Florida Gov. Rick Scott added two more counties on Thursday to the state of emergency declared over a "guacamole-thick" algae bloom affecting a stretch of beaches promoted as the state's "Treasure Coast." 
 
 Scott signed the amended executive order to add adding Lee and Palm Beach counties to Wednesday's emergency declaration for Martin and St. Lucie counties. Palm Beach County is directly south of the existing emergency area, while Lee County is on Florida's Gulf coast. 
 
 The blue-green algae is the latest contaminant featured in arguments stretching over years involving water flowing from Lake Okeechobee, which is critical to South Florida's water supply and flood control systems. 
 
 At Central Marine boat docks in Stuart on Thursday, pea-green and brown algae coated the water and smelled strongly like cow manure. Blooms that started last week in the St. Lucie River continue to spread, threatening Atlantic beaches expecting crowds of families for the holiday weekend. 
 
 Sarah Chaney, a receptionist at Central Marine, told the Associated Press that boaters and fisherman are canceling reservations after seeing reports of the algae, which she called "horrible and disgusting." 
 
 "I would describe them as guacamole-thick. And it stinks," said Gabriella Ferrero, spokeswoman for Martin County. 
 
 Chris Mascia Palas, a resident of Stuart, Fla., posted videos to her Facebook showing manatees struggling to get through the thick algae in a canal behind their house. 
 
 “The water is like thick pea soup and has blue color in it as well. It stinks like a dead rotting something! .. (The manatee was) clearly was in search of fresh water as well as struggling to clear its airways,” she wrote. 
 
 Florida's U.S. senators, Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bill Nelson, have joined Martin County commissioners in calling for the Army Corps of Engineers to stop the flow of water between the river and Lake Okeechobee. Residents and business owners blame the algae on pollutants streaming from the lake. 
 
 After touring the St. Lucie River as it passes through downtown Stuart, Nelson said the problems can be traced to Florida's history of diverting water to the ocean. 
 
 "We need to repair 75 years of diking and draining, but that takes time," he said. He called on the Florida Legislature to spend money approved by state voters for environmental projects such as purchasing land around Lake Okeechobee for water storage instead of diverting the funds to pay for administrative costs. Rubio is scheduled to visit the area Friday. 
 
 When Scott declared a state emergency for the area Wednesday, he blamed the federal government for neglecting repairs to the lake's aging dike that's considered one of the country's most at-risk for imminent failure. 
 
 Some residents blamed Scott instead on Thursday. He hasn't done enough to curb pollution from farms north of the lake or purchase land farther south where lake waters could be stored and cleaned, said Irene Gomes, owner of the Driftwood Motel in Jensen Beach. 
 
 The algae has rapidly grown from a beach nuisance to a health concern, as one customer made plans to leave early if the algae triggered breathing issues, said Gomes, whose family has owned the motel's turquoise-colored cabins since 1958. 
 
 "At one point, I could say to my customers, 'Come down, it's not at all the beaches,' because it wasn't toxic. Now we're talking about health issues," Gomes said. 
 
 Chaney, the Central Marine receptionist, said Scott should visit the area, even if he gets criticized. 
 
 "He needs to come see it himself and stop being a coward," she said. 
 
 Lake Okeechobee is the largest in Florida and the second largest body of freshwater in the contiguous United States. Flooding there after a major hurricane in 1928 killed at least 2,500 people in surrounding communities of mostly poor, black farmworkers. It inspired the storm central to Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God." 
 
 To reduce the risk of a breach in the dike built after that hurricane, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tries to keep lake water levels between 12.5 feet and 15.5 feet above sea level. Shoring up the dike will take years. In the meantime freshwater is released east and west of the lake into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. 
 
 State water managers have said local stormwater runoff and septic tanks also fuel algae blooms. They're working to direct more water south of Lake Okeechobee into the parched Everglades, but federal regulations, conservation mandates and stalled restoration projects complicate those efforts. 
 
 In neighboring St. Lucie County, home to the troubled Indian River Lagoon, officials have prohibited homeowners from using fertilizer during the summer and begun working with the state to test waterways for pollution that might be linked to septic tanks. 
 
