Friday, October 7, 2011

Steve Jobs too busy to be charitable.


NEWS FLASH

TechnoBabble News
October 6, 2011
Silicone Valley, CA
by Merri Tricious
  
          When questioned by a reporter about the absence of a public record of him making charitable donations, Jobs remarked that he was much too busy creating wonderful things that improved lives to help the poor, sick, and lame. After all, inventing and selling the iPod and helping destroy what little hearing is left in the ear drums of music lovers with those cute little ear buds that make you look so cool naturally took precedence over shelling out a few hundred million to stop the spread of AIDS or fight cancer or whatever. Well, yeah.
           Not to mention the hours, days, weeks, months, etc., etc., he labored in personally inventing the software that became the iPhone that simply drained him of all energy until he was just too exhausted to lift his hand and scribble his name on a check to help disabled children or Shiners’ Hospitals or find a cure for breast cancer. Sure.
           But, wow, did he invent some really neat shit that made our lives so much better. Let’s offer that as his epitaph. And BTW, tell those crippled kids to get their cheap parents to buy them iPods so we can all be slavishly worshipful of Steve Jobs.

          Does any one out there think? If they do, what they think is: Fuck Socrates and the reflected life.

Steve Jobs lives FOREVER ! !  Materialism RULES ! ! !  YEAH ! ! ! !

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Why Not the Corps of Engineers? — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          In numerous recent documents related to the CERP, the Corps of Engineers states that many of the problems now facing the Everglades are the result of “unanticipated effects of the existing C&SF Project” [emphasis supplied by the incredulous author]. Another favorite Corps phrase describing what happened in south Florida is, unintended adverse impacts. Believe that unadulterated nonsense and there’s a large, well-developed island in the Hudson River I’d love to sell you cheap.
          Shame on us if we ever accept uncritically the meretricious drek that spews out of the mouth of the Corps. In the C&SF Project, Congress directed to Corps to dry out the Everglades, an activity which by definition changed the water quantity. So people could use the land for agriculture. Which naturally also changed the water quality. As a direct result of the Corps’s work, farmers could sink mega-millions in the land without fear of losing their investments through flooding. Big surprise that the Corps’s extensive drainage activities were successful and its mandated objectives were achieved.
          By the Corps’s own estimate, about one-half of the Everglades has been lost to agribusiness and urban development and the once nearly 103-mile long, meandering Kissimmee River was converted into a 56-mile long concrete canal separated into five artificial sections. Countless other rivers, sloughs, and streams have been canalized or otherwise severely altered. And the Corps maintains with a straight face that those problems were unanticipated? Or maybe the appropriate word is unintended. Either way, the Corps’s explanation is a bunch of unadulterated, self-serving crap.
          If you, Gentle Readers, are unable to figure out that the Corps of Engineers has been dissembling to the public about their culpability in the destruction of the Everglades, delete all evidence of this blog from your computer. Seriously. Because nothing I can say or do will help you out of that mindset.
          Okay, for those skeptics out there who think I should cut the Corps a little slack, I’d like to refer you to the critical enabling legislation that made the destruction of the Everglades possible, The Flood Control Act of 1948. House Document No. 643, which was the basis of the Act, contains a highly significant statement.

The parched prairies and burning mucklands of the Everglades in 1945, the flooding of thousands of acres of farms and communities in 1947, and the intrusion of saltwater into land aquifers of the east coast are basically the results of altering the balance of natural forces. [Emphasis added by the author]

          Exactly who was responsible and how was that balance altered? By drainage systems designed by civil engineers and water managers working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So much for inadvertent consequences. In 1948 even the Washington politicians knew what had happened to south Florida. It didn’t take a PhD in biology or ecology to understand who caused the environmental imbalances and why. But, naturally that insight is beyond the analytical ability of the Corps. Which is one reason I’m so critical of that integrity-challenged agency. Actually, who out there trusts people or institutions that lie as a matter of normal practice? Which defines precisely the Corps of Engineers throughout its extensive organizational career.
