TC PALM: Written by Mark Perry. February 28, 2018.
Discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee totaled 832 billion gallons in 2017. The majority of those discharges, 650 billion gallons, went east and west causing massive environmental destruction to the northern coastal estuaries: the St. Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon and the Caloosahatchee River.
Billions of gallons of precious freshwater resources were dumped to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Of the 182 billion gallons of lake water that went south, the Everglades Agricultural Area used 142 billion gallons for irrigation and only 39 billion gallons went south to the Everglades.