She is pure light descending from the sky; a single snowy egret swoops
softly down, taking pause in a shallow pool, her body half hidden by
the khaki grass rising from the water. Her eyes scan the flat horizon
for just a moment before she returns to the air.
Like the egret, I am wading through the Everglades, viewing the legacy
of more than 150 years of drainage and development. As a geologist, I
wonder what this wetland looked like when it was truly wet. Wading
through sporadic stands of knee-high grass rising from ankle-deep
water, I watch the snowy egret until she disappears into the clouds
flowing unimpeded over this land, as the water once did.
Norman Maclean, in the final pages of his novel A River Runs Through
It, wrote, “I am haunted by waters.” Throughout the relationship
between Europeans and the Everglades, waters have certainly haunted.
They haunted the first explorers, who got lost in the unending maze.
They haunted the first settlers, who could not find dry land. They
haunted farmers, who feared their floods. They haunted engineers, sent
by the government to conquer the waters. Now they haunt me. The water
that remains lingers like some ghost of Everglades past.
Water wars
Early in Florida’s development, the question was how to get rid of the
water. Today, we wonder how to get the water back. In December 2000,
Congress passed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
(CERP)—at the time touted as the largest step towards conservation in
US history—and since then, the subject of intense debate. The Plan’s
goal, to restore the Everglades ecosystem to some sort of equilibrium,
cuts to the heart of the 100-year-old water war between development and
the environment here in Florida.
Dr. Walter Rosenbaum, a former employee of the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), taught one of the first environmental politics courses in
the country. He also works as a consultant for the South Florida
Environmental Restoration Project.
Sitting in his newly refurbished office in the University of Florida’s
political science department, Rosenbaum talks about what he sees as the
project’s biggest challenge: “its ability to achieve the environmental
goals of the restoration,” a term he sees as a misnomer for the
reconstruction of a man-made ecosystem that realistically will never be
able support itself. He gives the project a 50/50 chance of success.
“It depends on whether or not we can get the water right. Other
factors, like wildlife, will follow.” Rosenbaum says “Get the water
right” should be the slogan of the restoration project. His problems
with the implementation procedures exist because some want, as he put
it, “to simply get the water.”
“Water,” Rosenbaum says, “is the single most important issue in this
state.” This dependence is nothing new. It dates to the mid-19th
century, when hurricanes, floods, fires, and drought created the need
for water controls in a region concerned more with development and
economic growth than protecting the environment.
Following World War II, the US economy and population exploded, with
Florida feeling the full effects of the growth. Tourism grew almost
exponentially. In 1948, the Army Corps of Engineers began building the
Central and South Florida Project (C&SF), intended as “a practical
and permanent solution of the problems of flood protection and water
control in central and southern Florida” (C&SF, 1948).
Environmental impact, protection, or conservation won little attention
in this initial phase of large-scale human interference.
The C&SF took nearly 20 years to complete. Department of the
Interior records show that in that time, government agencies helped
build more than 1,000 miles of levees and canals, 150 water control
structures, and 16 major pump stations. Their efforts continued for
decades, changing the Everglades from largely uncontrolled,
uninhabitable wetlands to the home of more than six million people by
the mid-1990s. The area now encompasses seven of the nation’s 10
fastest growing metropolitan areas: the Everglades are now roughly half
their original size.
C&SF may have seemed a practical solution to growth, but it turns
out it was anything but permanent. As diversion and drainage continued,
the plan caused more problems than it solved. As development and water
use ran rampant, the inability of the C&SF to sustain the
environmental quality of the wetlands became increasingly evident as
more and more water was drained from the system.
Ecosystem in crisis
The Everglades’ once natural ecosystem is now extensively manipulated.
Agriculture and an expanding population siphon clean water from the
system, returning it polluted. According to USGS point-source data
reports, the agricultural industry, led by sugar, is the primary source
of detrimental chemicals such as phosphates—now widespread throughout
the Everglades and adjacent reservoirs—which pollute the water that
drains back into the Everglades. The concentration of pollutants
increases daily with the decline of actual water volumes in the system,
currently one-half the original volume.
The federal government took legal action against the sugar industries
in the 1990s for polluting the Everglades National Park, bringing the
C&SF under review in the process. The feds realized the ecosystem
was in crisis. Years of litigation and apparent compromise brought
together the federal and state governments, as well as industry heads
and environmentalists, to create what we now know as CERP, which
details 60 specific elements and projects to restore the Everglades.
CERP is scheduled to take more than 30 years to complete. Originally
estimated at $7.8 billion, the cost to re-engineer the ecosystem grows
daily, and is now estimated at more than $11 billion.
The objectives
One of the earliest goals of CERP, and one that dramatically exhibits
the complications of the project, is to increase the overall sheet flow
of the watershed into Florida Bay. The idea is that the Army Corps of
Engineers will recreate the original flow patterns of the wetlands
system through management of canals, levees, and reservoirs. This
complex coordination seems less and less plausible as the project moves
forward. Research into the process suggests the likelihood of lengthy
delays lasting decades, according to scientists listed in Florida
Audubon’s 2001 Everglades Report.
Of the many smaller projects within the larger restoration, the
acquisition of land for the eventual increase of natural estuaries
provides a glimmer of positivity. But even the seemingly simple process
of buying back property to then turn back to wetland has seen delays.
CERP also aims to increase water levels by trapping water before it is
lost to the ocean. But before it can return to the system, the water
must be extensively filtered. The water will need to be contained
somehow, which most likely means constructing more reservoirs. Building
new reservoirs in the state of Florida, already one of the nation’s
leaders in per capita water consumption, has some saying that CERP
furthers the very development that originally harmed the wetlands.
There is obviously political support for getting water to south
Florida’s burgeoning populations. Assuring the continued supply of
water is a priority at the ballot box and thus in the state
legislature. The Everglades’ future rests in the hands of those forces
that were responsible for the initial mismanagement, the same hands
still reaching for the water.
The X factor
Complicating all this is the potential effect of climate change. If
certain warming predictions come to pass, the restoration becomes moot,
as the Everglades subside under a rising ocean. Water levels recorded
in many locations all over the world show sea level rising, while
measurements of polar ice caps suggest melting trends. In the time it
takes to complete the restoration, Florida’s coastal areas and
low-elevation inlands could be inundated with salt water. The lack of
attention given climate change by restoration leaders could prove an
extreme miscalculation.
Almost three years after the passage of CERP, the Everglades continue
to shrink and fresh water levels continue to drop. With every passing
day, CERP seems to garner more negative attention. Unless real priority
is given to protecting our natural resources, the egret, along with the
water, will soon leave this place forever.
—Adam Spangler is a graduate of EIJ’s intern program.
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