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).

Inside Game/Outside Game — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          Some years ago, Joe Browder, a nationally known environmental consultant/lobbyist and former co-chairman of the Everglades Coalition, was typically blunt in his advice to environmental groups. “It’s time to choose sides. Are you for or are you against?” My interpretation is that Browder was asking whether environmental organizations want to play the inside game or the outside game.

          At the heart of the CERP inside game are the National Audubon Society and its Florida chapter. Without question they are among the most enthusiastic and outspoken environmental advocates for the CERP. From the very first they were a key part of the Everglades Coalition, the network of environmental groups that helped make Everglades restoration law. Throughout 1996 and 1998 Audubon of Florida and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce worked closely together to promote what they called the “long-term positive impacts of environmental sustainability in south Florida.”

          Here’s my outsider’s interpretation of their overall strategy. Richard Pettigrew, the highly political Miami attorney who had served as the Speaker of the Florida House and was the former Chairman of the Governor’s Commission for a Sustainable South Florida that proposed CERP’s initial structure, was then Chairman of the Board of Directors of Audubon of Florida (a strategic alliance of the National Audubon Society, Florida Audubon Society with 43 chapters and 40,000 members State-wide).

         Now, take a brief moment to reflect on that situation. The basic question that should immediately spring to mind is: what is such a political animal doing on the Audubon Board? A second question is: what signal does that send to other environmental groups and to the power elite? Easy. That they’re playing on the inside and are convinced that they can be more effective as members of the team controlling the ball. Meaning, they think as things progress they will be better able, from the inside, to persuade their new-found friends, the powerbrokers, the Corps and the South Florida Water Management District, to make changes that benefit the Everglades.

          Let’s eavesdrop as Eric Draper, Audubon of Florida’s Director of Policy, testifies before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2002.

The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) is an outstanding example of how a reformed Corps would repair damage from previous water resource projects, while functioning in a manner that is responsive, accountable, and fiscally responsible.

Audubon strongly urges the Committee to include in WRDA three critical Everglades restoration projects that are scheduled for authorization by Congress this year and contain more than half of the total land area of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). These projects will deliver enormous benefits to the Everglades natural system. Like other parts of the Everglades ecosystem, these projects are largely an attempt to repair previous damage by federal and state projects.

           There’s the key Audubon strategy: friendly persuasion. As a strong indication of its insider position, Audubon lobbyists focused on helping CERP proponents gain momentum and obtain increased funding, not on revising the Plan to include additional environmental benefits. Not surprisingly, given Pettigrew’s influence in the political arena, Audubon of Florida carefully dissociated itself from anything resembling a confrontational approach. Remember, you can’t be part of an effective inside game if you’re not a good team player.

          If you had the occasion to visit its website in 2004 you would have seen Audubon of Florida bragging that it played a key advisory role in providing technical criteria and documentation to Federal agencies that led to the purchase of 50,000 acres from the Talisman Sugar Company in the EAA, land that will be used for habitat restoration. They proudly proclaimed for all to see that they were working in “close conjunction” with the Corps of Engineers in revising the CERP. And was that a triumphant crow I heard to the effect that 80 percent of Audubon’s recommendations were incorporated into the CERP draft that was submitted for Congressional approval? On the other hand if you visit that web site two years earlier you would have seen the whining and complaining about the Washington Post series on Everglades restoration written by Michael Grunwald. Were it not so sad it would be funny.

          CERP’s environmental critics have harshly accused Audubon of Florida of working as a shill for a plan that was Everglades-unfriendly from the get-go. In counter argument, Audubon officials claim to have been fully aware of CERP’s well-known shortcomings. They steadfastly maintain that Audubon of Florida can achieve more by working on the inside than by waging an all-out war to change the CERP from the outside. Can you smell the rotting hand of an experienced political insider at work?

          But Audubon was increasingly isolated in its position. A great many scientists and environmental activists believed it was time to face harsh reality. That the CERP was not what had been promised in 1999. And, even worse, that the environmental groups had been snookered big time by a very sophisticated coalition of south Florida business and political interests. The new message of these opponents was clear. The CERP is not genuine environmental restoration and their organizations would withhold political support until it changed its stripes. Right.

          Barbara Lange, co-chair of the Sierra Club’s Everglades efforts, was not shy about identifying the CERP’s short-comings. “It’s a bogus water-supply project! It’s about time we all admitted it.” Lange, also stated publicly that elements of the Plan “will do incalculable damage to this precious American natural resource.” Which was exactly how you played the outside game.

