Best management practices for water quality improvement in the Lake Okeechobee watershed

A significant amount of work has been done in the Okeechobee/Everglades Dept., in south central Florida to understand and control the nutrient inputs to Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, and surrounding estuaries. Phosphorus (P) control has been the primary focus of these studies because P has been found to be the limiting nutrient for the accelerated eutrophication of these aquatic systems. The watersheds of these systems are dominated by beef and dairy operations north of Lake Okeechobee and vegetables and sugarcane south of the Lake. As a result, most of the research activities have focused on agricultural transport processes and control practices (known as best management practices or BMPs) for P discharge. This paper focuses on the BMPs that have been developed for agricultural water quality control in south Florida. BMPs are discussed from the perspectives of conceptual operational theory and field evaluation data, as well as practical in-field design constraints. An itemized listing of the proposed BMPs is also presented, as well as a discussion of implementation strategies.