How the $8-billion restoration deal will work — and how it could fall apart.
By Cynthia Barnett and Mike Vogel
No wonder the champagne corks were popping. An unlikely group of environmentalists, water managers, political appointees and industry representatives celebrated in January at an Everglades Coalition meeting on Hutchinson Island in southeast Florida. Just the month before, then-President Bill Clinton, with Gov. Jeb Bush in attendance, had signed into law a $7.8-billion program to save the Everglades — presumably ending years of fighting among environmental groups, the sugar industry and urban water users. Representatives of business and environmental causes had practically held hands while selling the plan to Congress as a way to end the disarray, delay and confusion over the Everglades’ fate. “This is a group of people that had been at war with each other for a generation,” says Michael Collins, chairman of the South Florida Water Management District Board, who became involved in Everglades policy in 1976, when as a fishing guide he began to notice changes in sea grasses in Florida Bay. “Over the years it was ugly and it was brutal, but in the end this coalition produced a miracle.”
Why not celebrate? The public can be excused for thinking that the Everglades is as good as saved, merely a few expensive levee removals and drainage ditches from returning to Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ River of Grass.
But the restoration plan — for all its virtues — is as fragile as the remaining ecosystem of the Everglades, now half its original size. The basic concept: A massive replumbing of south Florida, affecting everything from flows into Florida Bay to flows through suburban toilets. Huge reservoirs will be built above and below ground. The water from them and Lake Okeechobee will travel southward again, mimicking the natural flow of water to the 2 million acres remaining in the Everglades and to the 68 species endangered by a dried-out habitat in some areas and man-made flooding in others.
In theory, both spoonbills and lawn sprinklers should have water aplenty once the restoration is complete. Indeed, while sold to a green-minded public as saving a national treasure, restoration is as much about supplying water for sugar growers, farmers and south Florida’s growing population. “Really what’s at stake is whether people can live in south Florida,” says Lawrence Belli, deputy superintendent of Everglades National Park. “The stakes are so high.”
While the various interests traditionally at odds — environmentalists, farmers and city dwellers — now sing off the same page, they’re also steeling themselves for decades of single-minded trench warfare over details. And their hard-won consensus will have plenty of opportunities to crumble. First, there’s the science. The plan depends on unproven technologies questioned by some of the state’s most prominent scientists. The failure of any significant component — or a perception that the project has tilted too far politically toward either the environment or the cities — could cause the party most affected to demand a return to the drawing board. Though it’s not written into the law, for example, environmentalists were promised that 80% of newly captured water will flow to the natural system. Already, water managers are back-pedaling from that figure.
Adapting
The restoration also depends on a concept called adaptive management. That is, if something doesn’t go as planned — if, for example, an environmentally beneficial project has the unintended consequence of flooding Miami-Dade homeowners — the whole restoration won’t be scuttled. Rather, the entire scheme will be adapted to the changed condition. It’s common sense and has precedent: Parts of the Kissimmee River project, a decade-long $414-million proving ground for restoring the Everglades, were changed dramatically when it became evident that the original, less expensive plan to redirect the river to its historical courses wouldn’t work.
But, as with everything about the Everglades plan, the question is one of scale. And some projects — such as the makeover that will remove Tamiami Trail’s chokehold on the water flow to Everglades National Park — don’t lend themselves to improvisation.
Together, the 68 elements of the restoration plan form an enormous machine in which all the cogs will have to function harmoniously for this most ambitious — and necessary — effort to work. For now, all sides recognize the advantage of a united front. “Quit dumping on the plan. That alarms the people we need to have as partners,” scolded Richard A. Pettigrew, who chaired the Governor’s Commission for a Sustainable South Florida and is Audubon of Florida Society chairman, in a blast at environmentalists at the January coalition meeting. “Now that I’m chairman of the Audubon Society, I can say that,” he joked.
If the celebrated consensus fails, Everglades restoration could prove as enduring as a champagne bubble. But as much as self-interest is a danger, it could prove the plan’s salvation. “We may well have to retain every dispute-resolution professional in the state of Florida over the next 20 years,” says Walter Revell, chairman of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s environmental group that helped supply political support for the restoration package. “But we ought to do that if that’s what it takes to keep it together.”