          That difficult choice, play inside or stay outside, signaled a serious and growing rift within the Everglades Coalition. Some environmental organizations, like Audubon of Florida, are determined to work within the system. They believed it was still possible to persuade the Corps and the South Florida Water Management District to revise the CERP to include more environmental benefits. Others hunkered down and girded for a long and hard battle, maintaining that the only hope for genuine ecological benefits would be to legally require specific restoration progress tied to deadlines. Or failing that, to threaten widespread public opposition followed by litigation. Can’t get more outside than that.

          For many angry environmental groups still on the outside looking in with a mixture of dread and abhorrence, the real sticking point is that the CERP legislation certainly would not have passed Congress without their cooperation and blessing. Talk about guilt, internal recriminations, and a seemingly endless iterations of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. That’s the real reason for most of their hard feelings toward Audubon of Florida. The troubling truth for many environmentalists is that although there are some water quality components in CERP, they are few and far between and fail to accomplish much of significance. Which means that if people on the inside aren’t successful in demanding and getting the appropriate water quality improvements, restoring natural flows will simply poison the Everglades that much quicker and more efficiently. It’s a problem that bestows extraordinary significance on choosing to play inside or to flail away at the well-armored monster from the outside.

          Several environmental groups, including Friends of the Everglades and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, started on the outside by opposing CERP even before its passage into law in 2000. Now a number of well-known and not so well-known environmental groups have thrown in with the Plan’s opponents:

Sierra Club                                                             Environmental Defense

Natural Resources Defense Council                          National Wildlife Federation

Florida Wildlife Federation                                        League of Conservation Voters

Republicans for Environmental Protection                  Save the Manatee Club

          In January 2004 the Sierra Club dropped a bomb by formally withdrawing its support for the $10 billion plan to restore the Everglades. Its reason, according to Frank Jackalone, a Florida representative for the Club, was that, “The Federal and the state Bush administrations have both abandoned the plan. So why should we participate?” In a public statement Club leaders maintained that the administrations of Governor Jeb Bush and President George W. Bush have twisted the CERP until it is merely a plan to supply water to cities and farms. Wow, there’s a terrible shock. So, from the late-1990s through mid-2011 it’s been bloody, internecine warfare among the environmental organizations with no cessation of finger pointing, name calling, and blood-letting. With no end in sight.

          The ultimate outside game strategy actually got its start many years ago, long before the CERP arrived on the south Florida scene. One of the key early outside players was the Miccosukee Indian Tribe, which for decades has been a powerful advocate of preserving the Everglades. In 1988, the Tribe, aligned with the Federal Department of Justice and the then acting U.S. Attorney in south Florida, Dexter Lehtinen, brought suit in Federal Court against the State for failing to meet its legal obligation to protect the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge from phosphorus pollution released into surface waters by sugar growers and cattle ranchers.

          The original suit and the resulting settlement and consent decree reached in 1992 were overseen from 1988 to 2003 by Federal Judge William Hoeveler. However, in 2003 Hoeveler was removed from the case by Chief Judge William Zloch for having made comments to reporters that took issue with the actions of Governor Jeb Bush, the Legislature, and the SFWMD in promoting and passing a bill sponsored by the sugar industry that delayed the deadline for the State (and the SFWMD) to reduce phosphorus levels in the Everglades.

          In a June 2005 ruling that seemed to take the State by surprise, the Federal judge who replaced Hoeveler, Federico Moreno, declared that Florida (through the auspices of the SFWMD and the State Department of Environmental Protection) had violated the terms of the 1992 consent decree. Judge Moreno directed a Special Master to monitor future progress under a 1992 state-federal settlement agreement guiding Florida’s efforts to limit phosphorus pollution pouring into the Everglades by means of contaminated water released by the SFWMD through the Loxahatchee Natural Wildlife Refuge. Recently, in September 2011, U.S. District Judge Frederico Moreno ruled that water draining south into the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge continues to exceed pollution limits designed to protect the Everglades. Specifically, Judge Moreno ruled that water from the State-operated stormwater treatment areas exceeded the official limits that the State set for phosphorus, which is agricultural run-off, between 2005 and 2009.

          That victory was a direct result a long-term and sustained legal campaign waged by the Miccosukee Tribe and it attorney, Dexter Lehtinen (the former Federal Attorney for south Florida), and Earthjustice, a coalition of environmental organizations that include the Sierra Club, National Parks and Conservation Association, National and Florida Wildlife Federations, Defenders of Wildlife, Wilderness Society, and the Audubon Society of the Everglades. Without doubt coalitions like those formed by the Miccosukees and Earthjustice are a critical element in the ongoing struggle to save the Everglades and other sensitive Florida environments. Absent those coalitions and similar cooperative ventures by environmental groups, State agencies would have free reign to drag their heels, procrastinate, and spin one phantasmagorical excuse after another to justify their inactions while the wetlands continue to be consumed by the powerbrokers so beloved to State politicians.

