Creation of the Immokalee Landscape — EATING THE EVERGLADES

Travelers who take State Route 29 from the Tamiami Trail north toward Corkscrew Swamp  first drive through Copeland. That tiny settlement used to be an old lumber town but today is the headquarters of the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. If those intrepid travelers continue north they might miss, if they blink too often, a string of micro-villages: Jerome, Deep Lake, Rock Island, and Miles City. Wide, oily patches on the road, each and every one without a great deal to recommend them. Other than those small settlements, cleared, open farms, ranch land, and pine plantations border the east side of the well-maintained two-lane highway for most of the journey. Most people are surprised to learn that all the land from the Tamiami Trail north to Immokalee was formerly cypress wetlands before forest clearing, drainage, grazing, agriculture, and fires destroyed the natural landscape.

Immokalee is high on my list of Florida places to talk about for a powerful reason. Like Marco Island, it represents the real-world nightmare that grew out of the vision of Hamilton Disston, Henry Flagler, Barron Gift Collier Senior, Ed Ball, and numerous other Florida developers. When people challenge me, demanding to know what’s wrong with establishing farms and ranches in the Everglades-Big Cypress Basin, I ask them if they’ve ever visited Immokalee. Typically, the answer is negative. So I tell them to visit and take a good look at the surrounding countryside along Route 29. When they drive into Immokalee, all they’ll see are planted pinelands and cleared land in ranches and farms. They won’t see many indications of a landscape that’s remotely natural. Most people who live, work, or travel through the surrounding area have little idea that it was and remains part of the Big Cypress Swamp.

The landscape around Immokalee was transformed from what was to what you see today through a series of steps that were sometimes discrete and separated in time and other times were intentionally sequential. Small-scale commercial harvesting of timber in what then was Lee County began in the latter part of the 19th Century and continued through the 1960s, growing in intensity and areal extent every year until it became a huge business. For decades, more than 150 railcars loaded with baldcypress logs were hauled out each month. Since each railcar held between 60,000 and 80,000 pounds, think about how many baldcypress trees had to be logged to fill an average of nearly 2,000 railcars each year. And then think about what that destruction had to do to what had been a natural landscape almost totally untouched by previous human use.

By about 1900, because of the extensive timber harvest and land clearing, cattle grazing had become the primary agricultural activity in that part of southwest Florida and continued as such for many decades. Pastures were created on freshly drained land from which the marketable baldcypress had been removed by ever increasing and ever profitable logging operations.

The completion of the Tamiami Trail-U.S. Route 41 and various drainage canals dug by order of Barron Gift Collier Senior in 1928 brought high-value commercial vegetable production, especially tomatoes, to the newly-named Collier County. Those agricultural operations were followed in the 1960s by citrus crops and pine plantations and, at various key locations, by human settlement. It was that gradual transformation of natural habitat to logged-over land to drained pastures to field crops to citrus trees and pine plantations and finally to urban/suburban real estate that in Barron Gift Senior’s eyes looked like a harvest of gold that kept on giving. And that’s the Immokalee Landscape.

Author’s Note: The same transformation of sensitive natural landscapes to highly altered states has occurred in throughout Florida. On November 21, 2004, an article written by Gregg Fields and Nathalie Gouillou in the Miami Herald detailed the rise of Homestead from the ashes of Hurricane Andrew. One specific sentence that caught my eye was: “Thousands of rooftops are sprouting from former agricultural fields.” And what were those fields in their previous life? The Everglades. Homestead was growing so fast in the 1990s and early 2000s that planners expected the City’s population, currently 33,000, to double in the next seven years. And all those new rooftops would be sprouting from where? From agricultural fields that were part of the Everglades and were drained and developed from 1915 through the 1920s by Henry M. Flagler’s Model Land Company. If you Readers have environmental consciences and deeply held concerns for our collective future you won’t forget that the lesson of the Immokalee Landscape applies throughout the Sunshine State and not just to southwest Florida.

But there’s more. Even though Barron Gift Collier Senior is long dead and buried, his legacy lives on in the form of various corporations and business enterprises that are actively involved in southwest Florida land development. It shouldn’t surprise perceptive Readers that several of the Collier business ventures own a considerable amount of land around Immokalee. Or that those firms are working hard to bring economic development to the area and therefore funnel more and larger profits into their pockets. Eating the Everglades has become a well-established Collier tradition. The genuinely big surprise is that Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, former owner of the Detroit Tigers, and a very wealthy fellow indeed, is also involved in that process. As is Ave Maria University, the very first new Catholic university to be built in the United States for 40 years.

