Lake Okeechobee
Lake Okeechobee is actually at the root of many of Florida’s environmental problems. Not that it’s the lake’s fault, of course, but rather how it’s been treated and used. Like the Aral Sea, Okeechobee is the site of a massive engineering project in the service of agriculture. The lake’s waters are essential to the sugarcane industry that sits to its south. To help regulate flows out of the lake, the Army Corps of Engineers erected a dike on the lake’s southern boundary and a series of canals shepherd bring water to the cane fields.
That’s had a deleterious effect on the lake, though. In 2018, Lake Okeechobee turned into a festering algae bloom due to a number of factors, including runoff from farms that was made worse, in part, by Hurricane Irama the preceding year. The Army Corps released some of that water, spreading the toxic algae all the way to the coast. Scientists are concerned for the lake future, in part because there’s such a thick layer of fertilizer lodged in its muddy bottom that it could unleash more toxic blooms in the years to come even absent more runoff. But with runoff not likely to stop anytime soon, Florida’s largest lake is just one hurricane or heavy rainstorm away from another algae bloom from hell.