          At the end of March 2006, Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler, the federal judge hearing the Lake Belt suit, ruled that the Corps of Engineers failed to protect the environment when it approved permits allowing limestone mining companies to destroy more than 5,000 acres of wetlands in the Everglades to extract limestone for construction. As reported in the St. Petersburg Times, in a devastating 186-page decision issued on March 22, Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler ruled that the Corps rushed its decision into what seemed to be a predetermined approval, ignored available scientific evidence, failed to include citizen participation, and did not consider less-harmful alternatives. Judge Hoeveler determined that from the beginning of the decision-making process Corps officials acted as if the mining permits would be approved. In his ruling, the judge wrote that that “sense of inevitability,” resulted in the Corps changing the rules to give mining companies preference over the public interest. We’ll just have to wait to see if the Corps appeals that judgment or modifies its approach to the Lake Belt Plan. Either way, it is another example of the success of the outside game in altering the worst aspects of the original CERP.

          Adding to the outside game plan, on August 17, 2004, the Friends of the Everglades filed suit in Federal court against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act. They alleged that the EPA failed to properly review recent Everglades Forever Act Amendments, failed to properly oversee the State of Florida’s pollution abatement permitting efforts, and failed to close loopholes in the State’s pollution regime that allow continued destruction of the Everglades. According to John Childe, attorney for Friends of the Everglades, “Too much disinformation is being peddled by federally subsidized agribusiness and too many backroom deals are being made by too many self-serving politicians and governmental officials for there to be any real hope for the Everglades. Federal Court oversight may be the only solution — the only way to make State officials and politicians keep their promises.”

          As an aside, Friends of the Everglades is also involved in two other Federal court Clean Water Act lawsuits against the SFWMD and one in State Court challenging the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s lax phosphorus pollution standards. And in March 2005, Judge David M. Maloney of the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings ruled against the State Department of Environmental Protection in a suit filed in 2003 by the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida, and Save Our Creeks challenging the proposed “pollution load limits” for streams running into Lake Okeechobee. Judge Maloney’s ruling stated that evidence presented by the plaintiffs “calls into question at every turn the process that the department followed” in coming up with load limits. “Instead of the examination called for by scientific method, the department conducted a flawed process.” So the legal battles have only just begun.

          Prior to the Sierra Club et al lawsuit, in response to mounting complaints by citizen groups about the Lake Belt plan, in the spring of 2002, Colonel James G. May, Commander of the Corps’s Jacksonville District, tried to calm people’s fears. Not to worry, he said with a patronizing smile slithering across his face, the Corps would ensure that the Lake Belt plan restored more wetlands than it would destroy. According to Colonel Pollyanna May, if in the future it is determined that the mines had caused more environmental damage than expected, the Corps would review the permits. Okay, and do what? Slap the naughty miners on the wrist after they had done their damnedest to destroy the wetlands? Wow, those bad boys will be forced to pay a half-cent fine on every dollar of profit they earned for destroying the Everglades. Hey, any company caught polluting the environment or destroying habitat is more than happy to pay such meaningless and pathetic penalties since they are only miniscule fractions of the money they made in their mode as environmental vandals.

          Anyway, according to our bright-eyed optimist, Colonel Pollyanna May, who sees opportunity under every pile of manure, when the mining is completed the Corps plans to spend $1 billion to use the depleted quarries to store water for the Park, Biscayne Bay, and the area’s residents. “So, what are you bitching about? The Corps will fix things afterwards,” seems to sum up Pollyanna May’s thought process. However, in their August suit, the environmental groups asserted that the mine-first/study-later process made no sense. And, more importantly, it violated provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act. We shall see.

Implications

          Perhaps the most serious dilemma contained in the above materials arises directly from the relationship between south Florida’s Big Three powerbrokers and the environmental groups that have chosen to play the inside game. Many biologists and conservationists are convinced that a fatal poison lies deep in the bones and sinews of the CERP. The presence of that latent poison is rapidly becoming the focus of the fears of people who understand all too well the black hell that is Florida politics.

          The way the poison theory works is fairly simple. The old-line political insider’s plan from the start was to fund the CERP’s water supply improvements and flood control first, in 2010 and 2015 respectively, while promising the world to the relatively naive environmentalists, who traditionally have been outsiders, meaning specifically Audubon of Florida, but delaying delivery of the environmental improvements until at least 2020. Then, after five or however many years of valiant effort to construct the water supply and flood control improvements, the politicians would simply allow the environmental parts of the CERP that were slated to start ten or more years in the future to wither and die from a lack of Congressional support, giving the wide-eyed innocent excuse that over the years the funds had simply dried up and that the Administration would not raise taxes to generate additional funds.

