Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) — EATING THE EVERGLADES

Overview

Today in south Florida when you talk about the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan — from this point on the initials, CERP, will be used — it’s a challenge to find agencies or organizations that agree with positions taken by similar organizations. Everyone is convinced that the other side is populated with conscienceless bastards who lie through their teeth at every opportunity. Coalitions form and are dissolved in a matter of months. Former partners accuse their former associates of unethical motives and reprehensible actions. And I’m talking about respected scientists, national environmental groups, business leaders, politicians, Federal and State agencies, and intensely involved but fairly typical citizens.

When the scientists at the Everglades National Park publicly maintained that the CERP created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not provide the claimed environmental benefits to the Everglades, what’s a regular person to believe? Hey, it’s business as usual regarding the Everglades, only much worse and far more desperate than ever because for that endangered ecosystem it really is the 58 minute of the eleventh hour. And the stakes are enormous.

Although my intention is to present the materials in this segment in a straightforward manner, that goal is complicated by intensely held opinions and subjective judgments. That’s because we’ll be looking at a serious, highly complex problem that has many facets, not all of which are open or above board. Many of those elements are characterized by technical problems of exasperating difficulty and by experts who disagree among themselves on the facts as well as on the range of potential adverse effects, mitigation measures, and policy implications. Whoever claimed that science was objective has never studied the south Florida landscape.

Sad to say, an easy way to simplify the proposed restoration effort and still do justice to all the issues has not yet been discovered. At least not by me. Having said that, I’m committed to providing as balanced an overview as I can of what has happened in south Florida, why, and what it all means for today, tomorrow and into the future.

If you’ve had the stamina to make it through the first EATING FLORIDA segments, you know where my heart is. On the side of the environment. I desperately want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to be able to breathe fresh air, swim in clean streams, and marvel as a majestic Everglades snail kite soars past in search of a juicy freshwater apple snail. Despite that mindset, I promise to make an attempt to be as objective as possible in this presentation. Cynical and sarcastic soul though I am. At least my point of view has been revealed for all to see. Which is to ensure that the Everglades will survive into the future as much restored to its former natural state as is possible, even while suspecting that full restoration will prove impossible and that this incredible environment may be doomed as much as by our collective indifference as by the rapacity and greed of powerbrokers. And of course by that of their pet politicians.

As you will see, this material is difficult for a couple reasons. First, the subject is complicated, if only by the nature of its convoluted and highly controversial history. Second, if you’re a relative neophyte to the subject, you really don’t know who or what to believe. And that’s a critical problem. Third, the efforts being proposed to restore the Everglades are both extraordinarily technical and as grossly political as they get. In truth, this topic cries out for a more intensive, investigative approach as a full volume on its own, not just a couple lousy chapters in a blog intent on exploring many other closely related but not identical topics (for a well-written and informed viewpoint, see). But, that’s not in the cards. So we just have to make do. And for me, that’s an opportunity to provide as accurate an explanation as I am able within a relatively few pages. While keeping things as interesting and as objective as possible.

To acquire a basic understanding of southern Florida’s cornucopia of environmental tribulations, interested Readers should begin by reading Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. Grunwald hits most of the bases and, despite his professed vocation as an investigative reporter, he merits the status of a critical but objective observer. That doesn’t mean he’s without a viewpoint. But he doesn’t beat you over the head with it. Unlike some writers I could mention. Meaning me.

You can also get the CERP and related documents straight from the horse’s mouth by going to the Corps’s web site at www.evergladesplan.org, though you must remember what you are reading are politically informed documents. If you have a high-speed connection you can download the entire document.

CERP Background

By universal judgment, for 46 long years the “water management improvements” designed and constructed by the Corps of Engineers for south Florida directly caused widespread, large-scale environmental destruction across the entire south Florida region, especially the Everglades and associated ecosystems. And that included the densely settled coastal areas from Homestead north to Port St. Lucie. Today, surprisingly, even the Corps agrees with that assessment. Though they now claim that those problems were “unanticipated” or “inadvertent.” While holding up their hands to proclaim their righteous innocence.

Finally, even the calloused Florida politicians could no longer close their eyes to the devastation of the Everglades and pretend they were living in Oz. Hey, saltwater intrusion that pollutes the aquifers providing cities with drinking water is a problem that will not go away on its own. And neither will the collapse of coastal ecosystems that support sport and commercial fishermen. Or a myriad other environmental disasters created by the Corps’s foolhardy and thickheaded refusal to consider the inevitable adverse effects on biological systems that resulted from their boneheaded engineering “improvements.”

