March 2, 2013 – The Everglades Flood Control and Restoration: A Century of Disaster

OUTLINE

ABSTRACT
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Before drainage of the Everglades began over a century ago, the wetlands of southern Florida were an interconnected hydrological assortment of lavish freshwater lakes and streams, cypress swamps, secluded estuarine lagoons, freshwater sloughs, tree islands, wet prairies, and mangrove swamps spanning 3.6 million hectares. After a century of intrusion, the daunting task of understanding, fixing, maintaining, and regaining a sustainable, natural Everglades-type ecosystem in South Florida is monumental. The area south of Lake Okeechobee now has a human population of over four million people, with greedy agricultural and urban demands for more water and more space. Therefore, several uphill battles have ensued. The conceptual plans for restoring this ecosystem, currently on record, are all extremely expensive to implement. A more thorough definition of the environmental and societal objectives and measures of success are required. How the ecosystem will respond to the return of a more natural hydrological pattern is uncertain, but needs to be addressed as the expected and desired outcome through measures of performance. The critical level of deterioration of the Everglades has created a crisis-management atmosphere instead of a full spectrum response and future prevention methodology. The political and social aspects of the Everglades restoration process have continually increased in complexity. This, in turn, requires the reexamining of science programs in land management firms and the role played by these programs. The typical organizational hierarchy of federal and state agencies, dominated by a historical arrangement of Washington politicians, Florida legislators, and local lobbyists, had not sufficiently incorporated the levels of scientific data into the environmental restoration process as needed for these processes to flourish. At the same time, scientists involved in the Everglades restoration efforts needed to reexamine the steps they were taking to be better involved, injected, and synchronized with legislators and land management bureaus. In final analysis, the “restoration” of large, complex ecosystems, imbedded in even larger social, economical, political, and geological systems, requires the adoption of a new planning strategy; one that is characterized by a greater level of responsibility for scientists. They must operate as an equivocal partner with policy makers and project managers throughout all levels of the preparation, execution, and evaluation processes while continuing to apply the precautionary principle of science.
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I. Introduction a. Overview of the Everglades i. Location ii. Composition b. Problems c. Ecological Background. d. The Beginning of the End. e. Federal Aid to the Rescue iii. Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project (C&SF) iv. C&SF Mandates f. Kissimmee River Straightening

II. Protection Measures g. National Park Status v. Location and size. vi. Natural Resource Oversight Responsibilities. 1. Outside of the park. 2. Inside the park. h. Key Players. i. South Florida Water Management District. j. Everglades today. vii. Current size. viii. Species degradation. ix. Two primary ecological problems. k. Sugar Corporation Influences. x. Worldwide. xi. Local. xii. Political. xiii. Locations.

III. Assessment. l. Changes in the ecosystem. xiv. Geographic reduction. xv. Spatial and temporal patterns. xvi. Wildlife decline. m. Degradation of Florida Bay. n. Everglades Symposium.

IV. Progress. o. Everglades Forever Act. p. World spotlight – 1990s. xvii. Comprehensive Review Study. q. Reexamining Study of C&SF. r. Dechannelizing the Kissimmee River. s. Reconnaissance Study. t. Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). u. Proposed buy-out of sugar corporations.

V. The Way Ahead. v. National Research Council. xviii. Progress toward restoration. xix. Failures. xx. Catalyst for science throughout the process. w. Four problems of traditional science

VI. Conclusion - In summary, the Everglades of the twenty-first century is a much changed ecosystem, compared to what is known of the system 120 or more years ago. Examining a natural-system hydrological model demonstrates what water depth and distribution patterns have changed, often in major ways, throughout most areas of Florida’s Everglades. It has also been shown that three of the seven major landscape features in the pre-drainage Everglades have been completely eliminated. Two fundamental lessons from nature have once again been ignored: (1) prevention of environmental harm works better and is less costly than trying to undo it; and (2) when we intervene in nature, unintended and often harmful consequences usually result. Policy makers, managers, and scientists must develop a strongly integrated, horizontally organized, process for linking science into the Everglades’ issues. The “restoration” of large, complex ecosystems, imbedded in even larger social, economical, political, and geological systems, requires the adoption of a new planning strategy; one that is characterized by a greater level of responsibility for scientists. They must operate as an equivocal partner with policy makers and project managers throughout all levels of the preparation, execution, and evaluation processes while continuing to apply the precautionary principle of science.

