February 11, 2007
Everglades plan isn't restoration -- it's insanity
By Mike Thomas
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-miket1107feb11,0,2834798.column
Down in South Florida , the state is studying plans to sink hundreds of pipes deep into the ground. And then it would route polluted runoff to them, fire up the pumps and give Mother Nature one humdinger of an enema.
This bit of insanity, which I'll explain later in more depth, is courtesy of those who profess to be restoring the Everglades . You may have heard of the plan, now projected to cost almost $11 billion. It has been sold as a project to save the nation's grandest swamp. But it is as much a political plan to protect the very same sugar farms that are destroying the Everglades .
It falls short for one simple reason: You cannot fix the Everglades without finding a place to store the water. Why?
The Everglades has been whittled down to a sliver. It once was a vast network of lakes, swamps, rivers and sloughs extending from Orange County to Florida 's southern tip. But now it has been diked, drained and chopped into pieces.
The same amount of rain still pours into it, however. And so to keep all the former swampland dry, engineers must flush billions of gallons of polluted runoff to both coasts. There it is destroying the Indian River and Caloosahatchee River estuaries, sparking red tide blooms that are wiping out sea life, killing manatees and scaring off tourists.
The upshot is that this drainage worsens the impact of droughts, threatening South Florida 's water supply.
The area goes from flood warning to drought warning almost overnight because there aren't enough places to put the water. The Everglades plan does not do near enough to solve that basic problem.
A big reason is this: One logical place to keep water is south of Lake Okeechobee . A network of reservoirs and cleansing marshes could be built there, much like what was done in the headwaters of the St. Johns River . But that option requires taking some land from the all-powerful sugar growers. And so it has been taken off the table.
Why? Big Sugar controls politicians by funneling millions of dollars into their campaigns. The South Florida Water Management District is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Sugar. The district uses tax dollars to push the growers' position and engineer the Everglades to meet their needs.
One of the district's governing board members is Malcolm "Bubba" Wade, senior vice president, Sugar Operations, U.S. Sugar Corp.
It's almost laughable. This takes me back to Project Enema. Since sugar land was off-limits, and they didn't have enough reservoir space, the engineers needed a place to put the water when they drew up their "restoration" plan.
Their answer was to inject it underground. This led to current plans to dig 330 wells and pump 1.7 billion gallons of water into the aquifer daily, to be pumped out again when needed.
The water would be dirty so it probably would have to be treated going in and coming out. The fuel and treatment costs would be huge. Nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted.
The National Academy of Sciences has raised concerns about contamination of the aquifer and other environmental pitfalls.
Counting on such a scheme to provide a permanent holding tank is beyond reckless. Yet it accounts for half or better of all new water storage in the Everglades plan.
Gov. Charlie Crist needs to intervene in this mess. First up is replacing the district's governing board. It is time to clean house and start anew. Then, all water-storage options can be objectively evaluated, including use of at least some sugar land.
Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com