I missed this in the paper. Guess I was too busy enjoying the Lake at its present level:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-lake-okeechobee-releases-resume-20111217,0,4248319.story

It's only for seven days and it looks like it started already. Hope it isn't as drastic as last year's releases. I would think the agricultural releases would be started soon also. Hope it can stay 12+

Iv been monitoring the levels, its slowly coming down which is normal for this time of year.

I doubt we will have a dry summer like last year.

The Army Corps you can't lose or win. If they don't drain it enough and we have an unusually wet season then who is to blame if the dike fails, if they drain it too much and then we have a drought its a bad scenario as well. Its funny that they tick off the St. Lucie River environmental advocates when they drain the nutrient rich freshwater killing off estuaries, but make Caloosahatchee better by keeping the salt out. I wish they would shift the burden to the farmers by making them have their own water storage solutions and just worry about restoring the natural balance the ecosystem needs as much as humanely possible.

Nevertheless, I hope that they can keep it above 12.5 also, but I am not keeping my fingers crossed, since the weather experts can't even make accurate predictions on wind forecast 6 hours in advance.

I dont think theres much to worry about here. At current levels, lake O has ~19B sq ft surface area. A 290M gallon drawdown = 38.8M cu ft removed. Assuming constant depth (not completely valid, I know), a 290M gallon draw down would result in a total linear decrease of 0.02ft. Accounting for non constant depth you can increase this number a little bit.

Unless, I misplaced a decimal somewhere, this draw should not harm the lake levels. The other draw down they were discussing, involved hundreds of Billions of gallons which would definately have a drastic effect.

What I don't understand is they are currently holding Kissimmee at least 6 ft above the river. I have never seen it this high in January.

What I don't understand is they are currently holding Kissimmee at least 6 ft above the river. I have never seen it this high in January.

I don't get that either.

During our drought there was tons of water up north.

But like South Fla eluded too the ACE cant win, its not as easy as everyone thinks, being in a profession that is constantly second guessed I kind of understand their problems and try to go easy on them.