Monaghan, the University, and Barron Collier Companies have formed an unlikely but powerful joint venture to develop a large chunk of land (as large as 5,000 acres and maybe many times larger) five short miles south of Immokalee. Monaghan has given the University an enormous pile of money ($240 million to establish the University and another $300 million for an endowment program for the future) to get the project off the ground. Barron Collier Companies, recognizing an angel when it sees one (albeit a financial one in this case), immediately jumped on the bandwagon and donated 750 acres to the school. Naturally, it and allied Collier-family companies own most of the land around the University and expect to make a real killing by developing those properties for single-family homes and strip centers amidst golf courses on as many as 5,000 additional acres. Hey, no sense turning your nose up at a sweet deal, right? Even if the damned Papists are involved. (Author’s Note: Relax, Sister Mary Josepha. Born and reared Catholic, I attended and graduated Catholic schools from elementary through graduate school so don’t think I’m being more than just a tad sarcastic here.) And remember, we’re talking about rural southwest Florida, in the midst of Cracker heaven, where hard-shell Baptists are at the top of the religious pecking order and Catholics have been, well, tolerated at the very best, especially since most of the lowly Hispanic migrant farm workers are of that faith.

But, all kinds of things change when a 10,000 pound gorilla named Monaghan armed with hundreds of millions of dollars comes to the dance. Which is when tolerance suddenly becomes the magic word. You bet, podna. Say. How do they do that sign of the cross thing?

More critical changes are on the plate for the Immokalee area. In mid-June 2004 Governor Jeb Bush approved two special taxing districts that would directly affect the creation of Ave Maria University and its nearby town. Bush’s signature meant that Barron Collier Companies now has the power to build and maintain community services for Ave Maria University and the town that one day is expected to have an estimated 20,000 residents. That taxing district consists of about 10,000 acres. And Collier Enterprises can begin protecting land west of the Ave Maria District in an area that now will be known as the Big Cypress Stewardship District, which has slightly less than 22,000 acres. (Author’s Note: The Big Cypress Stewardship District? Did anyone miss the blatant hypocrisy of the name? Stewardship, indeed.) The two Districts are allowed to construct and maintain roadways, traffic signals, street lighting, bridges, sewage treatment systems, and even water-landscape plantings. They also are able to finance projects from revenue bonds and levy property taxes on residents within the Districts to pay for future growth and to provide public safety services. However, the Districts cannot exercise police power or planning and zoning, which remain in the hands of the County. That may give some people a sense of confidence but only if they close their eyes and pretend they’re not in southwestern Florida or in a county known as Collier. Named of course after none other than Barron Gift Collier Senior.

With Monaghan’s mega-millions and the various Collier companies land development expertise and political power behind it, the University expected that its first phase of 950 acres would be completed by 2006. Eventually the University and the adjacent town it is planning to build may have as many as 20,000 residents and occupy as many as 4,300 acres. Once completed, the town will also have 1,800-acres of parks and lakes as well as hotels and office and retail space. Not to mention hundreds of single-family homes ranging from $200,000 to $500,000 plus. Hey, it could easily happen. Right in the heart of the former agricultural fields that in a previous life had been Big Cypress wetlands.

Speaking of former wetlands, the University and the town are located at the edge of Camp Keais Strand, a critical flow-way connecting the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve in the south with the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed project to the north. But the real beauty of the Immokalee Landscape and the genius of Barron Gift Senior is that its transformation from natural area to cultural landscape is so complete that if conservation groups try to raise the issue of environmental degradation, spokespersons for the joint venture can hold up their hands in righteous indignation and wide-eyed innocence and claim not to know anything about sensitive ecosystems. Hey, look around, Joe-Bob. All you see are cattle ranches, tomato farms, and pine plantations. Not wetlands. Man, what the hell’s wrong with them stupid-ass tree-huggers? What wetlands they looking at?

What indeed, is what the Corps of Engineers asked and, having found no adequate answer by its civil engineering and water management standards, issued all necessary permits in April 2005 to enable the project to move forward.

