Change on the Map “Seat of War, 1839,” East of Lake Okeechobee
I use my mother a lot when I speak about myself because she has had such a profound impact on me. She and my father taught me to like maps, to like history, to like the stories of the people of today and of those that were pioneers, in our once great wilderness. And my mother, unlike me, is much more accepting of our area’s change. “It’s history,” she says….
I look at this 1839 map excerpt, I see so many changes, and I wonder if the history we are creating is going awry. This 1839 map was a war map because we were at war with the Seminoles pushing them further into the interior of the Everglades. They never surrendered….but we took most of the lands they lived on and changed them.
In 1892 we dug, by hand, the St Lucie Inlet, once Gilbert’s Bar, that had closed up since this map was drawn, creating the most bio diverse estuary in North America, as salt water and fresh water of the ocean, and St Lucie River/ Indian River Lagoon, mixed; in 1923 we dug the C-44 canal from Lake Okeechobee to the St Lucie River as an outlet for a “diked” lake that had been created for agriculture south of the lake, the first and “most important” industry in our state; in the 1930s and 40s we built C-23 and C-24 to drain the “useless” Alpatiokee Swamp meandering through “Martin and St Lucie Counties,” once known as “Mosquito County;” we “moved” the Indian River Inlet, creating the Ft Pierce Inlet; we built bridges, houses, roads, schools, churches and other places of worship, and finally we built shopping malls. We fought wars, had children, we had grandchildren, farmed, started businesses, went through desegregation and women’s rights. And along the way we loved and cherished what we had created, although it was hard: “a human paradise,” a veritable Garden of Eden.
And what do we have today? For me, it is still paradise, with a couple of caveats, a dying river, children who can’t swim or catch fish with out the possibility of a tumor or lesion, a lot of people on the road…. Can we turn back? Or is this change going to be constant? I think even my mother would say: “the river’s history, is a history to change.”
Sheepshead with tumor from North Fork of St Lucie River caught 2-8-14 by Dave Smith
This photo showed up on the Rivers Coalition facebook page yesterday. The fisherman reported catching the sheepshead near the mouth of Bessey Creek, close to the hugely polluting C-23 canal. Within minutes, the photo had been shared 30 times and numerous comments ensued.
Unfortunately, tumors and lesions are not new or unique to our time. In fact, the Rivers Coalition formed in 1998 when the locks were opened from Lake Okeechobee to a level rarely experienced. So many fish had lesions that the cover of the Rivers Coalition handout included the photos below.
As usual the government did a “study” to determine the “possible” causes: SLR/IRL fish lesion studies and the study did state “water quality” was the cause—polluted water from Lake Okeechobee; C-23; C-24 and others local runoff. Years of destruction to fish habitat.
Today,we seem to be making progress as people, as voters, but policy makers and politicians continue to ask for more studies, more science. I completely respect science, and yes, science changes over time, however; you don’t have to be a scientist to “know/see” there is a problem and have the common sense just to fix it.
2005 Satellite Map showing Water Location. Notice EAA South of Lake is Dry.
This 2005 map from the water districts shows where the water is located. Although it is now 2014, a map of today would show a similar situation, a feat of American engineering that unfortunately is to the detriment of the St Lucie and Caloosahatchee Estuaries.
The Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee is allowed by law to pump the water off their lands into the STAs (Storm Water Treatment Areas) south of the lake. They do this so as not to flood their crops. Once these STAs are full, there is no way to send the overflow water in Lake Okeechobee through the STAs to be cleaned before it goes to the Everglades.
The real pinch here is that mostly public tax dollars and yes, some monies from the EAA paid for the STAs. So why do “they” get 100% of the storage in rainy times and why do we get 100% of the discharges reeking havoc on our economy and our bio-divese/dying treasure, the St Lucie River /Indian River Lagoon?
The government, the ACOE and the SFWMD and even local entities don’t often point this out; they simply say “there is no place for the water to go but through the estuaries.”
This model may have worked in the 1960s but it is not working today. Especially since much of the EAA is subsidized through our Federal Government. “Feed the world” or not, this is government sponsored ecological destruction in an era where we need to rethink the model not embrace it.
The ACOE may need to start dumping 1170 cubic feet per second into the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon starting tomorrow as “there is no where for the water to go but through the estuaries….”
St Lucie River Photos display Local runoff from C-24, C-23, C-44 basin and Willoughby Creek in St Lucie and Martin Counties. All runoff flows to the St Lucie River/IRL (Photos by Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch and Ed Lippisch, 2-2-14)
Our beautiful St Lucie River on a gorgeous winter day, a week or so after extremely heavy rains that flooded parts of Port Saint Lucie and Martin County. An eighty foot section of Indian River Drive collapsed. It rained 6-11 inches, I have read. All that rain has to go somewhere since manmade canals don’t allow it to stay on the land as nature planned.
Viewing a map of Florida from the 1800s one sees that Port St Lucie and parts of western Martin County were in a swamp, Alpatiokee, that stretched from about the mid eastern inland coast of Lake Okeechobee to north of Ft Pierce.
Most of these wetlands, like the Everglades, were drained for agriculture and development in the 30s and 40s. Most of us live on “these lands.” The C-23, C-24 and C-25 are not connected to Lake Okeechobee but they too destroy the St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon. There is no turning back but there must be room for improvement.
When I was a kid growing up here in the early 1970s, I was never taught about the canals really. I remember driving in the family Pontiac “Catalina “around Ft Pierce and my mother would point out a rolling dry lands and say: “This all used to be swampland; a layer of water used to flow across these lands to the river during rainy season, but now they are drained.” “What about all the animals?” I would ask. “Jacqui, it’s progress.” Mom then turned looking straight ahead and kept on driving.
It’s been 40 years since those days. I’ve kept my mouth shut for a long time. But today I speak out. For me it won’t be progress until we re-look at the destruction we have caused and really improve the situation. Mom, I love you, but times have changed and progress is never progress if you are soiling your own nest.
Willoughby Creek’s surrounding runoff into St Lucie River/ Indian River Lagoon 2-2-14
Dark waters stained from deteriorating vegetation and full of sediment, phosphorus, fertilizer, pesticides, pet waste and other pollutants seep out into the the St Lucie River from Willoughby Creek in Stuart near St Lucie Boulvard and Indian Street. After hard rains last week the runoff makes its way to the Indian River Lagoon and St Lucie River. Dirty waters are also rounding the corner here at Hell’s Gate, shown in this photo, from “up stream” at C-44, C-23 and C-24 canals. This is basin water runoff, not from Lake Okeechobee. One notices the runoff more as one approaches the St Lucie Inlet, as the incoming ocean waters are bluer and cleaner. During this photo, it was an incoming tide. Lake Okeechobee is not being released into the C-44 canal/SLR at this time. As you can see, even without Lake Okeechobee we are killing the river all by ourselves. Nonetheless, the last thing we need is releases from Lake Okeechobee during the summer rainy season. Please be vocal to our local state and US delegation in letting them know “clean water is business” in Florida. We expect them to vote for policies in favor of the SLR/IRL. As for ourselves, let’s start doing our own part by slowly removing turf grass in our yards and replacing it with native and Florida Friendly plantings and thus stop throwing pollutants on our lawns as in the end, all water runs to the river…
Willoughby Creek runoff 2-2-14. Hell’s Gate and Sewall’s Point in view, Hutchinson Island and Ernie Lyon’s Bridge in the distance.
