Water Managers Chose Immediate Harm for Caloosahatchee, Rather than Risk Future Water Rationing for Agriculture

The Caloosahatchee Estuary is a vibrant, brackish system, the primary westward outlet for Lake Okeechobee water. It is also an example of one of the most pernicious challenges of Everglades Restoration: too much water when it isn’t needed, and too little water when it is. Oysters, seagrasses, and other estuarine species depend upon a healthy range of salinity.

Lake Okeechobee releases during times of high rainfall rapidly force salinity levels harmfully low, and during droughts, like those experienced this year, the opposite problem occurs. Reduced freshwater flows allow salinity levels to spike, and when those conditions persist, the system sustains lasting damage.

In the long term, this will be addressed by expanding water storage and treatment capacity to hold water when there is too much for the estuary and deliver more when it needs it.

In the short-term, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) struggle to balance the water needs of agricultural interests south of the lake with the water needs of the Caloosahatchee Estuary. The lake’s water management plan, LOSOM, prescribes flow levels aimed to balance both interests. Unfortunately, this spring the Corps, at the request of the SFWMD, did not provide the flows to the Caloosahatchee prescribed by LOSOM. Instead, fearing prolonged drought that might reduce water availability for agriculture, the agencies implemented harmful flow reductions, causing the estuary to suffer a “Minimum Flow exceedance” — harm that will require years of recovery.

As we approach the end of the dry season, the water shortage feared by the agencies has not materialized, and the harm to the Caloosahatchee and its ecology was for naught.

Audubon continues to call for water for the environment to receive equal consideration with agricultural use, ensuring that ecological systems are not forced to bear harmful reductions unless other water users are also required to cut back their use.

Until the system can store and move water more naturally, and until agencies prioritize water for environmental stewardship equally to human needs, our natural systems will continue to bear the consequences of this imbalance.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2026 State of the Everglades Report.