          So, how does that theory square with what has happened on the ground? From 2003 onwards Congress failed to authorize money for CERP projects. As a direct result, all the projects are behind schedule. Although the State boldly took the bull by the horns by allocating $1.5 billion of the State’s own funds to jump-starting eight CERP projects, the Governor and the legislature also ignored water-pollution controls (designed to protect the Everglades from nutrients like phosphorus) to please the powerful sugar lords. The suspicion is that the State’s intention is to fund those aspects of the CERP that will benefit the powerbrokers and leave all the environmental pieces for the federal government. Which will then throw its hands up and walk away, leaving the Everglades to its own devices.

          To almost no one’s surprise, on March 17, 2006, the Orlando Sentinel and other Florida newspapers reported that key Congressional leaders warned the Bush Administration that apparent attempts by the State of Florida to end or reduce a court-ordered cleanup of phosphorus “could discourage Congress from providing full funding for next fiscal year.” Maybe that was one of the first shots fired across the bow to warn environmentalists not the mess around with the CERP formula. Or maybe it was just a bunch of Congressmen searching for a vulnerable, high-budget project to scale back.

          Of course, one of those scenarios would require deep seated collusion between powerbrokers and various elected representatives. Thank heaven that could never happen. Not in sunny Florida or in the U.S. Congress. Aren’t you relieved that’s only a theory proposed by wild-eyed environmentalists?

          However, if you’re inclined to associate smoke with fire and you have a soft spot for conspiracy theories, you might follow that thread a little farther. In a conspiracy scenario the initial trick would to make it look like the moneyed and politically sophisticated south Florida business interests were giving the environmentalists benefits that had tangible value. Benefits so powerful that the naïve and gullible environmentalists would cease their opposition and climb in bed, wet with desire and panting to be part of the action. And to pressure them to demonstrate that they were real team players by helping pass the legislation that authorized the CERP. Which, if I’m not wrong, is exactly what happened. But then, a decade later, the real political insiders would cut the throats of the gullible environmental Judas goats by delaying environmental projects (already accomplished), delaying State requirements to reduce phosphorus levels (already accomplished but in litigation), and in the final insult pulling the funding plug (a distinct possibility given the mood of Congress) long after the Big Three movers and shakers had gotten exactly what they wanted from the deal. Again, let’s get on our knees and thank God that’s only a fictional scenario. After all, who believes in conspiracy theories anyway?

          Trouble is the above nightmare is based on confidence-shaking reality. After all, it’s historical fact that Congress passed far less ambitious Everglades restoration projects in 1989 (known as Mod Waters, which was an effort to produce more natural water flows to Everglades National Park) and in 1994 (Florida Everglades Forever Act). But both projects have been rendered comatose by constant litigation and brutal infighting, largely brought about by the conflict between moneyed south Florida agricultural/business interests and well-intentioned but functionally powerless environmental groups. In the meanwhile, nary a single drop of water has been delivered to the Everglades by either piece of legislation. Wonder if that was an accident or a fiendishly clever plan.

          Okay, here’s another perhaps skewed view about mixing promises with poison. In late-March 2005, the hype about restoring what Bob Graham touted as America’s Everglades hit the harsh reality of Congressional infighting over, what else, money. To cynical but knowledgeable observers of the Florida environmental scene, it should come as no surprise that the wheels of progress are grinding exceedingly slowly when it comes to the CERP. In late March 2005, an anonymous public servant leaked an internal memo to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. In that memo, written by Gary Hardesty, the senior CERP manager for the Corps in Washington, D.C., the message was brutally blunt. Hardesty warned that after five years of effort the Corps was behind schedule, over budget, and at risk of losing congressional support. The Corps’s most serious problems included lagging science studies, missing almost every milestone required in the Programmatic Regulations, scheduling delays, a projected budget that had ballooned by almost $1 billion for the first group of projects alone, and a mounting suspicion in Congress that the original CERP vision of restoring the River of Grass “is dead.” All that in the context of an ever-tightening federal budget and a major shift in political priorities at the highest levels. Perhaps the single most critical comment in Hardesty’s memo is the following: “We do need to talk about all that we’ve done since 1999, yes, but keep in mind . . . it’s [CERP implementation] different from what we told Congress we would do . . . and it’s not restoration!!!” 

          Author’s Note: The three exclamation points are contained in Hardesty’s original text.] At last, a Corps official not afraid to address harsh reality. Hardesty goes so far as to exhort his colleagues to take what is for the Corps an extraordinary step: “We need to be truthful.” Now that’s really pushing the envelope.

          Naturally, the political spin-meisters in State government immediately leapt into the breach and tried to make out like Hardesty’s words were just ho-hum business as usual and nothing to worry about. “Quite frankly, there are several things in there that aren’t really accurate picture of where the overall restoration is,” said Ernie Barnett, director of ecosystem projects for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. And Corps mouthpiece Dave Hewitt, putting the best possible interpretation on what had to be a vicious kick in the gonads type leak of sensitive materials, said Hardesty’s memo wasn’t meant as a policy statement but only as an internal heads’ up to an interagency team preparing a five-year report to Congress. I’m sure we all believe that Alice in Wonderland viewpoint.