          Everyone with a functioning brain has recognized the mistakes made when the Corps canalized the Kissimmee River and promptly destroyed its associated wetlands and Lake Okeechobee as natural systems. Today, that’s a no-brainer. But the real question is whether the Corps actually learned any lessons from its past egregious errors and destructive environmental practices. Well, to find the answer all you have to do is to look in two key places. First, check out what the Corps identifies as recommended actions in its Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Which, you may remember was approved by Congress in the omnibus Water Resources Development Act of 2000.
          Here’s one critical example from the CERP. I realize the following fact has been mentioned several times before but it bears repetition and explanation in this specific context. Each day approximately 1.7 billion gallons of excess water are drained from the Everglades to the coast. That’s right. Each and every day of the year. That’s the figure provided to the public by the Corps itself. Since it can be difficult for us non-engineers to get a handle on such a gigundus number, here’s a measure to help everyone understand exactly how much water we’re talking about. If that annual water loss (620.5 billion gal/year) were pumped through a 4-inch pipe, the pipeline would start from Lake Okeechobee and wrap around the Earth’s Equator 7,200 times, extending some 180,000,000 miles. No joke. Do the math if you don’t believe me. Or get a civil engineer/hydrologist to do it for you, which is what I did. Another way to look at it is if a pipeline that long were to blast out of southern Florida for outer space and rocket all the way around the Sun, it would just about make it back to Earth. The truly sobering fact is those 620.5 billion gal/year water losses occurs each and every year. So, when you see that 1.7 billion gallons per day number, you should think about the Corps’s water management technology and our tax-payer dollars that make it possible.
          The second place we should look is at what the Corps has been doing in the western part of the Everglades and in the Big Cypress Swamp. Well, the truth is the Corps has not covered itself in glory there either. In late November 2002, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Council of Civic Associations issued a report titled, Road to Ruin, that in part stated: “The Corps’s regulatory division is allowing the dismantling of watersheds while its planning division is using public funds for restoration programs in the same ecosystem” [Author’s Note: Emphasis is contained in the original document]. The NWF charged the Corps with ignoring its own rules and with violating Federal law with respect to environmental impact statements and issuing permits that seriously jeopardize the western Everglades through over-development. That behavior is the very same that nearly destroyed the Kissimmee River and the eastern Everglades.
          The only explanations for those Corps actions are institutional stupidity or caving in to sustained high-level political pressure. With the greatest confidence I would bet my house, cars, three children, six grandchildren, and all my retirement funds on the latter.
          According to the NWF, the Corps of Engineers and SFWMD, the two agencies officially charged with protecting wetlands by overseeing wetland filling and mitigation, are actively permitting the destruction of wetlands in the western Everglades-Big Cypress. Between 1998 and 2002, the Corps permitted more than 3,800 acres of wetlands to be drained in parts of the western Everglades for development. By the Corps’s own records, it failed to deny a single permit application in the one million acre study area of the western Everglades. In its Report, the NWF contended that the two agencies are officially allowing the destruction of wetlands in the western Everglades-Big Cypress the same way they allowed the destruction of the eastern Everglades. Turns out déjà vu is alive and well at the Corps and SFWMD.
          Let’s put things on an objective basis with respect to problems the Corps has had in south Florida. 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. Take a moment and think of how the Corps has intentionally compartmentalized flood control, water management, and ecological values. By compartmentalize I mean they treat those three 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.
          Here’s another wonderful example of compartmentalism hard at work at the Corps and the SFWMD: “Dr. David Rudnick, a senior scientist with the South Florida Water Management District, which helps coordinate the Everglades restoration effort, said researchers are still studying nitrogen’s effects. Because the project [CERP] concentrates on the Everglades, officials pay less attention to the marine environment, and therefore less attention to nitrogen.” Sure, that’ll work. At least until all the coral and bottom grasses in Biscayne Bay National Park and Florida Bay have died off. That’s when the dazed and befuddled engineers at the Corps and SFWMD would finally tumble to the fact that something’s dreadfully wrong. Why don’t we take a page from the Corps’s book and wait until all the south and central Florida ecosystems are dying and it’s too late to act. The big advantage of that tactic is that after it’s too late all those pesky environmentalists won’t have anything to bitch and piss and moan about. Now that is really something to think about.
