Since we're dealing with "water management" issues, let's take a much abbreviated, though hopefully accurate, look at how the Everglades Agricultural Area, and therefore the C&SF Project, really works. To maintain water in the EAA at seasonally appropriate levels in terms of agricultural needs, the Corps designed a system of water movement technologies interconnected with nearby storage areas and the coast. Depending on the time of year and the amount of water present, one of three things is done with excess stormwater. Note that those operations are not necessarily performed in sequence. One, excess water is back-pumped into Lake Okeechobee. Two, excess water is pumped into one or more of the three Water Conservation Areas. Three, excess water is discharged into the ocean via numerous canals and canalized rivers. Author's Note: I hope perceptive Readers noticed how much of the "excess" water was pumped into Everglades National Park, into which at one time it all flowed. Therefore, by plan and engineering design, the Corps was preventing vital water supplies from reaching the National Park.
That system of pumping and back-pumping nutrient-loaded water (containing phosphates and nitrates from agricultural fertilizers) has spread large doses of agricultural and other contaminants throughout the entire south Florida ecosystem. Resulting in catastrophe for the natural environment. "So what?" ask EAA landowners and cattlemen. "We got the right to use our property any way we please." That statement can be translated into the following plain English:
All you idiot environmentalists can go fuck yourselves.
It's no exaggeration to state that agricultural production in the EAA and large-scale cattle grazing north and southeast of Lake Okeechobee are directly responsible for contaminating surrounding ecosystems with runoff containing very high levels of fertilizers and pesticides. The historical condition is the natural water outflow from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades was nutrient poor. Over many thousand years the ecosystems adapted to that salient reality. But today, each year growers in the EAA apply thousands of tons of fertilizers to produce crops valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem with the widespread application of fertilizers is that only about 50 percent of nitrogen and around twelve percent of phosphorus are taken up by the root systems of field crops. The rest winds up in agricultural runoff and soon thereafter is spread throughout the south Florida environment by the Corps’s water management technology. High levels of phosphorus in the runoff result in the reduction of certain critical algae species—especially periphytons, which form the base of the Everglades food chain—and in the invasion of wet prairie and sawgrass areas by non-native species, especially cattails, which then effectively out-compete indigenous plants when total phosphorus concentrations in the soil increase above that found historically. To date, cattails have pioneered more than 60,000 acres of Everglades wetlands and until recently were advancing by about two acres every day.
It might help to know that that the pre-development, natural phosphorus level in the Everglades was about ten parts per billion. Which by anyone’s count is a very small number. And that issue constitutes one of the single most critical sticking points as to whether the Everglades can be saved from human alteration. More on the critical water quality issues will be provided in later blogs.
Surprising to no one who knows much about agriculture, crops in the EAA grow best when the water table is kept at a constant level. However, in the historical Everglades ecosystems the water table was never anywhere near constant. In fact, about the only constant with regard to the water table was that it fluctuated season to season, year to year. So, in order to maximize agricultural production, the EAA must be kept drier than normal during the wet season and wetter than normal during the dry season.
Think about the combined effects of the Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee, the three Water Conservation Areas, and all those drainage canals and pumping stations that can move hundreds of millions of gallons of excess water in several directions. Water management, remember? That’s what the C&SF Project is all about. The direct consequences of that engineering design and construction are experienced by the environment in terms of degraded water quality, un-natural water quantities, and un-natural hyrdo-periods (the timing of the delivery of water). Adverse water quality effects come in the form of increased nutrients in runoff resulting from the subsidence of organic soils, the application of fertilizers, and enormous quantities of cattle manure. Not to mention the widespread use of herbicides and pesticides. In a nutshell, the Project, through the functioning of the Dike and the EAA, has altered the natural sheet flow and hydrology of the historic Everglades and negatively affected water quality throughout south Florida. All in the name of a positive benefit-cost ratio. Oh yes, and don’t forget those so critical election campaign contributions by wealthy land owners.
