The Re-Birth of Lake Apopka — EATING FLORIDA

The focus of our next central Florida topic is about 15 miles northwest of downtown Orlando. With an areal extent of slightly less than 50 square miles, Lake Apopka is the third largest lake in Florida. It’s also the principal source of the beautiful Ocklawaha River. The events that transpired at the Lake offer those who are willing to learn a hard lesson in how thoughtless human use nearly destroyed a nationally renowned resource and how a combination of citizen effort, science, political pressure, and fierce determination may result in successful restoration. Please note that the key word is may.

Most of Lake Apopka’s serious problems are of fairly recent origin. However, its trail of tears started in 1895 with construction of the Apopka-Beauclair Canal that linked Lake Apopka to a chain of lakes downstream. That was the first step in the downward spiral into eventual environmental degradation. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that land use changes in adjacent areas spelled the beginning of the end of the Lake as a natural system.

In the early 1920s Lake Apopka was hit by a series of staggering blows in the form of external nutrient loads. First, sewage from the lakeside city of Winter Garden was pumped into the Lake. Second, organic wastewater from nearby citrus processing plants was piped in. And third, agricultural run-off laced with fertilizers and pesticides came as unsolicited and unwanted non-point source pollution from bordering farms. All without thought of inevitable consequences. The last straw arrived in 1947 in the guise of a hurricane that swept through central Florida and destroyed much of the shallow Lake’s rich aquatic vegetation. One month later, Lake Apopka publicly announced that it was dying with the first of many algal blooms (rapid increase in the population of algae in freshwater or marine aquatic systems).

Until its precipitous decline in 1947, the clear waters of the densely vegetated Lake were nationally known for extraordinary sports fishing. For decades bass fishermen from all over the country regularly rated it the best freshwater fishing in the United States. That came to an abrupt end. The Lake’s nutrient overloads and resulting algal blooms since the late 1940s created a pea-green open sewer and caused frequent fish kills. The Lake’s environmental quality, recreational opportunities, and economic value went into a disastrous and precipitous decline. Sad to say, it’s beyond any doubt that Lake Apopka contributed heavily to the subsequent decline of water quality in lakes downstream and in the Ocklawaha River. Lake Apopka had suddenly morphed from a thing of natural beauty into an environmental disaster of the first rank.

But nutrient loaded sewage and agricultural run-off were not the end of Lake Apopka’s travails. In 1980, a waste pond at the nearby Tower Chemical Company overflowed, dumping large quantities of powerful chemicals into the Lake. And not just any chemicals. We’re talking about really nasty pesticides, especially DDT and dicofol. Soon afterward, 90 percent of Lake Apopka’s alligator population died or simply disappeared. So, what was the reaction of the people responsible for all that damage: it was ho-hum and yawns all around. They went about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and bristled angrily at suggestion that they were to blame for any of the Lake’s environmental problems.

However, help was on the way from people who lived around the Lake and were determined to see it restored. Environmental assistance also came from a totally unexpected source: the State of Florida. Now there’s a genuine shocker. It’s no secret that the driving force responsible for pushing the State to actually do something about the horrible mess at Lake Apopka was a grassroots organization of fiercely determined local citizens who were fed up with the destruction of their lake. But the real surprise was that the State actually got off its dead ass and did something environmentally constructive.

After years of unsuccessful and uncoordinated individual efforts a number of people got together and formed a group that became known as the Friends of Lake Apopka (FOLA). The members of FOLA recognized that none of them had unlimited financial resources or unlimited time to devote to a cause they knew was just. So they devised a strategy of intense collective effort that focused on lobbying elected officials and agency staff. Their message was simple and consistent. They wanted their lake back as a natural resource. And they weren’t going to go away unless something was done about it. Period. They then applied constant and unrelenting pressure that, according to the complaints leveled by their moneyed opponents, bordered on the harassment of their political representatives at all levels. Ordinary people petitioning their elected representatives to address legitimate grievances. And that supposedly constituted harassment. Welcome to the real world of American politics.

