A good-news story

This is a good-news story.

American Bald Eagle
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (298)

Last Monday, 2018-10-08, Gary Kuhl and I made a trip to Lake Apopka located 15 miles north of Orlando.  It’s the third largest lake in Florida, about 30,000 acres, and is the head waters for the Ocklawaha Chain of lakes. I was hesitant at first because this huge, beautiful body of water was for years reputed to be one of Florida’s most polluted lakes.

“Fed by a natural spring, rainfall and stormwater runoff, water from Lake Apopka flows through the Apopka-Beauclair Canal and into Lakes Beauclair and Dora. From Lake Dora, water flows into Lake Eustis, then into Lake Griffin and then northward into the Ocklawaha River, which flows into the St. Johns River” (Wikipedia).

This grand flow that starts north of Orlando is also joined west of Ocala by the crystal-clear waters of Silver River and ends up exiting the state at Jacksonville. It’s an extraordinary hydrologic system and an exquisite underpinning segment of north-central Florida’s water make-up.

Decades of abuse and lack of understanding of their impacts by local communities and farmers, however, who ditched, diked and drained 18,000-20,000 acres of marshlands along the north shore, caused the lake, for lack of a better way to describe it, to die.

Glossy Ibis
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (199)

Here, Wikipedia recounts one example of the disastrous abuse the lake suffered: “In July 1980, Tower Chemical Company (TCC), a local pesticide manufacturer, improperly disposed of significant amounts of DDE, a known endocrine disruptor, along with other toxic chemicals. As a result, these chemicals spilled into Lake Apopka, and the US Environmental Protection Agency was alerted. TCC shut down their operations in December 1980. In 1981, an EPA investigation began and the site was decommissioned and designated as a Superfund clean-up site. Despite their efforts, some of the chemicals seeped into the Florida(n) aquifer and have proliferated into some of Central Florida's interconnected lakes and waterways. This chemical has caused health problems in much of the lake's wildlife population, and has caused infertility and other sexual disorders in several species, including alligators.”

Florida Marsh Hen
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (267)

In addition, with the massive loss of wetlands which deprived the lake of its natural ability to absorb and process nutrients, combined with hundreds of thousands of tons of added nutrients and pesticides discharged from the surrounding farming operations, the lake eventually succumbed. Its enormous natural bounty was decimated along with its world-class reputation as a bass fishing mecca and dozens of fish camps and other dependent operations. The lake was left as a disastrous pea-green soup of dangerously fouled water and dying wildlife

In 1984, I left as director of the St. Johns River Water Management District after over five years redesigning the way the U.S. Corps of Engineers had intended to ditch, dike and drain 2,000 square miles of the Upper St. Johns River drainage basin and divert its flows south toward the Everglades. It was a bruising exercise but one that resulted in a showcase system where today environmentalists, developers, farmers and governmental interests have been brought together in support of common goals.

Great Blue Heron
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (158)

As I was leaving the district, I told the incoming director, Henry Dean, the next greatest challenge for him and the district would be Lake Apopka.  Over the next 17 years, to his credit, he built the upper St. Johns Project as redesigned and took on the challenge of Lake Apopka.



Little Blue Heron
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (298)

Today, the District’s efforts are comfortingly apparent for the lake. The farming operations have been displaced through the mechanisms and wisdom of funding from Florida Forever funds designed for just such problems. Farms were purchased and thousands of acres of fertilized and pesticide-laden fields are being converted back to the freshwater marsh ecosystems systems that originally flourished as the lake’s kidneys. As we drove along the “Wildlife Drive”, formerly part of the agricultural diking system, the beginnings of new a marsh ecosystem was apparent, and wildlife was abundant.

It was gratifying to actually see and experience at least one significant success by those who spent their careers – decades - identifying and addressing Florida’s growing water-related problems and finding ways to revert such damage or prevent it from becoming a continuing inevitability into the future.

The health of Florida’s natural systems is directly related to the health of the state’s future economic well-being.  It is a false premise that protection of Florida’s natural systems and the legal mechanisms it entails are antithetical to free enterprise and the spirit of entrepreneurial viability.

These are a few photos that bear witness.

Red-Winged Blackbird
Lake Apopka
2018-10-08 (45)