![]() On a morning jog in the city of Pahokee a few weeks ago, she kept at least 100 yards from the shoreline, and with good reason. But in recent years her relationship with the lake has soured. Star Robinson, 55, grew up playing in and around Okeechobee. Ian last year most likely dropped 10 percent more rain than would have been expected in a world without warming, researchers have said. Scientists say hurricanes are getting not only more powerful because of climate change, but also wetter. Yet critics worry it’s still not enough, particularly as the world keeps warming. Sunrise over Pahokee and Lake Okeechobee. The coming weeks will offer a serious test. Things get further complicated when lake levels climb so high that contaminated water must be released into canals - toward coastal cities like Fort Myers and Stuart - to protect the structural integrity of the 143-mile-long dike holding back the lake. Climate change is making storms and rainfall more intense and less predictable, and last fall Hurricane Ian stirred up so much phosphorus that this summer is expected to be particularly bad. But in recent summers the problem has become more dire. The Okeechobee mess, caused mainly by phosphorus-based agricultural fertilizers, festered out of the public consciousness for decades. Toxic algal blooms now regularly infest much of its 730-square-mile surface during the summer, producing fumes and waterborne poisons potent enough to kill pets that splash in the contaminated waters, or send their owners to the doctor from inhaling the toxins. Summer rains swelled the shallow inland sea, creating seasonal overflows that sustained the Everglades and its alligators, panthers, spoonbills and snail kites.īut a vast re-engineering over the past century has transformed Okeechobee into something life-threatening as much as life-giving. For thousands of years, Lake Okeechobee pumped life into Florida’s swampy interior.
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