Sludge Watch ==> Florida - receding shoreline reveals toxic muck and treasure

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

With global warming and over allocated water (like the Colorado River, the 
Salton Sea)
these shrinking lakes can cause environmental havoc.

We need to treat water with respect.
.............................................................................................




Okeechobee's treasures and toxic muck
Archeologists gather clues to South Florida history as water managers work 
to clean up the sludge left by drought.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
July 19, 2007


LAKEPORT, FLA. — Conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas once famously 
grumbled that Lake Okeechobee, the liquid heart of her beloved Everglades, 
had been poisoned by man's careless disposal of "pesticides, fertilizer, 
dead cats and old boots."

She didn't know about the 1920s steamship, rusty anchors, tractor tires, 
fishing-boat motors, settlers' stovepipes, Native American tools and 
jewelry, and the bones of man and beast dating back thousands of years. All 
were hauled from the lake bottom this summer.

Drought has caused the second-largest freshwater lake in the United States 
to drop to its lowest level since recording began in 1932, and the 
shoreline's recession has exposed trinkets, treasures and trash from 
throughout the ages.

Archeologists and historians are excited by the potential insight into the 
little-known lives of South Florida's earliest inhabitants.

But the lake's shrinkage has also left a monumental cleanup headache: a 
bathtub ring of toxic sludge from dumped wastewater and the objects hurled 
in by hurricanes and litterbugs.

The slimy gray lining, if not a silver one, is that the drought has given 
water managers an opportunity to scoop out the muck and refresh the 
shoreline habitat for Okeechobee's flora and fauna.

In little more than two months, contractors with the South Florida Water 
Management District have hauled away 2 million cubic yards of sludge — 
enough to fill nine football stadiums from the field to the nosebleed seats, 
said Tom Debold, water district supervisor on the muck-removal project.

After the muck was scraped and temporarily stored in 20-foot-high mounds set 
back from the shore, scientists discovered that much of it contains 
excessive levels of arsenic from pesticides and fertilizers used until the 
1960s.

Water district and Army Corps of Engineers officials who maintain much of 
the lake's surrounding levee and its intricate network of canals, sluices 
and pumps had hoped to sell the excavated sludge to builders for landfill. 
But after analysis, they concluded that "it can't be used near any kind of 
housing facility," said Susan Gray, a biologist and deputy director of 
watershed management for the district.

The residential limit for arsenic in soil or fill is 2.1 milligrams per 
kilogram; the Okeechobee muck had as much as 9 milligrams per kilogram, Gray 
said. The concentration of arsenic, which cannot be treated or neutralized, 
is intensifying as water evaporates from the sludge and the desiccated piles 
compress. Removal of the muck has allowed fresh shoots of bulrush and tape 
grass to sprout and will improve the habitat for the bass and crappie that 
draw thousands of anglers to the lake each year.

Water quality isn't expected to radically improve, however. The amount of 
muck removed was estimated to be about 2% of what lines the bottom of the 
broad, shallow lake, said water district spokesman Randy Smith.

Plans to bury the contaminated muck in trenches inside the levee are pending 
environmental study and permits from the corps. The $11.4-million removal 
project was brought to an end by recent rain bursts that promise to begin 
refilling the lake from its historic low of 8.88 feet above sea level 
reached on July 1.

Work has just begun, though, for those poring over the artifacts pulled from 
the exposed shores.

"It's really amazing. We live on this Earth such a short time compared to 
the history that's in that lake," said George "Boots" Boyer, a tree farmer 
and environmental restoration activist from the lake's southeast cluster of 
towns and villages, called the Glades.

As he plied the lake's dredged channels on his airboat this spring, he 
spotted objects poking through the drying grasses and gray muck. He 
contacted historical preservation officials from the state and Palm Beach 
County. The officials have deployed fish and game wardens to protect the 
designated search sites from beachcombers and looters.

"There's spearheads and arrowheads and pendants made from conch shells. My 
favorite thing is an old catfishing boat," Boyer said of the 100-year-old 
vessel found fully intact when the water retreated.

Human remains and cultural objects have been mapped and left in place for 
the waters to reclaim them, whereas hundreds of artifacts such as handblown 
bottles, tools, hunting gear and adornments have been taken to state and 
county laboratories for cleaning and inspection.

"There's been a lot of things that look kind of neat, but I don't know what 
they are," said Jim Sheehan, who runs the Pahokee marina. "The archeologists 
say, 'Oh, that — that's a sloth tooth.' "

Palm Beach County archeologist Chris Davenport has two years to examine and 
catalog the implements and housewares found at 19 sites along the county's 
lakefront stretch, which includes the towns of Pahokee, Belle Glade and 
South Bay.

One of the artifacts, a spearhead, could be 8,000 years old, Davenport said, 
and human remains appear to date back 2,000 years.

"We know the first Native Americans in this area were not the Seminoles. The 
first ones died out before contact [with European explorers], so we don't 
really even know what they called themselves," the archeologist said.

He believes most of the lake-bottom objects will qualify the Glades' 
discovery sites for the National Register of Historic Places.

Aside from soda cans and plastic bottles, surprisingly little "modern 
debris" was found, Davenport said, crediting the levee with keeping out the 
shopping carts, broken appliances and wrecked cars that litter more 
accessible bodies of water.

The Glades' descendants of the first white settlers on Okeechobee's shores 
want the artifacts returned to their area once the archeological evaluation 
is completed. They plan to display them in a new museum being built in 
Pahokee to replace the one damaged, like many buildings in the city of 
6,500, by Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

"This is a very unique area in the United States, let alone Florida, and 
people have no idea about us," said Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser, recounting 
the Glades' Indian heritage and the waves of settlers that began rolling 
into the Everglades in the late 18th century.

White settlers from the industrialized Northeast, blacks who left behind 
Southern plantations to till their own land, Arabs who brought foreign 
trade, Cubans who came to plant sugar cane after Fidel Castro nationalized 
his nation's farmlands, Filipinos who came to staff the hospital, and the 
Latin American and Caribbean migrants who harvested the crops have all left 
their mark on the region, said Sasser.

"We want to have enough of the stuff from the lake to show this history," 
the mayor said.

--http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lake19jul19,1,1305309.story?coll=la-headlines-nation