FPL plan to cool nuke canals clears hurdle

Critics demand more scrutiny of the utility’s growing water demands at Turkey Point and also opposed a massive development that threatens Everglades restoration.

                           
FILE--A view of the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in Homestead with the cooling canals in the foreground on Wednesday Nov 16 2011            
                  
                                              
 

By Jenny Staletovich

jstaletovich@MiamiHerald.com

State water managers signed off Thursday on an emergency request for millions more gallons of water to control rising temperatures in cooling canals at Turkey Point — but not before critics urged closer scrutiny of the 168-mile long loop that keeps the nuclear power plant from overheating.

“We’re very concerned that this is going to be a precedent-setting action,” Biscayne National Park Superintendent Brian Carlstrom told the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District. “We’re also concerned that the conditions in the cooling canals are symptomatic of a bigger problem.”

The board unanimously approved the emergency water request, which will now go before the Miami-Dade County Commission for approval on Tuesday.

In June, Florida Power & Light asked the district for an additional 14 million gallons of water a day from the brackish Floridan aquifer to help cool the vital canals. The utility has blamed below average rainfall for raising temperatures and salinity and fueling an algae bloom that has trapped even more heat. The utility began treating the canals with chemicals in June in an effort to control the bloom and lower temperatures.

But as summer dragged on, the algae has persisted and temperatures have spiked. FPL reported temperatures in the canal system adjacent to the power complex along South Biscayne Bay reached 102 degrees in July and August.

So last month, the utility made a second emergency bid for up to 100 million gallons a day from the nearby L-31 canal. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also approved FPL’s request to raise limits on operating temperatures in the canal from 100 degrees to 104 degrees. While FPL and nuclear regulators stress that the hotter canals do not pose a public safety risk, reactors are supposed to shut down if the canals exceed temperature limits — raising the potential risk of power outages.

“We believe that the temporary use of excess storm water, if available, can make an immediate positive impact,” FPL spokeswoman Bianca Cruz said in a statement. “Our long-term actions will be based on results of the steps we are taking now.”

But environmentalists and park officials worry that diverting so much freshwater could endanger plans to revive Biscayne Bay. The bay also has suffered from algae blooms and high salinity since development and flood-control canals choked off water that historically flowed south through the Everglades.

The issue of water critical to Everglades restoration also triggered complaints about plans by U.S. Sugar and Hilliard Brothers of Florida to rezone 43,000 acres of Hendry County agriculture land for 18,000 houses and 25 million square feet of stores, warehouses and other commercial use. The state has an option to buy the land, but restoration advocates worry rezoning it before the Oct. 15 deadline could drive up the price.

Earlier this week, 46 organizations sent a joint letter to Gov. Rick Scott demanding the state Department of Economic Opportunity object to the plan, which would be built over the next three decades.

“You as this board need to speak up,” said Lisa Interlandi, regional director of the Everglades Law Center. “Without this land, there is no other alternative for restoring that land.”

But government officials from Hendry County, including Gregg Gillman, president of the county’s Economic Development Council, argued the chronically poor county needs jobs.

“All we’re asking is that we want our share,” he said. “We want a piece of it.”

As for Turkey Point’s canals, critics said the district needs to do more to address many unanswered questions.

Carlstrom and others asked the district to require FPL to convene an independent team of scientists to examine the problems plaguing the cooling canal system, which also is a suspect in salt water intrusion that threatens drinking water wells.

“One hundred million gallons sounds like a huge number and I think FPL should be paying a significant penalty for getting that much extra water,” said Drew Martin, a conservation chair for the Sierra Club in Loxahatchee.

The temporary permit expires on Oct. 15, the historic end of the wet season. It only allows FPL to take water from the canal, which would normally be discharged into the bay, above amounts reserved as part of Everglades restoration work. But critics Thursday demanded that FPL disclose its plan for a permanent solution. The utility has also been given permission to build two additional reactors at the plant.

Board member Sandy Batchelor urged the district staff to work with park officials and environmental groups to study the issue. “I would deeply appreciate varying points of view,” she said.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/11/4342897/fpl-plan-to-cool-nuke-canals-clears.html#storylink=cpy

"Hurricane Sandy keeps Lake Okeechobee rising" @sunsentinel

Hurricane Sandy's weekend nudge to Lake Okeechobee's rising water levels add to flood control concerns with a month of storm season still to go.