Implications

The Immokalee Landscape is what will happen to all of south Florida if environmentalists are tossed into the trash pile as irresponsible naysayers. What you see around Immokalee is the sterile humanscape that is waiting in the wings to replace what remains of the complex land-water nexus that is the Big Cypress and the western Everglades. Creating the Immokalee Landscape we have today required the complete transformation of a natural environment into a cultural artifact. What’s highly ironic is that all the ditching, drainage, and diking activities in the area to get rid of excess water have so lowered the groundwater table that farmers around Immokalee now are forced to irrigate their crops to obtain the requisite yields. So much for the ability of chuckleheaded civil engineers, water managers, and land developers to understand, much less control, that complex environment.

By the way, who do you suppose owns much of the agricultural and grazing lands around Immokalee? Go ahead, you’re allowed to take a wild-ass guess. The Immokalee Ranch Partnership, owned at least in part by the Barron Collier Company and Collier Enterprises, is a cow/calf operation on more than 70,000 acres located primarily in Collier County. And not too far away is Silver Strand Farms, with 5,000 acres producing tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and sod, and Silver Strand Groves, with 15,000 acres that annually produce five million boxes of oranges. Barron Gift Collier Senior and his peculiar brand of environmental stewardship live on and on and on. A Gift that keeps on giving. You have to remember that that man had a great deal of respect for the land he and his companies managed. Right. Respect. And also remember how that word is spelled: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. Shades of Henry Flagler and Ed Ball.

For the moment, despite all the development that is waiting anxiously in the wings, Immokalee is still a rough frontier-type town populated largely by farm workers, ethnic and racial minorities, and rural poor. Home of the Immokalee Regional Raceway (a drag strip), it is best known today for cowboy bars where Tony Lama facials and body massages are common events on testosterone-heavy Saturday nights. If your fantasy life includes wanting to see a typical Florida farming-ranching town without frills or fancy extras, you can do it in Immokalee if you hurry. You can also have lunch, gas up the car, fill the coolers with ice, stretch your legs, and maybe attend church on Sunday if you are so inclined. But for all its rough, working-class charm, Immokalee is not on my list of places to live, work, or even visit for more than an hour or so. My suggestion is to take a long, hard look at the area that forms the Immokalee Landscape as you drive through. It’s Hamilton Disston’s, Ed Ball’s, and Barron Gift Collier Senior’s dreams of Florida come true. I hope it isn’t yours. Want my advice? Take a quick look, gas up and haul your sorry ass out of town.

Let’s end this chapter with a couple assumptions. First, assume that Barron Gift Senior hadn’t suffered the financial reversals of the real estate boom and bust 1920s and the hammer blows of the Great Depression. Second, assume he had proceeded with all his plans to tame the hostile wilderness infested by gators and snakes, which, of course, he respected a great deal. If those assumptions were fact instead of fiction, what today would most of Collier County and the Big Cypress Swamp look like? The answer is right in front of our eyes. The Immokalee Landscape and the Naples metropolitan area would stretch all the way across south Florida to merge with heavily urbanized Miami-Dade County. The natural systems we call the Big Cypress and the Everglades would be but faint memories enshrined perhaps in the names of office parks or another university in the State system, thanks to the fat-cat politicians whose election campaign chests have been filled for decades by their powerbroker buddies. And how appropriate would that be?

Kissimmee River Restoration — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          Channelization of the Kissimmee River was discussed briefly in the 8-9-11 post. That project, which was designed and constructed between 1962 and 1971 by the Corps of Engineers' water managers and civil engineers, was and remains part of the comprehensive C&SF Flood Control Project. The resulting environmental devastation of the River, its associated wetlands, and Lake Okeechobee caused by the channelization was almost immediately obvious to all objective observers, though not to the Corps. It's appropriate to take a closer look at what has happened in what is euphemistically called the "restoration" of the Kissimmee River and its adjacent floodplain.

          The Corps of Engineers' civil engineering and water management approach to the Kissimmee River had the following effects. The River was converted from a naturally meandering 105-mile long channel to a straight, 56-mile long, man-made canal. Lowland and upland land uses and drainage practices adjacent to the River were drastically altered. Discharge characteristics of water flowing into Lake Okeechobee were greatly modified. And other hydrologic conditions were severely changed, resulting in numerous other adverse environmental alterations to the Kissimmee River’s complex ecosystem.

          Those negative effects included critical loss of biological resources and degraded hydrologic regimes. About 30,000 of the original 35,000 acres of the River's wetlands were drained, covered with spoil material dredged during construction of the channel, or were directly converted to channel use. Ecological consequences of those water management activities included diminished floodplain diversity, reduction in waterfowl, raptor, and wading bird use of the floodplain, diminution of riverine and wetland habitat for forage, and loss of larger riverine fish species. And for what reason? So the land owned by cattle ranchers would not be subject to seasonal flooding and could be converted from "unproductive" wetlands to profitable grazing lots. Hey, the ranchers wanted to get fatter and Congress, naturally, listened to their demands for relief while eagerly awaiting ever larger injections of political campaign contributions.

