FORT MYERS, Fla — An environmental group says the Caloosahatchee River and estuary is getting saltier and it's starting to sting, and with Lake Okeechobee releases reduced due to drought conditions, they say saltwater is creeping upriver and putting the estuary's delicate ecosystem at risk.
On Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it will lower releases from an already reduced flow starting May 3rd. They want to drop Lake O levels before the wet season - and give submerged vegetation a chance to regrow, improve water quality, and stabilize the lake's ecology.
But with less freshwater flowing downstream, groups like the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation warn the estuary is taking a hit.
Watch to see what the SCCF said about the risk to the estuary :
“When we are not receiving flows from the lake in drought-like dry conditions that we have right now. What that means for the estuary is it starts getting much more saline than it normally would,” said Matt DePaolis, Environmental Policy Director with SCCF.
And the group says all that extra salt can damage tape grass, disrupt fish nurseries, and hurt oysters - especially during the current spawning season.
“Oysters are hugely important not just to the health of the estuary - they filter water, they love filtering water - but they also provide important habitat for juvenile fish for foraging grounds. They provide a mechanism for storm mitigation. If we have wave energy coming through it actually dissipates some of that,” said DePaolis.
So to prevent long-term damage, SCCF says they've been asking the Army Corps to increase the amount of water they release.
“We're part of a stakeholder group that includes other governments, counties, and municipalities in the area, and we asked the Army Corps to actually increase the flows this week. We recommended they increase it up to 1000 CFS so we don't start to see that damage,” said DePaolis.
But the Corps says they're sticking to the 500 CFS steady release for now - to conserve water and stay on track with their dry-season recovery plan.
However, they say they're watching salinity daily, and if conditions worsen they could make changes.
Looking ahead, they say the long-awaited C43 Reservoir will give Southwest Florida more control to avoid this problem in the future.
“It's a really difficult balancing act. There's a lot of needs by a lot of diverse stakeholders. The issue we're balancing right now though is physical real-world damage to the estuary,” said DePaolis.
