Fishermen have a nasty problem in Florida, not of their own making.

A handful of sugar farmers and cattle ranchers have turned Lake Okeechobee into their own private sewer and loaded it with polluted water. Cattle ranchers are dumping excess fertilizer on their fields to produce more feed for their cows. This fertilizer, along with cow manure, washes off the land and eventually ends up in Lake O.

Making matters worse, the South Florida Water Management District keeps the lake levels artificially high at the insistence of sugar farmers who worry that a drought will leave their crops thirsty. In 31 years of record keeping they’ve never gone dry yet. Because lake levels are kept so artificially high, when it rains, the water district is forced to dump water from the lake in a hurry to avoid flooding of surrounding areas. This artificial excess of thoroughly polluted water is dumped mainly into two canals and rivers flowing east and west to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, ruining many miles of good fishing habitat along the way.

The lake releases totaled an amazing 855 billion gallons in 2005. [ Editor’s note: Wonder what that much water looks like? Picture the city of New Orleans under 22 feet of water].

Allowing the lake to overfill also has killed much of the aquatic vegetation growing on the lake bottom, since sunlight can’t penetrate the dark muck that fills Lake Okeechobee. In addition, plants around the lake’s edges die in the high water. Recently, rain and runoff from Hurricane Wilma, and the subsequent loss of vegetation, has left bass, bluegill and crappie with few places to hide, reproduce, and feed. With no bulrush or eelgrass around the lake’s edges to filter fertilizer-laden sediments washing in from neighboring farms, algae blooms explode in the lake making the waters even dirtier. The lake got a little reprieve when a drought, coupled with a manmade drawdown of lake level in 2000-01, allowed drowned aquatic vegetation to regrow. Since then water managers have allowed lake levels to rise steadily, undoing the benefits of the newly created habitat. Water managers had way too much water in the lake in the summer of 2004 when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne drove sloshing waves across the lake, wiping out 50,000 acres of submerged vegetation. Although the rains come from Mother Nature, the fertilizers, pesticides and billions of extra gallons of water pumped or drained into the lake from sugar and cattle farms are manmade problems.

Boca Raton bass pro and TV fishing show host Mike Surman was recently down at Lake O trying to hook some bass in advance of a major tournament scheduled on the lake. He was quoted in a newspaper article, saying the murky waters in Lake O are the “...nastiest water you’ve ever seen. I’ve been fishing this lake 25 years and I’ve never seen it this bad. Never...I’m worried the tournament organizers won’t come back here because it’s so messed up.” He had to run 30 minutes north from the launch ramp to find water barely clear enough to catch a fish.

The article went on to report that Don Fox, a fisheries biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Okeechobee, said crappie catches are at their lowest level since 1973 when the species was last commercially harvested. Largemouth bass, he said, are doing better, but not much. “We’ve got two to three years before there’s a noticeable decline in the bass fishery,” he said.

The polluted water being dumped from the lake reveals an equally astonishing path of destruction downstream. To the west, down the Caloosahatchee River, you find a waterway that only faintly resembles the meandering stream and incredible saltwater estuary that once existed. Down near the mouth of the Caloosahatchee, at the estuary, the river bottom is bare of oysters and grasses it once fostered, because of the devastating freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee. This damage is brought to you by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along with the South Florida Water Management District in the river where the first tarpon was taken on rod and reel, back in 1885.

The massive algae blooms wrought by this broken system have killed both the Caloosahatchee and the St. Lucie River, where they suck the oxygen out of the water. The algae eventually dies and leaves a stinky mess that has made many a riverfront homeowner in the estuaries on both coasts wish they had bought somewhere else. The water is also dangerous. The State of Florida posted signs warning the public against any contact with these dangerous overflow waters.