CERP’s most direct ancestor is of course the 1948 Central and South Florida Project (C&SF), which as a physical reality was fully in place and functional by the early 1970s. From the 1970s through the early 1980s, when widespread and pernicious environmental problems popped up and refused to go away, the Corps and the State desperately tried to restructure the Project so its many problems could be handled by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). That effort to deal with the internal problems, which were caused by the division of the historical Everglades into what the Project’s engineers claimed were separate and unrelated pieces, failed spectacularly. Author’s Note: scientists call that error compartmentalism.[1]

Environmental groups and many scientists studying south Florida wetlands interpreted what was happening in the Everglades as its death spiral. From the mid-1980s to the present, the Corps, the SFWMD, and the State attempted, on a piecemeal basis, to restore at least some small portion of the natural values of the Everglades. But again, they were appallingly unsuccessful.

In 1992, recognizing that the condition of the Everglades was increasingly desperate, Congress authorized the Corps, through the omnibus Water Resources Development Act, to determine whether modifications to the C&SF Project were necessary owing to changing physical and socioeconomic conditions. But CERP’s most closely related antecedent was a trial balloon released in early 1996 by Governor Lawton Chiles’s Commission on a Sustainable South Florida. The Commission, established in 1994, was a carefully chosen set of serious players in the political arena. State, regional, and local government representatives. State agency managers. Agricultural and cattle interests. Home builders. Attorneys. Business leaders. Seminole tribe representatives. Oh, yes, and a few environmentalists of an amenable sort.

The Commission Chairman, Richard Pettigrew, a former speaker of the Florida House, realized the chance of the Legislature passing an Everglades restoration plan that was opposed by developers, mining firms, or agribusinesses was a big fat zero. With that unassailable reality hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, he applied his years of political legerdemain to the task and pulled off a unanimous vote. Naturally, all the major compromises in the final document favored south Florida agricultural and business interests. Big surprise there. However, after decades of being promised that genuine help for the Everglades was just around the corner, the environmentalists on the Commission had reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that a little something was substantially better than tons of empty promises. Which was what the Everglades had been getting for many decades. The short, dirty end of the stick. So with heavy hearts and many second thoughts they climbed in bed with the business and agricultural interests and hoped for the best while squeezing their cheeks and preparing for the worst.

It was obvious that the State had neither the money nor the technical expertise to go it alone. So, hat in hand, and with the strong support of the Florida Congressional delegation, they trotted their dog and pony show to Pork Barrel Heaven: Washington, D.C. Having been primed previously by the Florida delegation and by the 1992 WRDA, in late 1996 Congress authorized the Corps to perform an official Comprehensive Review Study (known by friends and foes alike as the Restudy) of the C&SF Project. According to Corps documents, the mandated purpose of the Restudy was “to determine the feasibility of structural or operational modifications to the project essential to the restoration of the Everglades and the South Florida ecosystem, while providing for other water-related needs such as urban and agricultural water supply and flood protection in those areas served by the project.”

If you read that above quote carefully you may have noticed the problem. The fallacious and environmentally onerous goals of the original C&SF Project were never called into question. No Federal, State, or local politician wanted the original Project’s purpose reexamined. That approach would have been too radical and far too politically explosive. After all, the Big Sugar lords who controlled their Everglades Agricultural Area lands like medieval fiefdoms had been among the most active players calling for the Restudy. And, since those key owners/executives were great pals of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and both Bushes, their fingerprints were all over the reasons the restoration project was structured the way it was. They had too much to lose to let it become a genuine environmental restoration effort. Which is why they were pleased as punch that the Corps, Congress’s highly controllable butt-boy, was assigned to do the Restudy and not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Congress held the Corps’s balls so tightly in their clenched fists there could never be any question as to what they would finally recommend. The Corps generals and engineers would never bite the hand that fed them so well or could punish them so severely if necessity arose. Therefore, their unquestioning loyalty and slavish obedience was a foregone conclusion.

