Lakes Park is located east of Cape Coral in Lee County, just west of Highway 41. The park consists of an old rock mine with a series of borrow pit 'lakes.' The entire area drains south into Hendry Creek, an Outstanding Florida Water, which flows for a few miles before entering Estero Bay.

Lee County has developed the area as a regional park with a bathing area along the shoreline of the lakes. Adjacent to the developed area, the remaining natural habitat contains pine flatwoods with some cypress heads. The pits capture runoff from the surrounding developed area (commercial, industrial, and residential). County monitoring has indicated a decline in water quality in the lakes. The lakes are infested with hydrilla and adjacent uplands and islands are covered with exotic plant species such as Australian pine and Brazilian pepper.

The project is expected to enhance surface water runoff quality by creating a meandering marsh flow way system with shallow littoral zones and removing aquatic and upland exotic vegetation. The littoral zone will be harvested periodically to remove excess nutrients from the system. Exotic vegetation will be removed and replaced with native vegetation on 11 acres of upland.