After A Century of Destruction, Decades of Restoration, Fight To Save Everglades Struggles Onward

By Caitie Parmelee

Six­ty-sev­en years ago, a trag­ic death was immi­nent, and nobody was doing any­thing to stop it.

The Ever­glades, Flori­da author Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas wrote, were van­ish­ing. Birds were dis­ap­pear­ing, the saw grass prairies were burn­ing and the sup­ply of water need­ed to quench the region’s thirst was rapid­ly decreasing.

It was time for the gov­ern­ment to take action, Dou­glas said, before there was noth­ing left.

“The Ever­glades is a test,” she said. “If we pass, we may get to keep the planet.”

Bil­lions of dol­lars and near­ly sev­en decades lat­er, we are still strug­gling to pass this test through what has been described as the biggest ecosys­tem restora­tion in the world.

Over the years, sev­er­al restora­tion efforts and projects were ini­ti­at­ed, but none addressed the root of the destruc­tion. It was not until the Cen­tral Ever­glades Restora­tion Project (CERP) was autho­rized in 2000 that the gov­ern­ment would come to under­stand that it all comes down to water.

“The over­all goal is to get water flow­ing south out of Lake Okee­chobee,” said Howard Gon­za­les, chief of the ecosys­tem branch at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Despite the belief that they now know the root of the prob­lem, there is still no easy solu­tion. It all comes down to water, but it is not just about water. It is about mon­ey, pol­i­tics and history.

Hun­dreds of years ago, this unique and frag­ile ecosys­tem was kept intact by the nat­ur­al water sys­tem. Dur­ing the wet sea­son from May to Octo­ber, Lake Okee­chobee would spill over and the water would flow south into the wet­land area as a sheet flow. This flow hydrat­ed an ecosys­tem that does not exist any­where else in the world.

It was not to last. The Swamp Lands Act of 1850 autho­rized the recla­ma­tion of the “swamp­lands” so the land could be devel­oped for society.

Devel­op­ers start­ed plan­ning for the future. Hen­ry M. Fla­gler, the part­ner of oil tycoon John D. Rock­e­feller, bought hun­dreds of acres to build rail­roads that would run through­out Flori­da. Fla­gler was a pen­ny-pinch­ing, self-made busi­ness­man who had a ten­den­cy to reuse stamps to save mon­ey. Rock­e­feller described him as “a man of great force and deter­mi­na­tion, though per­haps he need­ed a restrain­ing influ­ence at times when his enthu­si­asm was roused.”

His enthu­si­asm was cer­tain­ly roused by the idea of mak­ing his mark on Flori­da. Fla­gler would spend mil­lions on an attempt to devel­op the land – an attempt that would ulti­mate­ly fail.

As Fla­gler spent his mon­ey buy­ing every bit of land he could grab, peo­ple start­ed buy­ing set­tle­ments in antic­i­pa­tion of the newest des­ti­na­tion for oppor­tu­ni­ty and Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism. But even as this hap­pened, no one seemed to be able to actu­al­ly ful­fill the promise of dry land. And then in walked Napoleon Bona­parte Broward.

Broward was a large man, full of charm and con­fi­dence, and he was con­vinced the Ever­glades could be drained. He made impas­sioned speech­es, point­ed to exam­ples of human inno­va­tion and fueled peo­ple with the con­vic­tion of their pow­er over nature. When he took office as gov­er­nor in 1905, Broward imme­di­ate­ly start­ed build­ing canals, sell­ing land and plan­ning for the future of Flori­da. The land stayed dry for some time, and then a lit­tle bit more. When Broward left office in 1909, every­one was con­vinced he had done it. Broward had drained the Everglades.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he for­got about the rain.

The 1920s brought new pros­per­i­ty to Flori­da, quick­ly fol­lowed by two dead­ly hur­ri­canes. In 1926, a storm hit Mia­mi, destroy­ing thou­sands of hous­es and killing hun­dreds of peo­ple. A hur­ri­cane in 1928 killed 1,800 more, and con­vinced offi­cials that Lake Okee­chobee, a huge source of flood­ing dur­ing the storms, need­ed to be con­trolled. A dike was quick­ly con­struct­ed around the lake, and the water that nor­mal­ly flowed south out of Okee­chobee was divert­ed toward rivers flow­ing to the east and west. The sheet flow was effec­tive­ly cut off, and it was not until the 1940s that peo­ple start­ed to real­ize that the Ever­glades were dying.

Over the last 200 years, humans have done their best to devel­op, drain, chan­nel­ize and dike these wet­lands so that soci­ety could com­fort­ably retire in the sun. These efforts severe­ly dis­rupt­ed the hydrol­o­gy of the Ever­glades, actu­al­ly mak­ing the land less able to sus­tain human life.

“With­out the Ever­glades, devel­oped areas can­not exist,” said Aida Arik, an eco­log­i­cal engi­neer for the Ever­glades Foun­da­tion, a sci­ence based non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the restora­tion of the Everglades.

The first attempt to save the Ever­glades was made in 1947, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas’ book, “The Ever­glades: Riv­er of Grass”. Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man estab­lished the Ever­glades Nation­al Park, which would serve as a refuge from devel­op­ment. The Cen­tral and South Flori­da, or C&SF, Project was devel­oped to pro­vide flood con­trol and fresh water to South Flori­da, mak­ing it eas­i­er for peo­ple to live on the land.

Even Dou­glas thought these two ini­tia­tives would be the key to sav­ing the Ever­glades. What she and every­one else failed to under­stand was that even though the Ever­glades Nation­al Park would pre­serve the pro­tect­ed land, it was still cut off from its nat­ur­al water supply.

Even more destruc­tive was the C&SF Project. The U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers focused on cre­at­ing bet­ter liv­ing con­di­tions for soci­ety, but failed to take into account the need to have an ade­quate water sup­ply for both peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment, and to make sure the water was clean. It was not enough to only pro­vide flood control.

An exam­ple of this dilem­ma is the chan­nel­iza­tion of the Kissim­mee Riv­er, which twist­ed and mean­dered for 103 miles through Cen­tral Flori­da. The riv­er was cut and dredged in the 1960s to form straight canals that would pro­tect peo­ple from flood­ing dur­ing the wet sea­son. As a result, the areas of land that were meant to be flood­ed no longer had a water sup­ply. The con­se­quences for the ecosys­tem were dev­as­tat­ing; the num­ber of wad­ing birds in the area was dras­ti­cal­ly reduced, as well as native fish and ani­mals that could only sur­vive in wetlands.

C&SF was not, how­ev­er, the only Ever­glades ini­tia­tive before CERP. In 1976, Con­gress passed the Kissim­mee Riv­er Restora­tion Act, which led to the autho­riza­tion of the Kissim­mee Riv­er Restora­tion Project in 1992. This project was designed to restore the river’s orig­i­nal flow while account­ing for flood control.

Final­ly, in 2000, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment autho­rized CERP, a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to restore the nat­ur­al flow of the Ever­glades. CERP had a price tag of $8 bil­lion and a goal to achieve restora­tion in 30 years.

The two key agen­cies lead­ing the project are the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers and the South Flori­da Water Man­age­ment Dis­trict, a gov­ern­ment agency that over­sees water resources in South­ern Flori­da. A range of oth­er gov­ern­men­tal and pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions also par­tic­i­pates, includ­ing local and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and sev­er­al envi­ron­men­tal groups. As this is a sci­ence-based project, orga­ni­za­tions such as the Ever­glades Foun­da­tion are crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant in the effort to iden­ti­fy prob­lem areas and come up with pos­si­ble solutions.

They are now 14 years and almost $2 bil­lion into the restora­tion, and they have come to under­stand the impor­tance of the water, as well as the col­lab­o­ra­tion and fund­ing need­ed to get it right.

Cur­rent­ly, the water flow­ing out of Lake Okee­chobee is being redi­rect­ed east and west into the Caloosa­hatch­ee and St. Lucie Rivers. This is not only waste­ful, but it results in send­ing fresh water into salt­wa­ter ecosys­tems. Because of the lack of water flow­ing south, this also increas­es the risk of salt­wa­ter invad­ing fresh water envi­ron­ments in South­ern Florida.

By restor­ing the his­tor­i­cal flow of water, more water will be uti­lized than wast­ed and there is less of a chance that the fresh and salt­wa­ter will mix.

“Mov­ing water south solves a lot of prob­lems,” said Arik.

