Florida’s Lake Okeechobee has pumped life into the state’s swampy interior and sustained the Everglades and its alligators, panthers, spoonbills and snail kites.
But e-engineering over the past century has transformed Okeechobee into a bed of toxic algal blooms that now infest much of its 730-square-mile surface during the summer, producing fumes and waterborne poisons potent enough to kill pets that splash in the contaminated waters and send their owners to the doctor from inhaling the toxins.
The Okeechobee mess is caused mainly by phosphorus-based agricultural fertilizers.
Climate change is making storms and rainfall more intense and less predictable, and last fall Hurricane Ian stirred up so much phosphorus that this summer is expected to be particularly bad.