Introduction In the southern most part of Florida, situated between Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Keys, lies one of the most diverse and complicated wetland areas of the world; the Everglades. Comprised of seven major landscape features, it is predominantly a vastness of sawgrass wetlands with dispersed islands of trees. Untouched, this river of grass slowly drifted as a thin expanse of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee in the north to Florida Bay in the south. The northern part of the Everglades is inundated with sawgrass and consists of shallow freshwater lakes and streams. To the west of this river of grass lies Big Cypress Swamp, a dimly lit swamp filled with massive moss-covered trees. Near the southern coast, mangrove swamps and salt marshes thrive. As the largest remaining subtropical wilderness in the continental United States, the diverse ecosystems of the Everglades were once a haven for wildlife such as panthers, alligators, crocodiles, snakes, otters, and thousands of birds of prey and wading birds. The Everglades: River of Grass, written by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947, made famous the region’s natural wonders in this environmental classic. Now protected as a national park, the southern portion of the Everglades was the first area recognized, and federally listed, to purely preserve biological, not geological, resources. Despite this effort, the Everglades are now considered to be one of the most endangered national parks in the United States because of the hydrological and biological damage we have done to this southern ecosystem. After a century of intrusion, the daunting task of understanding, fixing, maintaining, and regaining a sustainable, natural Everglades-type ecosystem in South Florida is monumental. The area south of Lake Okeechobee now has a human population of over four million people, with greedy agricultural and urban demands for more water and more space. Therefore, several uphill battles have ensued. The conceptual plans for restoring this ecosystem, currently on record, are all extremely expensive to implement. A more thorough definition of the environmental and societal objectives and measures of success are required. How the ecosystem will respond to the return of a more natural hydrological pattern is uncertain, but must be addressed through the use of measures of performance and measures of effectiveness in order for it to be modeled first and later assessed. The critical level of deterioration of the Everglades has created a crisis-management atmosphere instead of a full spectrum response and future prevention methodology. The political and social aspects of the Everglades restoration process have continually increased in complexity. This, in turn, requires the reexamining of science programs in land management firms and the role played by these programs. The typical organizational hierarchy of federal and state agencies, dominated by a historical arrangement of Washington politicians, Florida legislators, and lobbyists, has not sufficiently incorporated the levels of scientific data into the environmental restoration process that are required for these processes to be successful. At the same time, scientists involved in the Everglades restoration efforts need to reexamine the steps they were taking to be better involved, injected, and synchronized with legislators and land management bureaus. Before drainage began over a century ago, the wetlands of southern Florida were an interconnected hydrological assortment of lavish freshwater lakes and streams, cypress swamps, secluded estuarine lagoons, freshwater sloughs, tree islands, wet prairies, and mangrove swamps spanning 3.6 million hectares despite water in the Everglades being nutrient poor. At the epicenter of these seven landscapes lies a broad river of grass, the heart of the Everglades, that covered 1.2 million hectares nestled between Lake Okeechobee’s southern shores and the estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay. The imperceptible elevation gradient across the Everglades had an average slope of 2.8 centimeters per kilometer from north to south (Parker, Ferguson, and Love 1955). Deeper bogs within the Everglades have been critical collection and storage systems after heavy rainfall throughout the wet seasons of summer and fall. The flat terrain with its low hydrological gradient, and the resistance to flow caused by the marsh vegetation, resulted in a broad “sheet flow” from north to south at velocities that averaged only 0-1 cm/sec (Rosendahl and Rose, 1982). Therefore, this low velocity flow of water helped extend the duration of annual surface flooding throughout much of the wetlands and the downstream estuaries until well into the ensuing mild, more dry, winter and early spring dry seasons. This enabled multiyear periods of flows for the deeper freshwater sloughs which could continually feed the downstream estuaries. The vastness of the Everglades, coupled with tedious access prior to motorboats, airboats, and aircraft, meant the minute details of what enabled the Everglades to be successful had yet to be studied, measured, recorded or understood. Before scientists were ever introduced to the secluded interior of the landscape, and well before understanding the Everglades’ ecology, extensive preparation efforts for ridding the outlying areas of water, and the actual construction of canals to carry it out, were already in progress. The changes that early drainage projects made on wetlands in South Florida are the reason why “pre-drainage Everglades are a lost world: one that we will never know” (Davis and Ogden, 1994). The earliest canals and associated drainage projects in the Everglades basin date back to around 1881-1894. Early Florida settlers were first to introduce the idea of digging canals toward the ocean and draining the swampland in order to create farmland. Most people thought that draining the Everglades would be as simple as pulling the plug in a bathtub (Blake 1980, p.4). However, the daunting task became too expensive and extensive, even with initial financial and legislative help from the various levels of government. As early as 1850, the federal government drafted and passed the Overflowed Lands Act, which gave the state title to all "swamped and submerged land" that it could [drain and] reclaim (Carter 1974, p.58, 60). Therefore, vested interests of the Florida legislature quickly enticed settlers and homesteaders to an area south of Lake Okeechobee in the northeast portion of the Everglades. It then formed the state agency known as the Internal Improvement Fund (IIF), which utilized public money to entice private developers to begin draining the land. Touted by accusations of unofficial dealings and corruption, the IIF had an unpleasant and short-lived history after public knowledge revealed poor investment practices, their inability to recoup drainage taxes, and excessive construction costs. Financial failure put a halt to extensive development around 1920 after approximately 900,000 acres had been successfully drained. Soon, Federal Aid came by way of the Army Corps of Engineers charged by the federal government to provide assistance. During heavy rains, Lake Okeechobee flooded its banks, creating wetlands that provided biological habitat and helped recharge the Everglades. However, drainage efforts resumed after a hurricane hit the area in 1928 and many people lost their lives to the flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers then built the Hoover Dike along the eastern part of the lake. The Hoover Dike stopped the flooding but prevented the water in Lake Okeechobee from recharging the Everglades. Projects increased incrementally to include the construction of four more canals designed to drain water from Lake Okeechobee. These canals would drain into small rivers that flowed from the eastern Everglades to the Atlantic Coast. After several tropical storms caused flooding in south Florida in 1947, the pace and effectiveness of these drainage efforts sharply increased beginning in 1948, with the creation of the $208M Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Flood Control Project. The Army Corps of Engineers was charged by Congress to construct an extensive system of more than 1,700 miles of canals and levees and sixteen major pumping stations to prevent flooding, provide drainage, and supply water to south Florida. These structures were then operated by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and diverted excess water to the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Everglades and established agricultural development zones in the Kissimmee valley and south of Lake Okeechobee (GAO 1999, p.4). Additionally, the initial C&SF projects included the construction of an eastern perimeter levee to separate the Everglades from the sprawling urban and agricultural areas along the Atlantic coast of Florida as well as a network of canals and levees to drain the northern one-third of the Everglades. These four canals built by the Everglades Drainage District drained 214,000 hectares (530,000 acres) south of Lake Okeechobee, which was converted to farmland, and was to become the first Everglades Agricultural Area below the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Ironically, this water drainage and control, paid for largely with federal funds, opened the door for powerful commercial sugar production in the Everglades. Completed in 1979, the Corps of Engineers’ project arrived ten years past its deadline and nearly $100 million over budget (Snell and Boggess 1994, p.21). Following the completion of these structures, the C&SF project continued to construct additional levees in the remaining northern and central Everglades, creating five surface-water management impoundments (water conservation areas). These impoundments were designed to achieve the seven major mandates of the C&SF project: (1) receive and store agricultural runoff from the Everglades agricultural area; (2) prevent water accumulated in the Everglades from overflowing into urban and agricultural lands; (3) recharge regional groundwater and prevent saltwater intrusion; (4) store and convey water supply for agricultural irrigation, municipal and industrial use, and natural system requirements in Everglades National Park; (5) enhance fish and wildlife and recreation; (6) receive regulatory releases from Lake Okeechobee; and (7) dampen the effect of hurricane-induced wind tides by maintaining marsh vegetation in the system (http://www.evergladesplan.org/docs/river_interest/031512_river_interests_2012_chap_03.pdf). Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. Army corps of Engineers transformed the wandering, 103 miles long, Kissimmee River into a mostly straight, 56 miles long, canal flowing into Lake Okeechobee. The canal provided flood control for central Florida by speeding the flow of water, but it drained large wetlands north of Lake Okeechobee. The resulting lands were drier, which farmers turned into grazing land, which soon carried run-off from livestock farms directly into Lake Okeechobee and eventually the Everglades. Thus, more than 80 years of engineering projects have reduced the quantity of water flowing into the Everglades, and the water that does enter is polluted from agricultural runoff, increased urbanization, and often comes from much further away due to direct flow.
Protection Measures A large portion of the southern Everglades, nearly 500,000 acres, was established as Everglades National Park in 1947. The enabling legislation for the national park, signed into law May 30, 1934, stated, “No project or plan…shall be undertaken which will interfere with the preservation intact of the unique flora and fauna and the essential primitive natural conditions now prevailing…” In the 13 years it took to dedicate the national park, Beard painted a less desirable picture of the ecological conditions in the portion of the southern Everglades to be included in the national park, and wrote, “We now have just about all the biological ingredients that were originally present. Wise administration, coupled with the truly amazing fertility of the tropics should begin to show results in about five years. In fifty years, the Everglades National Park is capable of becoming an outstanding place” (Beard, 1938 p.106). Since its dedication, the park boundaries have expanded from the original 460,000 acres to 1,509,533 acres. It is now the United States’ largest federally protected wilderness east of the Rocky Mountains and Everglades National Park provides protection to the flora and fauna that thrive in the diverse and unique habitats of the everglades. Direct oversight and responsibility for the management of the natural resources of the remaining portions of the Everglades outside of the park’s boundaries are shared by two state agencies, one federal agency, and two Native American tribes. The South Florida Water Management District and the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission comprise the state agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the federal oversight, and the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes represent the Native Americans. Of the three water conservation areas, only one of them, the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, is leased from the state agencies by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. The Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission manages the remaining two water conservation areas. It is in these areas where much of the SFWMD supported ecological research is conducted. It is also where the more regionally designed ecological and hydrological monitoring is conducted with oversight by the Jacksonville District office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, other agencies with important regulatory responsibilities in the Everglades include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a federal entity and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a state entity. The competing mandates of the SFWMD to manage water in such a way to meet urban, agricultural, and environmental requirements, substantially crippled the water storage and sheet-flow capacities of the Everglades (Davis and Ogden, 1994). They also diverted large volumes of water through the manmade canals toward the ocean, which greatly altered the seasonal and historical patterns of the water tables. And for the estuaries located at the southern end of the system, the mandates reduced the volumes and altered the timing and distribution of freshwater discharges entering from the north. An ecologically naïve plan, authorized by Congress in 1970, established a water delivery formula that guaranteed that the volume of water provided to Everglades National Park would equal or exceed preset minimum monthly amounts (Davis et al, 1994). Such a water delivery plan based on monthly averages was doomed to fail in an ecosystem dependent on strong patterns of seasonal and annual variability in hydrological conditions as a mechanism for organizing the timing and location of primary and secondary production (Parker, Ferguson and Love, 1994). Environmental conditions in the park continued to deteriorate during the 13 years of this “minimum delivery schedule,” as proven by more frequent alligator nesting failures (an indicator species), accelerated rates of decline in wading bird populations, and the shrinking of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades habitats. Today, the Everglades’ wetlands are about half their original size, and they have many serious environmental problems that have developed over the last 70 years because of that. Much of the wetlands have dried out, leaving large areas vulnerable to summer wildfires and are incapable of supporting nesting habits of many critical species. Most water bird populations have decreased approximately 90% in recent decades, and the Everglades is now home to 50 endangered or threatened species whose numbers have dropped 75-95%. Identification of the factors responsible for the changes in the Everglades, in turn, offers guidelines for the focus and priorities that should be considered during the planning and implementation of regional restoration projects (Science At The Crossroads of Management And Policy, K. Norman Johnson). Simply put, two problems trump all others; the Everglades receive too little water, and the water it does receive is polluted with mineral nutrients from agricultural runoff. As a result of comparing water management records, the remaining natural areas receive about half as much water, and about 200 tons more phosphorus, than they originally did. Not only has the drainage and flood control system contributed to present environmental conditions, but it has also defined how land was being, or going to be, used. Depleted wetlands have been quickly consumed by agriculture and as a result, agriculture will have to figure prominently in any solution to the area’s environmental problems because nature no longer controls the flow of water into the Everglades, people do. But this aspect will come with a fight. Most of the Everglades Agricultural Areas and the surrounding farmlands are owned by sugar corporations. And no single policy affected the development of the Everglades more than the sugar embargo on Cuba. In 1960 fewer than 50,000 acres of sugarcane were planted in all of Florida; but domestic sugarcane growth exploded from 1961 as Cuban sugar was entirely eliminated from the U.S. market. During the embargo Florida's sugar acreage production increased nearly fourfold, from 50,000 acres in 1959 to more than 200,000 acres five years later (http://hendry.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/overview_of_florida_sugarcane.pdf). In 2000, sugarcane consumed 454,400 acres of Florida’s southern ecosystem and had primarily converted to mechanical harvesting to produce 51% of the nations sugar harvest. Additionally, federal price supporters ensured that more land would be drained and planted in sugarcane. Domestic sugar prices are supported by the federal government through a complex arrangement of loans and import restrictions. These programs have effectively kept domestic prices well above the world price. By keeping sugar prices high, federal policies encourage farmers to achieve high yields through extensive use of fertilizers and chemicals. The buildup of fertilizer is particularly harmful as studies estimate that nearly 80 percent of phosphorus used in fertilizing crops reaches the Everglades (Coale, Izuno, and Bottcher 1994). The Florida sugar industry continues to be blamed for a variety of south Florida environmental problems. Phosphorus, as stated earlier, is leaching into groundwater throughout the Everglades and is then pumped to Everglades National Park and Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge as well. This is particularly harmful because it encourages the growth of nonnative cattails that overrun the native sawgrasses and disrupt the flow of water. The Miami Herald calls sugar “Florida’s second most destructive industry,” sapping our resources, enriching a few at everyone’s expense, enslaving poor people, playing havoc with our foreign policy, mistreating its workers, and polluting the Everglades (Dorschner, 1990). In addition, other Everglades agricultural enterprises count on sugarcane production to provide stability for their operation. The enterprises could be weakened by a loss of the sugar industry.
Assessment