Flooding threats from the fast-rising lake in September prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to start draining billions of gallons of lake water out to sea to ease the strain on its 70-year-old dike — considered one of the country's most at risk of failing. But lake water levels have actually gone up nearly one foot since the draining started Sept. 19. That's because South Florida's vast drainage system of canals, pumps and levees fills up the lake faster than it can lower it.

The Army Corps tries to keep the lake between 12.5 and 15.5 feet above sea level. On Monday, the lake was 15.91 above sea level.

"The storm didn't give us that much of a bump [but] the Corps is nervous," said Paul Gray, an Audubon of Florida scientist who monitors Lake Okeechobee. "We are kind of in a risky spot right now."

The lake draining stopped briefly as Sandy passed and then resumed over the weekend with the Army Corps now attempting to dump nearly 3 billion gallons of water per day from the lake.

Dumping lake water out to sea lessens the pressure on the lake's earthen dike, but it wastes water relied on to back up South Florida supplies during the typically dry winter and spring.

The deluge of water from the lake also delivers damaging environmental consequences to delicate coastal estuaries, fouling water quality in east and west coast fishing grounds.

Lakeside residents, who have seen the Herbert Hoover Dike weather decades of storms, don't worry about lake water levels until they top 16 feet, Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser said.

"They can open those gates and shotgun that water straight to the ocean," Sasser said. "It's like feast or famine."

Tropical Storm Isaac's soaking at the end of August started lake levels climbing. The steady rains of September and October that followed, capped by Sandy's showers, kept the lake water rising even as the draining continued.

Sandy dropped as much as 3 inches of rainfall in parts of South Florida, according to the South Florida Water Management District.

Gray said Lake Okeechobee didn't receive that much, but with the region already saturated any rainfall adds to the stormwater runoff flowing into the lake.

"We continue to receive a lot of water into the lake, and the discharges are important so we can continue to maintain storage capacity for the remaining five weeks of hurricane season," said Lt. Col. Tom Greco, the Army Corps' Deputy District Commander for South Florida.

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Lake Okeechobee water once naturally overlapped its southern shores and flowed south to replenish the Everglades.

But decades of draining and pumping to make way for South Florida agriculture and development corralled the lake water; allowing the Army Corps to dump lake water west into the Caloosahatchee River and east into the St. Lucie River to drain it out to sea when water levels rises too high for the dike.

The infusion of lake water brings pollution and throws off the delicate balance of salt and fresh water in the estuaries. Dumping lake water since September already has fish leaving, oyster beds dying and fishermen staying away from the St. Lucie River, said Leon Abood, president of the Rivers Coalition.

"It's extremely frustrating," Abood said. "It is a problem that has been plaguing this area for decades."

Elevated lake water levels can also have damaging environmental consequences, drowning the aquatic plants vital to lake fishing grounds.

The Amy Corps is in the midst of a decades-long, multibillion-dollar effort to strengthen the lake's dike.

The Corps in October completed the initial 21-mile stretch of a reinforcing wall being built through the middle of the dike to help stop erosion. That took five years and more than $360 million and now the corps is working on a study, expected to last until 2014, aimed at determining how to proceed with upgrading the rest of the 143-mile-long dike.

Beyond fixing the dike, environmental advocates contend that jumpstarting the reservoirs and water treatment areas envisioned for state and federal Everglades restoration efforts would help the lake and protect the estuaries.

"We have got to find a permanent solution," Abood said. "Move the water south the way Mother Nature intended."

-By By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel

"Eve Samples: St. Lucie River gets dumped on again" @TCPalm

Enough fresh water to fill more than 900 Olympic-size swimming pools every day started gushing into the St. Lucie River last week.

The water — arriving from Lake Okeechobee via the St. Lucie Canal — is laden with pollutants. It is brown and foamy as it cascades through the St. Lucie Lock & Dam.