          In summary, the subsequent modification or destruction of river and floodplain interactions negatively affected the functional integrity of the River, its floodplain, Lake Okeechobee, and the Everglades. Other negative effects resulted from interruption of low flow that was associated with a meandering river system included degraded water quality, increased sedimentation, diminished habitat quality and diversity, and disintegrated river biological communities. In short, it was a terrible mess no matter how you looked at it; well, not if you were a blind-to-reality Corps or South Florida Water Management District engineer.

          Okay, the Kissimmee River and Lake Okeechobee had been dealt what could have been death blows by the indifferent and environmentally clueless Congress and their Corps of Engineer minions. What happened to change that situation?

          First, the very magnitude of the river channelization project and its highly visible and highly negative aesthetic and environmental effects immediately sparked widespread public outrage. Environmentally concerned people got royally pissed off and began demanding that their politicians change things back to the way they were. Although that movement was a grassroots effort it was intense. Second, various State and national environmental organizations quickly recognized the power of that emotional response, added their voices to the outcry, and gradually shifted the focus of the nascent restoration movement to objective, resource-based issues established by leading bio-scientists.

          Immediately after the channel’s completion in 1971, activists such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr.,[1] a crusading U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who with Archie Carr ranks as Florida's best known and most revered professional ecologist, and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, one of the original founders and First Lady of the Florida environmental movement, began working to reverse the damage. The first meeting of the Everglades Coalition, which is now the official network of south Florida environmentalism, was held along the banks of the Kissimmee River. Guided by Marshall and Douglas, the River's restoration became the Coalition's top priority and organizing principle for many years.

          The initial impetus of the environmental organizations included focusing on the negative downstream effects of the River's channelization on Lake Okeechobee. Early proponents of restoration maintained that river channelization was causing accelerated eutrophication of Lake Okeechobee by transporting sewage effluent (which was being discharged into the River's headwater lakes), chemicals, and manure from intensive agricultural and grazing land uses in the floodplain and adjacent areas. Those factors resulted in elevated nutrient loads that were flushed directly downstream into the Lake and from there into the Everglades National Park.

          The third critical factor in the restoration effort was that Florida legislator Robert "Bob" Graham became an extremely strong and well-placed supporter of restoring the Kissimmee River to its former pristine condition.[2] In 1976 he was one of several legislators pushing the State and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) into studying ways in which the River could be restored. But, in 1985, when the Corps of Engineers, which incidentally at that time had never worked on a river or environmental restoration project, reviewed the State's document, it concluded that although the SFWMD plan was generally beneficial in terms of environmental concerns it would not contribute to the country's economic development. Which made it a no-go with respect to the Corps undoing its own horrific mistakes. Remember, the Kissimmee channelization had been part of the congressionally mandated C&SF Project. So restoration, if it were possible, would fall under congressional purview and would probably be performed under the Corps's direction and therefore, by existing law, had to be characterized by a positive benefit-cost ratio.

          After Graham's stint as a state legislator he was elected Florida's governor. In 1983 he issued an executive order calling for the restoration of the Kissimmee River-Lake Okeechobee-Everglades ecosystems. Because of increased public outcry over deterioration of Lake Okeechobee’s water quality and potential negative effects of backpumping additional nutrient-laden water from the EAA into the Lake, in 1985 Governor Graham formed the Lake Okeechobee Technical Advisory Committee (LOTAC). By the time he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 he had the political clout and savvy to sponsor federal legislation that, when passed and signed into law, authorized the Corps to engage in environmental projects. Which was a tremendous change in their modus operandi.

          Through the omnibus Water Resources Development Act of 1992, Congress approved what was in essence the SFWMD plan to backfill 22 miles of what was known as the C-38 canal and to demolish two of its six control structures in order to restore 43 miles of the old meandering river channel and 27,000 acres of wetlands. It was an attempt to partially re-form and re-create a mosaic of wetland plant communities and intricate food webs that would support a diverse group of waterfowl, wading birds, fish, and other wildlife in the complex river/floodplain ecosystem. The restoration project was to be a joint partnership between the SFWMD and the Corps of Engineers. The one critical congressional constraint on restoration of the Kissimmee River was that the project could not increase flood risks to anyone in the Basin. That was a huge financial bone thrown to their agri-business powerbroker supporters to make sure most of their grazing lands (which were and still are Kissimmee River wetlands stayed high and dry and productive. So the agri-businesses could continue getting fat.

