The Caloosahatchee River is a river to the southwest of the Gulf Coast of Florida in the United States, about 67 miles (108 km) long. It drains the countryside at the northern end of Everglades, east of Fort Myers. An important link on the Okeechobee Waterway, the inland southern man-made water system of southern Florida, the river forms a tidal estuary along most of its path and has recently been the subject of efforts to restore and preserve the Everglades.
Video Caloosahatchee River
Description
The problem of the river from Lake Hicpochee, in Glades County southeast, about 10 miles (16 km) west of Clewiston. It flows west-southwest through LaBelle, where it becomes an ups and downs, forming an estuary along the 25-mi (40 km) lower. This extends as it near the bay, through Fort Myers and Cape Coral. It enters the Gulf of Mexico 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Fort Myers in San Carlos Bay, protected by Sanibel Island.
The 5 km (8 km) Caloosahatchee canal connecting Lake Hicpochee to Lake Okeechobee allows continuous navigation of the Caloosahatchee to the Okeechobee Waterway system; the oxbow lake marks an isolated stretch of the original waterway. By 2013 heavy rain in southern Florida resulted in high runoff to Lake Okeechobee; rising lake levels forced the United States Army Engineer Corps to release large volumes of polluted water from the lake through the mouth of the River St. Lucie to the east and the estuary of the Caloosahatchee River to the west. So the normal mixture of freshwater and saltwater in the estuary was replaced by a flood of freshly contaminated water that caused ecological damage.
Since the late 19th century, dredging and channeling rivers, as well as artificial connections to Lake Okeechobee and their use as a water supply for urban and agricultural use, have substantially altered river hydrology. As a result, both the magnitude and the timing of water delivery to the estuary have changed considerably. Recent programs by the state government have sought to establish minimum flow rates in the river, partly to help restore water supplies to the Everglades. The federal wildlife protection for manatees has been established at the mouth of a river in San Carlos Bay near Fort Myers.
Maps Caloosahatchee River
Video History
In 2007, PBS Earth Edition produced a 27-minute video titled: The Caloosahatchee . Videos can be watched for free here.
Earth Edition explanation of the following video: There really are two Caloosahatchee Rivers. The first is a million-year-old serpentine waterway that bends half way across the Florida Peninsula; the second, deep, wide, deep trench, gouged by humans through the South Florida landscape and simply called C-43. Unlike both, the two Caloosahatchee have one thing in common - both standing at the crossroads between destruction and resuscitation.
Crossing
The following is a list of crossings of the River bridge and the Caloosahatchee Canal
Gallery
See also
- South Atlantic Water Resources Region
References
External links
- South Florida Water Management District: Caloosahatchee River and Estuary
- GulfBase.org: Caloosahatchee River
- USFWS: Caloosahatchee River-San Carlos Bay Manatee Federal Patron
- The Residents Association of the River Caloosahatchee (Riverwatch)
- Caloosahatchee River River - Florida DEP
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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