SFWMD has already contacted the private landowners to express interest in acquiring their property.
By July 1, SFWMD will take the next step by sending a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requesting that the Corps develop with SFWMD a “Post Authorization Change Report” to the project for approval by the U.S. Congress. This is necessary since the land was originally slated to be used as part of the Congressionally-approved Central Everglades Planning Project.
View the new web page tracking the EAA Reservoir Project Progress.
https://sfwmd.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=4d9807e424894aec9e9c1f74d323f17e
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Please see links and check it out! Please post questions so we can ask and figure out. JTL
Maybe they could have a site that presented the modeling of the different projects so concerned folks could, through animated projection view how storage, retention, wells, increased storage in Lake O, southern flow, EAA timelines, seasonal rains and reservoirs can work together with CERP projects timelines and show everyone what we can expect, when we can expect Discharges to be only the last last plan B, what provides the most bang and when we can see progress and completion. They have most of those models completed and opening them up to the public might provide a far better fact gathering possibility than letters and 3-minute statements. Usage and options previewed would provide great sampling.
Good ideas. Thanks for comment. I agree. Their website does have a lot of things, however, sometimes hard to find out where to find them: https://www.sfwmd.gov/
Thanks to the District for putting this up for people to follow. However, nothing here has anything to do with stopping the damaging discharges from the Lake to the C 44. The EAA reservoirs are designed to hold and meter water to the STAs and WCAs for sheetflow. The capacity of the reservoirs and rate they can be emptied does not allow them to reduce the level of Lake O more than a few inches during a rain event. What also needs to be noted in this “time line” is the number of “ifs” and other dependencies on one thing being accomplished before the next step. Every time you see the Federal Agencies have to act, history has shown that will not happen for 5 to 7 years. The District envaribly is ready years before the Federal Agencies have the funding. This chart will probably be up until at least 2030.
Newton I appreciate your insights.