Lake Okeechobee Conditions Report April 14, 2009:

According to the USACE web site, Lake Okeechobee stage is 11.80' NGVD, which is 0.24' lower than a week ago, 0.63'lower than a month ago, and 1.30' higher than it was a year ago.  The current stage is 2.22' below the historical average for this date and 0.98' below the simulated average using the current regulation schedule (LORS2008).  Total reported inflows are 130 cfs and are limited to flows through S65E. No inflow data are reported for S133 and Fisheating Creek.  Total outflows are 3907 cfs and include environmental releases to the Caloosahatchee River (1805 cfs), water-supply releases through the S351, S352 and S354 (1784 cfs) and flow (323 cfs) through the S308.  Today is the 4th day of a 9 day pulse release (averaging 650 cfs) to the Caloosahatchee River.   Lake levels continue to decline with an average monthly lake level recession rate of 0.62’ since the beginning of January.

The “dry out” lake stages for 33 sites in the North, West and Fisheating Bay (FEB) that currently have sparse to dense beds of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) was predicted based on water depths recorded during the January to April SAV surveys (Dry out stages Apr 09 OPS.ppt).  These predicted “dry out” stages indicate that if lake stage reaches 10.0 ft. NGVD then half (17 of 33) of the sites that currently have SAV would go dry eliminating the SAV from those site.  In the North, 11 of the 18 SAV sites would go dry and 3 SAV sites in each of the West and FEB areas would go dry.  All of the sites along the western wall have dense beds of topped out and reproductive Vallisneria so fostering conditions that would allow the lake stage to remain above 10.5 ft. would be beneficial to SAV maintenance and continued growth. After the 2000 drought it took 2 to 3 years for sparse beds of SAV to emerge in areas that had been dry.  

March water-quality monitoring results are now available.  Two of the 25 monitoring stations (FEBIN and FEBOUT) were not sampled due to low water conditions.  Total phosphorus averaged 124 ppb lakewide (compared to 138 ppb in February) and 104 ppb at nearshore stations (compared to 125 ppb in February).  Total suspended solids averaged 21 ppm lakewide (compared to 22 ppm in February) and 18 ppm at nearshore stations (compared to 20 ppm in February). Graphs attached (Arp 09 OPS.ppt).


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