          There's no doubt that the nearly $580 million Kissimmee River project (with costs shared equally by Florida and the U.S. Government) is the most ambitious river restoration effort ever attempted in the United States and perhaps in the world. It's been so successful that Corps engineers were telling everyone who will listen that they are using the Kissimmee restoration as a model for the Everglades restoration. Easy to say but very hard to do, especially if you are a Corps civil engineer and don't know and don’t care about biological systems. As perfect examples of that chuckleheaded thinking, Corps engineers wanted to "protect" and stabilize parts of Kissimmee's restored river banks with large stones, or rip-rap. The incredulous Lou Toth, the river restoration Project Manager and a PhD biologist with the SFWMD, successfully fought to keep the banks in a natural state. Natural or human-designed rock armored banks? That's a tough choice, especially if you're talking about environmental restoration. The Corps also wanted to dump excess fill dredged from the river channel onto nearby wetlands because that was the cheapest alternative. The biologist Toth insisted that the whole point of the restoration project was to preserve the River's wetlands, not to destroy more of them during the process. Duh. Chuckleheaded thinking, unadulterated stupidity, or callous indifference? You make the call.

          For those interested Readers, a number of significant differences can be found between the Kissimmee River and the Everglades Restoration Projects of which you should be aware:

• The Kissimmee River restoration was managed by a PhD biologist (Lou Toth) and emphasized ecological value.
• Everglades restoration was managed by a civil/water resources engineer (Stuart Appelbaum) and is a multipurpose water project that emphasizes water management over ecological values.
• The principal Kissimmee River restoration goal was to restore ecosystem integrity.
• The principal Everglades restoration goals are to control flooding and maintain water supply to the urbanized coast and agricultural users

          In a telling interview in 2002 with Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald, Lou Toth, whose official title was SFWMD's Kissimmee River Restoration Project Manager, agreed that the Corps of Engineers' CERP leaders had missed the point of the Kissimmee restoration. One particularly egregious example was that the dirt-moving and fill element from the Everglades project will likely destroy more wetlands than the entire Kissimmee Project will restore. "They're doing the opposite of what we did," Toth said.[3]

          Furthermore, for those of you Gentle Readers who do not enjoy having smoke blown up your asses, here's something disturbing to think about. Scientists at SFWMD claim in various publications that the Kissimmee River . . . "restoration project will restore the ecological integrity of the river-floodplain system by reconstructing the natural river channel and reestablishing hydrologic processes."[4] Another quote taken directly from the SFWMD’s official Kissimmee River Restoration website stated: "The project is reestablishing the physical form of the river with its historical water levels and flows, while ensuring existing flood protection is maintained."[5]

          But, both quotes have one small problem. Neither happens to be true. What is consistent with the facts though is the tradition of Florida water managers intentionally misrepresenting known facts to the public. The simple truth is that the Kissimmee River Restoration project will not do what is so boldly trumpeted by the SFWMD above. The "ecological integrity of the River" will not be restored nor will the project "reestablish the physical form of the River with its historical water levels and flows." Period. Facts the SFWMD knows full well.

          And how do I know that? Louis Toth, the PhD in biology and Senior Environmental Scientist and Project Manager of the Kissimmee River Restoration Project, tells us in no uncertain terms that, because of the congressional mandate, "The restoration project itself has one major constraint, and that is a constraint to maintain existing levels of flood protection."[6] Project Manager Toth states, with that restriction the project will only re-flood areas that will benefit from the flooding but, "We cannot restore the entire length of the channelized Kissimmee River. In fact we're only restoring about half of the historic river’s length."

          Let me ask my few but dedicated Readers a simple question: how do those statements square with the official party line quoted above? How can historical water levels and water flows be restored while at the same time existing levels of flood protection are required by law to be maintained? Today's existing flood levels were created in the 1960s and 1970s by the Corps's channelization and water management techniques as applied to the Kissimmee River. It's not hard to see that those two values (pre-development water levels and existing flood levels) are directly and absolutely in opposition. You can do one or you can do the other. But not both simultaneously on the same river. They are 180° apart. All I can say is this situation is another wonderful example of governmental double-speak (a term that means LIES) and a perfect reason why people can not trust the existing organizations that manage water projects in south Florida to tell the not always pleasant truth.

Implications

          The Kissimmee River restoration is a qualified and partial success that offers careful observers a hard but simple lesson in reality. Any explanation of that success must recognize that four separate elements quickly became inseparably linked and worked together in an integrated effort.

• Public outrage over the destruction of a sensitive resource. 
• Environmental organizations and highly respected scientists combined to demonstrate the factual basis of the public claims of ecosystem destruction.
• A powerful political champion pushed the State and Federal governments to restore the River.
• That champion was supported at the State and Federal levels by sympathetic colleagues.

          Sometimes it is not sufficient for concerned citizens or environmental organizations to rise up and protest against the environmentally destructive practices of an agency as powerful and as politically well connected as the Corps of Engineers. The Kissimmee River restoration project shows us that in those situations an equally powerful and influential political champion(s) is needed to work inside Washington to achieve success. Senator Bob Graham was that champion. Without his tireless efforts at the State and national levels the even partial restoration of the River would almost certainly not have happened. So that has to become part of the environmental-action equation. The truth is that many Florida politicians of lesser national reputation than Graham were directly involved in the restoration efforts. Without their participation, Graham's efforts alone would have likely been unsuccessful. In cases where national agencies are involved, grassroots political action must be tied into close coordination and cooperation with numerous state legislators as well as Federal Senators and Representatives. And therein is the rub, as you will see in later posts (if you have the patience to persevere).

          However, it is important to be realistic about the long-term effects of large-scale human use and alteration of sensitive areas. Once humans have royally screwed up an ecosystem, it is for all practical purposes impossible to undo the damage for a multitude of reasons: political, financial, cultural (including a lack of will), and biogeophysical. A good rule of thumb is if an ecosystem has been altered through human occupancy and use, it will remain in an altered state even if valiant restoration efforts are made. In other words, don't believe anyone who tells you that environmental restoration projects will restore an altered ecosystem to its former state. That's true of the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, Lake Apopka, the Big Cypress Swamp, and the Everglades. Reality can be harsh but facing the truth, no matter how bitter that process may be, is the only way to go.

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[1] A fact testifying to Art Marshall's importance in Florida environmental issues is that his then cutting edge "total system view," which advocated treating the entire Everglades, from the upper Kissimmee Basin in the north to Florida Bay in the south, as a single ecosystem, has emerged in the last decade as the prevailing scientific approach for restoring the south Florida ecosystem. At least among biologists and ecologists if not among the civil engineers and water managers at the Corps of Engineers. For a brief Art Marshall biography online, see the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries Special Collections at: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/Marshall.htm

[2] For the sake of brevity, I have not provided detailed information about the many political inputs that affected the Kissimmee River restoration. Interested readers should consult: Louis A. Toth, "Development of the Kissimmee River Restoration Plan: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for Comprehensive Restoration Projects." Toth's presentation was based on the following paper that was published in Implementing Integrated Environmental Management, John Cairns (ed.), May 1994: Louis A. Toth and Nicholas G. Aumen "Integration of Multiple Issues in Environmental Restoration and Resource Enhancement Projects in South Central Florida." Online source: http://www.oas.org/usde/publications/Unit/oea74e/ch09.htm#Development%20of%20the%20Kissimmee%20River%20Restoration%20Plan:%20Lessons%20Learned%20and%20Recommendations%20for%20Comprehensive%20Restoration%20Projects.

[3] Source: Michael Grunwald, "An Environmental Reversal of Fortune — The Kissimmee’s Revival Could Provide Lessons for Restoring the Everglades," Washington Post, June 26, 2002.

[4] Source: Paul J. Whalen, Louis A. Toth, Joseph W. Koebel, and Patricia K. Strayer, P.E., “Kissimmee River Restoration: A Case Study:” http://www.riverfestival.com.au/2001/symposium_papers/STRAYERPatricia.asp

At the time of publication, all the authors worked at the South Florida Water Management District.

[5] Source: SFWMD's Kissimmee River Restoration project website: http://www.sfwmd.gov/org/erd/krr/ Sad to say, that web site is no longer and the replacement does no contain the above quote.

[6] Source: http://www.floridaenvironment.com/programs/fe00731.htm; Doubting Thomases should also read: Water Resources Development Act of 1992 — Public Law 102-580, signed October 31, 1992 (106 Stat. 4797).