People United to Restore Our Rivers & Estuaries
People United to Restore Our Rivers & Estuaries
October 16, 2008
Dear PURRE Members and Friends:
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' own Web site, on
October 7, they sent more than 26,100 gallons of polluted fresh water pouring through the Franklin Lock every second down the Caloosahatchee River and into our estuary. Similar volumes -- as high as 100,777 gallons per second -- had already been pouring into the river for weeks.
You can track the releases yourself at the Corps' Web site at www.saj.usace.army.mil/h20/index.htm. Sometimes you'll see "NR" listed under the data for that day's release. This stands for "not recorded," and does not mean there was no release that day. If you check back in a few days, you may see a number where previously "NR" was listed.
PURRE has been urging the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider its plan and switch from devastating pulse releases to "trickle releases." Pulse releases, even if the water were not polluted, are simply too much water all at once for an estuary -- and the fragile life it contains -- to withstand.
During trickle releases, however, the locks at the lake are opened only slightly, but for a longer duration. This allows a gradual release of the water from Lake Okeechobee to be absorbed into our system of rivers, canals and estuaries.
Please take a few moments to send a hand-written letter stressing the need to stop the pulse releases from Lake Okeechobee and stating your strong preference for trickle releases. Ask for futher investigation into the impact of pulse releases from Lake Okeechobee on our rivers, bays and estuaries.
It takes a little more time, but hand-written letters are the most effective communcation, followed by typewritten mail, and then e-mail. Here's who to write to:
Gov. Charlie Crist
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe Street
Talahassee, FL 32399-0001
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
South Florida Operations Office
525 Ridgelawn Road
Clewiston, FL 33440-5399
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
3900 Commonwealth Boulevard
M.S. 49
Tallahassee, FL 32399
Thank you. This is time well spent helping our precious environment and our wonderful, but now precarious, way of life.
"The River of Grass was only the most distinctive link of an interconnected ecosystem that once blanketed almost all of south Florida, from its headwaters atop the Kissimmee chain of lakes near modern-day Orlando down to the coral reefs of the Keys, an area twice the size of New Jersey. "
~ Michael Grunwald, The Swamp ~