          That specific problem, when coupled with the Corps’s demonstrated difficulty in learning from experience or from new information, makes the barriers to restoration that much more difficult to overcome. You should really read that NWF report, Road to Ruin. It will make you angry and sad at the same time.
          Let’s stand this situation on its head and hear the straight skinny from the mouths of the guys who are charged with making the CERP happen: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The primary and overarching purpose of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan [CERP] is to restore the south Florida ecosystem, which includes the Everglades. This purpose has guided all aspects of the Plan’s development and proposed implementation. It is a framework and guide to restore, protect, and preserve the water resources of the greater Everglades ecosystem. The Plan has been described as the world’s largest ecosystem restoration effort, and includes restoring natural flows of water, water quality, and more natural hydro-periods within the remaining natural areas. The Plan is intended to result in a sustainable south Florida by restoring the ecosystem, ensuring clean and reliable water supplies and providing flood protection.

          Okay, brave words those. But how many people familiar with the hellaciously complex challenges posed by “fixing” the disaster the Corps built over the past many decades truly believe that those lofty goals of sustainability are achievable? My honest guess? Zero. Flat out, dead-ass zero. Fact is, none of the real movers and shakers in Florida and Washington give a wood rat’s ass one way or the other as long as the water and the money keep flowing. In their direction. Guaranteeing their stay in Fat City.
          Perhaps skeptics need a few specific cases that illustrate the Corps’s standard operating procedures in terms of the environment. Procedures that have made people like me harsh critics. Here’s an example from the heart of the Mid-West that made national headline news for two years running.
          In 1993, Donald Sweeney, PhD, a highly-respected Senior Regional Economist at the Corps of Engineers St. Louis District, was assigned as the lead economist on a major benefit-cost analysis to determine the economic feasibility of expanding seven locks on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Sweeney was appointed technical manager of an economics work group for the Upper Mississippi River, Illinois Waterway Navigation Feasibility Study that covered parts of five states along the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois, and included up to a potential $4 billion in waterway improvements. At that time, that specific project was the second largest in Corps history.
          During that period, Sweeney pioneered the development of an innovative and sophisticated computer-oriented economic model named “ESSENCE.” The purpose of the model was to enable accurate assessments of the project’s relative benefits and costs. Later, after Sweeney’s work had been vilified, the National Research Council evaluated Sweeney’s model and said that it was “a major advance over previous economic models used by the Corps.”
          After a five-year evaluation effort, Sweeney and his work group concluded that pursuing the locks project was not in the nation’s best economic interests. The data his group collected and analyzed showed that projected economic benefits would not justify the locks project for at least another three decades. If then. When he reported that and other negative conclusions to his superiors, the Corps economic team Sweeney headed was disbanded and Sweeney was removed from his managerial role. The new economic team that was assembled included Sweeney in a strictly secondary and greatly reduced role as a lowly economic advisor.
          Over a year later, when it became clear that senior Army Corps of Engineers officials and high ranking officers were intent upon manipulating the results of the benefit-cost study until the locks project appeared to be justified economically, Sweeney went public. He revealed details and documents to various newspapers that first reported his story in mid-February 2000. He also filed an affidavit and supporting documents with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Sweeney found the whistle and started blowing hard enough to get the national attention he knew was necessary to focus the appropriate spotlights on the project.
          The Washington Post then published a number of internal Corps e-mails that showed Corps military and civilian officials had launched a campaign “to develop evidence or data to support a defensible set of projects, announcing that if the economic data did not “capture the need for navigation improvements, then we have to find some other way to do it.” The Corps’s desperation to fabricate supportive economic data for their pet projects can easily be explained. U.S. law stipulates that “Congress will fund water resources projects only if a project’s benefits exceed its costs” [Emphasis by the author]. If you believe that the benefits of many water resources projects actually exceed the costs, you also believe all whores have hearts of gold and are pursuing Master’s degrees in Social Work or Psychology during the day. But, hey, it’s the law and the Corps knew it.
