The Everglades ecosystem stretches from Orlando to Key West, encompassing among other natural resources, the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers and estuaries, the Everglades and Florida Bay. Millions of people, their homes, communities, businesses, farms and related infrastructure are part of the system as well. Billions of dollars and decades of science and intense public debate have resulted in a comprehensive plan to re-work the Central and South Florida Flood Control Project to better serve and protect the environment, including the estuaries, while continuing to protect the aforementioned millions of people. Progress has been made in some areas and many more projects are on the board to deal with specific issues for the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee and theestuaries. ANSWERS ARE FEW Six hurricanes in less than two years threw a gorilla-sized wrench into all those best-laid plans, and as a result, South Florida continues to suffer tremendously in many areas. Plans to lower water levels in Lake Okeechobee to allow our waterways to recover, which we wholeheartedly supported, have been overridden by stormwater that continues to pour in from the northern watershed. There is no button, levee or lock to stop that water from flowing into the lake. But, allowing water levels to build not only compromises the lake’s environmental health, it endangers people’s lives. Right now, the only canals capable of moving such large amounts of water are built to go east and west. So what can we do to stop the damaging releases to the Caloosahatchee River and estuary? Build a dam north of Lake Okeechobee and flood Orlando and the Kissimmee River Basin? Tear down the dike and flood the farming area, destroying the water conservation areas and levees that protect the communities of the lower east coast as well? Dig a flow-way to send the polluted lake water straight to the Everglades and undo billions of dollars of successful restoration projects? Depending on where they live, there are people out there who would support each one of these. Thankfully, there are many technical, hydrological and physical barriers to such knee-jerk solutions. For those of us who have been involved in this debate for more than 20 years, it is painfully clear that there are no silver bullets, no easy answers that solve every problem immediately. Believe me, if flooding the farming area and displacing 50,000 or so people and disrupting their lives would have fixed the problems, it would have been done. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looked long and hard at this proposal a few years ago and concluded that it just wouldn’t work. There have been too many changes to the system, too many canals and interrelated levees for it work the way it did before seven million people had to be taken into account. That is why it took years of science and engineering to develop a comprehensive plan that would actually do what was needed to fix the entire system. WORK TOGETHER Whether Commissioner Judah wants to acknowledge it or not, farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area have been true partners in Everglades restoration. Few urban areas can claim, as farmers can, that they’ve reduced phosphorus by almost sixty percent for ten consecutive years. Mr. Judah forgets that almost 100,000 acres of farmland is either currently flooded or scheduled to be flooded for environmental protection. Today farmers continue to work hard at Best Management Practices, which have proven to be highly successful in cleaning the water that comes off our land. The solution won’t happen overnight and unfortunately it can be delayed further for any number of reasons including natural disasters and lack of commitment and funding. The disasters in New Orleans will put tremendous pressure on federal dollars available for restoration projects. We can’t do much about Mother Nature, but if we can set aside some human nature -- some of our parochial interests, and the impulse to litigate these issues, we certainly stand a better chance of maintaining federal, state and local support and the funding that is vital making this system work better from top to bottom. We
challenge Commissioner Judah and the Lee County Commission to spend
their legal dollars expediting theprojects on the table that will provide
more timely storage and reservoirs north of the Lake, preventing more
of the polluted waters from ever entering the Lake, the estuaries or
the Everglades ecosystem. We commit to working withthe South Florida
Water Management District, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, our state
and federal governments and all other interested parties to work toward
long-term solutions and innovative ideas for getting there faster. |
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