Lake Okeechobee's Long Shadow: The 1928 Hurricane, the Dike and the Algae Emergencies
How the state and federal government manage Lake Okeechobee traces back to a 1928 hurricane that drowned thousands of people around its shores.
The 1928 hurricane
The storm made landfall in Palm Beach County between Jupiter and Boca Raton around 6:15 p.m. on Sept. 16, 1928, as a Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Weather Service in Miami. Winds pushed the lake's water south over a muck levee only 4 to 5 feet high, flooding an area roughly 6 miles deep and 75 miles long. Pahokee, Canal Point, Chosen, Belle Glade, South Bay and Bean City were hit.
The death toll is uncertain. The weather service long listed 1,836 deaths; the National Hurricane Center now lists at least 2,500. The NWS says probably three-quarters or more of the dead were non-white migrant farm workers, many from the Bahamas.
Building the Herbert Hoover Dike
Congress authorized new levees in the River and Harbors Act of 1930, and the Army Corps of Engineers built them from 1932 to 1938, WINK News reported. That work included about 68 miles of levee on the south shore, according to the Corps. After a 1947 hurricane, Congress expanded the system; it was completed in the late 1960s and named the Herbert Hoover Dike. It now rings the lake for 143 miles. A rehabilitation that began in 2005 was declared complete on Jan. 25, 2023, at a cost of $1.5 billion, WLRN reported.
Why water goes east and west
Before the dike, the lake regularly spilled over and flowed south through the Everglades, the South Florida Water Management District says. Now the Corps manages lake levels and can release water to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries. The district notes the lake can rise up to six times faster than water can be let out, and that large freshwater releases affect both estuaries.
The 2016 and 2018 emergencies
In February 2016, wet winter weather pushed the lake to its highest level in a decade, forcing more releases toward the coasts, Central Florida Public Media reported. Managers watched closely because the dike was in poor condition. By May, satellite imagery showed an algae bloom covering about 33 square miles of the lake, PBS NewsHour reported. Gov. Rick Scott declared an emergency in Martin and St. Lucie counties and, on June 30, expanded it to Lee and Palm Beach counties.
On July 9, 2018, Scott issued Executive Order 18-191, declaring an emergency in seven counties over toxic blooms that followed Corps releases from the lake. A bloom covered 65 of the Caloosahatchee's 75 miles, the Fort Myers Beach Talk reported, citing a conservation group.
How we reported this: This explainer was drafted with AI assistance from the sources linked above, and every fact was checked against those sources. See an error? Contact us and we'll correct it.
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