Specifications

Section 5 Formulation of Alternative Plans
EAA Storage Reservoirs Revised Draft PIR and EIS February 2006
5-43
FIGURE 5-7: ECOLOGICAL BENEFITS FOR LAKE OKEECHOBEE.
The affected area for the lake is the littoral zone, which consists of
approximately 96,000 acres.
5.4.2.2.2 St. Lucie Estuary
The performance measure for the salinity envelope for the St. Lucie Estuary has
four targets dealing with flows into the estuary. The only target the Project does
not successfully reach is flows less than 350 cfs for at least 207 months out of the
36-year period of record, with a with-CERP score of 0.66. The model output did
show the Project has a significant benefit in regard to the number of regulatory
releases from Lake Okeechobee. This benefit is seen in Figure 5-8. As in Lake
Okeechobee, the benefits for Alternatives 2 and 3 are delayed compared to the
other alternatives. The saw tooth pattern depicted in all the alternatives,
including the future without project, is due to the periodic high regulatory
releases from Lake Okeechobee, which have detrimental effects on the estuary.
For the with-CERP analysis, this saw tooth pattern is combined with the onset
of other CERP water storage projects. Once all the CERP projects come on-line,
we expect no further detrimental regulatory releases from the lake. While this
project alone cannot achieve full restoration of the estuary, it does provide
significant improvement for the 922 affected acres by greatly reducing the
number of regulatory releases, which has shown to be damaging to the
submerged aquatic vegetation, oysters, fish, and other fauna within that habitat.