Newly restored bends in the Kissimmee River are resurrecting floodplains and wetlands to clean and slow the flow of dirty water running from farms and cities into Lake Okeechobee. Reservoirs are underway east and west of the lake to hold more water. To the south, sprawling treatment areas to scrub pollution from farm runoff water were expanded last year. Of 26 massive culverts needed to shore up the lake's aging dike, 21 are under contract. And new and reconfigured canals began delivering more water in 2016 than ever before to Everglades National Park. To name a few.
But at ground level, the view is far different, with sides squared off in bitter fight over just how much remains to be done, and at what pace.
For the second year in a row, a proposed $2.4 billion reservoir included in original plans and envisioned somewhere in the sugar fields that now dominate the landscape south of the lake is taking center stage. State Senate President Joe Negron, his Treasure Coast constituents repeatedly hammered by dirty water from Lake Okeechobee, and environmentalists want to speed up its construction by years. Gov. Rick Scott and farmers, however, see the reservoir as a job-killing land grab and say efforts should focus north of the lake, where water storage projects are already underway.
The National Academies of Sciences also issued a dismal assessment earlier this year, citing problems that have dogged the $16.4 billion state-federal restoration project almost since its inception in 2000: bureaucratic creep and chronic underfunding.
Of the 68 projects originally envisioned, only six are under construction. None are fully done. At the current pace, the academy reported, fixing the Everglades will take another 100 years.
"We're now at 16 years and we're having a difficult time walking and chewing gum at the same time," said Stephen Davis, a wetlands ecologist with the Everglades Foundation.
Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers, who organized last week's helicopter tour for reporters from the Miami Herald and Politico, said it makes no sense to rush construction of a massive reservoir until other projects needed to move water into the marshes are completed.
"The science builds on itself; that (reservoir) and all the projects that are at the end are keystones," he said. Caldwell also questioned why the state would buy out farmers when it already owns so much other land south of the lake in water conservation areas that make up much of the marsh outside of Everglades National Park.
"You've got land," he said. "You could build a reservoir in the water conservation areas. That's sacrosanct to some folks. But if we're just being honest, it's not the Everglades. It's wonderful and I enjoy it, but we created the water conservation areas. That's former farmland that we turned back into marsh in the '60s, so if I could just build a reservoir today and spend half as much, I could put it there on 60,000 acres."
