A month-long hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades didn’t result in much of a haul, but scientists and outdoors experts say the data collected will be invaluable.

By CHARLES RABIN

crabin@miamiherald.com

“The data we’ll get will be unbelievable,” he said.

Stalking a Python: Florida’s wildlife agency is organizing its first python hunting competition. A group known as the Florida Python Hunters is out to win the challenge. Will it even catch one?

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: January 23, 2013

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles and crossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.

But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt is taking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red “man-van” (a well-lived-in Toyota Sienna) and a blue Prius (“You can’t beat the mileage,” says one).

And when they get lucky, they clamber down from their vehicles and snare enormous Burmese pythons with their bare hands, shrugging off the inevitable bites.

Two of the hunters are brothers, reared in the swamps of Central Florida with eight other siblings. The third is a Utah native, now a Miami high school teacher, who met one of the brothers in the apartment building they share. They quickly discovered they have much in common — they are Mormons, for one thing, and not afraid of snakes, for another.

Theirs was truly a chance encounter, considering that pythons far outnumber snake-savvy Mormons in South Florida.

“We don’t hunt on the Sabbath,” declared Blake Russ, 24, a Florida International University student, as he peered out the open door of the man-van.

But on this day, the brothers are in it to win it. They have joined Florida’s “Python Challenge 2013,” the open-invitation contest organized by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. So frustrated are wildlife officials with the prolific Burmese pythons that on Jan. 12 they began a one-month python hunt in South Florida, opening it up to just about anybody over the age of 18. The hunt is taking place mostly on state land, not national park land, which is off limits.

The only requirement is that contestants must take a training course — online. A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the hunter who catches the longest snake and $1,500 to the one who “harvests” the most snakes. About 1,300 people have signed up.

The pythons, considered invasive and uninvited, arrived here as pets. After some escaped or were let loose by fed-up owners, they slithered toward marshy land, mostly in and around the Everglades. There, they snack regularly on native wading birds, gators, deer, bobcat, opossums, raccoons and rabbits. They breed easily, laying 8 to 100 eggs, depending on the size of the female.

Killing the snake is a requirement of the “Python Challenge,” and for this the event’s Web site suggests a firearm or a captive bolt (the slaughterhouse stunning tool used to chilling effect in the film “No Country for Old Men”). Chopping off the head is permissible, the Web site explains, but difficult, because the brain lives on (for a while). For decapitation, machetes are the state-recommended weapon.

“Regardless of the technique you choose, make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain,” the Web site states.

The task is daunting. Estimates of how many Burmese pythons live in the wild here range from 5,000 to more than 100,000.

“Do we really know?” asked Skip Snow, a wildlife biologist at Everglades National Park. “No. No, we don’t.”

The snakes are everywhere and nowhere. Catching them is easy. The pythons — which can stretch to 20 feet and more — are lazy. They dislike moving. They rarely travel. Instead, they wait out their prey and ambush it, sinking their teeth in to hold it in place while they wrap it up tight, suffocate it and swallow it whole, little by little.

It is finding them that will drain hunters of all patience and fortitude, until the clocks ticks down and it’s time for a beer, or, for the three hunters in their man-van, a roadside fruit shake. Because the snakes blend in with the yellowish, brownish brush here, they are almost as hard to find as a Glenn Beck fan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

“It’s like looking for a piece of camouflage,” said Devin Belliston, 26, the science teacher in the group.

Seeing just one “Burm” is enough to rev up a hunter for days.

“It’s like seeing Bigfoot,” said Bryan Russ, 35, Mr. Russ’s older brother, who once unleashed 30 garter snakes in an Idaho college dormitory. (He got kicked out of school, which he called a “great life lesson.”)

Mr. Belliston and Blake Russ make up part of a fivesome who call themselves the Florida Python Hunters. Founded by Ruben Ramirez, who has been catching snakes for 27 years, the five men are licensed to hunt pythons. They have an impressive success rate at spotting snakes, catching them with their hands and turning them over to state wildlife officials. Last year, Mr. Ramirez and George Brana nabbed an imposing 16-foot, 8-inch python. Mr. Russ and Mr. Belliston, who started python hunting in May, have caught 15 pythons since then.

“You grab them, and let them strike at you and strike at you until they wear themselves out,” said Blake Russ, who leaned out of the man-van as it rolled slowly near an abandoned mango orchard and a canal. His eyes scanned the edge of the grass. Nothing.