One way of doing this is ele­vat­ing the Tami­a­mi Trail. The trail, con­struct­ed in 1928, stretch­es from State Road 60 in Tam­pa to U.S. Route 1 in Mia­mi. Since its con­struc­tion, it has act­ed as a dam for water that is sup­posed to be flow­ing out of Lake Okee­chobee and into the Ever­glades. The goal is to bridge the trail, allow­ing the water to con­tin­ue flow­ing south.

Accord­ing to Arik, the Tami­a­mi Trail is crit­i­cal to restora­tion, as it will “uncork the sys­tem.” As of March 2013, one mile of the bridge has been com­plet­ed, and Arik said Gov­er­nor Rick Scott has allo­cat­ed $90 mil­lion over the next three years for the next 2.6 miles of bridging.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the issue of restora­tion is not as sim­ple as restor­ing the flow of water. Accord­ing to Gon­za­les, get­ting the water right is not just about dis­tri­b­u­tion, but about qual­i­ty, quan­ti­ty and tim­ing as well. These are dif­fi­cult to man­age and very expensive.

Water qual­i­ty is not just about clean water for peo­ple; it’s about suit­able water for the ecosys­tem. The Ever­glades is a low-nutri­ent sys­tem, mean­ing it needs water con­tain­ing low amounts of phos­pho­rus to sur­vive. Before devel­op­ment, the water only con­tained about 10 parts per bil­lion of phos­pho­rus. Because of the dis­rup­tion to the sys­tem and the agri­cul­tur­al pol­lu­tion from near­by sug­ar farms, the water going into Lake Okee­chobee is rough­ly between 250 to 600 parts per billion.

Not only is the water pol­lut­ed, the water lev­els are hard to reg­u­late. Lake Okee­chobee is impor­tant for water sup­ply and flood con­trol. To make sure there is enough water for every­one, the lake lev­els need to be as high as pos­si­ble. To pro­tect peo­ple from hur­ri­canes and floods, the lev­els need to be as low as possible.

“We’re try­ing to get all the inde­pen­dent pieces to work as a sys­tem again, but they weren’t designed to work togeth­er,” said Paul Gray, Okee­chobee sci­ence coor­di­na­tor for Audubon Flori­da.

Accord­ing to Gray, there are a lot of peo­ple who say the water lev­els of the lake should just be raised to help the rest of the Ever­glades, but this would destroy the ecol­o­gy of the lake.

“PR is a prob­lem because a lot of peo­ple think Lake Okee­chobee is just a mud hole,” said Gray. “But we’re not try­ing to move the harm from one place to another.”

Don Fox, bio­log­i­cal admin­is­tra­tor for the Flori­da Fish and Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Com­mis­sion, says the key to suc­cess is col­lab­o­ra­tion. He said peo­ple like to place blame on oth­ers, but it is everyone’s problem.

“It’s all a big dance,” Fox said. “We’re try­ing to get every­one in the same ballroom.”

Sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants believe that their agen­cies are work­ing well togeth­er. Gon­za­les says they are more aligned now than ever.

“Eight to ten groups meet on a quar­ter­ly basis, talk through projects and see where they can help each oth­er,” Gon­za­les said.

Arik agrees. “[The Ever­glades Foun­da­tion] has to push to be includ­ed some­times, but we have a lot of weight when it comes to influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy, and so when agen­cies plan out these projects, they real­ly want to have us on board. Sci­ence dri­ves our pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy deci­sions. So a lot of times agen­cies do depend on our exper­tise to con­tribute to the plan­ning process.”

Sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made. The Kissim­mee Riv­er Restora­tion Project is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by 2019. Along with this and the ongo­ing ele­va­tion of the Tami­a­mi Trail, the ecol­o­gy of Lake Okee­chobee is slow­ly being restored and the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers has come up with a plan to tack­le the heart of the Ever­glades. The issue now is money.

“Look­ing at where we stand now, a lot of our progress depends on appro­pri­a­tions,” Gon­za­les said. He says it is key that Con­gress autho­rizes a Water Devel­op­ment Resources Act, a bill that autho­rizes and funds all U.S. Army Corps projects. Con­gress has not autho­rized this bill, which is sup­posed to be passed every two years, since 2007.