The Nature of the Problem- 90%-95% reduction in wading bird populations
- 68 animal and plant species threatened or endangered
- 1.7 billion gallons of water a day diverted to the ocean and Gulf
- 1 million acres (half) of the ecosystem under health advisories for
mercury contamination - More than 1.5 million acres (three-fourths) infested with invasive plants
- Declining population of commercially and recreationally important
fish species in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and Biscayne
and Florida bays - Defoliation of sea grasses, fish kills and deformed fish in St. Lucie Estuary
- Continued reduction of birds breeding in south Florida
- Repetitive water shortages and salt-water intrusion
Source: The Central and Southern Florida Project Comprehensive Review Study
Flow
The Water
The Everglades restoration plan is all about water — quantity, timing, distribution and quality.
QUANTITY: Nearly 2 billion gallons of water that once flowed through the ecosystem each day are now diverted to the ocean or Gulf. The plan proposes to capture most of this water in more than 217,000 acres of reservoirs and wetlands-based treatment areas and 330 underground aquifer storage and recovery wells.
TIMING: Human activity has disrupted natural alternating periods of flooding and drying that are vital to the Glades. Water will be held and released into the ecosystem to more closely match natural patterns.
DISTRIBUTION: To reconnect natural areas separated by canals and levees and enhance the flow of water, more than 240 miles of levees and canals will be removed and part of Tamiami Trail rebuilt.
QUALITY: Standards and solutions to some problems are still on the drawing board.
The Money
The costs of the $7.8-billion restoration plan will be shared equally between the federal government — which will funnel the money through the Army Corps of Engineers — and the state of Florida.
For fiscal year 2001, Florida’s share is $215.2 million. Here's where the state money will come from:
STATE SOURCES
General revenue: $50 million
Land-acquisition funds: $78 million
State total: $128 million
LOCAL SOURCES
Water district ad valorem taxes: $48.2 million
Special state appropriation: $10.1 million
Estimated local credits: $12 million
Water district and state land credits: $16.9 million
Local total: $87.2 million
FLORIDA TOTAL: $215.2 million
The Politics
Mr. Smith and Washington
Proponents of the Everglades restoration plan praise its flexibility. It can cope, they say, if a particular water works project doesn’t pan out. What it can’t do without, however, is money. Congress, in approving the restoration bill, didn’t simply write the Army Corps a check for the federal half of the $7.8 billion. Continued work requires continued funding in the form of Congress’ bi-annual grab bag Water Resources Development Acts.
Funding could dry up a number of ways: If the coalition of environmental, agricultural and urban interests supporting the plan comes unglued, Congress could see the plan as a special interest cat-fight or south Florida political boondoggle in the making and yank the money. Funding could also become a problem if the economy slows more than predicted or some other competing need like national defense takes priority.
A key figure in all this is Sen. Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The mantra that congressional staffers repeated to environmentalists at the Everglades Coalition meeting at Hutchinson Island in January sounded strict: “Sen. Smith will be watching. Sen. Smith will be watching.”
Mr. Bush and Tallahassee
The restoration law has the unusual requirement that the federal government make decisions only with Gov. Jeb Bush’s concurrence — not just notifying him or requiring that he be “consulted,” as is more typical. Bush may preside over up to the first six years of the project — abundant legacy-building time. His commission already rescued the restoration bill from an environmentalist end-run that would have doomed it. Meanwhile, the state Legislature, too, has a House-Senate panel devoted to overseeing Glades restoration.
Local Agendas
Local governments don’t have a very powerful official role in restoration, but their political clout is considerable, and they could crop up as roadblocks. Federal and state water managers are working to head off the possibility by including local officials on several of the dozen boards being put together for oversight.
Environmentalists, in particular, worry about local governments being at cross-purposes with restoration. Case in point: A diversion canal, shuttling freshwater into storage areas rather than letting it cause environmental damage to the St. Lucie Estuary, is an obscure, $30-million piece in the restoration puzzle. But in Martin County, through which the canal will pass, it’s controversial. The reason: A side benefit — unintended, designers say — of the canal will be providing water occasionally to citrus-growing areas. Some in Martin County fear that once growers have a taste of that water for irrigation, they will demand and get it on a regular basis, further stretching the region’s water supply.
Another example: Miami-Dade commissioners’ approval of turning Homestead Air Base into a commercial airport. Now apparently doomed by a negative Air Force assessment of its impact, the plan had environmentalists fearful about harmful effects on nearby Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park. “I see the battle for the Everglades as being a battle for the edges,” says Alan Farago, executive director of the Everglades Defense Council. With the actions of some local governments, “it’s almost as if the Everglades agenda doesn’t exist.”