 "A lot of people want to blame Lake Okeechobee, it's an easy target, but there are a lot of factors that contribute to the health of the lagoon," said St. Lucie County spokesman Erick Gill. 
 
 Murky waters on southwest Florida's Gulf Coast also are blamed on the lake's discharges. Fort Myers-area lawmakers said Thursday that Scott should extend the state of emergency to Lee County because of water issues in the Caloosahatchee River. 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
 
 Click for more from Fox 29. ||||| Story Highlights Algae blooms take over waters on Treasure Coast. Gov. Rick Scott has added two counties to his state of emergency declaration. 
 
 Florida Gov. Rick Scott Thursday added two counties to the state of emergency declared over bright blue-green algae blooms that are taking over waterways and beaches on Florida's Treasure Coast. 
 
 Scott issued Executive Order 16-155 declaring an emergency in Martin and St. Lucie counties Wednesday, according to a statement, but added Lee and Plam Beach counties a day later. The executive order allows state and local governments to take action against the spread of the algal blooms by redirecting the water flow in and out of Lake Okeechobee, which many believe are to blame for the foul-smelling algae that one resident described to the Associated Press as "guacamole-thick." 
 
 Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Jacksonville District began reducing the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, according to a release. 
 
 “It has been a challenging year for south Florida,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District Commander Col. Jason Kirk said in the release. “Our water managers have dealt with such large quantities of rain and runoff entering the lake that it would cover the entire state of Delaware in two feet of water. However, after visiting with local elected officials in Martin County yesterday and viewing the algae first hand, we felt compelled to take action, even though we need to remain vigilant in managing the level of Lake Okeechobee.” 
 
 Scott placed the blame for the algae squarely on the Federal government. 
 
 "The state, as you know, doesn't have any control over Lake Okeechobee," he told WPTV on Tuesday. "The federal government has got to put the money in to be able to hold more water there when we have a rainy year like we have now." 
 
 The algae forced Treasure Coast officials to close some beaches in Martin County this week, just days before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the Palm Beach Post reports, and has been spotted in waterways and canals across much of South Florida. 
 
 (MORE: Report: Pollution, Climate Change Destroying Florida's Coastal Environments) 
 
 "It's just been incubating and growing and growing," Matt Athan, who lives near the St. Lucie River in Stuart, told WPBF. “And you can see how thick it is. And the smell is just atrocious." 
 
 "It has been observed in a good deal of the district already," Randy Smith, a spokesman for the South Florida Water Management District, told the paper. "Some of it moves around fairly rapidly. You might see it in one area, and then it dissipates and you don’t see it again." 
 
 Water managers discovered a 33-square mile algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee last month, the Post reports. Algae samples taken June 14-15 from the lake contained more than 20 times the amount of toxins considered hazardous by the World Health Organization, TC Palm reports. 
 
 The Corps of Engineers frequently releases water downstream into the St. Lucie River, to manage water levels at the lake. The Corps is stuck between a rock and a hard place, spokesperson John Campbell told WPTV, and that releasing the water from Lake Okeechobee is the "lesser of two evils." 
 
 "Holding the water back in the lake accelerates the rise and puts us in a position that the people that live and work around the lake face an increased flood risk," he said. 
 
 But releasing water also means consequences downstream. 
 
 "It's heartbreaking for all of us who live, work and play along the lagoon to see how the quality of the water has declined," environmental non-profit Balance For Earth said in video on Facebook, which shows a blanket of algae spreading from the river into a canal, lapping against docks and the sides of boats, thick and goopy. 
 
 A thickening bloom is not a good sign, Ed Philips, an algae expert and professor at the University of Florida, told TC Palm. It means that some cells within the algae are starting to die, releasing any toxins they may hold into the water. 
 
 Besides tinting area waterways unnatural shades of blue and green, dying algae blooms can kill fish and other aquatic life, putting a strain on the thousands of residents who turn to the coasts natural resources for their livelihood. 
 
 "Out on the lake, the algae goes on as far as the eye can see," Mike Conner, a fishing guide and member of the BullSugar.org activist group, told TC Palm. "And on the C-44 it's shoreline to shoreline, the length of the canal." 
 
