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Article snippet: FORT MYERS, Fla. — Engineers stopped releasing water from Lake Okeechobee on Saturday, confident that they had lowered levels enough to keep the dike and the towns around it safe as Hurricane Irma swept into southern Florida. But the dike, built seven decades ago and named for Herbert Hoover, was not the only major piece of Florida infrastructure that had officials concerned as the hurricane approached. Airports, sewage treatment plants, flood control systems and other facilities could be overrun by heavy rains or flooding from storm surge, as Irma’s winds amass ocean water and push it ashore. The impacts of climate change — especially sea level rise, which is already bringing more tidal flooding in Miami Beach — could make matters worse, as any storm surge from Irma would be on top of an already higher baseline. And Florida, like every state in an era of tightening budgets, has deferred costly maintenance on much of its infrastructure, said Addie Javed, a former president of the Florida section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Deferred maintenance is the biggest problem; later or sooner you’re going to be paying for that,” he said. “You want to make sure that your infrastructure is in top shape when a disaster like this happens.” As South Florida’s population has swelled in recent decades, its roads, water and sewage treatment plants and other facilities have struggled to keep pace. Much of the state’s infrastructure is now nearing the end of its use... Link to the full article to read more