Florida's Lake Okeechobee levee grows weaker.

Levee holds back one trillion gallons of water

The Hitchiti Indian phrase "oki chobi" literally means "big water". That pretty well describes Lake Okeechobee, the largest lake in the U.S. south of Lake Michigan. But if you've never been there, you probably don't realize that it's entirely surrounded by a 143-mile-long levee. And in a monster hurricane, if parts of the levee were to give way, the word "big" wouldn't be nearly enough to describe the disaster.

"If there's a section that fails, there's gonna be a significant amount of water that comes out of the lake and runs into whatever area that it happens to be effecting," Faulkner said. "We're lucky that in Okeechobee that we've got a fantastic section of dike that's really well-maintained." Army Corps of Engineers teams say the northern parts of the dike are in excellent shape.

Southern walls are weakening

But recent studies have shown that some southern sections of the wall are weakening. More than seven decades of reinforcement haven't been enough. Tropical Storm Fay added three feet of water to the lake faster than any time on record. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun a $300 million repair project to reinforce the southern reaches of the dike, but some researchers feel that regardless of those improvements, rain from a string of storms like Fay would be enough to rip open the barrier.

Even in her most peaceful moments, that's a reality Shawna Bray can never truly forget. "It is a worry. 'Cause I don't want Okeechobee to be like New Orleans, because that was -- that was terrible," she said.

Water managers on Thursday agreed to let polluted storm water that washes off farms flow into Lake Okeechobee, with the hopes of boosting water levels needed to irrigate drought-strained crops.

A month after rejecting "back-pumping" polluted storm water that drains off farms into the lake, the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board decided not to stop "back flows" — which involve opening drainage gates to let gravity carry a smaller amount of the same water into the lake.

Back-pumping offered the promise of raising the lake water but threatened to bring with it fertilizers and other pollutants that wash off farms south of the lake, leading to algae blooms and fish kills.

Lake Okeechobee releases stir up regrets as drought lasts.

Nineteen months ago, saddled with drowning marshes, a weakened dike and a record-breaking hurricane season, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers got to work on an urgent task: dumping billions of gallons of water from Lake Okeechobee. At the time, it didn't just seem reasonable; it seemed necessary.

Now South Florida water managers see that point in late October 2005 as a much different milestone: the start of a crippling drought.

..."Now that people cannot water their lawns more than once a week, farmers and other critics call last year's lake dumping a major blunder, and even some board members of the South Florida Water Management District have tried to distance themselves from the decision.