          In March 2000, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel determined there was sufficient evidence that the Corps had “engaged in violations of law, rule or regulation and a gross waste of taxpayers’ funds” and requested that Secretary of Defense William Cohen conduct a thorough investigation into the alleged wrongdoings. In May 2000, a report by an independent panel of economists, commissioned by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, found that the Corps’s economics for the project in question were highly flawed. Also in May 2000, Richard Manguno, Sweeney’s successor as head of the project’s economic team, swore in an affidavit to Congressional investigators that senior Corps officials had pressured him to manipulate the project’s benefit-cost analysis. It was business as usual for the Corps, despite the intense national public pressure to be honest. The Corps’s motto seems to be: Why tell the truth when a plausible lie better serves our purpose? Why indeed? A question for the ages.
          In October 2000, desperate to salvage their badly tarnished reputation, the Corps of Engineers commissioned an independent study by two North Dakota State University economists. Unfortunately for the Corps, the professors concluded that the District’s second set of economists had used flawed methodology in their benefit-cost analysis. The handwriting was on the wall for all to see. In November 2000, the U.S. Army Inspector General substantiated Sweeney’s allegations that Corps officials manipulated data to justify the project’s multi-billion dollar price tag.
          In early February 2001, a study by the National Academy of Sciences also concluded that Donald Sweeney was correct about the initial conclusions he reached in his benefit-cost analysis and, among other things, recommended that future Corps studies be subject to independent technical review. Which, in the academic world that prizes independence of thought, was a vicious body blow and a face-slapping rejection of the Corps’s wide-eyed claims of innocence. Talk about being caught in the spotlight with their fingers in the cookie jar. Those guys were proved to be red-faced liars at every turn. And it wasn’t just low-level grunts we’re talking about. Several Corps generals and other high ranking Army staff were implicated in the scandal as the chief instigators of the wrong-doing. Not much anyone could do to “explain away” nasty problems like the ones Sweeney exposed. We’re talking about systemic institutional failure. Failure to realize that truth and integrity take precedence over political motivation. Don’t forget, we’re talking about the United States Army here. Warriors who willingly volunteer to give their very lives to protect the American way of life. Or to protect the right of Congress to award pork to their biggest campaign contributors. Same thing, right? Or so the Corps generals seemed to think.
          Here’s another glaring example of blatant Corps chicanery from the East Coast. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal flows across northern Maryland and Delaware, connecting the Delaware River estuary with the Chesapeake Bay and the Port of Baltimore. The C&D Canal is owned by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District. Therefore the Corps engineers and hydrologists can’t possibly claim to be unaware of the Canal’s physical characteristics. At its existing dredged depth of thirty-five feet and fourteen miles in length, the C&D Canal is an absolutely unremarkable water management project. Except for the fact that, according to official Philadelphia District Corps documents, the Canal flows in opposite directions simultaneously. That’s right, a canal that flows uphill and downhill at the same time naturally. Courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
          When Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company was established in 1802 the proposed route was surveyed by the Corps of Engineers. In 1829, the original canal opened, connecting Chesapeake City to Delaware City, just north of the present entrance at Reedy Point, Delaware. The canal was operated by a private corporation until 1919 when it was bought by the Corps of Engineers. From 1921 to 1927, the Corps widened it, removed all the locks and converted it to a sea-level canal. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was set in its current configuration approximately 33 years ago when the Corps dredged it to a depth of 35 feet. Today, the C&D Canal is part of the Inter-coastal Waterway, the world’s third busiest canal, and the oldest major commercial waterway in the U.S. still in use.
          In a study for the Port of Baltimore on a $90 million proposal to deepen the C&D Canal, the Corps supported that project and concluded that the Canal’s net flow was west to east, which therefore would minimize the proposed project’s ecological damage to the sensitive Chesapeake Bay. But in another study for the Port of Philadelphia for a $311 million plan to deepen the Delaware River, the same Corps District concluded the very same C&D Canal flowed east to west, thus minimizing ecological damage to the Delaware River estuary. The Corps staff responsible for both assessments were professional hydrologists and water resource engineers. Obviously, a lack of technical expertise was not the problem. Those good old boys were simply caught lying through their teeth. Can you say the two magic words? Political pressure. And we all know how the Corps reacts to that, with its peanut butter legs and non-existent ethical backbone.
