MICCOSUKEE INDIAN RESERVATION, Fla. — Richard Harvey sits through the "task force" meetings, the "working group" meetings, the "science subgroup" meetings, all kinds of Everglades restoration meetings. He listens, he seethes and then he blurts out his mantra: "What is it about water quality you don't understand?" The goal of the $7.8 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is to "get the water right" -- quantity, quality, timing and distribution. But the plan focuses almost entirely on hydropatterns -- just quantity, timing and distribution. Critics such as Harvey, the Environmental Protection Agency's South Florida director, as well as environmentalists, federal investigators and Miccosukee Indians, all warn that if the restoration plan's leaders ignore the need for pristine water quality, they will just create a more efficient pollution-delivery system for the Everglades. And they will end up in court. Of the plan's many pitfalls, this may be the most daunting. One defining characteristic of the original Everglades was its low nutrient content -- even lower than Evian -- and no one has figured out how to get it that way again. "If you don't fix the water quality, it's a waste of time and money," said Terry Rice, a former Army Corps of Engineers colonel who works for the Miccosukee tribe. Harvey was even harsher in an internal e-mail: "Getting the water quality right is critical to the restoration of the ecosystem and yet the two lead agencies -- the Corps and the [South Florida] Water Management District -- don't seem to have a clue about how to do it -- and therefore choose to virtually ignore it/hope it will go away -- unless they are sued." In fact, litigation has dominated the recent history of Everglades water quality -- most of it involving the irrepressible Dexter Lehtinen, a former Army lieutenant who lost a chunk of his face to shrapnel in the 1971 invasion of Laos. Lehtinen, the husband of Cuban American firebrand Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), is not the type to back down from a fight. In 1988, when Lehtinen was the Republican U.S. attorney in Miami -- he had just indicted Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega -- an Everglades National Park official told him phosphorous pollution from the sugar fields below Lake Okeechobee was killing the River of Grass. Lehtinen, a Homestead native who had fished in the Everglades as a boy, doubted the Reagan administration would support a landmark environmental lawsuit against Florida and the politically influential sugar industry. So he waited until the October campaign season, when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was blasting Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis over the dismal health of Boston Harbor. Lehtinen then sued without telling his bosses in the Justice Department. "What were they going to do, tell me to take it back?" he said. His key witness was Ron Jones, a proudly nerdy Florida International University microbiologist who studies periphyton, the ubiquitous globs of one-celled algae at the bottom of the Everglades food chain. Periphyton consists mostly of mucus; it's not charismatic megafauna. But Jones's research has documented that the Everglades is "oligotrophic," that even minuscule traces of phosphorous -- anything over 10 parts per billion (ppb) -- begin to transform the ecosystem. The most obvious change is that wide swaths of sawgrass -- a plant that usually flourishes here because it needs so little phosphorous to grow -- turn into dense plains of cattails that Jones calls "the markers on the grave of the Everglades." Phosphorous also eliminates periphyton, which hurts the fish and snails that eat it, and the birds that eat them, and so on. Anyway, Lehtinen won. In 1991, Lawton Chiles, who was then governor, dramatically announced in court that he wanted to "surrender my sword" and settle the landmark case. Now the state is building 45,000 acres of artificial marshes that filter pollution out of runoff from sugar fields, suburbs and Lake Okeechobee before it flows into the Everglades. The $800 million effort -- one-third paid by the sugar industry -- has already reduced phosphorous levels in some cases from more than 100 ppb to less than 30 ppb. But less than 30 is not 10. In December, Gov. Jeb Bush's administration endorsed 10 ppb as the appropriate limit, but no one has floated -- much less funded -- a plan to achieve it. And the water district's latest report notes that phosphorous inflows increased last year. It also says that "while tremendous progress is being made, significant uncertainties remain that may prevent the District from complying" by its legal deadline of 2006. Bush's top environmental official, David Struhs, told the Palm Beach Post that "there are going to be extreme problems in some cases in meeting those permitconditions," and declined to speculate when the cleanup might be done: "It depends on how long you live, I guess." But Jones says reducing pollution to levels above 10 ppb would not save the Everglades; it would just poison the Everglades more slowly. If the restoration plan rehydrates the Everglades with less-than-pristine water, that could poison the Everglades more quickly. "Until you get to 10, you're making it worse," Jones said. In recent years, the Justice Department has been content with the state's progress. But not the 492 members of the Miccosukee tribe, who live here in the central Everglades and have used casino proceeds to become the most aggressive enforcers of Everglades water purity. Their lawyer is one Dexter Lehtinen, and their consultant is Ron Jones. Rice and his wife, Joette Lorion -- a former president of Friends of the Everglades, the environmental group founded by the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas -- work for the tribe, too. "The Everglades has become a cesspool," says Billy Cypress, the Miccosukee tribal chairman. "We won't rest until it's clean." Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, says the state is doing all it can. Phase One of its marsh construction project far exceeded expectations, and Struhs says the 10 ppb standard is nonnegotiable. "No backsliding," he said. The Miccosukees are skeptical. They want to see how the state will measure phosphorous, and what it plans to do about Phase Two. Lehtinen just persuaded a federal judge to hold hearings. "I am convinced FDEP will do all within its power to find a compliance system which ensures minimum risk for the state . . . such is typical of human nature, but means relaxed protection for the Everglades," Rice wrote. The restoration plan calls for 36,000 more acres of artificial marshes, but it does not claim to fix the water-quality problem; it simply assumes Florida will do so. An investigation by the General Accounting Office warned that the plan may require many more water-quality projects to succeed. For example, it aims to stop only about one-fourth the phosphorous entering Lake Okeechobee from cattle pastures and Orlando sprawl. The GAO warned that the lake alone could require another $1 billion worth of water-quality work. Lehtinen and the Miccosukees won another legal victory in February that could have even deeper implications. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the water district had violated the Clean Water Act by pumping polluted stormwater from Weston into the Everglades. It wasn't huge news, because the tribe didn't ask the judges to shut down the pump. But the district plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. That's because the decision could set a major precedent if new structures sending water to the Everglades -- such as many of the restoration plan's 83 new pumps -- are required to meet the 10 ppb standard. "I don't think the taxpayers are going to like it if we build a bunch of pumps we can't even turn on," Harvey said. "They'd be perfect monuments to stupidity." Articles from "The Swamp" series:
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