Negron to SFWMD: Lake Okeechobee reservoir should spread off state land if necessary

Florida Senate President Joe Negron wants state engineers to think outside the box and outside the "footprint" they're considering for a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee.

In particular, Negron wants the South Florida Water Management District to "consider using any additional land available (for the reservoir), if necessary."

At a public meeting Wednesday, district officials revealed modeling results showing how three options they've developed for the project meet the goal of significantly cutting harmful discharges of excess Lake O water to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.

More:Officials laud reservoir plan's effectiveness; critics want more

When combined with other projects already in the works, the project would "basically get rid of all small and moderate discharge events," said Walter Wilcox, the district's chief modeling engineer.

And in particularly heavy discharge years — such as the hurricane years of 2002 to 2005 — the flow would be reduced by about 45 percent, Wilcox said.

All three options would be built on land already owned by the state.

In a letter sent Thursday to district Executive Director Ernie Marks, Negron said he's concerned planning for the project "may be unnecessarily constrained by using a limited footprint."

The law Negron, a Stuart Republican, pushed through the Legislature last spring calls for the reservoir to be built on the 16,000-acre A-2 parcel south of the Everglades Agricultural Area and allows it to spread onto the adjacent A-2 parcel if necessary.

More: Fight for reservoir not over, Negron says

The law calling for the project, Negron wrote, "also emphasizes termination of leases, land swaps and land acquisition if additional land is necessary" to hold back enough water from the estuaries and clean it before it's sent south to Everglades National Park.

"If the district needs to be flexible with the footprint to put an effective reservoir plan into action, I hope it will consider using any additional land available, if necessary," Negron wrote.

Several people at Wednesday's meeting also asked the district to look at how the project could work if it was expanded onto some privately owned land the state could acquire.

But Matt Morrison, the district's head of federal policy and coordination, told them, "I'm not going to assume there's all this land available when we don't actually have that land. I can't make that assumption. ... If someone comes forward (with an offer to sell or swap land), we'll evaluate that as an option."

Ray Palmer, the district's real estate manager, said Wednesday his department has been "very aggressive" in seeking land from private landowners, but "we've not gotten a lot of yeses."

The reservoir law does not allow the state to take land for the project by eminent domain.

"What I hope to see from the district is a proposal that is workable, that we can make a reality as expeditiously as possible to decrease the need for harmful discharges to the estuaries," Negron wrote.

Negron's original plan for the reservoir called for buying up to 60,000 acres of farmland south of Lake O for the reservoir. Residents and businesses south of the lake vehemently opposed the plan, saying taking land out of production would kill jobs.

More:Don't ask us to lose jobs to stop discharges, Glades leaders say

Marks and other district officials were in a board meeting Thursday afternoon and could not be reached for comment.