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WEATHER

West Palm shuts down canal to protect drinking water but Lox River may be left hanging

Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post

The City of West Palm Beach shut down taps flowing into its main supply of drinking water after finding algae in canals coming from Lake Okeechobee.

Poonam Kalkat, the city's director of public utilities, said the Grassy Waters Preserve, which also provides water for the Town of Palm Beach, needed to be protected from potential harmful algae blooms, even though the supplemental lake water was buoying the preserve until the wet season arrives.

With water levels dropping in the preserve, there is also a risk the long-suffering Loxahatchee River won’t get the freshwater it needs to fight back invasions of saltwater lethal to native cypress trees that have died in slow motion since human development so altered the watershed.

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The Loxahatchee River is South Florida’s only nationally recognized wild and scenic river.

“We are working hard to make sure that while we meet all the needs of the City of West Palm Beach residents, we are also trying to supply water to the Loxahatchee,” Kalkat said in a Water Resources Task Force meeting last week.

A similar situation happened in 2020 when water levels in Grassy Waters dropped too low to supply the Loxahatchee River. At the same time, Lake Okeechobee was also low – 11.03 feet above sea level on May 15 – but a special agreement was made with the South Florida Water Management District to funnel water to the river until the rains came.

Grassy Waters Preserve is the source of most of West Palm Beach's drinking water.

This year, Lake Okeechobee is flush with water at nearly 14 feet on Thursday, but algae is the concern.

“We certainly have more water to deliver this year than we did last year if we need to, but now we have water quality issues,” said South Florida Water Management District governing board member Jay Steinle during the April 29 task force meeting. “Prior to that, we should have, and could have, been delivering supplemental flows to the river, because every year the degradation of the river is getting worse.”

The algae found by city officials in the L-8 canal from Lake Okeechobee is growing in patches throughout Palm Beach County waterways and in the lake. Kalkat said she didn’t know if the L-8 algae contained toxins, and no tests in the area are showing on the state’s algal bloom monitoring website.

Water levels continue to drop at the Grassy Waters Preserve on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 in West Palm Beach. The rainy season officially starts Friday.

In late March, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection notified the state health department in Palm Beach County that water samples taken in the C-51 canal upstream of where the releases reach the Lake Worth Lagoon were tainted with blue-green algae and low levels of the toxin microcystin.

Last month, an algae bloom at the Pahokee Marina tested 100 times more toxic than what is considered safe for humans and triggered an emergency cleanup effort spearheaded by the water management district.

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Water levels at Grassy Waters Preserve in West Palm Beach seem normal Wednesday, September 25, 2019 despite the month being more than 5 inches below normal and the driest September so far in 126-years of record keeping. On Tuesday, Lake Okeechobee stood at 13.74 feet above sea level, within the desired 12.5 to 15.5 feet zone set in 2008. [LANNIS WATERS/palmbeachpost.com]

Lake Worth Waterkeeper Reynaldo Diaz said cyanobacteria blooms – also known as blue-green algae – have also been spotted in three spillways that lead to the C-51 and in the M canal, which channels water from the L-8 to Grassy Waters.

"There’s been so much political theater over the Pahokee Marina and they completely ignore the true extent (of the algae). They’re going to need a bigger vacuum,” he posted on the waterkeeper Instagram account referring to one of the tools used to clean up the marina.

Scientists fear environmental conditions are ripe for another algae-burdened summer, especially with blooms showing up before the longer, hotter days to come. A lengthy 2020 rainy season mimicked the conditions of 2015's soggy El Nino and 2017's Hurricane Irma – both of which were followed by damaging blooms the next summer.

Kalkat said the city is working with the water management district to find a solution that will continue sending water to the Loxahatchee River, including getting permission to use water stored in wellfields to recharge Grassy Waters.

“If we are providing water to the Loxahatchee, we need to get compensated with water into our system,” she said.

Thick blue green algae surrounds boats in the Pahokee Marina on Lake Okeechobee Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

Loxahatchee's dilemma is manmade. Roads have cut off natural flows that fed fresh water to the river and canals divert water to keep communities that were built on wetlands from flooding. The permanent opening of the Jupiter Inlet in 1947, and dredging of oyster bars, send a twice-daily fire hose of seawater flooding up the river.

In 1973, the United States Geologic Survey called the Loxahatchee a "river in distress."

During the dry season, the northwest fork doesn't get enough fresh water moving downstream to keep the salt water at bay. Over the years, majestic cypress trees native to the waterway have retreated deeper and deeper as brackish water-loving mangroves overran riverbanks.

Through at least midweek, the river was getting “reasonable” supplemental flows, said Loxahatchee River District Executive Director Albrey Arrington. But rainfall has been low.

“This suggests without the supplemental flows from Grass Waters, the Loxahatchee River would be in much worse condition,” Arrington said.

Park visitors paddle past a dead cypress tree on the Loxahatchee River in Johnathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County, Florida, August 27, 2018. Saltwater intrusion often kill the trees.

A more permanent solution is under development to repair the river. The Loxahatchee River Watershed Restoration Project was approved in the 2020 Water Resources Development Act. It is the only Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) project included in the act for Palm Beach County, but it needs funding.

The project from the Army Corps of Engineers would build a 20-foot high above-ground reservoir on the 1,600-acre Mecca Farms site west of Palm Beach Gardens to supply water to the river when needed. Mecca Farms, once slated for The Scripps Research Institute, was bought by the South Florida Water Management District in 2013. It is off Seminole Pratt Whitney Road between the Beeline Highway and Northlake Boulevard.

“By the time we get the CERP project in, we hope there is something to do,” Steinle said. “I’m being a little cynical but we need some interim measures.”

Kmiller@pbpost.com

@Kmillerweather