I may have reached the peak of my “career” to be called “irresponsible” in a Letter to the Editor today by US Sugar VP, Mr Robert Coker. The way I look at it is “they” hold the key to allowing more water to flow south to the Everglades and not through the estuaries. All the “responsible” projects in the world will not be enough to save the Indian River Lagoon/St Lucie River with out a type of flow system south. There is too much water….They are blocking our artery of life. To truly be responsible stewards of our state the Sugar industry must help us get more water south and not just tell us how clean the small amount of water they send south is…also, yes, trashing the IRL has all been a “problem” since the 1920s when the C-44 canal was dug, but it was not until the 1960s and the Cuban Missile Crisis, that the Sugar Industry’s success south of Lake Okeechobee soared, almost completely consuming the 700,000 areas EAA Everglades Agricultural Area, and really blocked any possible chance of water flowing south. I do want to work together, and they must do more than support the status quo. The public must call for this as people are what push politicians to act. Working together in this county is a “will of the people” not businesses and agencies that are intertwined and have been driving with a blindfold on for decades…
Town of Sewall’s Point, St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon, Martin County Florida, 9-13, surrounded by polluted waters released from Lake Okeechobee
You may wonder, “how we got here,”to this polluted Lake Okeechobee sewer running through the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon and the Calooshahatchee?
In order to do so, we must go way back.
In 1845, Florida became a state, and even before this time, there had been discussion about “draining the Everglades and reclaiming the swamp lands for productive use.”
Florida was poor and the legislature wanted to build its coffers, so when the “Swamp Land Act of 1850” transferred twenty million acres from the federal government to the state of Florida, of course the state legislature had dollar signs in their eyes.
From 1851 to 1885 the Internal Improvement Fund, overseen by the Florida Governor and his cabinet, sold swamp lands, and others, to the railroad companies ; with the money the state made, it built canals and drained more lands, an endless and helpful cycle for building the state’s immature economy.
By 1864, at the end of the Civil War, Florida was broke and it wasn’t until 1881 when Hamilton Disston entered the picture that draining the land started again. Disston paid for the land and started draining it by running a canal through the Caloosahatchee River on the west coast to Lake Okeechobee in the interior as well as parts of the Kissimmee River. The lake dropped substantially; Florida would never be the same. Disston ended up committing suicide due to the Panic of 1893, but he inspired generations of drainers to come.
As early as the mid 1800s, the legislature had discussed draining Lake Okeechobee through the Caloosahatchee and the St Lucie rivers . By 1923, this had been accomplished, on a shallow level, creating a water way across the state through Lake Okeechobee. At the same time, agriculture south of the lake excelled in the the rich soils that had been reclaimed from the great swamp. The state was happy and “feeling rich.” However, within only a few years, the country had fallen into the “Great Depression” and Mother Nature brought Florida to its knees.
The hurricanes of 1926 and 1928, together, killed thousands of agriculture workers when the water of Lake Okeechobee went south, as nature intended. The outcry from the local and state governments of Florida made it to Washington DC, and the true dependency on the the Army Corp of Engineers began.
By 1938 the Herbert Hoover Dike had been built around the once magnificent lake until another hurricane, in 1947, flooded the agriculture south of the lake again.
As it had done after 1928, the Army Corp dug the canals of St Lucie and the Calooshahatchee deeper and wider. Eventually, the Central and South Florida Flood Control Project was formed by the state and federal government for seventeen counties; its headquarters was placed in West Palm Beach, today the headquarters of the South Florida Water Management District -which the flood agency eventually morphed into.
More canals and pump stations were constructed and by the 1960s most of what was eventually called the Everglades Agriculture Area, 700,000 acres south of the lake, would grow primarily sugar. These sugar families became very powerful and influential in government and remain so today.
It wasn’t until the 1970s, under Governor Rubin Askew, that the environment and natural resources became “important,” as the conservation movement of the time demanded such.
The South Florida Water Management District now received an expanded mission that went beyond flood control and water supply for agriculture and other users; this mission now included an “ecological mission.”
To this day, the environment is certainly last in the mission of Florida’s government and today’s sick and polluted waters of the St Lucie, Indian River Lagoon, and the Caloosahatchee attest to this.
For 168 years the state of Florida has protected agriculture above all others. In light of the state’s history and prior poverty, this makes sense. Nonetheless, a lot has changed in 168 years. We’ve had a civil war, slavery has been outlawed, women can vote, children are no longer used as common labor, and we have an African America president. Don’t you think it’s time to change how we drain and destroy our rivers?
