The Lake Panasoffkee Restoration Council will meet on Monday, Dec. 1, 5 p.m. at the Lake Panasoffkee Recreation Center’s West Wing, 1532 CR-459, Lake Panasoffkee.
The council will discuss the completion of the lake dredging project, canal cleanup and the future of the spoil area. The public is also invited to share comments.
The Lake Panasoffkee Restoration Council was created by the state Legislature in 1998 to develop a restoration plan for the lake. The council is responsible for reviewing the project and reporting back on the project’s progress to the Legislature.
The implementation of the four-step restoration plan, which was managed by the Southwest Florida Water Management District, began in Sept. 2000. The first three steps focused on dredging the lake. The fourth step of the project involved dredging the residential canals along the western shoreline. Sumter County was the lead agency on the fourth step.
Steps two and three of the project began in July 2004 and involved dredging approximately 8.3 million cubic yards of sediment from more than 1,744 acres of lake area to improve fish habitats, restore the historic lake shoreline and improve navigation. These steps were completed in October.
Since the 1940s, 27 percent of the lake, or 900 acres of open water area, had been lost to the encroachment of emergent vegetation.
Lake Panasoffkee is designated as an Outstanding Florida Water by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and is one of the District’s Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) priority water bodies. Lake Panasoffkee is the third largest lake in west-central Florida and is a nationally acclaimed fishery.
For more information about the meeting, please call Tahla Paige at 352-796-7211, ext. 4606 or 800-423-1476, ext. 4606.