The Science
Measuring Success
Determining — early — whether new technologies are working will be important in order to avoid boondoggles that have plagued previous Everglades plumbing projects. But some independent scientists already charge there’s not enough rigorous review built into the effort: Of the restoration plan’s $7.8 billion, only 1.28%, or $10 million a year for the first 10 years, is earmarked for scientific review. Scientists say the percentage should be as high as 10% over the first five years or so, as policy-makers face major decisions on the plan. Without significant monitoring, they say, elements of the plan that turn out to be scientifically invalid will get too far along to stop.
Independent scientists, including Geology Department Chairman Harold Wanless at the University of Miami and Everglades ecologist Stuart Pimm at the University of Tennessee, also worry that the agencies carrying out restoration are the same ones charged with monitoring it. To address those concerns, the U.S. Department of the Interior has set up a committee of scientists through the National Research Council to oversee restoration. How much the 15-member board can accomplish, and how much of a voice it will have in long-term decisions, remains to be seen. While they have confidence in the committee, scientists point out that it is a far-flung group that meets only four times a year.
The Army Corps’ Michael Ornella says his agency is sensitive to the concern and has talked to NASA and other research-heavy agencies about involving both private-sector and university scientists. “I don’t think it’s fair to say the fox is guarding the henhouse,” Ornella says. “We are responsible for making the plan for monitoring and adaptive assessment, but we aren’t going to exclude any viable expert group.”
Another problem: Getting promising new technology out of the lab and into the field. One potential solution, developed by Florida International University Professor Ron Jones, relies on algae called periphyton that devour phosphorus. Jones complains that the South Florida Water Management District’s test projects on the technology, recommended for Everglades cleanup in 1996, are going “excruciatingly slowly.”
Digging Deep Holes
Ultimately, the Everglades restoration project is about ensuring a sufficient flow of water at the right time — to both the natural ecosystem and urban areas for human needs. To do that, the plan relies heavily on a controversial water-storage technology that hasn’t yet been proven on this large a scale. Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) basically involves storing water when it’s abundant and retrieving it when it’s scarce — by pumping it hundreds of feet down into the Floridan aquifer, where it forms a freshwater bubble in a layer of the aquifer that otherwise contains brackish water.
The restoration plan calls for about 330 ASR wells that can hold up to 1.6 billion gallons combined. The advantages: ASR wells are cheaper than other storage systems, at about a million dollars each; require relatively little space, at about an acre or two each; and don’t lose water to evaporation or seepage like reservoirs and other forms do.
The problem is simply the unknown: In February, the National Research Council issued a report raising questions about ASR. Whether, for example, the injections might alter the flow of the Floridan aquifer. And whether too much freshwater may get lost. And whether the process could breach rock layers that separate the Floridan’s brackish water from another aquifer that supplies most of south Florida’s drinking water.
Army Corps and water management officials say they are confident in the technology, which is already in use elsewhere in Miami-Dade County. But to be safe, the plan calls for an ASR pilot project, as well as additional regional studies, to ensure the technology works before it’s carried out en masse. “We’re talking about shoving water into a very permeable limestone system,” says Harold Wanless, professor and chairman of geological sciences at the University of Miami. “This one simply has not been adequately looked into.”
The Bureaucrats
Water-crats
With an operating budget of $525 million a year and responsibility for the largest flood-control system in the world, the South Florida Water Management District will play a uniquely powerful role in Everglades restoration as an equal partner with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the agency is in some disarray: Tensions are high between executive director Frank Finch and the district’s board, whose members are appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush.
Meanwhile, environmentalists are hammering the district for slashing $48 million in staffing and projects throughout its 16-county area in order to come up with its portion of the restoration money without raising taxes. “There have been some bloodbaths getting to where we are,” admits Chairman Mike Collins. And now, he says, “there’s a sense that we don’t know where we are on manpower and on readiness, and we need to solve that.”
Finch’s appointment of a highly regarded district engineer to oversee Everglades restoration could ease the tensions. Joe Schweigart is a 36-year district employee who’s alienated hardly anyone despite managing the massive Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project for a dozen years. Four years ago, Schweigart took over the troubled Everglades Construction Project, a water-quality effort mandated by the state’s Everglades Forever Act. He’s now bringing it in on time and under budget. Schweigart’s primary goal: Avoiding a train wreck. “The slightest disturbance, or the slightest screw-up, and word is on the street that this project isn’t legitimate, and that kills us,” he says.
The Army Way
For the next 30 years, the Everglades project will give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a chance to save not just the ecosystem and south Florida’s water supply, but also its own reputation. The Corps has come under fire for a lack of accountability, and for its reliance on construction solutions over ecological ones.
