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Policy Issues

• Agency News
• Algal Blooms in the Area
• Caloosahatchee / Lake Okeechobee Issues
• Climate Change & Sea Level Rise
• EAA / U.S. Sugar Land Purchase
• Everglades Restoration
• Government and Legislative
• Land Use
• Numeric Nutrient Criteria
• Offshore Drilling
• Pole & Troll and other Navigation Issues
• Protected Species and Wildlife Policy Issues
• Reviving the River of Grass -- Recent Everglades Restoration Planning
• Water Quality Issues
• Water Conservation
• Water Supply Issues

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Directory of Policy Acronyms

• EAA - The Everglades Agricultural Area comprises about 700,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee
• Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule Study (LORSS) - The lake regulation schedule is used by the Corps of Engineers to manage lake levels and determine when water is released from the lake to the Caloosahatchee, St. Lucie and south. The damage to the estuaries caused by the water releases prompted review of the current schedule. An interim schedule is expected to be in effect until 2010 when a new schedule will be evaluated and implemented.
• Lake Okeechobee Protection Plan (LOPP) - The plan was developed to identify strategies to reduce phosphorus loading to the lake and to meet the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) targets.
• Lake O Tributary TMDL – The Federal Clean Water Act requires states to establish a load calculation for a variety of water quality pollutants. These levels identify the maximum amount of degradation a water body can receive and still meet water quality standards.
• Lake Okeechobee & Estuary Recovery (LOER) - LOER is a plan developed to help restore the ecological health of Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Estuaries.
• ROG / River of Grass -- Reviving the River of Grass is what the South Florida Water Management District is calling the recent Everglades restoration initiatives which incorporate the U.S. Sugar land purchase.
  

• Caloosahatchee West Basin Storage Reservoir (formerly called C-43 Reservoir) - (C-43 is what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District call the Caloosahatchee River: Canal 43) A response to the excess flows from high water conditions in Lake O, this 11,000-acre Hendry County reservoir is proposed to capture and hold excess water to provide a more natural timing and volume of freshwater releases to the estuary. Unfortunately, it will not come close to providing the needed storage during heavy rain years. Test cells that were constructed for testing the operation have proven to be algae incubators, with no way to clean water before it is released. Since construction was first proposed, Caloosahatchee stakeholders have been asking for a water treatment area that would clean the water before releasing it back into the river.
• Caloosahatchee River Watershed Protection Plan (CRWPP) - Modeled after the LOPP for restoring and protecting the watershed, this legislated plan expands the restoration effort north, west and east of Lake O to cover the Kissimmee watershed and Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries.
• Caloosahatchee Tidal TMDL development - Expedited as a result of a lawsuit by Earthjustice the State has fast-tracked TMDL development for the tidal portion only of the Caloosahatchee to establish maximum limits for nutrients.
• Southwest Florida Feasibility Study (SWFFS) - When CERP was proposed it did not include any projects west of Lake O. This study was created to identify southwest Florida water resources in Glades, Hendry, Collier and Lee Counties to evaluate their conditions and develop potential solutions.