Last month brought unprecedented rain to Florida, setting a record for the wettest January on record. And with the all this rain has come a murky environmental mess. To curb flooding, officials "back pumped" polluted water from South Florida's farms into Lake Okeechobee – and now overflowing water from the lake has been dumped into fragile river ecosystems with potentially disastrous effects.

Even when Lake Okeechobee was at record low levels in 2007, elevated levels of arsenic and other pesticides were detected by scientists. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Emergency back pumping forced over the course of four days, the Sun Sentinel reported. While farms and local economies were no doubt protected, the same can't be said for the lake, rivers and ocean ecosystems affected by the chemical runoff.

According to My Palm Beach Post, Lake Okeechobee topped off at on Tuesday, what the Army Corps of Engineers calls a "dangerous territory" for the lake's dike, as well as for the lake's plant and wildlife. To curb those effects, the Army Corps of Engineers is draining the lake into the St. Lucie River and the Caloosahatchee River.

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In the next step of the chain reaction, the polluted water from Lake Okeechobee is bad news for the rest of South Florida's ecosystems.

News-Press.com reports that the polluted water can and can even contribute to harmful algal blooms in the ocean. Pollution aside, pure freshwater flowing into the ocean can lower salinity and disrupt marine life.

"To get one foot of water out of the lake, that's or two months of not so bad, and that’s if it doesn’t rain anymore," Paul Gray, Audubon Florida’s Lake Okeechobee science coordinator, told the Miami Herald. "We have what is essentially a jalopy of a management system and we're asking it to do more than it can do."

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Despite the environmental risk, there are no plans to end the efforts to relieve the lake of its rising levels.

"That's really a tough statement to make and a tough situation to be in because certainly we realize there are environmental impacts but there are very real public safety risks also,"John Campbell, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District told My Palm Beach Post.

But Florida government officials are escalating the issue.

Florida legislators have already brought the matter to federal attention via the Everglades for the Next Generation Act in an attempt to speed up Everglades restoration projects amidst Florida's water woes, My Palm Beach Post reports.

"We're going to have to pull out every trick in the playbook to offset some of these releases," Sanibel Mayor Kevin Ruane told News-Press.com."We're going to have to talk to as many private property owners as possible to store water. We're in a bad situation. The effects of the releases sometimes you don't see for months."

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