Managers from the South Florida Water Management District held a news conference Friday in Moore Haven – a city on the Western Edge of Lake Okeechobee.  They were on hand to answer criticism from competing interests for releases from the Lake.    

Locally, the District’s management policies are blamed for  a thick blue green algae bloom in the Caloosahatchee River caused by a lack of releases. The District’s Director of Operations, Tommy Strowd, said he understands the concerns of environmentalists, tourism officials and others.

“It’s shared in systems all across the district” he said. 

“The good news that we’re seeing is because we’ve seen local rainfall over the past week that there are now releases from the basin into the Caloosahatchee estuary and we expect to see some benefit from that.”

Strowd says rainfall of up to five inches has been recorded in some areas along the river.  

Meanwhile he says the region’s coming out of one of the driest dry seasons and twenty years - he says for the year to date the rainfall deficit is around 12 inches.