 (MORE: Stormwater Runoff Leads to Spread of Deadly Pathogen in Florida) 
 
 Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society, told WPTV, he was disappointed with the governor's handling of the crisis. 
 
 "The governor kept mentioning 'We have the Department of Health and the Department of Environmental Protection on it. They're monitoring it.' Like they're on top of the situation. I personally know that the agencies are not on top of the situation." 
 
 MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Beautiful Landscapes of Florida ||||| Also Directing DEP & FWC to Mitigate Spread of Algal Blooms 
 
 TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, Governor Rick Scott issued Executive Order 16-155 declaring a state of emergency in Martin and St. Lucie Counties following the presence of algal blooms in local waterways. The Executive Order will allow state and local governmental agencies to take swift action to mitigate the spread of algal blooms in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries by redirecting the flow of water in and out of Lake Okeechobee. Governor Scott is also directing the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to take specific actions to address the issues caused by blooms. To view Executive Order 16-155, click HERE. 
 
 Governor Rick Scott said, “Today, I am declaring a state of emergency in Martin and St. Lucie Counties to expedite water storage projects to alleviate the proliferation of algal blooms. The order also allows the South Florida Water Management District to reduce the flow of water into Lake Okeechobee through additional water storage projects. In addition to our Executive Order, I am calling on the federal government to speedily approve permits for our dispersed water management programs. I am also asking DEP and FWC to take actions to address the issues caused by algal blooms in South Florida waterways, including developing a hotline for residents to report algal blooms and deploying teams of additional staff to more rapidly survey and sample areas impacted by blooms. 
 
 “Florida’s waterways, wildlife and families have been severely impacted by the inaction and negligence of the federal government not making the needed repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike and Florida can no longer afford to wait. Because the Obama Administration has failed to act on this issue, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to discharge millions of gallons of water into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries resulting in the growth of blue-green algae which is now entering residential waterways in South Florida. Although the President has failed to do what is needed to address this growing issue, the State of Florida will devote every available resource to find solutions for the families and businesses in this area.” 
 
 Gov. Scott is directing DEP to take the following actions: 
 
 Deploy teams of additional staff to more rapidly survey and sample areas impacted by algal blooms. 
 
 Purchase On-Site Microsystin Testing Kits which allow field staff to perform faster, preliminary tests for toxins on site. These kits will provide information about the sampled algae more quickly and allow preliminary health advisories to be issued. 
 
 Launch a Bloom Reporting Hotline. DEP will be establishishing a hotline for citizens to call to report algal blooms, allowing staff to quickly respond to areas with a suspected bloom. 
 
 Gov. Scott is directing FWC to take the following action: 
 
 Continue deploying FWC Research Institute staff to survey and sample any suspected blooms offshore. At this time, no offshore blooms have been confirmed. 
 
 Gov. Scott is directing the South Florida Water Management District take the following actions: 
 
 Store additional water north of Lake Okeechobee in the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes. 
 
 Work with state and community partners to explore every opportunity to increase water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee. 
 
 Store additional water through dispersed water storage projects. 
 
 Florida has invested more than $688 million in Everglades restoration over the past five years and will continue to invest up to $200 million a year under the Legacy Florida bill which Governor Scott signed into law this year. The State of Florida has invested nearly $2 billion in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) and $1.8 billion in providing clean water to the Everglades. To date, the federal government is $880 million behind in its share of CERP funding. 
 
 Senate President Andy Gardiner said, “We want to make sure our coastal communities know we are doing everything possible to help mitigate the environmental and resulting economic impacts of this algae. I applaud the Governor’s leadership and am grateful for his dedication to our environment.” 
 
 Speaker of the House Steve Crisafulli said, “I applaud Governor Scott for cutting through red tape in order to expedite the construction of crucial water storage projects in Martin County and St. Lucie County that the Legislature funded this Session. We know that storing water north, east, and west of Lake Okeechobee is the key to reducing damaging discharges. I am confident that the South Florida Water Management District will be able to bring these projects to fruition. It will take time, but thanks to Governor Scott and the District, we will not have to needlessly wait for relief.” 
 