To every one’s astonishment the tactics of intense and unrelenting political pressure worked. The Lake Apopka Restoration Act was passed by the Florida Legislature in 1985. It required the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) to develop and implement plans to restore Lake Apopka to a water quality condition that made it suitable for recreation. Meaning fishing and swimming. And the Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) Act of 1987 included the Lake on a list of waterways of highest priority for restoration, making pollution reduction a primary goal. Planning and feasibility studies for lake improvements began shortly thereafter. To its lasting credit, SJRWMD committed itself to working with all affected parties and stakeholders to re-create a clean Lake Apopka that would be a recreational and economic engine to benefit central Florida and the State as a whole. People at FOLA thought it was time to get down and celebrate. The primary goals for the restoration of the Lake’s ecosystem were to:

• Reduce the amount of phosphorus entering Lake Apopka from farms on the lake’s north shore by purchasing those lands and restoring the area to a more natural condition.
• Remove phosphorus and other suspended sediments from the lake by filtration through the Marsh Flow-Way (a constructed wetland covering approximately 760 acres) and by mass removal of gizzard shad.
• Improve the food-web structure by removing gizzard shad.
• Restore habitat through restoration of the shoreline (known as the littoral zone), increased fluctuation in lake levels and restoration of the north shore farmlands to wetlands.

After the studies were complete the District began negotiations with the local farmers who had been responsible for discharging nutrient-laden runoff to the Lake for decades. As if it had been their own no-cost, personal sewage disposal system.

After only a few years, the resulting agreements brought about a 60 percent reduction of phosphorus discharges from the farms. Real progress was being made. Then in 1996 the State’s Lake Apopka Restoration Act authorized the District to set a new phosphorus water quality standard and provided funding to initiate a mandated buyout of all the “muck” farms — with organic soils that are relatively decomposed, black in color, and very fertile — on the north shore of the Lake. The District completed its buyout of the farms in 1999 at a cost of quite a few million dollars.

The District’s Governing Board approved a rule in 2002 limiting the amount of phosphorus that can be discharged into Lake Apopka or its tributaries as a result of new construction in the Lake’s watershed. SJRWMD has also partnered with local, State, and federal agencies to:

• Purchase more than 19,000 acres of agricultural land along the lake’s north shore, reducing the discharge of phosphorus from the farms and providing an opportunity to restore the former marshes to wetlands. About 5,000 acres have been restored to wetlands, with a goal to reflood a total of 13,000 acres.
• Operate the Marsh Flow-Way since November 2003 and, through 2009, filter 2.6 times the lake’s volume — resulting in the removal of 62 million pounds of suspended solids and 37,300 pounds of phosphorus.
• Harvest gizzard shad since 1993, and through December 2009, removing more than 125,700 pounds of phosphorus and 374,800 pounds of nitrogen in fish tissue and preventing them from recycling phosphorus by feeding in the lake sediments.
• Replant six native wetland species of vegetation in the water along the lake’s shoreline, which helps restore fish and wildlife habitat.
• Work with the Friends of Lake Apopka and the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council to develop a plan to ensure that future development does not negatively impact the lake

The positive consequences of nutrient reductions in the Lake first became apparent as early as 1995 when the total phosphorus count hit new, much lower levels. And since mid-1995 chlorophyll levels have also declined. All good news. Those significant increases in water quality and clarity resulted in a spontaneous return of native aquatic vegetation, especially the productive eelgrass. Such vegetation not only provided valuable fish habitat but had the additional benefit of aiding the Lake’s recovery. More good news.

To further cut the total phosphorous, the District embarked on a program to remove millions of pounds of gizzard shad, a trash fish that had greatly raised phosphorous levels. Since then, SJRWMD scientists monitoring the Lake have recorded remarkable improvements in the Lake’s water quality. So it should be no surprise that recreational fishermen soon were reporting increased catches. The turn-around was genuine but disaster loomed on the horizon.

In the decades before the large farmers on the north side of the Lake were bought out, they regularly back-pumped water into the Lake after summer rains flooded their low-lying fields. Naturally, those waters were in reality chemical cocktails laced with fertilizers and any number of lethal pesticides and herbicides.

In 1998, after SJRWMD spent millions to buy the farmland, the District’s project managers allowed the summer rain waters to collect on the former agricultural fields. Their idea was to recreate natural wetlands that had been integral components of the lake margins prior to agricultural operations. Shortly afterward, more than 150 species of birds were attracted to the newly formed wetlands. The project was beginning to look like an unqualified success. However, weeks later, in the fall of 1998 and winter of 1999, the birds began to die, first by the dozens and then by the hundreds. Until nearly 1,000 white pelicans and birds from 70 other species had croaked. It was a devastating blow to the restoration effort.

