Disagreement on Lake O Flood Gates

There is some disagreement this afternoon in the media as to whether the Flood Gates on Lake Okeechobee, Florida, were supposed to be opened today, whether they were, and how significant this is. The story goes that Fay's heavy rains (on top of other earlier rains) caused the lake to become dangerously high, and the thought of Hurricane Ike striking early next week made planners decide it might be time to release some of the pressure.

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The original video caption for the video (that I downloaded from ABCNewsOne into the Raw video player at right) was from around 2 PM and was from WSVN, and stated that the flood gates were released, and it was the first time this had happened in 15 years. Earlier in the day, Local10.com said the gates would not be opened, and that they had last been opened in 2006. The 15-year remark was not carried in WSVN's official web article, and their accompanying video was not available as of this writing. As of this evening, more articles on Google were saying that the release of water had begun, so I have no reason to think WSVN was incorrect in breaking the story.

*The only graph of lake levels I could find [PDF] did not show a drop as of time 17:46 today. The USGS gauges around the lake showed some fluctuation around the last few days but nothing obvious today, even at one of the said release points, Saint Lucie Canal at Port Mayaca.