 Senate President-Designate Joe Negron said, “I want to thank Governor Scott for recognizing the catastrophic impact this blue-green algae is having on our community. Our beaches and water are polluted and our way of life has been dramatically impacted. The Governor’s quick action today reflects his commitment to making certain our community has the resources we need to address this disaster as quickly as possible.” 
 
 ### ||||| Florida’s governor this week made official what residents of southwest Florida already knew: The bloom of toxic algae that has darkened gulf waters is an emergency. The red tide has made breathing difficult for locals, scared away tourists, and strewn popular beaches with the stinking carcasses of fish, eels, porpoises, turtles, manatees and one 26-foot whale shark. 
 
 Gov. Rick Scott (R) late Monday declared a state of emergency in seven counties stretching from Tampa Bay south to the fringe of the Everglades. Scott promised $1.5 million in emergency funding. 
 
 The governor is facing Sen. Bill Nelson (D) this fall at the ballot box in a contest for the senate seat Nelson has held for three terms. Each man has accused the other of failing to tackle the red-tide calamity and the simultaneous bloom of a different type of algae that is clogging rivers and canals and putting a scum on top of Lake Okeechobee. 
 
 Citizens in retirement communities are reporting respiratory distress from the vapors of the microscopic red-tide organism called Karenia brevis. A recent study found a 50 percent spike in hospital visits due to respiratory problems during red-tide blooms. 
 
 The red tide has been gradually moving north, to the mouth of Tampa Bay, according to state tracking data. For many places, the daily reports continue to say “Water Color: Dark” and “Respiratory Irritation: Intense.” Worst of all are the reports that state “Dead Fish: Heavy.” 
 
 1 of 12 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Photos of marine life dead from the effects of red tide in Florida View Photos The season usually lasts from October to around February, but the current red tide has lingered along the Florida coast for around 10 months, killing massive amounts of fish as well as other marine life. Caption The season usually lasts from October to around February, but the current red tide has lingered along the Florida coast for around 10 months, killing massive amounts of fish as well as other marine life. Eve Edelheit Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Rick Bartleson, a research scientist with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, said water samples offshore show lethally high concentrations of algae. 
 
 “There’s no fish left. Red tide killed them all,” he said. “All of our concentrations of red tide are still high and would still kill fish if they were out there.” 
 
 [How climate change is making red-tide algal blooms even worse] 
 
 The algae is found in marine environments for most of the year, but the past two months have produced high concentrations, said Kelly Richmond, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The duration of blooms can be affected by sunlight, nutrient and salinity content, she said. 
 
 The toxins can aerosolize in the wind that drifts ashore, triggering respiratory problems or worsening conditions such as asthma. That has incited many tourists and some locals to flee. 
 
 Sea turtles have been hit hard, with more than 300 dead from the red tide in the affected counties, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 Scott’s declaration came one day after thousands of Floridians engaged in a grass-roots collective action on Florida beaches. At 10:15 a.m. Sunday they lined up at the water’s edge and held hands, an image captured by drones. They were trying to grab public attention. 
 
 “I can’t even let my cats out on the lanai,” said Amy Ernst, a Sarasota printmaker who lives near the beach. “Eyes burning, throat burning, sinus problems.” 
 
 Adrienne Miceli-Trask, 52, a salon owner who helped organized the Hands Along the Water protest in Sarasota, said: “It’s not just on the beach. It’s in our intracoastal waterway. It’s in the air. It’s toxic. Somebody’s backyard on the intracoastal is totally filled with dead fish. It’s disgusting.” 
 
 
 
 Biologists perform a necropsy on a whale shark that died in Florida waters. (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission ) 
 
 Scientists are trying to figure out why, exactly, the current red tide along the Gulf Coast has been so protracted and deadly. State officials and scientists point out that, at base, this is a natural phenomenon. Fish die-offs were noted by Spanish explorers in the 1500s and have been well documented since the 1840s. 
 