          The current, often brutal competition for federal funds, which includes the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, paying for Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and the ongoing uncertainty about the future of Social Security, is working directly against earlier promises of projects that would have direct environmental benefits for the Everglades. The result is Congress is casting a fish-eye on the restoration effort and is openly wondering if it’s worth the promised $13 billion, and counting.

          Naturally, much of the blame should be laid at Congress’s door, since its foot-dragging on funding major CERP projects has caused this very real problem. Congress also shoulders the responsibility for cutting funding for critical pilot CERP projects, including one that was meant to identify new technology to solve the aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) problem (remember that SWAG?). Technology that was supposed to be developed for pumping 1.7 billion gallons of water daily into the Floridan Aquifer. Yes, that still unknown technology, which was slated by the Corps’s water managers to play a key role of the restoration effort. But in mid-2005 the funding for even the ASR pilot project was suspended and the entire effort is under critical scrutiny that may lead to the financial trimming process. Which royally pissed off members of Congress who correctly interpreted the State’s action as undermining what they had regarded as a once-promising intergovernmental collaboration to favor its powerbroker paymasters.

          However, unlike Congress, which has failed to deliver its promised funds, the State has kept paying its share of the CERP. Although since 2000 Florida has ponied up more than $1.5 billion, about five times more than the funds committed by Federal agencies to date, many Congressional staffers and even Senators and Representatives have become skeptical about the State’s hidden agenda, which many political insiders interpret as pushing key water supply and flood control projects while leaving the Corps and the Federal government with the far more difficult chore of fixing the ecosystem later on, a not unrealistic scenario.

          The State of Florida, a professional when it comes to shooting itself in the foot, didn’t help matters when it rolled back the agreed upon phosphorus pollution standards and gave agribusiness powerbrokers another ten years to reach the ten parts per billion standard. In August 2004, Friends of the Everglades filed suit in federal court, alleging that the United States Environmental Protection Agency failed to properly review recent (2003) State of Florida Everglades Forever Act Amendments, failed to properly oversee the State’s pollution abatement permitting efforts, and failed to close loopholes in the State’s pollution regime that allow continued destruction of the Everglades. Another hardball fired by players of the outside game. Then, in March 2009 the Florida Wildlife Federation, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and Save Our Creeks, Inc., filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to compel the U.S. EPA to set more protective pollution standards for Lake Okeechobee and its tributaries.

          So, we’re full circle in what has happened to the Everglades for more than 60 years. Promises and more promises, followed by lawsuits and more lawsuits. That’s what the environmental groups playing the inside game fell for a decade ago when they bought the CERP story line and that’s still the case today. Seductive promises, come-hither panting and heavy groping but no delivery. And the poison I mentioned previously: the danger that the initially promised Federal funds for restoration will not be available.

          You have to remember that environmental groups are just like people. They make mistakes, sometimes big ones. They have been known to make very stupid decisions and to promote embarrassingly ridiculous claims in public forums. On far more occasions than they would like to admit, they have not always been on the side of the angels with regard to environmental issues. So, let’s get down to the heart of the matter. On which side are the angels? Anyone care to place a bet? Problem is we’re not talking about kitchen table nickel-dime poker sessions. What’s at stake is no less than the future of south and central Florida.

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End of an Academic Career

For seven years I have been a university professor (Author’s Note: This material was written in the summer of 1977). Nine years prior to that I was a student at varying levels in one institution of higher education or another. Sixteen years in academe, which is approximately half of my life to this date. What will it be like to work a regular job like the average person? There it is, one of my many problems. I’m an intellectual elitist. No doubt. Since my first year in college I have not thought of myself as ordinary, average, one of the masses. I needed to be better so I thought of myself as better. Sort of a bastardized variation on a theme by Descartes. Now I will be like all the other working stiffs because I am one, with an 8:00 to 5:00 job. Leaving the house around 7:00 and returning around 6:00 or later, as work demands. Every day. Performing meaningless, trivial, mind-numbing tasks important to no one but the client. For a paycheck, a house in the suburbs, and a precarious hold on the vaunted brass ring.

Why? Because my employer, Eastern Michigan University, is actively trying to lay me off. And eventually will succeed. Naturally, always the shit-disturber, I’m fighting the lay-off notice every step of the way. I’ll not leave quietly, dragging my tail between my legs, defeated by those officious, self-righteous bastards. After all, I’m a tenured Associate Professor, a member of the Graduate Faculty. For all the good those silly designations do when push comes to throat-cutting. Truth be told, I’m only fighting it half-heartedly. At it best EMU is a barely mediocre institution and lousy if you want me to be honest about it — that sounds like the worst sort of rationalization, doesn’t it? Yet, truth be told, it is on target.

