If you lived here in 2016, you already know. It was a horrible summer. Toxic algae from massive Lake Okeechobee discharges closed most of the estuary to fishing and swimming. People got sick. Pets died. The Stuart News ran front-page stories on it every day. 

It got people’s attention like nothing had before. And they got angry. Very angry. 

They voiced their outrage to the Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District, who had both been incredibly adversarial before then. They also expressed it to politicians in both parties.

In 2016, all three entities finally listened.

The Corps of Engineers, after an excruciatingly-lengthy process, adopted a new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual in August 2024 that virtually eliminates the threat of future discharges to the St. Lucie Canal. In addition, both the Water Management District and Corps are now factoring human health into all of their deliberations. And politicians have found the money to create more water storage areas south and east of the lake, a major factor allowing those virtually-eliminated discharges.

Jacqui-Thurlow Lippisch, a former SFWMD governing board member, summed it up: “We changed the world.”

Progress can never be taken for granted in the world we now inhabit – but eternal vigilance to maintain the status quo is a much easier mission than constantly fighting for big changes. There were even hints during the meeting that we may now be able to focus on water storage issues. (“Water is a precious resource; we shouldn’t just let it run off into the ocean.”) 

During the meeting, Todd Thurlow shared an immense amount of data from his website with us. One such data point: an average of sixty inches of rain falls on Florida annually. To make that more relatable, he told us “My sister is five foot two… so the average Florida rainfall is not quite a Jacqui.” 

And thus a new metric has come into being to supplement things like acre-feet and metric tons – the Jacqui. 

Todd Thurlow’s website, far from incidentally, has a staggering amount of data, both current and historic, on Lake Okeechobee. Everything you ever wanted to know about Lake O, the flows into and out of it, and the weather that affects it is at: https://eyeonlakeo.com/. Check it out sometime; it’s mesmerizing.

-- Walter Deemer, LWVMC Rivers Coalition Representative