 But the incidences of red tides seem to have increased since the 1950s and 1960s. Climate change could be a factor; warmer waters, up to a certain point, are congenial to algal growth. The Gulf of Mexico’s surface temperature has warmed by about two degrees Fahrenheit since 1977. 
 
 There’s a more direct human handprint on the current crisis: Florida’s landscape and the flow of water have been radically altered by agriculture, canals, ditches, dikes, levees and the sprawling housing developments that have sprouted as the state’s population has boomed. Bartleson said Lee County used to be 50 percent wetlands and is now about 10 percent wetlands. 
 
 In the old days, he said, rainwater slowly filtered into the aquifer or seeped into estuaries. Now it rushes rapidly, unfiltered, into rivers and bays and into the gulf, typically loaded with agricultural nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous, which feed the algae. 
 
 Hurricane Irma struck the state head-on last September, and the red-tide bloom began about a month later. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was forced to release massive amounts of nutrient-laden water from Lake Okeechobee to prevent the overtopping of the venerable Hoover Dike. 
 
 Those nutrients fueled green algae in the inland canals and rivers and flowed through the Caloosahatchee River into the shallow waters along the Gulf Coast. It is plausible that fueled the red-tide bloom. Some scientists hesitate to declare a direct cause and effect, though Bartleson said of the current red tide, “It’s on steroids with our nutrients.” 
 
 Researchers have experimented with ways of killing the toxic algae, but they are proceeding cautiously because they don’t know what effects it could have on the ecosystem. 
 
 The Karenia brevis algal bloom is made up of millions of tiny, single-celled plantlike organisms. Like many plants on land, they produce chemicals as a defense. One of these weapons is the brevetoxin compound. 
 
 “The ocean has thousands of species of algae, really only a little bit more than a hundred that produce toxins that are dangerous to us," said Don Anderson, the director of the U.S. National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "Algae in general are hugely important to marine life.” 
 
 Historically, algal blooms become more prevalent in the fall and decline in late winter and spring. Less rainfall and increased wind could potentially ease this deadly red tide. For now, there’s no end in sight. 
 
 Angela Fritz contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 A red tide ravaging Florida may have killed a whale shark for the first known time 
 
 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launches on a mission to study the sun and its dangers ||||| (CNN) When Marcy Cornell's toddler son "couldn't breathe" on the first day of their recent Florida vacation, she took him straight to the emergency room. 
 
 "Before they even asked me anything else ... they said, 'Did you go to the beach today?' " she recalled. 
 
 Doctors said her son had upper airway inflammation "brought on by the red tide," she said. 
 
 Evan, almost 2 years old, is doing just fine now. But the warning signs were there from the start. 
 
 The water in Englewood, on the state's southwest coast, "smelled kind of funky, and then we noticed a few dead fish floating past," Cornell said. "All of us felt as if we had bad allergies -- like itchy, watery eyes and coughing. And we thought that was the end of it." 
 
 Cornell's experience is not unique. Respiratory symptoms have been reported in a number of Gulf Coast counties, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. 
 
 The state is dealing with a toxic algae problem on multiple fronts, with colorful names like "red tide" and "green slime." A marathon bloom on its west coast is leaving dead fish, sea turtles, manatees and even a whale shark in its path. Experts say it poses a risk to people, as well. 
 
 This prompted Gov. Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency Monday for affected counties. 
 
 "I am issuing an emergency declaration to provide significant funding and resources to the communities experiencing red tide, so we can combat its terrible impacts," Scott said in a news release. 
 
 Although red tides happen around the world, this one is caused by an organism almost exclusively found in the Gulf of Mexico: a single-celled organism called Karenia brevis. 
 
 K. brevis produces toxins that cause "neurotoxic shellfish poisoning," according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 "These shellfish, over time, they accumulate high concentrations of these toxins, but it doesn't seem to affect them at all. Then humans come along and eat shellfish, and they get very sick," said Larry Brand, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. 
 
 This can lead to symptoms such as numbness, tingling, loss of coordination, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC. Symptoms typically disappear within a few days, but they can last much longer. 
 
 Brand said that this is "not much of a problem anymore" because Florida authorities shut down shellfish harvesting during red tides. Some harvests may also be tested for toxins before they are sold, according to the conservation commission. 
 