I won’t be missing much by way of intellectual quality when I leave. But, it has been my home for seven years. On the plus side I have several friends in the Geography-Geology Department who I talk with every day about important ideas. The prospect of leaving already fills me with ambivalence and bitter-sweet sadness.

Despite many sometimes vociferous denials, to say that I treasure the life of a university professor is no exaggeration. Teaching, doing research, digging through fascinating works in the library, interacting with inquisitive students, engaging in stimulating intellectual exchanges with fellow faculty. It’s almost the Ideal State for me. Why, then, am I leaving?

First, although being forced out is the prime cause, no matter how distasteful and painful that process may be, it has little to do with my acceptance of the necessity of leaving EMU. Being sacked has simply overcome the blockbuster inertia that would have kept me at EMU, moldering away, losing my edge, until death did us part. So, in that small way, a tiny bit like Socrates openly accepting the cup of hemlock, I welcome the lay-off and look past it to a new life.

Second, in ways half-hidden from myself and everyone else, I desperately need to break away from the academic world. It is a narcotic, lulling me to sleep, insidiously pulling me into the land of nod, a place for intellectual whores, ass kissers, status quo preservers. A morass of bourgeois madness for testers of less than middle-range hypotheses (a tip of the sociological hat to R.K.M.).

Middle of the road American universities like EMU are not places that typically encourage and nurture intellectual foment. That’s much too dangerous to be encouraged or allowed. Professors are penalized overtly and covertly for being too radical (read intractable, which is a most appropriate word in this context, meaning not capable of being moved). Their research in the whole must support the true mission of the university, which is to bring in money and keep wealthy and influential contributors and alumni happy. Those rabble-rousers, like me, who revel in pointing out societal inequities and even the dark side of the actions of the university itself are warned once or twice and then are given short shrift (a wonderful Catholic phrase). Anyone who does not understand that those statements are factual is as incredibly naïve as I was seven years ago when first introduced to the inner workings of the system.

The basic function of places like EMU, and other third- or fourth-tier universities, is to train low- to mid-level replacement parts to keep businesses running at an acceptable pace of profitability. Actual education plays no part whatsoever in the process. Even the students implicitly recognize the charade: “Teach me what I need to get a job.” That’s it. The sum and substance of their educational goals.

That assembly plant system of “higher” education is concerned only with pushing the required number of bodies through at a rate commensurate with the amount of funds received. More funds equal more bodies. Full Time Equivalents. FTEs as they are so lovingly referred to by university administrations across the country. Accountability.

Let’s be a little more specific in defining the critical equation. More funds equal more programs equal more professors equal more graduates. And it works the other way as well. Fewer students equal fewer programs equal fewer professors. And that’s the bottom line. Which becomes the proverbial nut cruncher for malcontented professors who feel compelled to rock the boat with their inappropriate research enough to stimulate the wrath of the dreaded Administration. How else would that system function? I mean, that’s EMU. The assembly line college for children of assembly line workers. They deserve nothing better. Hey! We’re talking about EMU here, not the University of Michigan. What the fuck else could it be? Did I tell you the name of the EMU newspaper is The Echo? No shit.

Those well practiced in survival techniques are seldom troubled during times of bloody axe murders. Oh, I forgot. Reduction in force. Sorry. Have to keep that straight.

Professors are not dumb. We all know how to pick safe research topics, ones that generate minimal controversy. Pure research. Objectivity. Value free science. Except we’re talking social science here, not micro-biology or the physics of crystalline structures. Which of course may be as value-laden as social science but few of those guys would ever admit to such heresy. The sad fact is that some hard-headed rebellious fools never learned that critical lesson or refused to kowtow to the Great Pooh-Bahs sitting on high in Administration Heaven. They are always the expendable ones blown away in times of financial exigency, tenured or not.

Guys like me. Unwilling to do the obvious, too full of intellectual pride or piss and vinegar to do as so many of my colleagues, which is to write and publish safe bullshit while kissing the administration’s ass. So, because I’m a shit-disturber I’m vulnerable. Vulnerable despite a decent enough record of professional publications, enough to earn tenure, and vulnerable despite my having served as the Thesis Advisor of more graduate students than anyone in the Department. Vulnerable despite excellent student evaluations, which in truth I regard as worthless in any context.