Once Blake rode a scooter to a hunt, his flip-flops planted firmly on the floorboard. He spotted a python, hopped off, wrangled it into a pillow case, hopped back on and sped away.

Studying the python lifestyle is critical to success. Hunters must know that the best time to find one is the morning after the temperature drops into the 60s or below. The snakes surface to warm up in the sun. They stay close to water, so canals and levies are a good bet. They like rock piles.

Most savvy hunters stick to gravel paths or roads that abut grassy areas with water nearby.

At night, especially in summer, the hunters “road cruise.” Pythons come out then, sometimes onto the asphalt, because it is cooler at night. Sound does not bother them.

When caught, “they squirt out a mixture of feces and urine,” Bryan Russ said. “It smells like musk, like wet dog. Ruben calls it, ‘The smell of success.’ ”

How many pythons have been caught in the competition’s first week? As of Tuesday, all of 27. Mr. Ramirez and his team have caught eight.

The men scoff at those machete-toting novices from out of state who have shown up in their python-hunting finery.

“This guy had brand new clothes, beautiful new boots,” Mr. Ramirez said, of a fellow he had spotted nearby. “He was standing there on the water’s edge. I was just waiting for a gator to take him and do a gator death roll.”

Their prediction: After a couple of days of tedium, “these guys, they’ll all be like, ‘I’m going to South Beach,’ ” Bryan Russ said.

But the Florida Python Hunters persist.

Spying a black clump on a patch of grass, Blake leapt from the man-van and scooped it up. The Everglades racer whipped around and bit him several times. “It’s like a pinch,” he said. Blood bubbled up.

Not quite a python, but for these hobby herpetologists, any snake is better than no snake.

“People should really know that this is what it’s like,” he said, referring to the success rate, not the blood.

By day’s end, the team’s python count was zero. Nothing but optimism prevailed. “We’re going out road cruising tonight,” Blake Russ said. “Do you want to come?”

If we’re serious about sending forth an army of gun-toting, beer-drinking, redneck snake-hunters to wade into the Everglades and eradicate the python hordes, we’re going to need more than a couple of piddling cash prizes.

We’ll need a queen.

Any officially sanctioned snake-killing frenzy worth a damn comes with a beauty contest. Apparently, girls in bathing attire, presumably of the snakeskin variety, are downright essential to a successful hunt.

So far, only about 400 contestants have signed up for South Florida’s “2013 Python Challenge,” which kicks off Saturday. Compare that to the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater (that’s the other Sweetwater) which brings in about 30,000 apparent lunatics every year to a dusty town in the middle of Texas with a population of not quite 11,000, where the only other tourist attraction is the National WASP Museum (for the women Army fliers, not the insects.) South Florida’s python shindig would need 18 million attendees just to keep pace, proportionately, with the festivities in Sweetwater.

What Sweetwater offers, along with the rattlesnake holocaust, is a Miss Snake Charmer, though the title is a bit of misnomer, given that pageant winners are required to decapitate a rattlesnake. I dug up this charming Associated Press quote from Laney Wallace, 16, Miss Snake Charmer circa 2011. “Tomorrow I get to skin snakes and chop their heads off. And I’m super excited about it.”

Go ahead with your snide Freudian analysis, but last year that giant posse of displaced Texas cowboys collected bounties on 1,700 pounds of rattlesnake redeemed at $5.50 a pound.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the hunter who brings in the longest python, and $1,500 for the fellow who bring in the most pythons. Of course, certain rules apply. No roadkill. No pets. “DON’T dismember pythons into more than two pieces or they will not qualify for the ‘longest snake’ category.”

Also, pythons must be dispatched humanely. Miss Snake Charmer would be disappointed, but Florida rules won’t allow decapitations. Gunshots to the head, however, will be okay. Also, “captive bolts,” a slaughterhouse instrument familiar to moviegoers as the killer’s favored weapon in No Country for Old Men. A special FWC online python challenge training course suggests: “To target the correct area, draw an imaginary line from the rear left of the head to the right eye, and then draw another line from the rear right of the head to the left eye. While one person is holding the snake in place, position the captive bolt where those lines intersect. The bolt must enter at a slight angle, not flush to the skull.”

Imagine some conscientious serpent hunter, trying to figure the prescribed humane angle while wrestling a 15-foot Burmese python in two feet of black swamp water. No, this particular snake extravaganza will be all about gunplay. If the hunters can find something to shoot.

