FORT MYERS, Fla. -- South Florida's waterways are the lifeblood of our economy. Now that potentially polluted water from Lake Okeechobee is flowing toward Southwest Florida, environmentalists are sounding the alarm about what to expect.
"Brown water, fish kills, people getting lesions on there body and if you have an open sore and you go in, flesh eating bacteria that we've seen some people die from," said John Scott with the Sierra Club. He says that's what can happen when polluted farm water gets pumped our way from Lake Okechobee. I took that concern right to the Southwest Florida Water Management District, getting the spokesman on the phone. He says it's a small amount of water, so small it probably won't make its way to our beaches.
"The pumping in relation to a 730-square mile lake for flood control in this particular case is going to be a relatively small volume of water for a lake that size," said Randy Smith with the Southwest Florida Water Management District. But even a little pumping can have a big effect according to the Sierra club.
"If you take a bath and somebody pours acid into a small corner of the bathtub, I mean we're talking about a much smaller scale but eventually it's going to migrate into the rest of the water in the tub," said Scott.
That may sound concerning, but the Water Management District says it's very unlikely.
"Discharges from Lake Okechobee into the Caloosahatche occur on the western side of the lake. The District doesn't feel like that this water is likely to make it's way all the way across the lake to end up being discharged in the Caloosahatchee, it just doesn't seem physically possible," said Smith.