Naturally, after the intense political manipulation and Congress’s specific directions, the Restudy came up with the same old same old Corps ingredients: structural solutions to flood protection, drainage canals, levees, pumping stations, and water supply for agriculture and urban uses. What a tremendous surprise. Oh, don’t forget; and just barely enough environmental restoration thrown in to keep the tree-huggers, like their new best buddy, Audubon of Florida, from jumping ship. More later on those collaborators.

The Corps’s final report was submitted to Congress in July 1999. Naturally, considering the authors, no surprises were to be had. The Corps trumpeted that the “Comprehensive [Everglades Restoration] Plan contained in this report will, when implemented, restore, protect, and preserve a natural resource treasure — the South Florida ecosystem.” Another intentional misrepresentation from the people who’ve consistently lied about the environment for more than ten decades.

In the earliest stages after its creation by the Corps, the CERP enjoyed nearly universal support. Certain environmental organizations (especially the so eager to collaborate Audubon of Florida) agreed to support the CERP only if major environmental improvements were in place by 2010, which was the project’s half-way mark in terms of spending. Suddenly that was a done deal and strange new relationships blossomed. Lobbyists from Audubon of Florida and the sugar industry, who under normal conditions were on the opposite side of whatever issue was under discussion, wound up walking arm-in-arm through the halls of Congress promoting the CERP. As if they actually had something in common.

The environmentalists had been seduced and then mesmerized by the promise that 79 billion gallons of freshwater would be supplied annually to the Everglades National Park. A life-giving infusion that was desperately needed for the survival of the Everglades. But as months passed and the lobbying and political pressure mounted, the promise of those 79 billion gallons gradually morphed from a guarandamnteed certainty to a “future” study that would determine the Park’s real freshwater needs. Suspicions confirmed. Things were slowly reverting to normal for the Everglades: promises galore in the here and now but no future delivery.

The environmental strategy of south Florida powerbrokers and politicians has always been the same. Use the dire state of the Everglades to pump up public interest, and then, after everyone is on the bandwagon, drop the Park’s needs like a hot potato and get on with the real agenda. Which is making sure the powerbrokers get fatter. Oh, and don’t forget more campaign contributions for those always agreeable Florida legislators. Have to keep them fat and happy, too. Pass the wetlands, please. Burp.

After the downgrading of the 79 billion gallon promise of freshwater came yet another hammer blow. The environmental organizations’ other main concerns, how to allocate the project’s water to guarantee ecological progress by 2010 (a deadline that passed without any significant progress being recorded) and a crucial set of future regulations that would “ensure the protection of the natural system,” were removed from primary consideration and shuffled off to the sidelines. With fresh promises that they would become the basis of a future federal-state agreement, now known as the Agreement between the Bushes, which was signed on January 9, 2002.

As an aside, after the signing of the Agreement, the White House released a fact sheet that stated that the restoration, while serving the Everglades first, would still benefit those who live around them. “When fully implemented, it [the CERP] will provide the region with an additional 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water per day, ensuring an expanded water supply to meet the growing needs of South Florida communities and farms,” the White House stated.

Two points should be made about these statements and what they reveal. First, nowhere in the CERP or the Agreement does it state that the needs of the Everglades will be served first, second or whatever. Nowhere. The key word used in the CERP is overarching, which can be pressed into service in many disparate ways, as lobbyists and politicians know well. And second, the White House statement allows us to see Bush’s critical mindset. That the 1.7 billion gallons of freshwater will meet the growing needs of south Florida communities and farms. Right. And can’t we all see where that will lead.

Although Everglades restoration was sold to environmentalists and the public as the Plan’s overriding purpose, in the end the CERP was only legally committed to meeting the “water-related needs” of South Florida. It was business as usual, or to put it another way, water management as usual. At this point all you Gentle Readers should be thinking surface water storage reservoirs, stormwater treatment areas, aquifer storage and recovery, seepage management, canals, levees, and pumping stations. All of which are intended to make sure agriculture and urban development wind up with way more than their fair share of the approximately 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water that is discharged per day on average from the Everglades ecosystem to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Not more water for wood storks or Everglades snail kites, that’s for damned sure.

Problem was, those agriculture and urban development needs had never played a key role in any important discussion during the national lobbying campaign to generate support for the Plan. The focus was always on a slogan Senator Bob Graham coined to de-parochialize what was from the get-go a south Florida water supply project. All those involved in drumming up support for the Plan were supposed to loudly trumpet “America’s Everglades” every time the subject came up.