The C&SF and other projects have provided south Florida’s rapidly growing population with a reliable water supply and flood protection. But as a result, much of the original Everglades has been drained, diverted, paved over, polluted by agricultural runoff, and invaded by a number of plant and animal species. From a broad perspective, changes in the Everglades ecosystem during the 20th century have been threefold: (1) the geographic extent of the system has been reduced; (2) the spatial and temporal patterns of the major physical driving forces such as hydrology, fire, and nutrient supply have been altered in the remaining system; and, (3) the abundance of wildlife has declined (Miller and Spoolman, 2011 ). The Everglades are now less than half its orginal size and About 90% of the wading birds in Everglades National Park have vanished, and populations of other vertebrates, from deer to turtles, are down 75-95%.

Another result is the degradation of Florida Bay, a shallow estuary with many tiny islands, or keys, south of Everglades National Park. Because the large volumes of freshwater that once flowed through the park into Florida Bay have been diverted for crops and cities, the bay has become saltier and warmer. This, along with increased nutrient input from croplands and cities, has stimulated the growth of large algal blooms that sometimes cover 40% of the bay. This has threatened the coral reefs and the diving, fishing, and tourism industries of the bay and the Florida Keys. Additionally, after large rainstorms, water control districts relieve flooded farmlands by releasing large volumes of fresh water in brackish estuaries adjacent to the park. The excess water disrupts the delicate mix of brackish water needed to produce shrimp and fish, a food source for many coastal birds. When these aquatic creatures are not abundant, coastal birds will desert their nests and nestlings in search of new food supplies, farther away (Blake, 1980) – more examples of unintended consequences.