To no one’s surprise, restoration of the former fields to wetlands was immediately placed on hold. In 2001, after an exhaustive investigation that involved 200 necroscopies from a scientific sample of the dead birds, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released detailed laboratory results. Their analyses found elevated levels of organochlorines (pesticides) in the birds’ tissues, including dieldrin, toxaphene, and DDT. In several birds the levels of dieldrin alone were sufficiently high to cause death. A field investigation conducted by SJRWMD scientists also identified soil in the flooded wetlands with toxaphene levels that were 500 times higher than was found in soils in adjacent non-agricultural areas. Suspicions confirmed.

As a side note, dieldrin had been removed from the market twenty-five years previously, in 1974. It’s a carcinogenic insecticide that permeates produce. The bad news is there’s no way to wash it off. It had been used for years at the Lake Apopka muck farms. DDT, which had a long and infamous record of bird kills in the 1950s and 1960s, had not been sold in the U.S. since 1972. And the manufacture of toxaphene, which began in 1948, was halted in the mid-1980s. But even after nearly twenty years in the environment, those poisons were sufficiently toxic to kill wildlife. After much tearful claims of innocence (or at least ignorance) by the former owners of the agricultural operations, the State forced the owners to remove the contaminated soils and replace them with clean fill having similar physical and organic characteristics.

Sad to say, that wasn’t the end of Lake Apopka’s travails. At the same time as all of the above activities were transpiring, a then little known biologist from the University of Florida began working with alligators. When Louis Guillette Jr. began studying alligators in 1985 his goal was straightforward and seemingly was guaranteed to keep him below everyone’s radar scope, except maybe that of his Department’s Tenure Committee.

Since a whole bunch of people, especially alligator farmers, wanted to use the reptile as a renewable resource (by harvesting its skin and meat), he simply wanted to determine the general state of alligator health in Florida to establish how many eggs could be harvested without adversely affecting the larger population. That was it in a nutshell. Well, he also was interested in alligators since they are what biologists regard as a sentinel species that indicates the overall health of the environment. In addition, he wanted to use the Florida alligator as a model for other crocodilians worldwide, the majority of which were endangered or threatened.

Guillette and his research team identified Lake Apopka as a potential source of gator eggs for their study. One of the reasons they picked Lake Apopka was that researchers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had studied it earlier and had found numerous problems with alligator eggs they had collected. After several field investigations Guillette’s team discovered that alligator eggs were in relatively short supply at sites around the Lake. They theorized that, owing to the previously mentioned chemical spill, the Lake’s general alligator population had been drastically reduced from what it had been a decade earlier. And worse, they determined that the gator eggs that they had collected were much more likely to die before hatching than eggs from other central Florida lakes.

Knowing something was definitely wrong with alligator reproduction at Lake Apopka, but not able to pinpoint a specific problem, Guillette decided to raise some of the gator eggs in his lab at the University. In 1992, he designed an experiment to help the research team identify and sort out the issues. His team of young biologists collected two sets of alligator eggs, one from Lake Apopka and the other from Lake Woodruff, which was just north of the central Florida city of De Land. From previous research, Guillette knew that Lake Woodruff’s alligator population was healthy and thriving. His research design was fairly simple: normal eggs from Lake Woodruff would serve as a control group to help the team determine exactly what was happening to the Lake Apopka gators.

Guillette’s initial results proved both informative and puzzling. When alligators from each lake hatched, there were obvious differences in their rates of survival. Many of the Lake Apopka hatchlings died within the first two weeks. Being a thoughtful professor type, Guillette wondered why the female alligators in Lake Apopka were having problems producing eggs that were viable. He had all kinds of information but they appeared to be disparate, almost unrelated. The puzzle pieces didn't fit together in a way that made sense.

His research team’s initial theories of what was causing the problems were not linked to chemicals. They thought it had something to do with extremes in temperature or the gas environment in the nest. They also tried to determine if the main cause was nutrition.

But even more significant differences emerged when Guillette began to measure hormone levels in male and female alligators from both lakes and quickly detected atypical results in Lake Apopka alligators. Males exhibited such severely depressed testosterone levels that they approached levels found in females. Levels that were over three times lower than those of the male part of the control group from Lake Woodruff. Moreover, Apopka’s female gators had twice the amount of estradiol (estrogen) that was characteristically found in normal females. 

