A New Plan for Managing Lake Okeechobee Water Shortages

摘要

Lake Okeechobee is considered the heart of the water resources system insouth Florida. The period 2000-2001 represented one of the worst droughts on recordthat the Lake, its tributary basins and its service areas have experienced. During the2000-2001 drought, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), incooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, managed water deliveries fromthe Lake for agricultural irrigation and urban consumptive use according to a previousdeveloped water allocation scheme, known as Supply Side Management (SSM). TheSSM methodology was developed, documented and applied during the previousdroughts. However, due mainly to growth in the system and increased number ofusers, application of the SSM guidelines during the 2000-2001 proved to be difficultand cumbersome, requiring day-to-day modifications to the methodology andextensive consultation with water users. By the end of 2001, drought conditions nolonger existed in the region and the SFWMD embarked on an investigation of severalnew methods to allocate Lake water to various users during periods of low Lakestages. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the previous SSM methodologyand the evolution of new methods that have been proposed and examined during2002-2006, to manage the Lake during water shortage conditions. The new selectedmethod, known as the Lake Okeechobee Water Shortage Management (LOWSM)plan is described in detail, together with a comparison of its performance to theprevious SSM methodology. The tool used to compare the performance of the twowater allocation methods is the South Florida Water Management Model, a regionalhydrologic simulation model, capable of continuously simulating south Florida'shydrology and the response of the system under different operational scenarios.