The public relations gurus thought that, correctly as it turned out, unless that slogan was on everyone’s lips lawmakers from the parched Southwest and West might start grumbling about why Congress was willing to pay for a multipurpose water project for a subtropical paradise that was blessed with around 60 inches of annual rainfall. To top it off, local water officials were even told not to say anything about the key flood control and water supply issues contained in the CERP. The word was out. “Just talk about saving the Everglades. Keep your mouth shut about everything else. Don’t worry, your water needs will be taken care.” It proved to be a very successful strategy. Cynical and double-dealing as hell but most effective.

Regardless of whether today’s pseudo-green Corps is intentionally lying through its teeth about what the CERP is intended to do in an effort to salvage its shaky reputation by re-writing history (my personal opinion) or is merely trying to lay down a thick smoke screen to cover its past guilt and present incompetence (the most charitable interpretation possible), the reality no one can deny is that the wetlands of south Florida have either been destroyed or savagely altered by land use and water management practices put in place by the Corps since the 1900s. It is also true that those pre-drainage wetlands can never be fully restored. Let me state that again. Fifty percent of the wetlands of south Florida have disappeared as a result of the Corps’ water control engineering and can never be restored. Never, never, never. And that also is a nearly universal scientific judgment with which both the Corps and SFWMD officially concur.

The very best that can happen is that parts of the Everglades will be allowed to recover certain marginal aspects of their former healthy, pre-drainage state. But, in the Corps’s CERP scenario, the result will be an environment that is totally human-dependent (meaning a non-natural system relying on water management technology) and will only “resemble” the pre-drainage Everglades. So, what we will have is an artificial, cultural landscape that would look in part like the real thing but could never function naturally again. It will be a pseudo-natural, Disneyesque Everglades that mimics the real thing and looks good to ignorant tourists lured to south Florida for the express purpose of lightening their wallets. Thanks to the thoughtless demands of millions of people over the last nine decades to exploit a beautiful but fragile environment through living and working in south Florida. And getting fat at the expense of the Everglades without giving a rat’s ass about the inevitable consequences of their actions.

Implications

The CERP started life as the centerpiece of Bill Clinton’s and Jeb Bush’s environmental legacies. Next, President George W. Bush started referring to CERP as the best example of his “new environmentalism for the 21st Century.” But during the Bush Administration the CERP all but disappeared from the halls of Washington as funds that had been promised were redirected to the war effort.

Where does it stand now? In truth, very little progress has been made on the Federal front, with construction having begun on only four of 68 projects identified by the feds and not a single project has been completed. The lack of federal funding during George W. Bush's administration left many restoration projects comatose on the launch pad. At least a portion of those stalled funds has been promised under President Obama, thanks in part to federal stimulus spending, but actual progress is happening at a glacial pace.

You might think that most people living in south Florida would eventually figure out what’s going on. Nope. The environment is just not a sexy topic that will hold the interest of the average voter for more than a minute or two. And it won’t until something drastic happens to change that situation. The question to ask yourself is who but fat-cat developers and their equally fat pet politicians would benefit from a Disney Everglades that entertains tourists? No one. And maybe that's the real answer to my question above. Ordinary south Florida residents will only care about restoring the Everglades because it means money in their pockets. It's the Rule of 85 in action.

As horribly difficult it is for me to express this opinion, I believe environmentalists should write off the entire Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades Basin as a functioning ecosystem and focus their limited resources elsewhere. As it is they are fighting over a zombie that occasionally appears to be alive but isn't and can never be resurrected. The Zombie Glades. Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Art Marshall are probably rolling over in their graves. They put up a wonderful fight for a once glorious ecosystem but it's over. The fat bastards won by eating the Everglades. It breaks my heart.

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[1] Several nationally prominent research scientists have concluded that barriers to true ecosystem restoration have arisen when institutions like the Corps establish operating premises that are less than system-wide in scope. The Corps has intentionally compartmentalized flood control, water management, and ecological values. By compartmentalize I mean they treat those elements as if they were absolutely separate, unrelated, and distinct. Elements that are compartmentalized are by definition isolated from each other and are not allowed to interact. That’s great except when you’re dealing with natural systems in which water flow, quality, periodicity, and quality are all tied together in the creation and sustenance of a unified but fragile ecosystem. See Lance H. Gunderson, Crawford S. Holling and Stephen. S. Light. Barriers & Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Columbia University Press, New York; 1995.