October 25, 1998

GLADES' MAJESTY FOREVER DIMMED
NO PLAN PROMISES FULL RESTORATION

By CYRIL T. ZANESKI
Herald Staff Writer

All of the nation's engineering and scientific might and $7.8 billion won't
be able to put the River of Grass back together again.

The team of government scientists and engineers that drew up the proposed
3,500-page federal restoration plan for the Everglades learned this lesson
the hard way. As their two years of work wound down this summer, the team
managed only in their last few days to devise a scheme that would not be
scored a failure for the environment.

During the final stage of their mission, the team figured out how to make
dramatic improvements in the southern Everglades by filling in hundreds of
miles of canals and rebuilding Tamiami Trail to let water flow into the
national park. But that solution leaves out the northern Glades. And it
relies heavily on pumps going full blast in western Miami-Dade and Broward
counties to prevent precious water from draining away and also requires a
major transfusion for the Glades from a proposed quarry pit reservoir.

As Stuart Appelbaum, the chief of the restoration planning for the Army
Corps of Engineers put it: ``The patient is going to have to stay on the
respirator.''

Pondering the series of mind-bogglingly massive construction projects
proposed in the plan, some conservationists are asking a tough question: Is
this really an environmental restoration? Or is it - as some skeptics
suggest - a proposal whose massive pumps, underground reservoirs and other
technology is aimed mostly at bolstering dwindling supplies of fresh water
and open land for South Florida's growing cities and thirsty farms?

``This plan hits or exceeds all its targets for supplying fresh water for
urban and agricultural areas,'' said Shannon Estenoz of the World Wildlife
Fund. ``Where we are making compromises is in the supply of water for the
natural system.''

Scientists at Everglades National Park agree.

``The park service position is the Everglades has got to be what it was when
the park was created and before that,'' said Thomas Van Lent, a park
hydrologist. ``This plan does not constitute a restoration. And it does not
provide a natural system that's sustainable in perpetuity.''

Contention evaporates

On one point, the plan offers no room for debate: The remaining Everglades
and other resources will be far healthier under the plan than if nothing
were done.

With its population expected to jump from six to eight million by 2010 and
then to at least 12 million by 2050, South Florida would endure frequent and
devastating droughts -- with severe damage to its environment - unless a
considerable effort is made to collect and store vast amounts of the fresh
water that now pour out to sea through the canals, the plan says.

The big question that will be addressed during a series of 11 public
meetings next month is whether this proposal is the right one to do the job.

Congress will have the final say next summer. If the plan gets approved,
state and federal taxpayers will split the cost of building the project over
the next 20 years.

So far, Estanoz and leaders of most conservation groups are expressing
support for the proposal in hopes of being able to push later for
refinements that might make further improvements for the Everglades.

Leaders of National Audubon and Florida Audubon, for example, want a final
plan with more reservoirs, especially in the agricultural area dominated by
sugar farms south of Lake Okeechobee. They also want planners to make a
greater effort at ``decompartmentalizing'' the Glades - removing more dikes
and canals that aren't needed for flood control to enable more water to
flow.

``I think they've done a real good job on the restoring water to the
southern end of the Everglades,'' Estanoz said. ``But we don't think they
did a good enough job of even looking at options for getting water to flow
in other areas.''

A sore point: The northwest corner of Broward County. The proposed
restoration plan fails to remove any of the levees around the state-owned
marshes there and fails to promise any ecological improvement there. The
problem there is that water in that area would naturally flow south - into
Weston.

Impact of development

``They have kind of a hard time overcoming Weston,'' Estanoz said. ``All the
development out there along Interstate 75 is coming back to haunt us. Every
battle we lost is now a big `I told you so.'  ''

And - more importantly - a big impediment to restoration.

A century of drainage projects has wrung dry more than half of the
Everglades. The natural path that flowing water would  follow between Lake
Okeechobee and the Gulf of Mexico is now blocked not only by Weston, but by
sugar farms and other sprawling cities like Pembroke Pines, Hialeah and
Miami Lakes.

``We know now that we can't just take out all the canals and levees and let
the water run,'' said Steve Davis, a senior scientist for the South Florida
Water Management District and a member of the restoration planning team.
``When we tried to do that  (using computer models), the water pooled in
some areas, and the rest of the Everglades just got drained dry.''

It was still possible to reestablish the natural flow of water through most
of the Everglades in 1947, when Marjory Stoneman Douglas sounded a clarion
call for restoration in her classic book, The Everglades: River of Grass. In
the book's final chapter, she expressed hope that the Army Corps of
Engineers, which was just starting to design a new flood control system for
South Florida, would also figure out how to restore parts the Glades that
had been damaged by inept state drainage projects. What could have been.

The Everglades, Douglas wrote, ``can be restored to nature's design.''

But the corps plan, which was completed in 1949, did the opposite. It led to
the construction of more than 1,800 miles of canals and levees that over
four decades helped turn half of the Everglades system into dry land for
farming and real estate development.

The current $7.8 billion proposal is intended to revamp the 1949 plan - with
goals of undoing damage done to the Everglades and providing more water for
a growing population.

Appelbaum said the debate over how much of the proposal is for water supply
and how much for the environment is misguided.

``Our goal was to enlarge the pie - enlarge the regional water system so
cities and farmers don't depend on Lake Okeechobee or the Everglades for
their water,'' Appelbaum said. ``It's impossible to separate ecological
needs from the water supply.''   Can it be win-win?

Davis said that the root of the conflict is two-fold. First, there's simply
not enough of the Everglades left to restore to its predrainage splendor.

``Virtually all the areas west of the coastal ridge (roughly, the I-95
corridor) were once storage areas for water,'' Davis said. "`That's all
gone.''

Moreover, there's not enough water in South Florida to bring the remaining
Everglades to 100 percent health and still have enough for farms and cities,
he said.

``I think we've gone about as far as we can go and still have a win-win
situation for both the environment and urban water users,'' Davis said.
``The only way to tip this toward the environment is to make this a
win-lose. And in the past, whenever there was a win-lose, the Everglades
lost.

``We don't want that to happen again. We don't want to set up the water wars
of the next century.''

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