Contributions from dozens of scientists integrate information from a variety of perspectives as a basis for proposing the defining physical and ecological characteristics of the pre-drainage Everglades and further explaining how land-use and water management practices have affected these defining characteristics. Identification of the factors responsible for the changes in the Everglades, in turn, offers guidelines for the focus and priorities that should be considered during the planning and implementation of regional restoration projects.

Each agency controlling lands outside of the national park attempted to deal with ecological problems identified in parts of the system that were directly under its purview and that were known to be adversely affecting the ability of that agency to meet its specific mandates. Such an approach, however, failed to address the ecosystem-defining problems of the Everglades and, in many instances, contributed to the further deterioration of those elements of the system that operated across large spatial and temporal scales. Thus the Everglades Symposium and the book, Everglades: The Ecosystem and Its Restoration, edited by Steve M. Davis and John C. Ogden, by providing the technical arguments for an integrated effort, were additionally intended to stimulate the development of a single, regional planning process. For several decades, some agencies and individuals have recognized the pattern of deteriorating ecological conditions in the Everglades and have attempted to correct these problems through initiatives such as the park services’s seven-point plan. But efforts to address these concerns greatly accelerated during the 1980s. During that time, former Florida Governor Bob Graham, encouraged the creation of the Everglades Coalition, a loose confederation of environmental and agency people, which became an essential catalyst to this accelerated process. Equally important has been the emergence of a much improved ecological understanding of the Everglades system, as the result of the creation by the National Park Service of the South Florida Research Center during the late 1970s and a rapidly growing research and monitoring program at the South Florida Water Management District.

