For me, writing a story is like painting my living room. If I'm careful, if I lay down plastic, apply tape to the baseboards and crown molding, undercoat first and carefully apply the best paint I can find, it's probably going to make me feel pretty good. But when I cut corners, skip any of those steps, I make a terrible mess.
That's what happened last week. I wrote a story and made a mess. Maybe you read "South Florida in Another Water Crisis Presses the Urgency of 'Legacy Florida' Bill." It was about the South Florida Water Management District's need to back-pump stormwater into Lake Okeechobee.
It wasn't until I saw and heard Mary Wilkerson, vice mayor of Belle Glade, speak heartbreakingly to the SFWMD's Water Resources Advisory Commission Thursday about the plight of the rain-inundated Glades communities that I realized, instead of making one more phone call, I had made a false assumption.
Take a minute to view Wilkerson's address to the commission in the video on the bottom of this page.
I wrote, "Only in the most dire emergencies is the South Florida Water Management District allowed to back-pump stormwater into Lake Okeechobee."
Not really.
Yes, it was a dire emergency. With Belle Glade and nearby communities facing potentially dramatic flooding, water managers used two pumps on the south side of Lake Okeechobee to reduce water levels in the adjacent canals, preventing significant urban flooding. And yes, the district always hopes that won't have to happen. "Though rare in frequency," says district spokesman Randy Smith, "the back-pumping efforts have protected the Glades families for decades." In other words, that's the plan.
The SFWMD has a plan for where flood waters in all 16 of its counties go.
I wrote, "Exactly what nobody wants: water pumped into the big lake before it's been cleaned of pollutants." That was misleading. I had assumed polluted water from the Everglades Agricultural Area was being sent directly into the lake.
No. Again, to make it perfectly clear: Only when Glades towns are flooded is the excess town flood water sent into the lake.
The rest of the media made the same assumption I did. Understandably, Wilkerson and the people of the Glades communities, who read the follow-up stories and angry comments among coastal residents, feared district officials might listen and end the back-pumping as a flood control measure. It wasn't so many generations ago, remember -- pre-Herbert Hoover Dike -- that these residents, their parents and grandparents suffered terrifying and deadly floods.
They remember. Most of the rest of us haven't got a clue.
Please, Wilkerson told state water managers, keep taking all possible measures to protect our residents, who depend on the SFWMD for their flood control safety. Hearing her plea shamed me into writing this.
Every citizen, not just the rich property holders along the Gulf and Atlantic -- every citizen who lives within the SFWMD has a right to flood protection.
They receive that protection and it works as it should.
There is more to say on this subject. Frankly, a lot more on placing the blame for all adverse water conditions on Lake Okeechobee releases, as Kevin Ruane, mayor of the city of Sanibel wrote in the Fort Myers News-Press. And I plan to say it. Stay tuned.
But for now, it's past time I fessed up and apologized for a sloppy job on a story that had unintended consequences in communities important in Florida's rich tapestry. They deserved better.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
