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Highlands Today

Istokpoga Drawdown Approved, But Lake Level's OK

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: January 28, 2008

SEBRING — The drawdown request on Lake Istokpoga was approved earlier this month by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, allowing for the lake to potentially sink down to an elevation of 36 feet if its water is needed for irrigation to the south.

Neither Highlands County Lakes Manager Clell Ford nor Trails End Fishing Resort owner Gary Albin has noticed any withdrawals from the lake since the approval. Ford said, however, that the water permit holders to the lake have been allowed to use their permits again on two different days of the week.

The South Florida Water Management District shut off the water permits in October. It followed that action with a renewed request to the corps, asking for permission to be able to draw water from the lake to supply permit holders around the lake and to its south until the lake reached a level of 35.5 feet. The corps approved a 36-foot limit instead.

SFWMD spokeswoman Vicky Nolwan said that the permitted holders can now only withdraw 45 percent of the water their permits normally allow.

The lake's surface elevation remained at 38.41 feet Thursday morning at the southern part of the lake, keeping a foot below the normal winter high but remaining almost at a constant level the past few months.

"It's been holding its own as far as lake level and people have been able to get out and boat all right," said Albin, who has vocally complained about last year's requested drawdown before it was approved.

Despite the approval, summer rains made it so that SFWMD did not need the extra water, and the drawdown's approval became a non-issue.

This time, Albin was just hoping for more of those rains.

"We sure hope they don't start sucking a bunch of water out of this, because the bass are responding now."

Ford remembered having trouble using airboats in Lake Istokpoga during the 2001 drawdown, when the water was deliberately let out for environmental work on the lake. Back then, it sat at a level of 36.5 feet.

The water would benefit four permit holders directly taking from the lake, 38 permit holders withdrawing from Istokpoga's canal system and approximately 100 well owners indirectly linked to the lake in the Indian Prairie basin, which stretches through southern Highlands County and Glades County.

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