Apparently, the idea of a python hunt came out of the governor’s office, where it was conceived as a “market driven” solution to a fast-breeding exotic that’s caused considerable damage to native wading bird and small mammal populations. (Instead of, say, pushing Congress to ban the importation of exotic reptiles.)

But Michael Dorcas, a herpetology researcher, author of I nvasive Pythons in the United States and an expert in these stealthy exotics, suggested Monday that the marketplace may seem a little bare. “The one thing I know about these snakes,” said Dorcas, who knows everything about these snakes, “is that they’re very difficult to find.” Dorcas said that Burmese pythons are so secretive and so well camouflaged, “we’ve walked right past a 15-foot python without seeing it.”

He said the snakes range across thousands of square kilometers of southern Florida, most of that habitat away from roads and canals and nearly inaccessible to most hunters. “Probably, some pythons will be removed, but the damage to the overall population will be minimal.”

Dorcas worries more about unintended consequences to other populations, including humans. The Sun-Sentinel reported that hunters from 17 states have signed up for the month-long python chase. They’ll be coming into unfamiliar terrain, laden with poisonous native snakes, underwater limestone holes and other local hazards. The required 30-minute online training course seems a bit inadequate.

Dorcas is more worried about native snakes, likely to be scarfed up by frustrated python hunters, ready to blast away at any reticulated reptile that happens their way. Saturday could be a very bad day to be a brown water snake caught out without proper identification.

Ironically, the Rick Scott Python Challenge comes the same year that the famous Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Ga., immortalized in the Harry Crews novel Feast of Snakes, stopped rounding up snakes. Wildlife officials noticed that the hunters had been pouring kerosene down tortoise burrows, setting them alight and catching the panicked snakes as they escaped. Several hundred other species also resided in those burned-out turtle abodes. Meanwhile, the Eastern rattlesnake has neared extinction. So this year, the roundup became a non-lethal wildlife celebration.

Texans, of course, don’t care much about biodiversity and the relative value of venomous native snakes. Rattlesnake hunts persist, guilt free. Maybe some of the promotional ideas that make these Texas hunts so damn successful might be worth emulating in python-plagued Florida. For instance, in Brownsville, home of the Brownsville Rattlesnake Roundup, locals distinguish themselves from the crazies in Sweetwater by devouring the still-beating hearts of freshly killed rattlesnakes. “They’re little-bitty. You don’t really chew them up. You just put them in your mouth and swallow them,” a festival organizer explained to BigCountry.com, an Abilene, Texas, news website.

A first-time taster compared rattlesnake heart to “eating a slug….. It sure doesn’t taste like chicken.”

Who knows if the still-beating heart of a Burmese python heart in South Florida would have the same gourmet appeal as a west Texas rattlesnake? No, what we need is a queen, Miss Python Challenge 2013.

With a little luck, she’ll be as adept at public relations and reptile dissection as Miss Snake Charmer Laney Wallace, who didn’t slither away from her queenly duties. “You have to make sure you don’t pop the bladder,” she warned. “That’s a huge mess.”

By Fred Grimm

Saving Florida’s riversOUR OPINION: Urgent task can no longer be postponed

By The Miami Herald Editorial

HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

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.

Letter: My governments have killed my St. Lucie River

The South Florida Water Management District announced more releases of Lake Okeechobee into our already stressed and filthy St. Lucie River.

This amazing estuary is home to hundreds of species and serves as a nursery for ocean species as well. So why has our government killed our river?

No politicians on a state or national level have done anything to stop this massive destruction, essentially taking the river, and the life it should sustain, away from me, you, and our children.

With all the talk these days of the economy, politicians and candidates choose to ignore the importance of a healthy river to our community and its members who make their living from it in so many ways.

I wonder if our politicians have been fishing here, paddle boarding, pulled their kids tubing or skiing, or looked for hermit crabs on the banks of our river.

I also wonder how much they've received in campaign contributions from Big Sugar, an industry catered to by our government, one with little interest in clean estuaries.

How is it that the state of Florida could fast-track millions of dollars to help a company make movies, yet they somehow can't come up with any money for Everglades restoration?

It's heartbreaking to watch the Army Corps of Engineers and water district destroy what they should be protecting. My government has killed my river, and I am angry.

