As a result of a law I wrote, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently writing the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, which will determine when discharges will happen from Lake Okeechobee to the estuaries for the next decade. My legislation required the Army Corps to work towards stopping harmful discharges to the estuaries!
As part of this process, the Army Corps has now narrowed their consideration to a final five remaining options, and while four of the plans were written by the Army Corps, the fifth plan (“Alternative BB”) was quite literally written by two lobbyists for the sugar industry!
Letting the sugar industry write the management plan for Lake Okeechobee is like letting the fox guard the henhouse. This is a brazen attempt to skew the plan to put corporate profits ahead of the health of Floridians across the state.
That’s why I am fighting to get the Army Corps to reject “Alternative BB!”
We have decades worth of data that shows a clear pattern: the sugar industry gets all the water they need, plus billions of gallons extra put in storage just in case, and everybody else gets a half-hearted apology from the Army Corps. That cannot be allowed to continue.
I defeated the sugar lobby when they tried to manipulate the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual last year, and I will fight this latest attempt with everything I’ve got also!
Read my letter to the Army Corps below. You can send your opinions to the Army Corps here.
