Tourist development to launch $50K marketing campaign

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FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Lee County Tourist Development Council voted to spend $50,000 for an immediate digital marketing campaign intended to reassure potential visitors the waters and beaches in Southwest Florida are fine, even as a Naples harbormastor insists that murky Lake Okeechobee overflow is now trickling further south into the gulf.

The meeting was two hours with only a fleeting mention of the grown water creeping along the region’s shorelines.

“I feel this group is more reactionary as opposed to proactive. In February, March may be some more decline. April, May may see some more decline, as well,” said Jeff Webb of the Lee County Hotel Association.

Council members blamed the media for making the situation worse.

“Those guys can help us more than anybody else by simply not talking about negative things that are happening,” said Fort Myers Beach Mayor Anita Cereceda. “I mean today it is a glorious day outside.”

They said they wanted media to stop calling the water “polluted,” though WINK News has never used that term in reference to water from Lake Okeechobee.

A representative for the Army Corps of Engineers said the water levels at Lake Okeechobee remain abnormally high. The department will continue to issue the maximum releases into Southwest Florida waterways, the Army Corps said.

The releases are beginning to impact the Gulf of Mexico near Collier County, Naples Harbormaster Roger Jacobsen said Thursday.

“The brown line, as we’re calling it, is working its way south,” he said. “The first round didn’t reach us but the second round is now reaching us.”

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