Bad Water
Florida takes the top spot for nation’s most polluted lakes and streams ARTICLE COURTESY OF: Florida…
Lake Okeechobee Pollution
Emily Reisinger, Contributing WriterApril 6, 2023 ARTICLE COURTESY OF THE WAVE The majority of Floridians are…
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to start harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges on December 7, with no end in sight. These releases, which could last until June 1, will bring polluted water and sediment to the fragile northern estuaries that have already suffered this wet season, on top of years of abuse. READ THE FULL ARTICLE...
Florida Department of Agriculture
ARTICLE COURTESY OF: ABC Action News Florida Department of Agriculture Pushes Water Polluters to Clean Up MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing pouring millions of dollars into combating Florida’s water quality crisis in the new year, as the state recovers from rounds of red tide and other harmful algae blooms. By: Kylie…
Everglades Cleanup
As U.S. Sugar quietly expands north of Lake Okeechobee, environmentalists fear that the Everglades cleanup is losing out to farming. ARTICLE COURTESY OF: FLORIDA BULLDOG Cane fields in the backdrop at U.S. Sugar’s Area 7 site off State Road 621 east of Lake Istopkoga in Highlands County. The sugar grower has leased about 14,000 acres…
SWFL WATER CLEANUP
New water SWFL water cleanup project aims to improve the health of SWFL water systems. ARTICLE COURSTESY OF: WINK NEWS The South Florida Water Management District announced a new water quality project to protect Lake Okeechobee and our coast. The plan is to clean water before it enters the lake. The project will use wetlands…
The Florida Vacation Store is a Proud Sponsor of Lake Okeechobee Pollution!
Lake Okeechobee is the largest freshwater lake in the U.S. state of Florida. It is the tenth-largest natural freshwater lake among the 50 states of the United States and the second-largest natural freshwater lake contained entirely within the contiguous 48 states, after Lake Michigan. Lake Okeechobee Pollution is a serious problem today and for future generations.
LAKE OKEECHOBEE – Courtesy of Wikipedia
Okeechobee covers 730 square miles (1,900 km2) and is exceptionally shallow for a lake of its size, with an average depth of only 9 feet (2.7 meters). It is not only the largest lake in Florida or the largest lake in the southeast United States, but it is too large to see across. The Kissimmee River, located directly north of Lake Okeechobee, is the lake’s primary source. The lake is divided between Glades, Okeechobee, Martin, Palm Beach and Hendry counties. All five counties meet at one point near the center of the lake.
HISTORY
The earliest recorded people to have lived around the lake were the Calusa. They called the lake Mayaimi, meaning “big water”, as reported in the 16th century, by Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda. The name Okeechobee comes from the Hitchiti words oki (water) and chubi (big). Slightly later in the 16th century, René Goulaine de Laudonnière reported hearing about a large freshwater lake in southern Florida called Serrope. By the 18th century the largely mythical lake was known to British mapmakers and chroniclers by the Spanish name Laguna de Espiritu Santo. In the early 19th century it was known as Mayacco Lake or Lake Mayaca after the Mayaca people, originally from the upper reaches of the St. Johns River, who moved near the lake in the early 18th century. The modern Port Mayaca on the east side of the lake preserves that name.
On the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee, three islands—Kreamer, Ritta, and Torey—were once settled by early pioneers. These settlements had a general store, post office, school, and town elections. Farming was the main vocation. The fertile land was challenging to farm because of the muddy muck. Over the first half of the twentieth century, farmers used agricultural tools—including tractors—to farm in the muck. By the 1960s, all of these settlements were abandoned.
