THE FLORIDA
EVERGLADES
Addressing The Problem
From: FICUS
Network - USF University of South Florida
It is hard to find anyone who doesn't
want to protect the Everglades. But we seem to be having
a difficult time getting started, in part because
jurisdiction over the area is shared among many state
and federal agencies.
For years, neither state nor federal
governments did much about the problems of the
Everglades. For its part, the federal government has
continued to provide agriculture with exemptions from
the Clean Water Act. As a result, the industry is the
country's largest remaining source of agricultural
pollution. The federal government has also provided
agriculture with other federal subsidies despite
evidence that the destruction of the Everglades was
increasing.
In addition, the state did little over
the years to prevent agricultural pollution and
continues to provide the industry with financial
incentives, including inexpensive water. A 1991
Wilderness Society study of the South Florida Water
Management District showed that although farmers use
about two-thirds of the area's water supply, they pay
less than two percent of the district's $227 million
annual budget, which is derived from property taxes.
Urban residents pay the rest. Urban dwellers in Central
and South Florida pay about $26.90 per acre-foot of
water. In contrast, farmers pay about 23 cents for the
same amount. (See Chapter 10 on Florida's Groundwater
for a discussion of water pricing in Florida.)
Further, the district spends $18
million a year to provide agriculture with water,
compared with only $7 million for urban residents. The
study also shows that for each acre-foot of water,
agriculture generates about $1,000 in the economy, while
urban businesses produce about $85,000 to $90,000 in the
form of goods, jobs, and services.
Nor is urban development any panacea.
Despite its greater economic benefit, such development
continues to destroy South Florida's native ecosystems
and demands ever-greater quantities of increasingly
scarce water. (See Chapter 10 on Florida's
Groundwater, as well as Chapter 12 on Growth Management
in Florida, for more information on water-supply issues
and growth management.)
REDUCING POLLUTION
Although much remains to be learned,
the pollution problem in the Everglades is reasonably
well defined. An upper limit for phosphorus of 20 parts
per billion has been set, although this amount may still
be too high.
Retention and treatment are the only
known ways to eliminate the pollution. Retention is a
known technology that can be quickly implemented. While
designing retention areas is a straightforward
engineering problem, the loss of this quantity of water
to the Everglades would have to be made up with another
source of clean water, which would be difficult. Using
water from Lake Okeechobee is a possibility, if its
phosphorus levels can be reduced. By contrast, treatment
requires discharging farm drainage into an artificial
marsh that would store nutrients and produce clean
water.
THE FEDERAL LITIGATION
In 1988, the U.S. attorney for the
southern district of Florida took an unprecedented
action, filing a complaint on behalf of the United
States against the Florida Department of Environmental
Regulation and the South Florida Water Management
District in an effort to protect the Loxahatchee
National Wildlife Refuge and Everglades National Park
from the effects of polluted agricultural drainage
water. Every major Florida and national conservation
organization intervened on the side of the United
States. The lawsuit was unusual because it relied on
state rather than federal law and focused on the
agencies' failure to administer their own state laws.
Following a change in state
administration, the agencies and federal interests
negotiated a cleanup plan that was made final in early
1992 by a federal consent decree. The plan describes the
interim and final results for cleanup efforts. These may
be modified, however, through state administrative
hearings. Legal maneuvering by the sugar industry has
just begun. Issues such as how much will be cleaned up
and whom will pay have still not been decided. While the
settlement of the federal lawsuit mandates a process and
the state's starting position in that process, it does
not completely define the final result. A combination of
on-farm management practices and man-made marshes that
provide nutrient-filtering areas will be used. The cost
of interim measures intended to reduce phosphorus in
farm drainage from about 200 to 50 parts per billion is
estimated at $300 million.
A TREASURE STILL WORTH
PROTECTING
While it may be impossible to re-create
the historic Everglades, we can work toward protecting and
restoring what remains, and we can work toward optimizing
its management. Though much has been lost, the remnant
Everglades is still extremely valuable biologically and
well worth restoring.
In principle, the hydroperiod in the
Everglades can be improved for wildlife, if not optimized.
The struggle will be monumental because water management
decisions are generally still driven by the desire to
minimize agriculture's economic risk. In addition, sizable
urban demands exist for water. While we can fine tune the
system and conserve more water, in the end real change
will be expensive and may increase the risk of drought to
agriculture. A shift in federal wetlands policy could also
drastically affect cleanup efforts. (See Chapter 11 on
Florida's Surface Waters for more information on the issue
of wetlands protection.)
Draining the Everglades was a massive
undertaking. Similarly, restoring even portions of it will
be difficult and extremely expensive, and no one knows to
what extent restoration would work. A state and national
coalition of environmental groups is pushing Congress to
authorize far-reaching restoration plans. Farmers, who
would be charged for much of the cleanup, say the plan is
not scientific and would bring economic disaster. Some
state officials also predict water shortages in urban
South Florida if some historic water flows are restored
because water storage would be reduced. On the other hand,
not preserving the remaining Everglades could bring
even greater economic disaster over the long term. A
healthy Everglades system would also protect long-term
water supplies in the Biscayne Aquifer, which supplies the
basic water needs of the lower east coast's urban
population.
Restoration of the Everglades is
currently proposed in a number of areas:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under
pressure from state agencies and public interest groups,
proposes to return the Kissimmee River to its original
103-mile meandering channel at a cost of more than $300
million. The river was bypassed during the 1950s when
the Corps dug a 60-mile channel between Lake Kissimmee
and Lake Okeechobee, destroying as many as 40,000 acres
of wetlands. Under the restoration plan, nutrient
pollution of Lake Okeechobee would be lowered because
29,000 acres of wetlands and riverine habitats would be
restored.
South of Lake Okeechobee, the South
Florida Water Management District would create more than
35,000 acres of marshes to filter out nutrients from the
Everglades Agricultural Area before they reached the
Everglades, at a cost of about $150 million.
The Corps of Engineers would build
gates to allow water to flow under Route 41, the Tamiami
Trail, at a cost of about $75 million, into Shark River
Slough. Restoring the flows that were cut off will make
the East Everglades lands authorized for addition to the
park ecologically viable as wetlands.
Over five years, the federal government
would purchase 107,000 acres, for about $40 million, to
add to Everglades National Park. State and federal
agencies are working on water management alternatives to
create a more natural flow regime in the Everglades that
would sustain the Everglades during the dry season and
more evenly distribute water during the rainy season. The
first step, the creation of computer models to simulate
the consequences of change, is under way.
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For information on the
Everglades and the Florida panther, contact the following
agencies (see the listing of governmental agencies in the
back of the guide):