Last year, a Washington Post series identified numerous cases in which massive, multi-million-dollar Corps projects rested on flawed or questionable analyses. An Army inspector general’s report found a Corps study had been manipulated to justify a mammoth project.
Col. Greg May is in charge of the Corps’ Jacksonville district. He says he’s proud of the Corps’ history — even in the Glades, where Corps flood-control projects helped destroy the ecosystem. “The Corps of Engineers reflects the nation’s values,” he says — 50 years ago, flood control. Today, environmental restoration. To keep restoration on track, May wants to focus on what worked to pass the plan: Involving multiple stakeholders and keeping the process “extremely open and extremely inclusive.”
Can They Get Along?
In 1989, Congressman Dante Fascell sponsored a bill to rescue Everglades National Park by adding 109,000 acres in west Miami-Dade to the park and redirecting water to the Shark River Slough. But the agencies involved — the National Park Service, its parent, the Interior Department, the Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District — haven’t been able to pull it off. Over 11 years, the Modified Water Deliveries project — “Mod Waters,” it’s called — has become a model of bureaucratic delay and finger-pointing. The National Park Service blames Congress for not providing the money on a timely basis to fund the project, for example.
A major stumbling block for the agencies has been the so-called 8.5-square-mile area, a west Miami-Dade patch that’s home to 1,500 people. Fascell’s law ordered flood protection for them if the project added to their flooding troubles. Environmentalists and Interior want to eliminate the need for a flood-control system by removing the residents — getting them to sell their property either voluntarily or by condemning it. But the families want to stay. The process of acquiring the land has been tedious, and costs have ballooned from an original authorization of $114 million to $300 million.
“Mod Waters” doesn’t bode well for the agencies’ ability to pull off the broader restoration plan. “If we can’t manage this $114-million project, we might as well give it up,” says Terry Rice, the retired Army Corps commander of the Jacksonville district and a research scientist at Florida International University who works with the Miccosukee tribe, a frequent critic of the Interior Department. But Mod Waters is essential to the overall effort in a more direct way. The federal law authorizing the overall restoration effort specifies that no construction work on anything involving water flows to the east side of Everglades National Park — a substantial section of the overall restoration — can proceed until Mod Waters is complete.
The latest Corps plan calls for removing 55 of the area’s 514 families and building flood protection for the rest. The Corps, assuming no more delays, says it can finish by 2003 — eight years after the late Fascell envisioned.
The Park's Place
The Department of the Interior and its National Park Service, guardian of Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park, have a reputation for mucking up plans to fix south Florida’s environment and water supply. The Park Service, the charge goes, makes a habit of arriving at the policy table after deals are reached to insist on changes. And once it arrives, it’s too reluctant to compromise.
That wouldn’t be much of a problem were the park service a peripheral player. But its Everglades National Park is in many ways the poster child for the $7.8-billion fix — which involves not just the park’s water sources but also urban drinking water and restoration of lands to the park’s north. The park has potent environmental group allies and a sizable wrench, in the form of the Endangered Species Act, that it can throw into the works.
The Park Service says much of the reputation is undeserved. The Park Service led in advancing “de-compartmentalization” of restoration, says Lawrence Belli, deputy superintendent of Everglades National Park. And the restoration law gives Interior a decision-making role — so it won’t have to show up after deals are cut to offer objections like just another member of the public.
But the Park Service also is quick to point out that it’s required by law to protect the park lands, limiting its ability to compromise. Its chief area of concern: That once the agricultural and urban areas get the public works projects they want for water supply and flood control, the environment will get stiffed.
Many Cooks
The Everglades restoration project team involves:
-- Five Cabinet-level arms of the U.S. government — Army, Interior (which includes the Park Service), Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture and Commerce
-- 15 agencies and offices under them
-- Gov. Jeb Bush
-- Five state agencies
-- Five county environmental and natural resource offices
The Interest Groups
Agriculture
As it flows through the sugar and vegetable-growing areas south of Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades, water gets fouled. Of particular concern for the Everglades is phosphorus, a major ingredient in fertilizers that kills the Glades’ natural flora and leads to the proliferation of acres of cattails.
Long castigated by environmentalists as the Everglades villain, the sugar industry has used on-site management practices to neatly meet provisions of the state’s 1994 Everglades Forever Act requiring it to cut its phosphorus pollution by 25%. Indeed, the industry has cut phosphorus in its runoff water by an average of 50% from historical levels of 100 to 200 parts per billion. Newly built stormwater treatment areas — funded with a tax on agricultural lands — have whacked phosphorus down to the high teens and low 20s ppb. Construction of the largest such treatment area at 17,000 acres began in February.
