110207 Effort to save the Everglades

November 2, 2007

Effort to Save Everglades Falters as Funds Drop

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Oct. 31 — The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering.

Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry.

The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.

Supporters say the effort would get sorely needed momentum from a long-delayed federal bill authorizing $23 billion in water infrastructure projects, including almost $2 billion for the Everglades.

But President Bush is expected to veto the bill, possibly on Friday. And even if Congress overrides the veto, which is likely, grave uncertainties will remain.

The product of a striking bipartisan agreement just before the 2000 presidential election, the plan aims to restore the gentle, shallow flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, in south-central Florida, into the Everglades, a vast subtropical marshland at the state’s southern tip.

That constant, slow coursing nurtured myriad species of birds, fish and other animals across the low-lying Everglades, half of which have been lost to agriculture and development over the last century.

The plan calls for new reservoirs and other storage systems to capture excess water during South Florida’s rainy seasons, guaranteeing an adequate water supply for cities and farms as well as the Everglades. That provision helped win the support of the powerful sugar industry, whose farms have long encroached on and polluted the Everglades, and of Jeb Bush, then the governor.

Mr. Bush is the younger brother of President Bush, and supporters of the restoration hoped his close ties with the White House would guarantee its early success. But while Jeb Bush invested heavily in the project, federal enthusiasm seemed to fade after its champions in Congress, including Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack of Florida, left office and the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and other crises emerged.

A changing economy, too, hurt the plan. It passed in a year with a record budget surplus, but the climate changed sharply after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Some state officials say the plan, which involves dozens of complex engineering projects, also got bogged down in federal bureaucracy, a victim of “analysis paralysis.”

Some environmentalists believe that having Jeb Bush in Tallahassee even hurt the restoration because the White House effectively handed it off to him. As a result, pressing state priorities — enough drinking water and flood control to accommodate rapid population growth in South Florida — took precedence over restoring a clean flow of water to Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem.

Nathaniel P. Reed, a conservationist who was an assistant interior secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said that Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political strategist, supported the restoration because he thought it was good politics — “the Bush brothers saving a dying ecosystem,” Mr. Reed said. With Mr. Rove gone and the clock running down on the president’s tenure, he said, the Everglades are more vulnerable than ever.

“Everything now depends on 2008,” Mr. Reed said. “Everglades restoration depends on electing a president who can reignite the national consciousness that this great program should not fail.”

So far, though, most presidential candidates have yet to utter the word “Everglades.” In the only mention that has made news, Fred D. Thompson, a Republican, suggested he might allow oil drilling there.

While the Bush administration says it remains committed to the restoration, critics say its actions suggest otherwise. Although the cost of the effort was to be split evenly between Florida and Washington, the state so far has spent about $2 billion and the federal government only $358 million, though it has also helped finance some projects planned before the 2000 legislation.

Moreover, earlier this year, the Department of the Interior asked the United Nations to remove Everglades National Park from its list of endangered World Heritage sites. While largely symbolic, the removal sends the message that the Everglades no longer need help, said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida.

“I have to deal in a world of perception and symbols,” Mr. Nelson said, “and when I’m begging each year for appropriations for Everglades restoration and suddenly the perception is, ‘Well, the Everglades is making a lot of progress,’ it’s tying my hands behind my back in trying to get the federal share.”

Florida, too, has done things to jeopardize the effort, said former Senator Graham, a Democrat who started the movement to save the Everglades in the 1980s. In 2003, the Legislature, under pressure from the sugar industry, postponed enforcement of strict pollution limits in the Everglades until 2016.

“It’s so important to avoid doing anything to send the signal that there’s less than full commitment in the state where the Everglades is located,” Mr. Graham said. “Frankly, there are people in Washington looking for any sign of lack of commitment in Florida.”

Florida has another perception problem, Mr. Graham said, in that it continues to permit development in environmentally sensitive areas — sometimes even in the restoration footprint. Although the state has bought 55 percent of the land needed for the restoration, crucial land remains private.

Meanwhile, the South Florida Water Management District revealed in September that farmers had missed a phosphorus reduction target for the first time in 11 years, despite the recent construction of 45,000 acres of filter marshes to reduce contaminants in agricultural runoff.

“That is a very loud warning bell that some additional work is needed,” said Charles S. Lee, advocacy director for Audubon of Florida.

State officials say that despite financing challenges, they have made significant progress acquiring land, building filter marshes south of Lake Okeechobee and restoring a more natural water flow to the Kissimmee River, south of Orlando, which is the headwater of the Everglades ecosystem. The state has also broken ground on a reservoir it calls the largest public works project in the world.

Supporters of the restoration have praised Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointees to the water management district’s board and to the state agency that regulates development. But Mr. Crist, a Republican who took office in January, is facing a budget crisis due to the real estate slump. “Florida remains committed,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “But we do have to face facts. We do have some economic challenges.”

Like many others, Mr. Crist is pinning his hopes on the federal bill that provides $23 billion for water projects, including wetlands restoration in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and beach replenishment around the country. The bill finances several projects that are crucial to restoring a clean flow of water through the Everglades.

It went to President Bush last week, and he has pledged to veto it because, he says, it is stuffed with political pork. Other critics agree, and say the bill does not ensure that the most crucial projects, including those in Florida and Louisiana, would get the highest priority.

They also say the bill should have included major changes to the Army Corps of Engineers, which executes the projects but has been accused of misjudgments in engineering, design and the degree of potential harm to the environment.

Corps officials have said the long delay in passing the water bill has hurt their ability to function well, but the critics say the problems are deeper than that.

“This is just a recipe to keep the corps as dysfunctional as ever,” said Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent at Time magazine who wrote “The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), the most exhaustive recent book on the subject.

Echoing the criticism of many scientists, Mr. Grunwald also said the plan does not go far enough to restore a natural water flow to the Everglades and depends on dubious technology for storing billions of gallons of water.

“Until they fix the plan, until they fix the corps and until we get a handle on growth management in South Florida,” he said, “it’s going to be hard to make a lot of progress in the Everglades.”

So, too, will progress be difficult without support from lawmakers outside Florida. Rising land and construction costs have pushed the total estimated price to more than $10 billion.

Mr. Nelson took Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the committee in charge of the water bill, on a tour of the Everglades in September. He has also been known to carry jars of polluted Everglades muck around the Capitol to draw the attention of his colleagues.

Mr. Grunwald said focusing on Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem, not providing water to farms and suburbs, is crucial to reviving national interest in the overall plan.

“It’s the Everglades that’s the national treasure,” he said. “That’s why the guys from Iowa and Montana are going to support this thing.”