Lee County mayors going to court over South Florida water crisis

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Aerial footage of Lake Okeechobee on Aug. 13, 2018
Aerial footage of Lake Okeechobee on Aug. 13, 2018. Credit: WINK News.

Lee County mayors are taking the South Florida Water Management District to court in the never ending battle against the Southwest Florida water crisis.

Bob P. of Port Charlotte said it’s nice to see action being taken.

“It’s nice to see that these mayors and everything are trying to get involved to take care of the situation that were in and try to correct it,” Bob said.

Sanibel Mayor Kevin Ruane leads the effort to nearly double water releases from Lake Okeechobee during the dry season.

Ruane says the lower lake levels are by the next rainy season, the less red tide and algae blooms to deal with.

“Send me more water during the dry season and then you won’t have to send me as much water during the wet season,” Ruane said.

The mayors teamed up with the Department of Environmental Protection and numerous local scientist and monitored our estuaries.

They say we need at least 720 cubic yards per second released from Lake Okeechobee to keep our waterways healthy.

But the South Florida Water Management District says they have some of the greatest scientist in the world saying 400 minimum is plenty.

“Their actual scientific evaluation was done in a modeling situation hypothetical situation ours was actually done with real life data,” Ruane said.

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