Everglades Restoration Plan — Unwise, Unnecessary

Brian Doherty | September 29, 2000

LOS ANGELES--The U.S. Senate recently approved by an 85-1 vote the first appropriation for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, a mammoth program that reflects all that's wrong with federal environmental policy.

Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush both like the plan, which is meant to repair some of the damage done during previous attempts to manage the Everglades by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since 1948, the Corps have built over 1,700 miles of canals and levees in Everglades National Park for flood control purposes, in the process creating 1,000 square miles of new agricultural land for sugar farmers, drying out nearly half the old swamp and sending 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water a day into the ocean.

The new Everglades plan is the biggest environmental public works project ever attempted. The plan is supposed to cost $7.8 billion and take 30 years, an estimate that is almost certainly optimistic.

The program has been and will continue to be mired in turf fights among a slew of federal and Florida agencies, Indian tribes (the Miccosukee and the Seminole), as well as scores of environmental groups.

Consider the fate of two smaller-scale projects already in motion in the Everglades' area, the Modified Water Deliveries Project and the C-111 canal project.

A General Accounting Office report last April found those endeavors are already two years behind schedule, apt to end up more than five years behind schedule and projected to cost $80 million more than original estimates.

The far-more-ambitious Everglades plan is not likely to fare any better. The Army Corps' plan depends on as-yet-untested theories, models and methods. The Corps has cheerily announced their intention to use "adaptive management."

In other words: Start giving us money based on this plan, and if it doesn't work, let's keep making it up as we burn up taxpayer money. As the bill moves on to the House of Representatives, the public should recognize a few things.

For one, the Corps doesn't really know what it's doing. The federal money flowing into the Everglades is a bonanza for scientists, who are launching scads of research projects to learn things that should already be known before a project like this begins.

For example, we don't know enough about animal migration patterns, water seepage or how models match with reality to be confident of what the Everglades will be like when the plan is completed.

The key element meant to guarantee the fresh water supply for southern Florida is a risky scheme to inject fresh water deep into the ground, where it will in theory remain separate from the heavier brackish water beneath.

While such a system has worked on the small scale before, it has never been tested on the scale the Everglades plan requires. The plan is a further assault on private property in a state where the government already owns 29 percent of the land.

Since the Corps started messing with the Everglades over 50 years ago, various levels of government have acquired more than 4.6 million acres in the region.

The new plan will require taking another 200,000 acres. The bosses at Everglades National Park want to drive from their homes the residents of the 8.5 square-mile area east of the park, insisting those people must leave in order to restore water flows into the park.