          That $90 million project to deepen the C&D Canal from 35 feet to 40 feet was authorized contingent on favorable Corps studies to improve a shortcut for ocean-going vessels to the Port of Baltimore. However, the Corps’s own studies demonstrated that that project would neither increase shipping nor create more jobs. Then, an independent review panel determined that deepening could not be justified economically since justification of the previous canal deepening had been projected based on major increases in ship traffic. But ship traffic had actually declined to less than 15 percent of the projected levels. Hey, hard economic facts make no difference to the Corps. They’re simply another problem to be whisked under the rug.
          The sad problem is that there are plenty more examples like those above that clearly illustrate where the Corps’s heart is. In concluding this little demonstration, for further enlightenment we turn to the Corps itself and listen as their mouthpiece speaks. “We know there will be rocks and shoals along the way,” John Fumero, the Jacksonville District’s General Counsel said of the CERP. “People are going to have to trust us to do the right thing.” Is anyone out there rolling over, helpless with laughter? Or maybe simply flat out hysterical? Trust the Corps? Is he out of his mind?
          After decades of presenting bald-faced prevarications to the American public about the damage they were doing to one environment after another, after decades of bending over for the moneyed interests that fund congressional campaigns, what possible reason is there to trust the Corps of Engineers about anything? After decades of misplaced confidence and misplaced hope, only canonized saints or venal congressmen trust the Corps. And without independent scientific verification only fools, wide-eyed innocents, the totally inexperienced, or greed-monger powerbrokers believe one word the Corps says about the environment. By the way, you should remember that guy’s name. John Fumero. Sounds like that good old boy has a very bright future with the Florida’s fat cats. Very bright indeed.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

What Does The CERP Do? 03 — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          If you want a clue as to the seriousness of the restoration component of the CERP, all you have to know is that it barely makes a token gesture at controlling the exotic plant species that have invaded close to two million acres of the Everglades. The worst exotics are melaleuca trees from Australia that can suck water from dry cardboard and grow in impenetrable thickets that either drive out or kill all competitors and that sustain no native wildlife. Or Australian pines that destroy beaches. And old world climbing ferns and Brazilian pepper that spread like viruses. But the CERP is silent on dealing with those environmentally destructive alien species. Because the CERP is an engineer’s version of environmental restoration. Don’t you love the hypocrisy of it all? A tip of the hat to Congress and our elected representatives as they grow fat while watching the Everglades being eaten by south Florida moneyed interests.
          Still another of the CERP’s highly publicized top priorities is the areal expansion of the Everglades. But in the civil engineers’ desire to play God their own earth-moving requirements will destroy 34,000 acres of existing wetlands. That’s 53 square miles for those Readers who may be interested. And, following mandatory U.S. NEPA regulations, exactly from where are the square miles of replacement wetlands going to come? The Corps doesn’t have an answer for that question. And exactly how and when will that replacement happen? Despite federal legal requirements, the Corps doesn’t know that either. Where in the ever so detailed CERP prepared by the crypto-green Corps of Engineers are all those critical details that are required by federal law? They’re not there. So don’t waste your time looking.
          Believing in the Corps as an environmental restorer is like an adult believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. To pile insult on injury, Karl Havens, SFWMD’s chief Lake Okeechobee scientist, has acknowledged publicly that the CERP offers only “limited help” in solving the admittedly horrendous difficulties of Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades’ badly diseased heart. And what analogy can be applied to help Readers understand that reality? Hey, it’s like replacing coronary arteries long after the heart has suffered systemic failure and is in collapse. And that is neither a joke nor an exaggeration.
          To even begin to comprehend those mind-boggling difficulties, the first thing you have to realize is that the CERP was crafted by a coalition of south Florida’s leading sugar and citrus growers, large-scale ranchers, land developers, lime rock miners, water managers, and politicians who had enticed several national environmental organizations into bed with them by promising major environmental improvements would be in place by 2010. Yes, 2010.
          The CERP was a deal sold on the strength that everyone would get something and no one would be hurt too seriously. Right. And if you’re an environmentalist you should now drop your pants, bend over, and brace yourself for the worst.