When the crunch comes the ass-lickers line up at the Dean’s door and do homage to the Great Man. On the other hand, at a full Departmental faculty meeting in 1975 I was tactless enough — in that specific case the phrase, monumentally stupid, is far more appropriate — to tell Dr. James Magee, the Vice-President of Academic Affairs, that he had, while lecturing us on failing in our responsibility to run our Department correctly, meaning to generate more FTEs or else, consistently misused the terms, attitude and value, switching one for the other. And if we were uncertain as to what he was trying to tell us about our Department, how then could we possibly act intelligently on his ideas. Yeah, that was a very smart move on my part.

Well, that observation, correct though it may have been, went over as smoothly as an altar boy ripping a sulfurous fart in front of the Archbishop. My problem was that the FTEs were fundamentally out of our control and Magee was just using us as his whipping boy. I wasn’t going to sit there and pretend, like my erstwhile colleagues, that the Emperor had a set of new clothes when in fact he was starko. Needless to say, that comment marked me as a serious malcontent and was the beginning of the end. Which I had been in the Department long before that incident but that foolhardy act certainly moved my reputation down two or three notches. Actually, most of my colleagues later claimed to have noticed the Vice-President’s error but were too polite and mature to point it out in such a public venue. Bull shit, I told them. You fuckers were either sound asleep, didn’t know the difference in the first place, or too scared shitless to say one word in protest as he rode roughshod over us. And that comment caused no end of hard feelings. The bastards had no sense of humor nor did they value the truth. Politically expedient is what they were and what I wasn’t.

In the middle of fiscal year 1975, The Administration officially notified the Geography-Geology Department that enrollment had declined sharply in the past year throughout the University and specifically in our Department. In addition, Departmental FTE production was projected to continue to erode in the coming two years. Consequently, the University was declaring a state of financial exigency. As a result, our Department would lose two full-time faculty positions, effective in the Winter Semester 1977.

For those unfamiliar with university labor policies, at least one year’s notice was required for faculty lay-offs owing to the contract between the University and our erstwhile collective bargaining agent, the pathetically ineffectual American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The Department was given a grace year either to get our shit together and shore up FTE production or identify two sacrificial lambs to be offered up for slaughter. Marvelous choice. Naturally, many of my colleagues, responding to the urges of reality, were eager to finger two victims. But some of us, my friends and I included, refused to participate in that internecine struggle and said it made more sense to generate additional FTEs by devising programs that would attract more students. I personally refused to vote to lay off specific people. Perhaps a mistake, but there it is. And so we commenced a vicious internecine struggle that lasted over a year.

In mid-December of 1976 the Administration turned up the heat by selecting the two most junior faculty for lay-off, Allan Cichanski, a geologist, and Gene Jaworski, a geographer with whom I had had several serious disagreements over the material he was teaching in two courses. Cichanski had tenure but no PhD — or Master’s degree for that matter and was no longer a PhD candidate (ABD) with the university where he had studied: Ohio State University. Allan had officially been turned down by the Departmental Tenure Committee for tenure but the Dean, a close personal friend of Alan and his wife, had supposedly signed the wrong form, thus “accidentally” approving his tenure application — and Jaworski was without tenure but had the requisite graduate degrees. But he had the dubious distinction of being hired last. For him it seemed to be LIFO (Last In, First Out) all the way. Seemed turned out to be the operative word.

The friends and supporters of Cichanski and Jaworski started to play hard ball and generated considerable internal and external pressure to have the lay-off notices rescinded. It certainly didn’t hurt that Allan was a good friend of the Dean’s and, painful as it is to be honest, the arguments made in their support had more than a little truth. Both men were good teachers who were popular with students. Many of the Departmental faculty felt that our programs would be compromised if they were dismissed. It was after the Dean rescinded the lay-off notices that the Administration attempted to force the Department to turn on itself and identify the next victims.

An absolutely brutal battle ensued, complete with Machiavellian intrigue, shifting alliances, recriminations, viscous rumors, and blatant lies worthy of the most unethical corporate infighting. The battle lines were drawn politically, between the left and the right. We leftists, blindly and stupidly rejecting realpolitik, tried to ignore the falling axe and swore to do nothing to assist the Administration’s blood letting — a better example of the time-honored “head-in-the-sand” defense would be difficult to find. The conservatives, much more practically oriented as always, immediately leapt into the breech and unhesitatingly pointed their fingers at Marshall McLennan and me. If Cichanski and Jaworski were to be saved from the axe, as the most radical in our approach to education we were easily the most vulnerable members of the Department.

The next year and a half was so awful that describing it as nightmarish is to badly understate the brutal emotions that swirled around and almost consumed us. It was one raging battle after another. Faculty meetings became insult fests that frequently deteriorated into shouting matches between ordinarily even-tempered, well-intentioned women and men. After a particularly trying meeting, Larry Ogden, one of the most senior geology professors, a man in his early sixties, burst into my office and loudly accused me of intentionally lying about a key issue. I walked around by desk until I was inches from his face and told him he was a lucky man.