Progress

Since 1988, Florida, working with federal agencies, has developed an environmental improvement plan for the Everglades. Passed in 1994, the Everglades Forever Act (EFA) defined a plan to
“begin restoring a significant portion of the remaining two-million-acre Everglades ecosystem by reducing the amount of phosphorus-enriched agricultural stormwater entering the system, improving the quantity and distribution of freshwater, and setting deadlines to achieve these objectives.”
EFA also created funding mechanisms that addressed all three of the issues raised above. In addition, it established mechanisms to control harmful nonindigenous species, also known as foreign invasive species, even though problems with HNIS were not linked directly to Everglades agriculture decline at the time.

Battles over the Everglades escalated in the 1990s, and ultimately brought the struggles over regional conservation and water management to the top of the political agenda. This created opportunities for legislative and performance measure compromises. The primary, regional ecosystem restoration planning process that followed, the Comprehensive Review Study of the Central and Southern Florida Project, was a direct outgrowth of that accelerated process. Largely in response to activities by the environmental NGO members of the Everglades Coalition, the U.S. Congress in 1992 authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “reexamine the Central and Southern Florida Project to determine the feasibility of structural or operational modifications to the project essential to restoration of the Everglades and Florida Bay ecosystems while providing for other water-related needs (USACE, 1994). The primary topic to be addressed by this reexamining study was to determine if there were other methods of managing the C&SF Project that would not only eliminate detrimental practices to the Everglades system, but could also help recover the original ecological integrity of the area before it was altered.

Also, in 1992 and 1994, Congress and the Florida legislature passed numerous initiatives to pinpoint the interconnected problems of water supply and environmental restoration in South Florida. These projects included dechannelizing more than half of the Kissimmee river to return it to its winding, natural state. The second initiative required the removal of 250 miles of canals and levees blocking water from flowing south out of Lake Okeechobee. The third called for the purchase of 93 square miles of farmland and allow it to be flooded and become filter marshes around the Everglades Agricultural Area to clean agricultural runoff, primarily from sugarcane plantations, before pollutants reached the Everglades. Fourth, create 18 large reservoirs and underground water storage areas to ensure an adequate water supply for the lower Everglades and for South Florida’s current, and projected, population. Lastly, build new canals, reservoirs, and huge pumping systems to capture 80% of the water currently flowing out to sea and return it to the Everglades.

In 1996, the federal and Florida governments began planning these extensive restoration projects to reverse some of the adverse effects of decades of unnatural interference. Using the USACE Reconnaissance Study (“Restudy”) that began in 1992 as a catalyst, former President George W. Bush and former Florida governor Jeb Bush signed a federal agreement to at least partially restore the natural flow of water through the Everglades. This affirmation was set to provide $8 billion over a 30-year federal plan to repair the wetlands. However, the official legislation was not passed until 2000 that included the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). President Clinton continued the Bush brothers’ efforts and signed the Water Resources Development Act into law and called for cost sharing between the state and federal governments. CERP was designed to supply clean, fresh water to the Everglades ecosystem and to the greedily-growing population of south Florida’s urban sprawl. According to Edward O. Wilson, however, such an in-depth and accurate conservation strategy would actually cost about $30 billion – an amount that could be provided by a tax of one penny per cup of coffee consumed in the world each year. But first, scientists must do a great deal of research as the plan continues to evolve. And, political and economic support from citizens must continue to burden the powerful sugarcane and agricultural industries to continue to meet pollution legislation mandates and timelines or pay the price with hefty fines and increased involvement of funding restoration efforts. But many questions remain on the best methods to attain a historical natural water flow, repel invasive and foreign species, and to reestablish dwindling native species. However, the first hurdle was aggressively approached in mid-2008 with the proposal of a $1.8 billion offer to buy out operations and land holdings of the U.S. Sugar Corporation specifically within the Everglades Agricultural Area. This would eliminate a major source of pollution in the Everglades and substantially increase the land available for restoration if this complex business transaction is ever ultimately completed. Since 2000, however, Congress has been unsuccessful at appropriating the required funding to support financial federal action on this proposal. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a major nationwide financial crisis, and growing public-sector budget deficits have changed national priorities. To make matters worse, key supporters in the U.S. Senate, including Connie Mack and Bob Graham from Florida, have retired. In addition, Florida itself has been unsuccessful in satisfying its own promises by allowing state-sanctioned residential and commercial development in areas clearly defined for reclamation under the CERP. Farmers have continued to fall behind pollution reduction benchmarks but the state legislature keeps postponing enforcement deadlines (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2007). Current infrastructure projects in progress have been over budget, behind schedule, and focused primarily on furthering economic development, while projects that focus primarily on environmental purposes are usually put to the side.