          The second critical problem is that CERP would be administered and managed by none other than the very people who decades previously, and without thought of consequence, had wreaked environmental havoc on the Everglades by building hundreds of miles of canals, levees, and dikes and monster pumping stations. And that would be the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their buddies, SFWMD, which for years had the unmitigated gall to claim on their official logo: Protecting the Everglades since 1949. What a travesty. Double-speak at its finest: bad is good, poor is rich, the SFWMD is an environmentalist. Let’s hear it for George Orwell. The very same guys who had tried their damnedest to destroy the complex ecosystem we know as the Everglades are now charged with restoring it. Anyone out there not able to understand what’s so terribly wrong with that scenario?
          In truth, the CERP as designed is nothing more than the typical Corps flood control and water supply project dressed up like the painted whore it is. But lurking in the background of the Everglades Restoration project is an uncomfortable reality. The simple fact no one can deny is the historical Everglades can never be restored, no matter what the most ardent environmentalists would like or how many Federal or State dollars are available. Never. The needs of six million existing south Florida residents and 37 plus million annual tourists cannot be ignored. No wave of the magic wand will make them disappear. Although it may be possible to partially revive a certain part of the Everglades that remains, at this point with the CERP running the show, it’s entirely appropriate to imagine a distinctly minimalist result. But many scientists believe even that would require a lot more diligent and intelligent efforts than are currently available through the CERP or from the chuckleheaded civil engineers and water resource managers at the Corps.
          Today, more than half of the historical Everglades has either been paved over for urban settlement or drained for agricultural uses. And the companies that grow sugar are arguably the most politically sophisticated lobbyists in the U.S., donating generously to the re-election campaigns of hundreds of Congressmen and Senators scattered throughout the country. So, they’re not about to fold their tents and head elsewhere. Not that political donations are illegal. Which they obviously are not, donations to political campaigns being a form of speech, right? But look at what those contributions and their resulting political influence have wrought. The past, continuing, and future destruction of one of the most beautiful and fragile ecosystems in the world. It’s a trade-off the fat politicians of the State of Florida are very comfortable with because it funds their re-election campaigns and keeps them in office. Now there’s an instructive example of the American political system hard at work, a lesson in real-life civics. Grease is as American as apple pie.
          If, as is mentioned above, one half of the Everglades has been drained or developed, what has happened to the other half? Everglades National Park is that half and it has become the prototypical Cinderella-like stepchild: abused, unwanted, and basically unloved. Beaten and battered first one way then the other. Flooded when there’s too much water in the EAA. Turned into a dry, mud-caked basin when the precious fluid is needed for other more important uses, meaning for agriculture or to serve urban needs. Today the Everglades National Park is the real stepchild of south Florida. Anyone out there remember Cinderella and the glass slipper? Problem is, there are no Brothers Grimm to write a fairy-tale ending for the Glades. Only Walt Disney-types are waiting in the wings with an artificial ending.
          Despite Federal legislation supposedly protecting Everglades National Park, especially in terms of ensuring that it had sufficient water for its many and varied ecosystems to survive, the Park has never received what was promised or what was legislated. Not once, not ever. Despite the laws that insisted otherwise. The Park has always sucked hind tit and all too few cared that the life-saving milk, or fresh water as the case may be, dried up decades ago.
            There’s no question in anyone’s mind that the far greater part of CERP is devoted to new water controls that are designed to tweak the existing water management system rather than to restore the Everglades to anything remotely approaching a natural state. In the past four decades, the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, the northern Everglades, and the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers were devastated by that very type of brute force engineering mentality. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that most environmentalists are skeptical about a multi-billion dollar engineering exercise that adds even more artificial components to those already in place and steadfastly refuses to restore natural features. According to nationally and internationally respected bio-scientists, restoration of the natural system with as little “water management” technology as possible is the best solution. Just don’t spend any time waiting for that to happen.
          Acknowledging perhaps the undeniably reality that the Everglades is a river of grass, one of CERP’s most commonly stated and often repeated goals, one trumpeted proudly and loudly by Corps water managers, was to “get the water right.” But surprisingly, overland sheetflow, the central mechanical erosional process responsible for the existence of a great part of the historical Everglades landscape, was never on the initial Corps agenda to investigate as part of the CERP or on their list of continued restoration research activities. That is, not until they were pressured to address it by outcries from individual researchers and then from the most respected association of scientists and engineers in the country.