I promised earlier that I would lay out the problem of restoring the Everglades in the simplest terms possible and still pay homage to its complexities. Well, here it is. Given the historic and existing reluctance of the State of Florida to force the politically powerful land owners in the EAA to do anything they were opposed to, will it ever be possible to reduce nutrient loading to the point where the Everglades can be saved? The answer is not simple because if by “saved” you mean restored to a state imitating its former ecological glories, the answer is yes. But if by "saved" you mean restored to its former ecological glories, the answer is never.
Back to the Corps's civil engineering solution to an environmental problem. Water management, remember? Through the initial Comprehensive Plan for the C&SF Project, Congress also authorized the canalization of the Kissimmee River to reduce flooding in the northern Chain of Lakes area and on the River’s floodplain. Construction of a 30-foot deep, 300-foot wide, 56-mile canal (named C-38) that would replace the Kissimmee River began in 1961 and was completed in the early 1970s. The 103-mile plus river that had lazily meandered in a floodplain that was from one to two miles wide from immediately south of the Orlando area to Lake Okeechobee was replaced by a concrete-revetted surface channel. No surprise there, since the project was intentionally designed to convert 45 percent of the floodplain to cattle pasture and drain approximately 33,000 acres of wetlands. To accomplish those goals, the River had to be turned into a canal that moved water quickly away from areas of human settlement, agriculture, and pasture. And, you might ask, what role did nature or biology play in the Corps’s Kissimmee River water management design? Get real. Ecosystems do not count nor do they have a role to play in the Corps’s civil engineering schemes. But, nature has a way of asserting itself, if only in the form of adverse consequences to ill-considered engineering “improvements.”
Seasonal flooding of the Kissimmee River’s two-mile-wide floodplain was eliminated so cattle could get fat. Thereby making their owners fat. Who would then contribute to political campaigns and make the politicians fat. Everyone was getting fat but the natural environments that constituted the Kissimmee River Basin. Which were shrinking fast and were being replaced by human-altered landscapes that had no ability to remove environmental pollutants from surface waters. That “small” problem that the Corps engineers didn’t tumble to would eventually become critical and demand resolution since the marshes that had filtered nutrients and reduced the phosphorus and other agricultural runoff were gone. Suddenly, those nasty pollutants were being injected by C-38 directly into Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, covering 730 square miles and having more than 100,000 acres of adjacent wetland habitats. [Author’s Note: Additional detailed information on the “restoration” of the Kissimmee River will be provided in a later post]
It didn't take long before Lake Okeechobee was seized by a series of algal blooms, aquatic plant die-offs, and fish kills and started its death spiral. Other negative consequences of the Corps’s water management design of C-38 and thoughtless destruction of the Kissimmee River ecosystem included drastic declines in wintering waterfowl, wading bird, raptor, and game fish populations, as well as a critical loss of ecosystem functions.
Jump to the 21st Century. After taking an enormous pounding by Francis and Jeanne, the two hurricanes of 2004 that crisscrossed the central part of the State, and indirect damage from hurricanes Charley and Ivan that included heavy rainfall, today the Lake looks like it has been through the proverbial meat grinder. The water is extremely turbid, tainted by polluted, blackish-brown, coffee-ground-type bottom sediments that had been churned into solution and re-suspension by the hurricanes’ heavy rainfall and high winds. The bad news is those horrific conditions became much worse when Hurricane Wilma struck in 2005 and ripped out most of the repair efforts put in place since 2004, especially the pollution-absorbing plants inside marshes designed to filter phosphorus from water flowing into the Everglades National Park. The truth is, before things settle down, especially in terms massive algal blooms that could kill thousands of fish, things could get even worse. At risk are not only the world-renowned bass fishing industry but also the economies of communities around the Lake.
Just as bad is the most recent news about the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers. Remember all the human-generated filth accumulating in Lake Okeechobee? Well, owing to record high rainfall in 2004-2005 from the various hurricanes, the SFWMD opened the sluice gates and sent all the nasty crap that was in the Lake downstream in the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers, with the inevitable result of devastating the riverine environments and their estuaries. Can you spell environmental disaster? Even if you don’t want to spell it all you have to do is let your nose do its work, because the horrific odors produced by those discharges were impossible to miss.