Whether they get autho­riza­tion from Con­gress this year remains to be seen, as this is an elec­tion year and it is already May. Gon­za­les is con­fi­dent, how­ev­er, that they will get the help they need. “We are get­ting signs from Wash­ing­ton with regards to autho­riza­tion,” he said. “The expec­ta­tion is that some­thing is going to hap­pen this year.”

This autho­riza­tion will allow them to start imple­ment­ing projects that have been planned by the state, but can­not be exe­cut­ed with­out being approved by Con­gress. Accord­ing to Gon­za­les, the state has expend­ed $400 mil­lion to $500 mil­lion that can­not be brought into the equa­tion with­out fed­er­al approval.

Fed­er­al fund­ing is not the only mon­ey issue, how­ev­er. The restora­tion has faced state bud­get slash­es the last few years, as con­ser­v­a­tive Gov­er­nor Scott cut back on fund­ing for the envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tive in 2011, his first year in office.

While Scott has since reversed his posi­tion and just this year allo­cat­ed more of the state bud­get for the Ever­glades, the finan­cial slash­es were a set­back for the restora­tion effort. One of the projects that has been strug­gling is the effort to clean pol­lut­ed water using storm water treat­ment areas.

Storm water treat­ment areas, or STAs, are water sup­ply “well­fields” that stretch from Orlan­do to Key West. These well­fields take water com­ing from the water­shed and fil­ter as much of the nutri­ents as pos­si­ble just before let­ting it con­tin­ue into Lake Okee­chobee and the Ever­glades. One way they do this is by plant­i­ng veg­e­ta­tion that thrives in nutri­ent rich envi­ron­ments, allow­ing the plants to soak up the phos­pho­rus and send bet­ter qual­i­ty water into the Everglades.

Gary Rit­ter, inter­gov­ern­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the South Flori­da Water Man­age­ment Dis­trict, says the process of reduc­ing phos­pho­rus through storm water treat­ment areas is vital to restor­ing the hydrol­o­gy and it is expensive.

Accord­ing to Rit­ter, the Water Man­age­ment Dis­trict has suf­fered from the bud­get cuts, forc­ing lay­offs and slow­ing down the process of buy­ing land to cre­ate more STAs. Rit­ter says Gov­er­nor Scott has recent­ly com­mit­ted at least $40 mil­lion a year to this project for the next four years, but it is not enough for every­thing they need to do.

Rit­ter is pleased, how­ev­er, with the mon­ey that is com­ing from the gov­er­nor, as are oth­er play­ers in the restora­tion. Gon­za­les even thinks that Scott has had a pos­i­tive effect on the Ever­glades restora­tion dur­ing his time in office.

“We need to fin­ish projects we have already start­ed,” said Gon­za­les. “I real­ly feel [Scott’s] been a cham­pi­on for this, which will then lead fur­ther down the line to con­tin­ued support.”

Though Gon­za­les expects the restora­tion to take at least anoth­er 30 years, he along with the oth­ers feels opti­mistic about the progress being made.

“We can nev­er get the Ever­glades to go back to the way it was,” Gray said, “but the goal is to restore as best as possible.”

Rit­ter agrees. “We can only do as much as pos­si­ble to achieve restora­tion as best as we can.”

While the time­line seems daunt­ing, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the restora­tion of the Ever­glades is an incred­i­ble effort. There is decades of dam­age to undo, and no room for mis­takes. Every­thing from the birds to the phos­pho­rus to the safe­ty of the pop­u­la­tion needs to be tak­en into account.

But if suc­cess­ful, the end result of the time and mon­ey spent on this project will be priceless.

There is no easy way to describe the feel­ing of being in the Ever­glades. The excite­ment of speed­ing along Lake Okee­chobee in an air­boat, or the sound of the birds on a calm morn­ing at Flamin­go Bay. The absolute qui­et when walk­ing into a cypress dome com­plete­ly cut off from the sounds and the stress of the rest of the world. It is sim­ply an immer­sion in a world of beau­ty, heat and awe out­side of every­thing any­one has ever known that no words can ever tru­ly describe. It is an expe­ri­ence – and there is no oth­er place equal to it. There will only ever be one Ever­glades, and we will nev­er get anoth­er chance to save them.

“We’re not going to fail,” Arik said.