Everglades preservation

IDENTIFICATION: Sparsely inhabited subtropical wetlands located in southern Florida

The Everglades are home to many different species of animal and plant life, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. Since the late twentieth century, efforts have been under way to repair the damage done to the region’s fragile wetlands ecosystem by human activities.

The subtropical wetlands region known as the Everglades encompasses an area of approximately 607,000 hectares (1.5 million acres), about one-fifth of which—some 121,400 hectares (300,000 acres)—was dedicated as the Everglades National Park in 1947. The park was later expanded to encompass 1.5 million acres of land. This ecologically fragile area is actually a river more than fifty miles wide and just a few inches to a few feet deep.

The northern portion of the Everglades resembles a prairie covered with shallow water. Most of it is filled with saw grass, a plant with sharp, serrated edges that can reach heights exceeding 3 meters (10 feet). On areas of higher ground, called tree islands, plants such as royal palm, bustic, gumbo limbo, and live oak flourish. Near the southern section of the Everglades the landscape is covered with salt marshes that are home to stands of mangrove. The mangrove swamps are the natural habitat of deer, fish, pelicans, heron, alligators, snakes, and the Florida panther.

In 1915 construction was undertaken on a two-lane highway that would cross the Everglades, linking the Gulf of Mexico in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east. Although there was considerable commercial interest in creating such a thoroughfare, progress on it was slow. It was not until April 25, 1928, that this road, named the Tamiami Trail, was completed. Part of US Highway 41, it runs for 266 kilometers (165 miles) across the northern edge of what later became Everglades National Park. Subsequently, Interstate 75 was built as part of the national highway system; the section of this interstate that runs through the Everglades is nicknamed Alligator Alley.

Agricultural operations arrived in the Everglades shortly after the end of World War I in 1918 with the establishment of sugar plantations and farms. Canals were built southeast from Lake Okeechobee to provide water for the plantations and farms and for the communities that grew up around them.

In the late 1940s, after World War II, the US government began to develop an interest in preserving the ecology of this sensitive area. In 1947, Marjory Stoneman Douglas published The Everglades: River of Grass, a book that awakened many Americans to the uniqueness of the region and aroused the concerns of naturalists and conservationists, many of whom had grown increasingly aware of how people with business and commercial interests in southern Florida had begun to despoil the area’s extraordinary natural wonder. Some of these people wanted to drain the Everglades and use the land for farming and real estate development. The sugar plantations, truck farms, and housing tracts they envisioned would destroy valuable habitat for dozens of species of plants and wildlife and would require enormous quantities of water for their efficient operation.

Despite public protests against the destruction of this valuable wetland area, by the 1960s those who wished to drain the swamp had made significant inroads. The US Army Corps of Engineers had already built a canal that diverted fresh water from the Kissimmee River, which had followed its natural course into Lake Okeechobee, to towns and cities bordering the Everglades. Fresh water was becoming a scarce commodity in the region, and as agriculture and human habitation increased, the diminishing water supply was being degraded by harmful chemicals used in farming.

Restoration Efforts

By the last decade of the twentieth century, following considerable efforts on the part of those wishing to protect the area and preserve its ecology, the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to work on the restoration of the Kissimmee River to its former, natural course. The Corps also began working under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) to return to their previous condition those areas in which the Corps had erected artificial barriers and constructed canals to drain the wetlands. That project was kicked off when President Bill Clinton signed the Water Resources Development Act of 1996 authorizing the Corps to create a restoration plan. After the proposal was submitted, Congress provided funding with the Water Resources Development Act of 2000.

CERP was originally envisioned to last over thirty years at a cost of $7.8 billion, but the estimated budget quickly increased, reaching more than $23 billion by 2021. The project was the largest ecosystem restoration program in the world upon approval, and one of the biggest-ever examples of equilateral federal-state cooperation in the United States. The ultimate objective of CERP is to balance water flow throughout the Everglades and the larger south Florida region, benefiting not only native species and natural ecology but also humans. For example, the project intends to improve water supplies and provide better flood protection for the already established developments in the area. One of the main points behind CERP is the idea that human needs are best served by understanding and preserving the natural environment.

Along with hydrological engineering, Everglades restoration efforts have included pollution mitigation, invasive species removal, and land conservation. Yet despite significant progress, CERP and related projects have also faced serious challenges. Shifting (and contentious) politics, lobbying from sugar growers and other interests, and the extensive scale of the necessary work slowed things down greatly. A 2017 assessment of CERP by the National Academies of Sciences estimated that the delays caused by underfunding and bureaucratic roadblocks meant that full completion of the program would take a century.

However, by the 2020s, the situation had somewhat improved, and multiple important projects connected to CERP were showing signs of progress. Increased federal support and adjustments to the funding process led to more reliable funding for both new and ongoing efforts to restore the ecosystem of the Everglades and address key issues, namely water pollution. In 2021, the Army Corps of Engineers completed the Kissimmee River Restoration Project, a decades–long effort that involved rerouting the Kissimmee River to its original, natural pathway; this project restored much of the river's original floodplain area, and provided benefits to an ecosystem heavily disrupted by earlier drainage efforts. Another project at that time involved raising roadways along the Tamiami Trail to ease the natural flow of water.

In early 2022, the federal government allocated over $1 billion in new funding for the Army Corps of Engineers' Everglades restoration projects, namely the construction of the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir, a critical project intended to help treat and transport clean water south and reduce the spread of polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee. The US Army Corps of Engineers estimated the reservoir would be completed by 2029 at a cost of $3 billion. These and other efforts took on greater urgency as Florida faced increasing threats due to climate change, including frequent flooding and severe storms.

Bibliography

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Rubio, Marco. “After 20 Years, Progress on the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan Is Starting to Yield Results.” The Sun Sentinel, 11 Dec. 2020, www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-rubio-everglades-restoration-20th-anniversary-20201211-wj4w2fgip5gfjfp4wxzeaqafli-story.html. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022.

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