Last January, the Army Corps triumphantly announced the completion of an 18-year project to repair the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee at a total cost to taxpayers of $1.5 billion.
Over the nearly two-decade lifespan of the project, each time the Army Corps came asking for more taxpayer funding, the project was heralded as a necessity that would increase the capacity of Lake Okeechobee by more than a foot—reducing the need for harmful discharges to the coastal estuaries, making communities around the lake safer from flood risk and decreasing the risk of water shortage.
Now, though, still operating under the interim lake regulation schedule that was put into place because the dike was considered unsafe, the Army Corps is simply ignoring the fact that these repairs were completed and has yet again begun massive harmful discharges to the estuaries—at exactly the same lake depth they always have. That’s the equivalent of an Army officer using a 15-year old map to infiltrate an enemy compound when we’ve got new, confirmed intelligence from this year. It doesn’t make any sense.
So, today, I asked the Army Corps point blank: with these repairs completed, what is the new depth at which the Herbert Hoover Dike is at risk of failure? This is important because if the risk is lower, discharges aren’t “necessary” until the lake gets higher.
Their response? “I can’t answer that specific question.”
Every time the Army Corps came asking for more taxpayer dollars, they were confident this project was going to expand the capacity of Lake Okeechobee by at least a foot. Now that they don’t need the money anymore, they haven’t even bothered to do the analysis—or perhaps worse, are hiding the result from the taxpayers that funded the project. As a result, the estuaries are once again getting dumped on.
If you’re as outraged by this flippant attitude toward destroying Florida’s coasts as I am, please join me in calling on the Army Corps to answer a simple question: what the hell did you do with $1.5 billion of our tax dollars?
Sign the petition now: