Lake Okeechobee Lunacy: Stuart City Commission Wants Government to 'Take' Private Land

When you're rich and righteous and "egged on by a witch hunt by the liberal Stuart News," you believe God wants you to "take" land. Apparently.

Whatever you need. Take it.

That's how it appears in Stuart, where hysteria so gripped the Stuart City Commission at its last meeting that it voted to ask government agencies to seize huge tracts of private land owned by sugar and agricultural farmers so it can be flooded to relieve estuary pollution.

Stuart wants the land for a flow-way so tainted water from a full Lake Okeechobee can be discharged south over hundreds of thousands of private acres owned by sugar, citrus and agricultural farmers large and small.Only problem is, there's no flow-way. Just the thousands of people, ordinary rural Floridians, living in small towns in the Everglades whose generations-old way of life would be ruined.

John Smith of BizPacReview has written a blistering editiorial, not only on the sanctity of private property rights as they are enumerated in the Constitution, but "that Martin County politicians and eco extremists want to fix their dirty water problem by flooding out farming in other counties."

Smith saysthe harm to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries was not caused by farming south of the big lake. It was caused by heavy rainfall into the water system south from Orlando. And by the dirty stormwater and hundreds of thousands of septic tanks that account for more than 95 percent of the water volume and 95 percent of the phosphorous in the lake.

Smith says every state and federal agency involved in restoration has reviewed the science and technical aspects of a southern flow-way from Lake Okeechobee, and reached these conclusions:

• The system has been changed too dramatically for the water to flow south naturally.
• There are many other projects that provide more benefits to more parts of the system.
• During average to dry years, a flow-way would drain the water system, harming the conservation areas and Everglades Park.
• During wet years, like 2013, the entire system south of Lake O would be full of water, destroying farming communities and providing very little relief to the estuaries.

As Smith points out, the toxic green algae and sediment-laden water won't go away by dumping it in someone else's backyard or confiscating land. The people of Stuart should demand more thought, better attention and real solutions to a tragic problem -- not only from their City Commission but from their newspaper.