PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis was in Palm Beach County Thursday morning to announce advancements of the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir Project.
Watch full press conference below:
The EAA is planned to be a 10,000-acre reservoir that can store up to 78 billion gallons of excess water from Lake Okeechobee. The water can be sent to an adjacent 6,500-acre stormwater treatment area, where it will be cleaned and then delivered south to nourish the Everglades, providing an additional 370,000 acre feet of clean water to the ecosystem each year.
On Thursday, DeSantis announced the groundbreaking of a new inflow pump station in Palm Beach County, which he called an essential component of the project.
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The station will house nine total pumps, making it one of the largest in Florida with the capability to move around 3 billion gallons of water per day from Lake Okeechobee to the EAA reservoir.
"Today's groundbreaking marks the 80th milestone event in Everglades restoration that has taken place since 2019," DeSantis said. "What we needed was leadership and vision, and then we needed to provide support for the people that were on the ground getting it done and and it's worked out very, very well."
In July, DeSantis went to Marco Island to announce that the State of Florida and the U.S. Army have reached a new agreement to accelerate Everglades restoration through expediting the completion of the EAA Reservoir from 2034 to 2029.