In September 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released information that documented water pollution in Lake Okeechobee had reached new record levels that were approximately four times the legal maximum level for the Lake and will likely worsen in the near future. The key pollutant, phosphorus, has approximately doubled in Lake Okeechobee over the past decade, making prospects for restoring the Everglades even more remote than had previously been thought. The heart of the problem is the State of Florida is legally committed through agreements with the federal government to reaching a maximum of 140 metric tons of phosphorus per year in Lake Okeechobee by 2015 [Author’s Note: later blogs will explore the reasons for that legal situation]. Since the current per year average in the Lake exceeds 500 metric tons, that legal mandate now seems impossible. Complicating the issue is the 300 million cubic yards of phosphorus-laden mud that has accumulated on the Lake bottom since the Hoover Dike’s construction. The situation is further exacerbated because a series of federal court decisions have excoriated EPA's failure to enforce Clean Water Act protections in the Florida. Most of those decisions came during the George W. Bush presidency and the Jeb Bush governorship. Anyone think that was a coincidence?
Let me ask a simple question. Why have all those birds come home to roost now? For decades environmentalists have been warning the Corps and the SFWMD about the dangers of allowing Lake Okeechobee to become a handy-dandy, cheap latrine for cattle ranchers and sugar cane growers and were laughed at. Now, those predictions of doom are here simply because nothing was done to stop that very pollution. Today, those two rivers and their estuaries are dying very publicly, just like Lake Apopka died 55 years ago, in ways that can’t be “explained” away by meretricious and truth-challenged Corps and SFWMD PR mouthpieces. But conditions have changed since Lake Apopka bit the chemical bullet. Today, the roiling crud and sludge in the St. Lucie River are photographed from helicopters by mainstream TV news teams from Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale and packaged for dinner-time and bed-time consumption. So, maybe the good people of Martin and St. Lucie Counties will finally wake up and follow their noses to smell the disastrous culmination of decades of piss-poor planning, meaning the engineering design that purposefully ignored ecology, incompetent “water” management, and politics so bad it passed the slime-ball stage generations ago.
Henry Dean, then executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, expressed a downhearted but surprisingly realistic viewpoint when he said, “I don’t think the outlook is very positive in the near-term and maybe for the long-term for Lake Okeechobee.” Paul Gray, Audubon of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee sanctuary manager, echoed that statement. “We’re all just petrified. We’ve been talking about all the problems of Lake Okeechobee for years and now it’s as bad as it’s been in years.” Colleen Castille, then secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, perhaps unwittingly best expressed then Governor Jeb Bush’s point of view when she said, “We need to have some serious voluntary cooperation [from agri-businesses and grazing interests].This is a problem and it demands action.”
Hope all perceptive Readers see the huge difficulty with what is at best a half-assed idea. Voluntary action indeed. By the very powerbrokers who benefit directly from polluting the waterways. Yep, that’s gonna happen. So, you ask, why doesn’t the State propose legislation with teeth that will ensure that the pollution stops? The simplest and most correct answer is that we’re talking about a legislature filled with present and former developers and big business proponents, not with people who give a rat’s ass about the environment.
Worse yet, although levels of the Lake’s chief pollutant, phosphorous, have fallen since the hurricanes, they are still nearly twice what they were before the storms and five or more times higher than levels biologists think are appropriate for the Lake and downstream ecosystems to thrive.
Since this blog is not an ecological science text, all I’d like to do is briefly summarize my point with a pertinent quote from the Corps, the guys who not only brought us to this dance but also wrote and played the music.
The
Everglades have also been reduced in area by half due to agricultural and urban expansion. The remaining
Everglades ecosystem is in a continuing state of decline largely as a result of altered water regimes and degraded water quality, as evidenced by vegetative change, declining wildlife populations and organic soil loss.