“No one calls me a liar to my face and gets away with it. The only reason I don’t punch you in the mouth is you’re too old and feeble to survive. Now, get the fuck out of my office before I throw you out.” In those precise words.

For months I would come home after those marathon meetings so upset that I was unable to eat dinner or to talk calmly about the events of the day. Rationality had taken an extended holiday from the deliberations of the departmental members.

My personal nadir came on May 17, 1976, which also happened to be my thirty-third birthday, in the form of an official registered letter from James H. Brickley, President of EMU. Its express purpose was “to formally notify you that you will be laid off at the conclusion of the Winter Semester of 1977.” Quite the birthday gift. Marshall McLennan had received the same letter minutes before.

Pow, pow, you’re both dead. It would take the bodies a full year to hit the ground but the inevitable always wins. Over the next year Marshall and I fought the good fight but when your corner man is the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), staying vertical is a real challenge. We were always trying to come from behind with AAUP support that was never up to snuff. We appealed the decision all the way up the ladder of Administrators as stipulated in the contract, with the expected lack of results. Next we filed a formal grievance that was routinely denied. Our last step was to submit the matter to binding arbitration, which took us three months to prepare for and five full days to testify before the arbitrator. And then we waited for the decision.

In the preceding year, despite the distracting brouhaha, I organized a six-week long field class to south Florida with Drew Nazzaro as co-director. The bald truth is that the course was my idea from the get-go and Drew was persuaded to become part of the venture only after I had done most of the necessary ground work. We proposed investigating a variety of environmental and planning issues. The class was scheduled for May 2 through June 16. The arbitrator’s decision came on June 11th, while we were on Marco Island. I remember taking the call from San in the early afternoon. She was very excited, having just received a letter from the arbitrator, who had ruled in our favor and against EMU. I felt vindicated, triumphant. And also tremendously relieved. But no way was I going to stay at a job where I wasn’t wanted. I had no future in the Geography-Geology Department or at EMU. No matter what the arbitrator’s decision.

So, before leaving on the field trip to Florida I had sent a number of letters to consulting firms in St. Louis, enquiring about jobs in urban planning. One interview was scheduled for June 20th and another several days after that. The simple truth was I wanted to leave the university setting. I was burnt out and exhausted from more than two years of brutal blood-letting. Besides, at that late date no academic positions were open and San desperately wanted to move close to her mother. Her father had died about four months before and she wanted to go home. Why not? If I could work four or five years for a consulting firm as an urban planner and gain valuable professional experience, it would be easier for me to get back into teaching at a decent university. Or so I assumed.

I was at the end of my rope at EMU and even with an 8:00 to 5:00 job and the uncertainty of what I would be asked to do, the potential pay increase would likely beat the shit out of what I had been making. It was a new opportunity and I was determined to make the most of it.

But underneath all that exterior confidence I was worried, frightened even. The only way of life I had known as an adult was coming to an abrupt end. After all, being a university professor was the only job I ever wanted. It was my dream job. I loved teaching and being a university professor. If I had found it difficult as a quasi-rebel to survive in an academic environment how would I adapt to the real world where leftists were chewed up and spit out daily? And I was genuinely insecure about being able to do well as a professional planner. Even though my graduate background should have been right on target to do the job competently, the question was would I be able to apply those skills in response to the demands of the cruel world? A big unknown there. And most of all I worried that I would be unable to find sufficient challenges that would excite and hold my intellectual interest over a relatively long period.

But, was there a choice? No. I wouldn’t work at EMU again no matter what the conditions and it was glaringly obvious that I was neither wanted nor appreciated.

As a footnote, at the end of June I accepted a position as a Senior Urban Planner and Assistant Planning Department Manager with Booker Associates in St. Louis, a 200-person, multi-disciplinary consulting firm. As an added attraction, the pay was nearly fifty percent higher than what I would have made that year had I stayed at EMU. Wow! That caught my attention big time.

But the most startling and baffling development of that summer was that even after being ruled against in binding arbitration and after my resignation from EMU, the University laid off Marshall McLennan. I couldn’t believe it. I told him to sue the bastards for violating the AAUP contract. But, he refused, certain that he would be reinstated to full-time employment the following semester. Which, to my genuine amazement he was.

Maybe all the Geography-Geology Department wanted to do was to get rid of me. Although that interpretation smacks of paranoia, it’s a distinct possibility. What I could never understand is why Marshall bent over and tolerated it as the Administration shoved the contract straight up his ass and twisted it. I’d rather drive a truck than work for those cocksuckers.

Hey, maybe that attitude was one of my critical problems. Having been raised in the crucible of my father’s wrath, I was constitutionally unable to bow and scrape and kiss anybody’s ass for a job. I was too much the angry rebel to knuckle under easily. It was that simple. And that complicated.