Ecosystem restoration group meets in Jensen Beach to discuss ways to save Everglades

JENSEN BEACH Pete Quasius walked out on the dock at Indian RiverSide Park on Tuesday and saw the bottom of the Indian River Lagoon.

"I was amazed," said Quasius, a director of the Snook Foundation as well as a lobbyist for the Audubon Society. "It comes from so many years living on the Caloosahatchee River."

Sand is a rare sight there because of water so dark you can barely see the black sediment bottom that flows from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee.

Back home in Fort Myers water churned by Tropical Storm Debby went over Quasius' seawall and onto his lawn, approaching his house.

The clear water in the Indian River Lagoon is unlikely to last much longer as Debby's heavy rain in north Florida makes its way down the Kissimmee River, through Lake Okeechobee and into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries, he said.

Quasius came to Jensen Beach for a meeting of about 40 people from government agencies and conservation groups.

Known as the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Working Group, they're exchanging ideas on how to reduce the amount of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee that gets into the two rivers.

They're looking for the right combination of reservoirs, water levels and flow rates to clean water before it reaches the estuaries or goes into the Everglades.

Tuesday's presentations were filled with charts, graphs, technical data and acronyms incomprehensible to most people who haven't been following the Everglades restoration and water quality improvement efforts.

The agency representatives hope to sort through all the possibilities and present its preliminary report in October 2013.

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Ecosystem restoration group meets in Jensen Beach to discuss ways to save Everglades