-TCPalm

Black skimmers gather on the sand's edge on Lanark Reef this week. The mostly submerged island is a haven for nesting sea and shore birds, as well as migratory and wintering species. / Jennifer Portman/Democrat

 LANARK REEF — After decades of worry by conservationists about the future of one of Florida’s most important destinations for nesting and migrating sea and shorebirds, this fragile strip of sand flats and sea oats is now entirely in safe hands.

Audubon Florida announced this week it has purchased the last privately held parcel on the low-lying reef located in the Gulf of Mexico less than a mile south of Lanark Village.

Lanark Reef is an avian hotspot. It is home to the largest of the Panhandles’ four brown pelican rookeries, and supports large numbers of nesting shorebirds, including black skimmers, willets and the American Oystercatcher, which is a threatened species in Florida. The reef is considered an “Important Bird Area” by Audubon, and is designed a critical habitat for the Piping Plover by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. More than 250 species of birds use the reef for spring and summer nesting and as a stopping point for winter migration.

“Lanark Reef is one of the most important breeding, wintering and migratory sites for coastal birds in the state of Florida,” Julie Wraithmell, Audubon Florida’s Director of Wildlife Conservation told the Tallahassee Democrat on a trip to the reef this week. “It’s a bird factory.”

The purchase was completed quietly last month, when the nonprofit paid $33,000 to Premier Bank, which acquired the property in 2011 from Tallahassee developer Hurley Booth. Though large areas of the six-mile long reef are submerged at high tide, the state in the 1950s conveyed parts of the island that mostly remain dry into private ownership. Booth had the title to the remaining 1.7-acre parcel for about a decade and five years ago sought to build home sites on the narrow swath of sand. The submerged lands of the reef are owned by the state.

The scant dry land, however, is not zoned for development of any kind and is not part of Franklin County’s land use map, said director of Administrative Services Alan Pierce. While permits for several septic tanks were granted by a county department in 2007, Pierce said the county turned down Hurley’s request to build seven homes on the reef.

“We said no, it’s not land that can be suited for development,” Pierce said. “It’s just a sandbar as far as we are concerned.”

Audubon Florida purchased the land from the bank with money provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation from the sale of recovered oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Private donations from around the nation also contributed toward the purchase and ongoing management of the reef.

“There is something fitting about using that money,” Wraithmell said of the recovered oil funding.

John Himes, northwest regional biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said he is glad the reef now will be protected. Not only does it provide nursery and resting grounds for threatened and endangered sea and shore birds, it is also home to the diamond back terrapin, a rare salt marsh turtle.

“It is a really important area,” he said, pointing out its obvious shortcomings for residential development as it is frequently washed over during storms. “It’s not like we are taking anything away from anyone.”

As ill-suited as the reef is for human habitation, it is ideal for the many bird species that flock there. In the spring and summer, thousands of birds crowd its uplands free from the threat of mammal predators such as racoons and coyotes. Its relative remoteness discourages harmful disturbances by people and pets.

“Our coasts are home to species of birds that live their entire lives in this dramatic landscape of sand and wind and salt,” Wraithmell said. “Even though you think they’d be really tough, in fact they are very vulnerable.”

The nests and eggs of many nesting shorebirds are camouflaged and easily destroyed by even the most well-meaning human contact. While the reef is safely viewed up close from a boat, people are encouraged to not walk on the islands. Stepping on the island causes birds to leave their nests, leaving their young vulnerable to predatory birds or the hot sun.

“People don’t know the harm they can cause,” Wraithmell said. “There is this tendency to say, ‘It’s just this once,’ but once is enough to do damage.”

Himes said looking at the birds is fine “as long as you keep your distance.” The place is a bird sanctuary.

Though the notion of houses on the small spits of sand seems improbable, Wraithmell said private ownership was still a risk.

“Unfortunately, in the current times, I’m not sure what I would put off the table,” she said.

Wraithmell said acquiring the land is just the beginning of protecting it for the future. Audubon Florida plans to work with the state to develop a management plan for the entire reef.

“Everyone has to take responsibility for keeping this place as special as it is,” she said. “Wildlife brings so much to our quality of life. It’s a big part of what Florida is. We’ve got a chance up here to hold on to it. There is no time to lose.”

Gail Phillips, an Audubon volunteer and nearby Gulf Terrace resident whose home looks out on the reef, is pleased it will now be protected and managed in a consistent way.

“I am absolutely thrilled,” Phillips said. “It’s a hidden jewel.”

