Ecotourism in Florida - Without a Paddle (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2003

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The Water Issue: Restoration Dreams
Without a Paddle (Cont.)

THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE EVERGLADES restoration project can be summed up in six words: ink, money, pipes, and hot air. Even President George W. Bush has lent his considerable voice to the chorus. "The Everglades and the entire South Florida ecosystem are a unique national treasure," he said in January 2002, upon signing a joint federal-state water agreement with his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush. "The restoration of this ecosystem is a priority for my administration, as well as for Governor Bush."

That's all to the good, except for one thing. The real Everglades—the fabled "River of Grass" that everyone is trying to save,

Plumbing the Everglades

CLICK HERE to see a graphic representation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' attempt to restore, preserve, and protect the South Florida ecosystem.

restore, return to its natural state, or whatever the current claim is—doesn't exist and hasn't for well over a century. It may be one of the largest wetlands in the Western Hemisphere and the primary source of South Florida's drinking water, but at this point it's not a river. After 150 years of reclamation projects, the Everglades is now little more than a compartmentalized swamp.

The Everglades was one of the youngest ecosystems on the planet—only about 5,000 years old—when Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States in 1819, and entirely unique: a 50-mile-wide river, with an average current of half a mile per day, masquerading as a floodplain during the summer rainy season and a vast swamp the rest of the year. It covered four million acres with some of the purest water in the world and was home to more than 40 indigenous plants and 300 species of birds, plus black bears, panthers, and gray foxes.

Of course, to its new neighbors it was just a swamp, and swamps are meant to be drained. To that end, Floridians petitioned the U.S. Congress incessantly until, finally, the 1850 Swamp Act gave them ownership of the Everglades and the right to make it arable. From then on, everyone and his mother had a scheme to drain the land. No one was successful until the early 1900s, when Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward dynamited the Everglades to help speed canal construction. But that didn't stop developers from selling nonexistent "reclaimed" land. Dumb Yankees bought it sight unseen, packed their bags, laid eyes on the quagmire, and took up hoboing.

But some stayed and hit the big time—most notably, the brains behind what would eventually become the U.S. Sugar Corporation, an agribusiness giant and multimillion-dollar player in the development of the Everglades. With the help of the state and a hodgepodge of levees and canals, farm acreage grew. By 1928, 48,000 people were living in and around the Everglades. The ecosystem was stressed, so much so that when a hurricane-engorged Lake Okeechobee broke its southeastern levee that year, the deluge killed 1,800 people. You callin' me a swamp? the Everglades seemed to be saying. I'll show you a swamp.

To make sure that never happened again, in 1930, President Herbert Hoover had the feds throw up a new levee, dubbed the Hoover Dike, all the way around Lake Okeechobee. With its perennial flood source cut off, and the canals multiplying, the Everglades just got drier. Large swaths of peat caught fire. Salt water edged into the aquifer, tainting the drinking water of the burgeoning urban areas. Then came back-to-back hurricanes in 1947. Far fewer people died than in '28, but $59 million in property was ruined. Congress quickly ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a permanent fix. In 1948, the Central and Southern Florida Project was implemented. Over the next 50 years, the Corps and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) built a complicated water-control system that would eventually employ 1,000 miles of canals, 720 miles of levees, and more than 200 pump stations, spillways, and culverts to maintain water levels for flood control and farming, while mostly ignoring the needs of the ecosystem.

In 1996, thanks to the threatened extinction of 68 species (from the Key Largo cotton mouse to the American crocodile), a completely fragmented water flow, the despoilment of Florida Bay, and intense lobbying by the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and a persistent homegrown group called Friends of the Everglades, Congress ordered the Corps to undo what it had done. In 1999, after a lot of number crunching, the Corps presented a new plan called the Comprehensive Review Study, or, simply, the Restudy. The Restudy was fed into something called the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 and came out the other end as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP)—a pet project of the Clinton administration, spearheaded by Al Gore.

Phew. I've been trying to get to the bottom of CERP for a while now. Despite all the talk, mandated restudies, and money—$7.8 billion over 30 years promised (but not allocated) by the feds and the state of Florida—this is not, as far as I can tell, a restoration plan. It's just another in a long line of well-intentioned but ultimately destructive water-management schemes—in short, a compromise touted as a vague but important-sounding solution. While it might halt further degradation of the ecosystem and save billions of gallons of freshwater that are currently being dumped in the ocean, it will not return a natural flow to the Everglades, no matter what Clinton, Gore, or the Bushes have to say.

But then, "the Everglades Stopgap Plan" isn't so catchy, is it?

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