 But those toxins, known as brevetoxins, can also become airborne as waves break, bursting K. brevis cells in the process. Aerosolized toxins can travel several kilometers inland from the beach and be inhaled by humans. This can lead to respiratory problems, especially for people with asthma, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 
 
 "It's like being hit with a tear gas," Brand said. 
 
 Using hospital records, researchers have found that respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses increase during red tides. In one study, hospital admissions for respiratory diagnoses jumped 54% for coastal residents. 
 
 K. brevis thrives in saltwater. In freshwater, however, there are blue-green algae -- which could be any of thousands of species of cyanobacteria. 
 
 Cyanotoxins can be ingested through contaminated water, fish and blue-green algae dietary supplements, according to the CDC. They can cause stomach pain, headaches, rashes and even kidney and liver damage, although no one is reported to have died from these toxins in the United States, the agency said. 
 
 Brand's current research aims to find out to what extent these toxins can be aersolized, too. 
 
 The most widespread toxins from these algae, called microcystins, are "being produced right now by these blooms in Lake Okeechobee" and other bodies of water, Brand said. But there could be other toxins we don't know about because they haven't made people acutely ill, leading scientists to the cause. 
 
 "A bunch of people get sick about the same time, same location, and you could track it back to the source. And that's how we discovered all these toxins," Brand said. "There's almost certainly other toxins being produced by these cyanobacteria that we have not discovered yet." 
 
 Brand worries that toxins might pose long-term health risks, but that's much less clear. For example, some evidence suggests that one kind of microcystin can cause cancer down the line, but the US Environmental Protection Agency says the research is too limited to say so definitively. Researchers have linked a different algal toxin to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but other studies have refuted the connection. 
 
 "If you see a bloom of cyanobacteria, you should simply assume it's got toxins in it," Brand said. "Don't go swimming in that water. Don't eat any seafood from that water." 
 
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 Algae can be present throughout the year, affecting humans when there's a "bloom," or overgrowth. 
 
 In Florida, these blooms normally start in October and end in winter, but the current one has persisted, becoming the longest on record since 2006, the year after Hurricane Katrina and other storms rocked areas along the Gulf of Mexico. That red tide lasted 17 months. 
 
 This past year, Hurricane Irma may have been partly to blame. The storm moved nutrients that were inland into coastal waters, helping algae grow, according to NASA. Dumping of fertilizer and human waste into the water also contributes to some algae blooms, Brand said. 
 
 "When you start feeding these things with all these excess nutrients ... now you've got what we call a 'harmful algal bloom,' " Brand said. "Now you've got high concentrations of toxins, and now you're causing a lot of human health [problems] as well as destruction of the ecosystem and so on. 
 
 "This is not just a unique situation in Florida. This is a global problem."
– Beaches are closed in South Florida, where a massive algae bloom has caused water to turn bright green and Gov. Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency in four counties—Martin, St. Lucie, Lee, and Palm Beach—over Wednesday and Thursday, reports Weather.com. Health officials are telling people to stay out of the water if they notice discoloration and not to use tainted water to water their lawns. And tainted it is, according to one resident who tells CBS Miami, "The only way to describe how it smells is like a hundred dead animals that have been sitting in the street for weeks." What some blame for the toxic turmoil: a water release from Lake Okeechobee, found last month to have more than 20 times the level of toxins deemed safe by the WHO, per TCPalm.com. Exposure to these toxins can cause skin rashes, vomiting, and respiratory issues, and aquatic life could be sickened and killed. One video posted to Facebook by a Martin County resident shows a manatee struggling to work its way through what a county rep calls "guacamole-thick" algae, Fox News reports. The US Army Corps of Engineers is planning on decreasing the flow Friday from the lake, opened for release because water levels were straining the lake's levee and posing a flooding risk. Gov. Scott, who blames the feds for not repairing that dike, has instructed the state DEP and fish and wildlife commission to address issues caused by the hazardous situation. But some are blaming Scott himself, saying he hasn't done enough to curtail pollution happening on farms near the lake.