Just how dirty is Lake Okeechobee?

Rental company Lake.com thinks it may be the dirtiest in the nation.

Using federal chemical data from 2020 through July 2025, the study ranked 46 of the nation’s biggest lakes on their “total pollution score” — the higher the score, the dirtier the lake.

Lake O, with a score of 10, easily outdistanced the second most-polluted lake in the country, Idaho’s American Falls Reservoir, which scored 7.68.

The study used eight specific characteristics to grade the lakes: dissolved oxygen, ammonia, lead, phosphorus, sulfate, total dissolved solids, turbidity and pH.

Lake O’s high turbidity level, high levels of lead (!), phosphorus and nitrogen propelled it to the “top” of this low list.

By contrast, Lake Superior — with a pollution score of 0 — was the nation’s cleanest lake.

Now, this is hardly the final word. The study did not grade all of the nation’s largest lakes, and some of the criteria (lead?) is not something often used to gauge the health of Lake O.

Yet Lake O water quality is an obvious concern. Annual blue-green algal blooms are triggered by nutrients. Discharges to the coasts exacerbate water quality problems there, fueling harmful algal blooms.

The Florida DEP’s “Basin Management Action Plan,” or BMAP, hasn’t done enough to curb rising nutrient levels; projects to slow and clean the flow into the lake are underway but will take years.

Small wonder then that the County Coalition for the Responsible Management of Lake Okeechobee at its meeting earlier this month discussed the need to dredge the lake. Members of the coalition, representing the counties adjacent to the lake, noted that muck must be removed because it provides enough nutrients on its own to continue causing problems, even if inflows are cleaned. And they talked about taking their case to Washington, D.C.

In the meantime, how about some accountability for those failing BMAPs? Shouldn’t FDEP be held responsible when they fail to meet their pollution-reduction goals? Right now no one is held responsible – so the can just gets kicked endlessly down the road. Didn’t meet the goals this time? We’ll get ‘em next time. That’s the whole approach. Small wonder it isn’t working.

Cleaning up Lake O is going to require political will and lots of money. In Florida, both are in too-short supply — but the future of Lake O hinges on fixing that, and soon.