Will this STA become just another tool for cleaning up sugarcane pollution?

Friends of the Everglades is on high alert after learning how state and federal water managers intend to use the A-2 Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) — a crucial component of the $4 billion EAA Reservoir project. 

Much political fanfare surrounds this 6,500-acre man-made marsh, which was billed to the public as a remedy for harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges that are dumped on the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and Lake Worth Lagoon. Just six months ago Gov. Ron DeSantis attended a ribbon-cutting for the project and touted its benefits: 

“When I signed our executive order when I first took office back in 2019, we called on the district here in South Florida to expedite construction of the EAA Reservoir Project Stormwater Treatment Area,” DeSantis said (starting at the 8:58 mark in this video embedded here). “This is because we want to send more clean water south, and we need the infrastructure to be able to do it.” 

Now, though, we have learned the A-2 STA will do nothing to send more clean water south — not if water managers move forward with operations proposed at a July 31, 2024, meeting hosted by the Army Corps of Engineers. Instead, it would be yet another taxpayer-funded treatment marsh for sugarcane runoff.

That’s not how the project was sold to Floridians, and it’s not acceptable. That’s why we’re insisting on a different approach.

In a letter sent Aug. 13, 2024, to the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), Friends of the Everglades rejected the current proposals for operating the A-2 STA, which fall short of the original environmental goals.

The A-2 STA was supposed to increase the capacity to clean water flowing from Lake Okeechobee before it reaches the Everglades, helping to reduce harmful discharges into the northern estuaries. However, the proposed alternatives do not meet this expectation. Instead of using the new A-2 STA to increase volumes  of clean water flowing south, the water is being redirected from existing stormwater treatment areas, negating the additional capacity for Lake O water that the A-2 STA was envisioned to provide. This raises critical questions of whether or not the current STAs are capable of meeting water quality standards for phosphorus, as SFWMD has claimed.

Under the proposed operations unveiled July 31, the A-2 STA would end up treating polluted runoff from agricultural areas, particularly sugarcane fields, rather than focusing solely on Lake Okeechobee water. This is not what the public was promised when the EAA Reservoir and A-2 STA project was first introduced, following a string of lost summers and toxic-algae crises in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and Lake Worth Lagoon.

In light of this, Friends of the Everglades is calling on the Army Corps of Engineers and SFWMD to correct the course while there’s still time. These agencies should focus on using the new A-2 STA to divert harmful discharges away from the northern estuaries, ensuring the water is properly treated before being sent to the Everglades. This would better align with the project’s original goals and truly benefit the environment.

This latest shortcoming provides more proof that the lasting solutions must involve the acquisition of more land in the EAA to reconnect the River of Grass. Friends of the Everglades remains committed to ensuring that the A-2 STA lives up to its potential to relieve the northern estuaries and restore flows to the Everglades, rather than just becoming another tool for managing existing pollution from sugarcane production.