Is Florida moving too slow to save the Everglades?

1292
SHARE

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.”