With interim cleanup going well, the next step is finding the permanent pollution solution as required by the 1994 law: A scientific determination of the right phosphorus level for all runoff. Figure 10 parts per billion — the default level in the act and the target level the Miccosukees have set for their runoff. But the trick will be finding technology to bring phosphorus discharge down to that level and what to do if getting there seems cost-prohibitive. The industry’s tab for phase one was capped at $320 million. When it comes to phase two, growers will question the wisdom of paying exorbitant sums to clean up a few more parts per billion.
The rub likely will come over the money. Some environmentalists want sugar to pay more. The sugar industry won’t want to pay to clean water it feels was polluted by urban areas and upstate interests like dairy farmers and cities north of Lake Okeechobee. “That issue is going to be on the table,” says Robert Coker, U.S. Sugar vice president of community and governmental affairs.
The Greens
Everglades restoration was sold to the country as a way to save a U.S. environmental treasure, as well as two popular national parks that draw about 1.5 million visitors a year. The more than 40 environmental and civic organizations that hung together and agreed to significant compromise to see the bill passed knew better. But they, like all the other stakeholders, knew urban water supply and environmental restoration had to go together for the measure to fly.
Now each of those groups is keeping a close eye on the process. And if the balance tips too far toward supplying water to urban or agricultural areas rather than the ecosystem, they’re prepared to sound an alarm that could erode the public confidence that is key to continued funding. Says Shannon Estenoz of the World Wildlife Fund, who co-chairs the Everglades Coalition that brought 41 groups together to help pass the restoration bill: “The federal government is not in the business of paying for local water supply projects ... the federal interest in this project is ecosystem restoration, and it’s our job to tell Congress whether that’s happening.”
The other wild card when it comes to environmental groups: Just how well they can hold their own coalition together. There are longtime divisions between groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has an Endangered Species Act lawsuit under way, and more conservative groups such as the Florida Audubon Society, which tends to work inside
the system.
The Business Players
Pennsylvania-based IT Group has been sacrificing profit margins to win water district jobs in south Florida. The aim, says IT executive Gary Wilson, is to establish credibility in Florida and develop the in-house know-how to pull off larger work — like the jobs that will make up the Everglades restoration project.
The private sector already has a lot at stake in restoration. As it invests in additional staff and equipment, count on it to push to keep the money flowing.
Firms are busy forming alliances with minority and women-owned firms, which get an edge in public-sector project bidding on federal projects. IT has done that. IT also can claim 350 employees in Florida, and has been the major contractor on the restoration of the Kissimmee River, a project to return the Kissimmee to a meandering river rather than a man-made ecologically flawed channel. Oh yes, the company's biggest client nationally already is the Army Corps.
Early favorites for a piece of the restoration action include Kansas City, Mo.-based Burns & McDonnell. Ron Hilton, the Army Corps’ former chief of hydrology and hydraulics for the Jacksonville district, now does marketing for Burns & McDonnell. Another is Miami-based engineering firm PBS&J, formerly known as Post Buckley Schuh and Jernigan; CH2M Hill, a Colorado-based firm with a significant Florida presence, was one of the earliest to seek out a lobbyist. Also a contender is Earth Tech, a Long Beach, Calif., firm that opened a Center for Watershed Programs office in Palm Beach Gardens with former Corps and district engineer Kent Loftin.
Natural Issues
On the Trail
One-hundred miles of Tamiami Trail — the 1920s-vintage road linking Tampa and Miami via Naples — cut through the heart of the Everglades, slicing Big Cypress National Preserve in half and serving as the northern border of Everglades National Park. The two-lane highway also works as a giant levee. It blocks the flow of water southward and stops wild creatures from traveling back and forth, with a devastating ecological impact.
To solve at least the water-flow problem, the plan calls for rebuilding Tamiami Trail as one of its initial projects. But there’s significant disagreement on how to do it. The Army Corps proposes punching 87 culverts into the highway. Others suggest a series of 1,000-foot bridges along 20 miles of Shark River Slough, the primary source of water for Everglades National Park. But some scientists argue that both plans are inadequate; a 10-mile bridge, they say, would be the best long-term ecological solution.