-By Jennifer Portman

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam on Wednesday outlined what he called the "hard economic truths facing Florida agriculture" including the need for a "smart" immigration policy, dealing with invasive animals and plant diseases, improving Florida seaports to gain new overseas markets and ensuring future water supplies.

"These (issues) aren't separate silos," Putnam said during a speech to the Economic Club of Florida. "The future of agriculture and the future of Florida are entwined."

"Agriculture is present on two-thirds of the acreage of our state," he continued. "If that goes away, what replaces it that's better than what we have --Citrus groves along highway 27, the magnificent pine forests up and down I-10.

"What replaces that -- that gives you the same economic value, the same tax base stability and the same quality of life issues? Chances are it's not better than what you have right now in terms of a vibrant agriculture industry."

Florida's agriculture industry produces $100 billion in sales annually and provides 1 million jobs, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The agriculture commissioner said he views child nutrition as an economic issue because the state every year spends $1 billion on school nutrition programs with four million meals served each day. Taxpayers are helping pay for many free and reduced cost meals as well as the health care costs resulting from poor diets.

"If we are content to serve Tater Tots and ketchup and call it a starch and a vegetable, we will pay the economic consequences of doing that," he said.

Putnam said he has about 50 people now in Hialeah, Kendall and West Miami looking for the giant African land snails that can eat almost anything including the stucco off homes. Agriculture must factor for the increased threat from foreign species and agricultural diseases.

"When there is a breakdown at the federal government level at an airport or seaport it is frequently the state taxpayers who are asked to pick up the tab and clean up the mess," he said.

The planned widening of the Panama Canal, he said, could be a boost for Florida agriculture. He said the port could bring consumer products that now are unloaded from ships in California to Florida if the state is ready. And those ships could return with Florida agricultural products.

He also said a smart immigration policy is needed the "best human capital" from around the world to fill employment gaps.

"The simple fact is if we want to be a free nation that can feed itself and not be as dependent on others as we are for our fuel, we need that stable legal workforce," he said.

The biggest long-term economic challenge facing agriculture and the state, he said, is water. He said the lack of water flowing from federal reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River is having "devastating" consequences for oystermen and the seafood industry at Apalachicola Bay.

Water supply, he said, must be a substantial component of state programs in the future the way land acquisition has been in recent decades.

"It is that connection to the water," he said, "that not only gives us an identity but gives us the economic foundation for everything that flows from it."

With rainfall at a record pace in some places, water managers are struggling to lower water levels in Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.

From Lake Okeechobee to the marshes of the Everglades, South Florida has been saturated by what is shaping up as the wettest of wet seasons.

Water managers are struggling to deal with high-water concerns across a region left brimming by Tropical Storm Isaac and stubbornly steady storms that have followed in its drenching wake. Some spots are on pace for the rainiest year on record, with Miami leading the list at 79.51 inches through September.

On Wednesday, federal engineers ordered the drainage gates cranked open even wider on Lake Okeechobee, where water levels have climbed nearly a half-foot despite two weeks of release intended to slowly lower them. The decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to double the flow is primarily intended to ease pressure on the aging and leaky flood-control dike that rings the massive lake, but it will have a side-effect of pouring billions of gallons of polluted water into sensitive river estuaries on both coasts.

In the swollen marshes of the Central Everglades north of the Tamiami Trail, there are no similar relief-valve options to help deer and other wildlife, which have already spent the last month mostly confined to levees and small tree islands, shrinking swaths of high ground where starvation from dwindling food supplies, and diseases like hoof rot, are a growing threat.

Even without more rain, it could take another three weeks to a month for the water to drop to normal seasonal levels, said Michael Anderson, regional wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Quite frankly, after about 30 days, they start to run out of groceries on the islands and we start to see impacts,’’ Anderson said.

The Corps’ initial effort to lower the massive lake has already dumped more than 11 billion gallons of freshwater laced with high levels of farm chemicals and nutrients into the St. Lucie River on the east coast and the Caloosahatchee River on the west coast. Similar but much larger dumps after hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 destroyed oyster beds and sea grass, and triggered massive foul fish-killing algae blooms.

But with two months still left in hurricane season and plenty of rain remaining in the forecast, the Corps’ lake managers said they had little choice but to accelerate the damaging releases.

“We just haven’t seen the results we wanted since we started,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Greco, the Corps’ deputy commander for South Florida.

Under the Corps’ management plan, the water level in Lake Okeechobee is supposed to stay between 12.5 feet and 15.5 feet above sea level, rising and falling with seasonal rain. It stood at 15.69 feet on Wednesday.