          Hydrologic research that was part of the CERP program was focused largely on restoring the natural location, duration, and timing of water levels and was not concerned with overland flow characteristics, which certainly was a very curious omission since sheetflow is one of the most effective geomorphic agents in shaping the landscape. Things didn’t change until Chris McVoy, a PhD soil scientist from Cornell, started working in Florida in 1996 for the Environmental Defense Fund and who later became an employee of SFWMD.[1] His research interest was specifically focused on one aspect of the natural environment of the Everglades: geomorphic agents that shaped the historical landscape. He did something no other scientist had thought of doing: assembling a huge database of more than 700 historical maps, aerial photographs, surveys, explorers’ field notes, and other accounts dating from as early as 1830. That detailed analysis led him to the conclusion that overland flow, also known as sheetflow, was a critical erosional agent that had gouged the Everglades landscape into a noticeable washboard pattern of parallel and alternating low and high ground called sloughs and ridges that provided habitat for a variety of wading birds, fish, reptiles, snails, saw grass, and water plants.
          McVoy’s efforts gradually began to be recognized among scientists working on the Everglades restoration project as the innovative and ground-breaking effort it was. Finally in August 2002, the Science Coordination Team (SCT), the CERP working group that was charged with the restoration research, bowed to the ever increasing national scientific pressure and decided to prioritize and draw attention to the overlooked physical and ecological dimensions of sheetflow. The SCT first released a draft white paper exploring the influence of water flow on the Everglades landscape and then issued a final report that came to the same conclusions. In the summer of 2003 the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences also released a report evaluating the SCT findings.[2] Their report found that water flow in the Everglades appeared to play a major role in ecosystem structure. Suddenly things had changed and the Corps was forced to look at sheetflow as a major factor in shaping the Everglades landscape.
          Today, the larger scientific community has weighed in on the side of McVoy and against the Corps civil engineers and water managers: “. . . there are compelling reasons to believe that direction, velocity, and rate of flow (i.e., discharge) have important effects on the parallel ridges, sloughs, and tree islands in the central Everglades. Ignoring flow introduces an important source of uncertainty in the implementation of the Restoration Plan.”[3] The conclusion is fairly clear even to laypeople who don’t know the first thing about hydrogeology or geomorphology: if the Everglades is going to be restored in a meaningful way, the water must flow again as it did prior to the Corps’s meddling. But the problem is that, as it stands, the $13 billion CERP doesn’t create nearly enough flow. And that’s because the CERP was created by Corps civil engineers and water managers instead of environmental scientists, which is one reason why sheetflow was never on their radar screen. That failure alone casts enormous doubt on the scientific validity of the CERP.

Implications
          So why all the fuss about something as esoteric as sheetflow? Because the CERP and all the related construction activities have already been approved by Congress and schedules, timelines, and budgets for construction and pilot projects have been set. The Tamiami Trail, constructed by Barron Gift Collier Senior in 1928, largely cut off sheetflow to the Everglades. If sheetflow is a major consideration in “getting the water right,” as the Corps has never tired of trumpeting, then restoring the natural sheetflow must become a CERP priority. If so, parts of the Tamiami Trail have to go as it now exists since the highway cuts off sheetflow to the Everglades National Park. Either that or substantial portions would have to be elevated, especially the eleven-mile section that forms the northern boundary of the Park. In 2004-2005, the Corps began looking at options for the future of the Trail, but their alternatives have been sharply constrained by an increasingly parsimonious budget, largely effects of the attack on Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and one huge tax cut after another. According to the Corps analysis, building an 11-mile elevated section of the Trail would cost $150 million. Although a mile-long bridge on the Trail will be built under the Modified Water Deliveries project, that’s the only elevated section that will be funded unless additional monies are appropriated by Congress. An additional 5.5 miles of bridging and other construction elements have been proposed as the Everglades Skyway. Four bridges ranging from a third of a mile to 2.6 miles will replace sections of the Tamiami Trail, beginning about one mile west of Krome Ave. in Miami-Dade County. The projected cost is $324 million. But as of summer 2011 Congress had not approved the funding bill.
          So the concept of elevating the highway to improve overland flow into the National Park remains in unfunded limbo and is not now part of the CERP process. The need for an elevated section is something the Corps civil engineers never considered in the CERP, which is a critical error and a perfect illustration of the Corps’s many glaring deficiencies in terms of its understanding of natural landscapes.