The entire plan is built on the concept of adaptive management — the premise that as scientists and engineers learn what works and what doesn’t, projects will be changed. But with a permanent structure like a road, a wrong decision will be tough to correct. Adaptive management also will be difficult to pull off in other costly elements of the project, like the $233 million worth of storage reservoirs planned for the Everglades Agricultural Area — reservoirs whose benefits are uncertain. “The attitude seems to be — ‘let’s just build it,’ ” says G. Ronnie Best, chief of the restoration ecology branch of the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida. “That’s how we ruined the ecosystem in the first place.”
Birds and Suits
There are some 68 endangered or threatened species in the Everglades, and the perception of how they are faring as restoration proceeds will have a good deal to do with how the plan proceeds. “We’re making a very big assumption, and that is that if we get the water right, the ecosystem will rebound,” says Shannon Estenoz, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s South Florida Everglades Program. “We think that’s true, but we’re not 100% sure.”
Among the 15 lawsuits that complicate nearly every aspect of the Everglades plan, those that most seriously threaten restoration revolve around a tiny songbird called the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow that is found only in the Everglades. Environmental organizations led by the Natural Resources Defense Council have sued under the Endangered Species Act to save a nesting area where Army Corps flood control formerly unleashed too much water into the bird’s habitat. The Corps then diverted floodwaters away from the nesting areas, only to get hit with another lawsuit — this time from homeowners, farmers and the Miccosukees, who claim their property is now threatened.
Players on all sides are seeking a compromise that will keep the Corps out of the courts. But there’s no guarantee that another group won’t sue over another endangered species — a move that could bring the project to a screeching halt.
“There are people and groups that would put one endangered species above the greater good, just like there are people and groups that would sue over something else in order to get the results they want with their one local issue,” says Stuart Strahl, president of the Florida Audubon Society, which is not a party to the sparrow lawsuit.
“That’s why we’ve got to keep all the interested parties talking ... and know there’s got to be a little compromise here and there to fix the whole system,” says Strahl.
Interested Parties
The Miccosukees
With a proud history of not caving into the U.S. government — neither in war nor over the Everglades — the 480-member Miccosukee tribe has long established itself as a forceful player in Everglades affairs. The tribe supports the general restoration plan. But the Miccosukees could balk if they think their old nemesis, the Department of the Interior, which manages the national park, is pursuing the park’s agenda at the expense of “water catchment areas” to the north — parts of which are perpetually leased to the tribe.
The tribe feels the Interior Department and water management district have decimated vast stretches of these northern Everglades by using them as glorified holding ponds to ensure “correct” water flows to the park. Dexter Lehtinen, the tribe’s general counsel, complains that the Interior Department has an Animal Farm view: “All parts of the Everglades are equal, but some are more equal than others.” The result: Man-made floods have cut acreage of tree islands — raised areas where mammals congregate and where Indians lived — by 61% in 55 years in areas north of the park. “There’s more freshwater Everglades to be saved north of Tamiami Trail than in the park,” says Lehtinen, “and we can save it all.”
The tribe and Lehtinen are big believers in the rule of law. Count on them to expect adherence to agreed-upon deals — especially U.S. trust obligations to the tribe. Lehtinen, who brought the landmark Everglades lawsuit in 1988 while U.S. Attorney in Miami, proposes creating a Florida Everglades State Park in the region — akin to the huge Adirondack State Park in New York. “It’s an idea whose time has come,” Lehtinen says.
The Urban Fringe
In October 1999, a flood invaded homes in Sweetwater, a west Miami-Dade city of 17,000. Hurricane Irene provided the rain, but the flooding worsened thanks to an interim rehydration plan for the Everglades: Water managers had kept levels in canals high to benefit the Everglades, which left Irene’s deluge nowhere else to go but Sweetwater’s living rooms.
Indeed, one Army Corps study predicts that large chunks of suburban west Miami-Dade will be more prone to flooding because of restoration projects. People in urban fringe communities such as Sweetwater, West Miami, with a population of 5,833, and Medley, with 800 people, could put pressure on their elected officials to alter the restoration plan if their homes are threatened. But Mike Ornella, senior project manager for the Army Corps, promises: “No one’s going to be flooded because of the plan.”
Flood control and restoration aren’t mutually exclusive, say people who have studied the issue, but flood control won’t happen by accident. Sweetwater has flooded three times since 1999. Two teen-agers died in a December storm by electrocution when rising water reached a light pole with frayed wiring. More powerful pump stations and a new storm drain system are in the works to help the area, but Sweetwater Mayor Jose Diaz believes that water levels have to come down, too. “It’s not pleasant taking people out of their homes,” Diaz says, and “now loss of life. What’s it going to take?”