The Way Ahead The National Research Council released "Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades: The Fourth Biennial Review, 2012” on June 21, 2012. The report is the NRC’s fourth biennial evaluation of progress being made in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, South Florida Water Management District, and U.S. Department of the Interior sponsored the report, which was authorized in the Water Resources Development Act of 2000. According to the report, twelve years into the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project, little progress has been made in restoring the core of the remaining Everglades ecosystem; instead, most project construction so far has occurred along its periphery. To reverse ongoing ecosystem declines, it will be necessary to expedite restoration projects that target the central Everglades, and to improve both the quality and quantity of the water in the ecosystem(http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13422). This is why the scientific community needs to spearhead a review of its role in regional restoration programs and in proposing the necessary stair-step approach to fulfill this “science application” role versus the traditional methods of gathering information, research, and monitoring. These steps should correct four problems that are created when science is limited to the more traditional role: (1) the lack of regionally scaled, consensus-building processes for organizing and synthesizing technical information and opinion into formats that are compatible with restoration planning and evaluation endeavors; (2) the lack of a clearly articulated set of ecological end points or measures of success; (3) the uncertainties regarding ecosystem responses; and (4) the problems of producing focused scientific guidelines in a timely fashion (Johnson 1999, p.180). Having these problems demonstrates that neither the scientific community nor the management and policy leaders started the Everglades reclamation initiatives with an overall plan for how science and policy should be intertwined during both the planning and implementation of the world’s largest ecosystem restoration processes. It is evident that planners and decision makers are mulling many social, political, and budgetary factors, in congruence to scientific data, in developing plans and policy. However, much of that information is derived from separate teams and sources that may not ever have any interaction or know each other exists. The demands made by an extensive wetland ecosystem in need of wise management are already monumental; it only complicates the tasks of planners and policy makers when they attempt to weave intricate, and often competing, swarms of information with each other. For instance, most planners and policy makers lack formal ecological training or experience, and as a result do not often fully comprehend the niches and potential trade-offs related to ecosystem management decisions. Therefore, scientists should not expect these ecologically inexperienced personnel to take the lead in appreciating the strong role that scientific data must play within the policy making and project management arenas.

In conclusion, the Everglades of the twenty-first century is a much changed ecosystem, compared to what is known of the system 120 or more years ago. Examining a natural-system hydrological model demonstrates what water depth and distribution patterns have changed, often in major ways, throughout most areas of Florida’s Everglades. It has also been shown that three of the seven major landscape features in the pre-drainage Everglades have been completely eliminated. Two fundamental lessons from nature have once again been ignored: (1) prevention of environmental harm works better and is less costly than trying to undo it; and (2) when we intervene in nature, unintended and often harmful consequences usually result. Policy makers, managers, and scientists must develop a strongly integrated, horizontally organized, process for linking science into the Everglades’ issues. The “restoration” of large, complex ecosystems, imbedded in even larger social, economical, political, and geological systems, requires the adoption of a new planning strategy; one that is characterized by a greater level of responsibility for scientists. They must operate as an equivocal partner with policy makers and project managers throughout all levels of the preparation, execution, and evaluation processes while continuing to apply the precautionary principle of science.

References

Beard, D. B. 1938. Wildlife reconnaissance. Everglades National Park Project. U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service. Unpublished Report. P.106.

Blake, Nelson Manfred. 1980. Land into Water-Water into Land: A History of Water Management in Florida. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida.

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