The water around Sanibel may look pristine – all turquoise clarity and sunlit shallows – but under the surface, a slow die-off is underway: tape grass browning, oysters gaping, fish fleeing upriver.
Environmental advocates are urging the public to petition water managers to increase freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee. In a charge led by the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, they say prolonged low flows are hurting the system and risking long-term ecological harm, calling it a “disaster that is currently unfolding beneath the surface.”
This is despite a new half-billion-dollar reservoir intended to help with just this sort of problem. While technically operational following a ribbon-cutting last July, the C-43 reservoir in Hendry County is not yet open for business. It’s still in “its planned initial fill and testing phase, which is the standard operational process for projects of this scale,” wrote South Florida Water Management District spokesman Jason Schultz in an email…