The St. Lucie River
Ecosystem Management Area

The St. Lucie River, located in Martin and St. Lucie counties, has been the focus of many individual restoration efforts for some time. Only recently, with increasing public awareness due to high occurrences of fish found with lesions, have these efforts really been linked. The problems facing this system include, but are not limited to, large regulatory releases of freshwater from Lake Okeechobee through the C-44 Canal, agricultural runoff, and increased stormwater associated with urban development.

 Since early 1998, local, state, regional and federal agencies, along with local citizens’ groups such as the St. Lucie River Initiative and the Rivers Coalition, have joined forces to begin to address critical water quality issues. This included the formation of the St. Lucie River Issue Team, under the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force. This team developed an extensive list of short term projects that if implemented would improve water quality in the estuary. These projects were ranked and passed along to the Governor’s Office and to the local legislative delegation.

Concurrently, the Department submitted the 1999-2000 budget request to the Governor’s Office. In this request, the Department asked for $15 million to pay for the top ranked projects in the St. Lucie River. It is hoped that with the local delegation’s support, this request will be granted and projects will begin mid 1999.

The short term projects were chosen to address local runoff issues. The team felt that the larger issues would be adequately addressed in the Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Restudy and the Indian River Lagoon Feasibility Study.

The projects could be broken down into four main types: stormwater retrofits, water storage areas, wetland restoration, and outreach/educational programs.

Examples include:

• Shoreline Stabilization in local canals to reduce sedimentation to the estuary

• Water Storage Areas for treatment and reuse of agricultural runoff

• Programs that promote environmentally friendly practices for urban and agricultural areas

• Local stormwater retrofits to hold and treat urban runoff

 

For additional information on the St. Lucie Estuary contact Greg Graves at (772)398-2806.