Two Key Projects Push Water South

Two Key Projects Push Water South

C111Marvin
The C‑111 Spread­er Canal near the entrance of Ever­glades Nation­al Park is designed to get more water into the park and Flori­da Bay.
Pho­to by Mar­vin Williams

By Mar­vin Williams

Flori­da Ever­glades experts are opti­mistic that two key projects to bring more water into the Ever­glades Nation­al Park will help restore the nat­ur­al habi­tat of the park.

The two projects are a bridge on the Tami­a­mi Trail and the C‑111 spread­er canal.

Lin­da Fri­ar, pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer for the Ever­glades Nation­al Park, calls them key projects for the park.

The C‑111 canal is sup­posed to bring water to the park in areas where it might be too dry, while the Tami­a­mi Bridge works to repair dam­ages done on the Tami­a­mi Trail.

Con­struc­tion of the C‑111 spread­er canal start­ed 14 years ago, while the first mile of the Tami­a­mi Bridge was recent­ly com­plet­ed with anoth­er 2.6 miles said to be built soon.

C‑111 is actu­al­ly one of our key suc­cess­es,” Fri­ar said.

More specif­i­cal­ly, C‑111 refers to a project that made changes to a canal that runs on the east side of the nation­al park.  In the past it caused a lot of water that should have gone to the park to drain into the ocean.

It’s a major piece of every­thing,” said Neil San­taniel­lo, a jour­nal­ism pro­fes­sor at Flori­da Atlantic Uni­ver­si­ty and long­time fol­low­er of devel­op­ments in the Everglades.

The changes that they are mak­ing [to the canal] will allow a lot more water to stay in the park,” San­taniel­lo said. “It’s going to ben­e­fit wildlife.”

Fri­ar says that C‑111 has been in the works since the ear­ly 1990’s, with a devel­op­ing plan start­ing in 1996 and con­struc­tion begin­ning in 2000.

The C‑111 project is actu­al­ly a small-scale exam­ple of the changes under­way in the Ever­glades ecosys­tem, accord­ing to Aida Arik, eco­log­i­cal engi­neer for the Ever­glades Foun­da­tion.

The spread­er canal allows water to dis­trib­ute more even­ly into more areas both in the Ever­glades and Flori­da Bay, thus mak­ing the restora­tion efforts more effi­cient.  Flori­da Bay has received so lit­tle fresh water in the past that it has devel­oped salin­i­ty prob­lems at times.

sawgrassmarvin
The Ever­glades needs projects such as rais­ing the Tami­a­mi Trail and the spread­er canal in order to get the water it needs to sur­vive.
Pho­to by Mar­vin Williams.

The C‑111 looks like it’s going to be a suc­cess accord­ing to experts but they say it is still  ear­ly to say how much of a success.

I think it’s very ear­ly to give a strong assess­ment of whether it’s work­ing or not,” Arik said, who remains upbeat about its future.

With ecosys­tems, you sort of have to give time to assess how these restora­tion projects are work­ing,” Arik said.

Arik also says that wet­lands tend to recov­er from destruc­tion much eas­i­er than oth­er ecosys­tems in the world.

You have so many vari­ables,” Arik said. “You have cli­mate changes, the weath­er is always chang­ing, and you have wet or dry years.”

The Tami­a­mi Trail, which opened in 1928, is a high­way that links Tam­pa Bay and Mia­mi. The trail runs through the Flori­da Ever­glades and over­time has dam­aged fish and veg­e­ta­tion habi­tats by block­ing water from flow­ing far­ther south.

Engi­neers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists have pro­posed con­vert­ing an 11-mile stretch into a bridge. Con­struc­tion for the first mile of the bridge began in 2009 and fin­ished in ear­ly 2013, with the next few miles of the bridge still in the works.

The next seg­ment that we’re try­ing to get is 2.6 miles,” said Arik. “Once we get that 2.6 miles, we’ll get to the rest.”

Flori­da gov­er­nor Rick Scott, who has played a sig­nif­i­cant rule in the build­ing of both the C‑111 spread­er canal and Tami­a­mi Bridge, announced that the funds need­ed for the next 2.6 miles of the bridge have been approved.

The bridge is still fair­ly new; there­fore it is hard to assess how well it is doing at this point.

Some peo­ple think that they’re see­ing some improve­ment from the bridge, but the water is not real­ly mov­ing in here yet,” said Shau­na Cotrell, a ranger at Ever­glades Nation­al Park. “They’re just see­ing the effects of a cou­ple wet summers.”

Still, key restora­tion projects such as the C‑111 and Tami­a­mi Bridge give hope to many that the Flori­da Ever­glades will one day be restored back to its nat­ur­al habitat.