We can expect it to kill oysters and sea grasses. Depending on how long the Army Corps of Engineers continues the releases, it might trigger algae blooms and fish kills.

"It's easily the most frustrating aspect of the current system that the Army Corps operates, just because the estuary bears the brunt of it," said Kevin Powers, vice-chair of the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board.

There is no debating that the releases — which started Wednesday as the Army Corps tried to lower a rising Lake O — will hurt the already ailing St. Lucie River estuary.

What is still being debated, after decades of abuse, is where to focus efforts for a solution.

Allies of the Rivers Coalition, a diverse collection of advocates for the St. Lucie River, have been clear about what must happen.

"The true long-term fix for the next generation is for them to be able to move and store the water south," said Leon Abood, chairman of the group.

If he had a nickel for every time he made a statement like that, he'd be able to buy all the land needed to restore the natural flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades.

But the unwavering message has not forced the hands of those in power.

The Rivers Coalition has tried taking its battle to federal court. It has tried diplomacy with government agencies.

Neither approach has stopped the discharges into the St. Lucie River. On Thursday, 925 cubic feet of polluted water per second flowed through the St. Lucie Lock & Dam — less than what the Army Corps is allowed to send our way, but enough to cause damage.

Still hoping for a solution, the Rivers Coalition now intends to try its message on a new potential ally: the sugar farmers who control much of the land south of Lake Okeechobee.

"We don't have the political will to force it. We don't have the money to outspend them. We don't have the political influence to out-lobby them," Abood said. "So we've got to get them to the table."

Two representatives of the sugar industry — consultant Thomas MacVicar and David Goodlett of the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida — will join the Rivers Coalition at 11 a.m. Thursday for a public meeting at Stuart City Hall.

They're bound to get an earful from fed-up residents who are tired of the federal government propping up the sugar industry with subsidies while the St. Lucie River suffers.

"What we're looking to accomplish is to have them be frank and candid in their answers to specific questions involving the flow way south, involving cleaning up their own water, involving their support for a flow way concept," Abood said.

Abood and other members of the Rivers Coalition were hopeful about a flow way in 2008 when former Gov. Charlie Crist announced a deal to buy more than 180,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee from U.S. Sugar. That deal was dramatically scaled back after Gov. Rick Scott took office, though the South Florida Water Management District still has an option to buy the remaining 153,000 acres.

Powers, who is in the unique position of living on the St. Lucie River and sitting on the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board, is more focused on near-term projects than embracing the idea of a flow way.

He pointed to four things that, in combination, he believes could help the St. Lucie avoid at least some water from Lake Okeechobee:

Construction of the C-44 reservoir, which will capture local runoff in the St. Lucie Canal; rehabilitation of the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee's 140-mile perimeter, which might allow the lake to hold more water; restoration of the Kissimmee River north of the lake; and water-quality projects to the south.

"I would rather focus on things that we have an actual chance of doing," Powers said.

Abood said he agrees with Powers to a point. He supports those four projects — yet he and many others in the Rivers Coalition want the larger fix, too. They raised their voices together Wednesday night, when about 50 protesters from the River Kidz group gathered at the St. Lucie Lock & Dam to oppose the releases.

As Powers pointed out, Martin County's voices often get drowned out amid the competing interests jockeying for Florida's water supply.

"Martin County's at a huge disadvantage. It's got 140,000 residents. It's got 100,000 voters," Powers said. "There's 5 million people in the counties south of us. Who do you think has a louder voice?"

-By Eve Samples

Broward, cities face deadline on #Everglades levee agreement - @MiamiHerald #water #eco

 

 
Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel

By Andy Reid

Sun Sentinel

The clock is officially ticking on repairs needed to upgrade the levee that keeps the Everglades from flooding Broward and Palm Beach counties.

February triggered the start of the South Florida Water Management District’s two-year window to fix the Broward section of the East Coast Protective Levee, which falls short of federal safety standards.

The district, Broward County and eight western cities now have three months to finalize an agreement aimed at getting the levee up to the standards of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Inspectors have also identified deficiencies in the Palm Beach County portion of the levee, which will be subject to its own FEMA review – also expected to require upgrades.

 

Read rest of article at: miamiherald.com