Everglades Agricultural Area reservoir project helping prevent future water crisis

The rush is on to get the water in Southwest Florida cleaned up, and the area of the future home of the Everglades Agricultural Area or EAA Reservoir.

“The EAA Reservoir is the single-most important water quality project across South Florida,” said Director of Operations at Captains for Clean Water, Noelle Casagrande.

And Governor Ron DeSantis agrees, and that’s why he and state leaders ended a lease with Florida Crystals early, to speed up construction of the EAA Reservoir.

Captains for Clean Water has been one of the driving forces behind the project.

“We have suffered from decades of delays for this critical Everglades restoration project,” Casegrande said.

The project has three parts to it, canals, a storage reservoir, and storm water treatment area.

“So this is, in order for us to go ahead and expedite something called the Stormwater Treatment Area, which is about 6,500 acres, it’s going to be a wetland, and we’re ready to start working on that now,” Chauncey Gross, Chairman of South Florida Water Management District said.

The goal is to use canals to allow water to flow to a reservoir, and then the treatment area cleans the water before it moves to the Everglades.

“The EAA Reservoir will really help in terms of water storage, helping to clean that water, and that’ll help us here ultimately,” Dr. Mike Parsons, professor at the water school at Florida Gulf Coast University said.

That treatment piece of the water puzzle should be completed in 2023