If there is one thing Florida teaches you, it is that water rarely behaves exactly the way you expect it to.

Today, parts of our state continue to deal with the effects of drought, while other communities have experienced localized flooding from recent heavy rains. Lake Okeechobee remains well below its historic average for this time of year. Yet anyone who has spent time working on Florida’s water challenges knows how quickly conditions can change.

That is exactly why we cannot afford to manage Florida’s water system from one crisis to the next.

I’ve spent years working on these issues as a member of the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board, and I’ve seen firsthand how complicated the system is. Farmers need reliable water supplies. Communities need flood protection. Our coastal estuaries need protection from damaging freshwater discharges. The Everglades needs clean water moving south. And millions of Floridians depend on the same interconnected system every day.

There is no single valve we can turn that solves all of those challenges.

Mother Nature will always have the final say. What government can control is whether we’re prepared for what she sends us.

A dry year can become a wet year remarkably quickly. Lake Okeechobee can go from concern about low water levels to concern about excess water. When that happens, water managers can face difficult decisions about where that water goes and how to protect communities, agriculture and our natural resources.

We should be making those decisions from a position of preparation rather than desperation.

That means continuing to invest in water storage so we have somewhere to put water during periods of heavy rainfall. It means completing projects that allow more water to move south when conditions permit. It means improving water quality before that water reaches our rivers, estuaries and the Everglades. And it means maintaining and modernizing the canals, pumps, levees and other infrastructure that quietly protect Florida communities every day.

These projects aren’t particularly glamorous. Most Floridians will never see many of them.

But when they work, families don’t wake up to flooded neighborhoods. Farmers can continue producing food. Communities have reliable water supplies. And fewer difficult choices have to be made between protecting Lake Okeechobee and protecting our coastal estuaries.

Florida has made enormous investments in its water infrastructure and Everglades restoration, and that progress matters. But our work isn’t finished.

Our state continues to grow. Weather extremes continue to test a system that was largely designed generations ago. And every year we delay necessary infrastructure makes tomorrow’s challenges more expensive and more difficult to solve.

Water policy also requires something increasingly rare in public life: patience.

Major reservoirs, treatment areas and restoration projects take years to plan, permit and construct. Their benefits aren’t measured in a news cycle. They are measured over decades.

That’s why the best time to prepare for the next wet year isn’t when Lake Okeechobee is already full.

It’s now.

Whether the months ahead bring drought, heavy rainfall or something in between, Florida should continue doing the hard work of building a water system capable of handling both extremes.

We cannot control the weather.

But we can make sure Florida is ready for it.

Ben Butler is a ninth-generation Floridian, cattle rancher and dairy farmer who has served on the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board since 2019.