Officials will decide Tuesday on water release from Lake OkeechobeeBy Tyler Treadway
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Army Corps of Engineers will decide Tuesday whether to release water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie Canal and eventually into the St. Lucie River estuary.
Lake Okeechobee water also could be released into the Caloosahatchee River west of the lake.
Andrew Geller, a senior hydraulic engineer at the Corp’s headquarters in Jacksonville, said forecasts for tropical storms Gustav and Hanna will play a major role in the decision.
“If the weather forecasters could tell us right now what’s going to happen with those two tropical storms out there right now, we could answer the question (of whether there will be releases).”
Luis Alejandro, the Corp’s manager of Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River Basin, said other factors going into the decision include the lake’s level, the amount of local runoff remaining in canals from Tropical Storm Fay and the condition of the estuary.
Geller said the decision will be made late Tuesday; Alejandro said that if discharges are approved, they would begin immediately after the decision is made.
Geller said the discharges would range from 1,1700 to 1,800 cubic feet per second, depending on the amount of local runoff already in the canal.
“The rule of thumb is to get rid of the local runoff first,” he said, adding that Corps officials are hoping the local runoff has dwindled enough by Tuesday to allow discharges from the lake.
Geller said the Corps policy is to “try to get the lake maintained with small releases first so there’s less probability of high releases in the future.”
The Corps’ target operating levels for the lake are between 12.5 and 15.5 ft, which is a safe range for the Herbert Hoover Dike structure, Geller said.
The lake level was 14.02 feet Thursday morning. In the last week, the lake has risen 1.8 feet because of rain from Tropical Storm Fay.