          Author’s Note: After years of stiff-arming the National Academies of Science and Engineering and working desperately to keep that organization at the edge of the action rather than on the inside, on June 14, 2004, the Federal government and the State of Florida finally folded their opposition and announced a formal agreement to allow an independent scientific panel to review the then $8 billion plus, 30-year CERP.[4] Previously, a panel from the National Academies of Science (NAS), the Committee on the Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem (CROGEE), was only allowed to review topics that were pre-approved by the same Corps of Engineers that promoted the CERP and designed the earlier and environmentally disastrous C&SF Project.
          Under the new agreement, the National Academies of Science review of the CERP, an assessment of ecological indicators, and the overall restoration progress will be reported biennially to Congress. The agreement to set up the review process was signed by the Corps (whose representatives must have been biting their tongues and muttering angry curses as they signed the document), the U.S. Interior Department, and the South Florida Water Management District.
           Naturally, in their joint press release everyone was making nice but you can only imagine the bloody infighting that had been waged for nearly a decade as the Corps did every single thing in their power to keep NAS at arm’s length or any greater distance that was possible. The very last thing they wanted was for biologists and other natural scientists looking over their shoulders and raising embarrassing questions about their water management mindset and their manifest failure to address key environmental concerns in the CERP.
          Let’s conclude by taking another look at the Lake Belt situation detailed above. Perhaps I can boil it down to its essence by identifying the intertwined elements so everyone can understand clearly what page I’m on and why my temper is up.
  • Property rights fiercely held by one of the most politically powerful businesses in all of Florida: the mining industry.
  • An imperiled, fragile, world-class ecosystem already grievously damaged by human occupance.
  • State and local politicians and local governments without the will to regulate an industry that contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns.
  • Federal politicians and an administration without the courage or the desire to stand up to political pressure and protect either its citizens or a unique environment.
  • An indifferent, apathetic populace without the will to force the drastic political change that is necessary to save a fragile and unique environment.
          Sad, to say, those combined elements constitute a powerful formula for the continued destruction of the Everglades and inter-related ecosystems, like the Big Cypress, Lake Okeechobee, Biscayne Bay, and Florida Bay. With no end in sight.
          So, after all the cards have been dealt, what really is the CERP? Nothing more than an assurance of future paydays for south Florida developers, agribusiness, and the mining industry. The CERP is a very sophisticated shell game whose creators are confident is so complicated and so convoluted that the collective public, with its notoriously short attention span and limited concern for things environmental, won’t get interested in the first place. Or secondly won’t understand details that can be frustratingly complex. Their hopes are that even if the public stumbles onto the facts, the complexities will put them to sleep or leave them dazed and confused. So the sound bite artists and the flim-flam men have had their day. Smoke and mirrors have been the rule whenever the Everglades has been on the table for serious discussion. Remember, for the Slick Willies of this world perception is reality. Therefore, according to the political fat cats calling the plays in Washington and Tallahassee, if the CERP is perceived by the public as a restoration plan then it is a restoration plan. Viola.
          I may be too cynical but that’s bullshit, pure and simple.



[1] Interested parties should consult the internet for the work of Chris McVoy on pre-drainage overland flow patterns. His basic argument is that sheetflow was sufficiently strong to sculpt patterns in the historic Everglades landscape. Which means that overland flow was a lot stronger than thought previously by Corps civil engineers and that the CERP wetland science must be way off base. Getting the water depth and timing right may only be part of the restoration equation. Which may prove to be a huge scientific and engineering problem for the CERP and its proponents because of the Corps’s abysmal failure to “get the water right” when the CERP was created. For more information see: Science Coordination Team, “The Role of Flow in the Everglades Ridge and Slough Landscape,” January, 14, 2003; available online at: http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/papers/sct_flows/
[2] National Research Council, Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, Does Water Flow Influence Everglades Landscape Patterns? The National Academies Press, 2003.
[3] Ibid.
[4] News release PA-04-12, 6-14-04. Online source: http://www.evergladesplan.org/docs/pr_nas_061504.pdf