That’s still well short of the 17-foot level where engineers begin to worry about the integrity of its aging dike, which has sprung leaks during past hurricanes and is undergoing repairs that will take years. But a tropical storm like Isaac can quickly drive up lake levels by two or three feet, which would raise the risk of a potentially catastrophic failure.

The lake has to come down and the Everglades are already too full to send water there, Greco said.

State and federal water managers say they are doing the best they can do with an outmoded and overwhelmed flood-control system that operates under sometimes conflicting regulations to protect suburbs, farms and the Everglades from excessive flooding. A string of Everglades restoration projects, starting with a bridge along Tamiami Trail expected to be completed next year, promises to resolve many of the issues and eventually allow more water to flow south into Everglades National Park. But it could take a decade or more for enough of the projects to come on line to make a significant difference.

For now, water managers are diverting as much water as they can out of the biggest troubles spots in the Everglades — the marshy water conservation areas bordering Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — and sending it down canals into southern Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. State wildlife managers also have temporarily restricted public access to flooded portions of the Everglades and the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area to ease stress on stranded wildlife.

Flooding decimated the Glades’ population of white-tailed deer in 1982 and 1995, knocking the herd from thousands to hundreds, and killed countless smaller animals that rely on high, dry tree islands for food and shelter.

The FWC’s Anderson said he doesn’t expect that level of loss this time around, barring another major storm, which could keep water levels high even longer.

According to the South Florida Water Management District, which runs the flood control system from Orlando to Key West, seasonal rainfall is running about 114 percent above normal with an average of 37.53 inches across 16 counties.

But some areas have been hit harder than others, with the district showing eastern Broward County experiencing the wettest April through September since 1955, with more than 44 inches of rain — more than nine inches above average. Eastern Miami-Dade has been even wetter, with nearly 50 inches of rain — 13.22 inches above average.

At the official rainfall gauges maintained by the National Weather Service, Miami is on pace to record its wettest year ever, with 79.51 inches measured at Miami International Airport through September. The annual record for that site is 89.33 inches in 1959. The Redland, with 72.69 inches, and Homestead, with 67.58 inches, also are on pace for the wettest years on record. Fort Lauderdale’s Dixie water plant, with 69.24 inches, is the second wettest mark through September on record.

-By CURTIS MORGAN

STUART — Several Martin County commissioners and residents Tuesday blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to release polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie Estuary.

Releases of polluted water from the lake have historically harmed fish, sea grasses and other wildlife and made it hazardous for people to swim in the estuary.

"I suspect it's going to get worse before it gets better," said Commissioner Sarah Heard. "They need to see what the consequences of those actions are. It's an unhappy, unenviable, unfair consequence."

The commissioners voted unanimously to ask the South Florida Water Management District, which helps the Army Corps manage the lake, to provide information needed to discuss the discharges with Army Corps officials.

The commissioners also agreed to invite Col. Alan M. Dodd, the commander of the Army Corps district that includes Florida, to visit Stuart to see the problems caused by the lake discharges.

In addition, the commissioners agreed to send news articles, photos and other information about the releases to federal lawmakers to show them the need for funding for the C-44 Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area, the Herbert Hoover Dike Rehabilitation and other related projects.

"It continues to rain, the forecast continues to be wet and we do have the releases going on now," said Deborah Drum, the county's manager of Ecosystem Restoration and Management.

The Army Corps began releasing water from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers on Sept. 19 as part of its efforts to manage the rising lake level so the dike is not compromised.

Commissioner Doug Smith expressed sentiments similar to Heard's.

"I've been here for five colonels now. They all seem to tend to think as they go into their new position that they've got everything under control," Smith said. "They need to come and see and understand what it really means to us locally because it does change their perspective instantly when they see it."

Jacqueline Trancynger, a civic activist from Jensen Beach, said she thinks the lake releases are the result of the South Florida sugar industry's extraordinary political power. Massive sugar cane fields are located south of the lake.

Some observers think the sugar industry uses its wealth and political influence to block efforts to restore the historic flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south to the Everglades.

"It is certainly not a lack of the understanding of environmental facts that is causing the Army Corps to release water from the lake, so that if it continues (it) will kill our rivers and our lagoon forever," Trancynger said. "Think Big Sugar and all of their money, much of which is earned by subsidies from my tax money in the first place."

-TCPalm