The evidence seemed to show that feminization of both male and female embryos had occurred during development. That wasn’t all. The adult alligators’ testes and ovaries exhibited strange bio-structures that Guillette had never seen in a healthy population. Despite the males typically exhibiting poorly developed testes they also had advanced spermatogenic activity in which the testes of the newborn and six-month old animals had already begun producing sperm. Another anomaly that didn’t fit with the collected data.

Not to be left out of that puzzling picture, the research team found that the female gators were also characterized by unusual structures in their reproductive organs. Under normal conditions, alligator ovaries contain a number of bio-structures called follicles, with each individual follicle housing a single egg. However, the individual follicles of Lake Apopka females housed up to three or four eggs. And instead of just one nucleus those eggs contained many. When the Lake Woodruff alligators were tested, none of those abnormalities was detected.

A conscientious scientist, Guillette worried he must have done something wrong to get results that were so off the wall. So he and his team laboriously repeated the same experiment the next year. To his surprise, the results proved the same. Whoa, talk about a disturbing trend. It was time for Guillette to sit back and think about what the hell was going on in Lake Apopka. What had caused all those gender defects?

Guillette already knew about the ground-breaking research of John McLachlan of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences on compounds in the environment that were endocrine disruptors. He also was aware of Howard Burns’s work on diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen, and the birth defects it caused in rodents and humans.  But most importantly he knew that Theodora Colborn, a Senior Scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, was doing research on the state of the environment in the Great Lakes. Colborn had painstakingly assembled a great deal of information on significant changes in animal populations, especially population declines, birth defects, behavioral problems, and population crashes. All of which fell under the purview of the endocrine system. She concluded that certain chemicals had disrupted embryonic growth in Great Lakes animal populations by mimicking or blocking the body’s own natural hormones. When Guillette put the research of Burns, McLachlan, and Colborn together in the context of what was happening with the alligators at Lake Apopka and with the effects of the earlier chemical spills, the light bulb went on in his head and all the seemingly separate threads started twirling together to form a coherent fabric.

Guillette’s research team took blood and tissue samples from the alligators they caught at Lake Apopka and also a variety of physical measurements, including phallus size. Another surprise they found was that the penises of the Apopka males were about 25 to 30 percent smaller than those of normal males. But perhaps their most significant finding was that alligator penises were the shortest in that part of Lake Apopka closest to the site of the former Tower Chemical Company. That wasn’t the end of the surprises. Back in the lab the tissue samples revealed high levels of a strange chemical known as p,p’-DDE, which is produced as DDT deteriorates in the environment. The DDT derivative wasn’t the only finding that was out of the ordinary. Lurking in the gator blood and tissue samples was a host of other nasty chemical contaminants.

Guillette suspected that chemicals in Lake might have blocked the male alligators’ internal response to their own hormones. He knew that penile growth, whether in alligators or humans, was dependent on two androgens (testosterone and dihydrotestosterone). In a population of normal alligators, higher androgen levels resulted in more growth. But if chemicals in the Lake had blocked the effects of testosterone in the males, Apopka’s male gators would have smaller penises. Plus, no direct relationship would be found between penis size and the amount of testosterone present in an alligator’s system since their puny peckers would not be caused by lowered androgen levels. He quickly began refining a hypothesis that multiple chemicals in the environment had tricked the developing embryo into thinking that it was getting a normal signal when in fact it was receiving an abnormal signal. Which resulted in an abnormal embryo that grew into an abnormal individual that may have looked normal externally but was unable to function or behave normally. Bingo. Suddenly the puzzle pieces looked considerably less confusing.

Guillette tested his theory in the lab and found that Lake Apopka alligators’ penis size did not directly correlate with the levels of testosterone in their blood. Which meant that something external, something in their environment, was preventing the hormone from having its genetically intended effect.

When the research team collected samples from the Lake they found that the water was relatively clean. So they reasoned that the gender-influencing chemicals from the 1980 spill might have migrated into the food system. Alligators are top predators, sitting at the apex of their food pyramid. By eating such typical prey species as fish, frogs, and snakes, the gators had inadvertently accumulated chemical contaminants like p,p’-DDE that moved from small prey to the larger predators, becoming more concentrated with each stage of the journey. The contaminants were then transferred through impregnated female gators to their eggs, where they could negatively affect embryo development.

Suddenly, everything made sense. The drastic population decline. The unusual bio-structures present in the male and female reproductive organs. The puny peckers and strange ovarian follicles. The abnormal testosterone and estrogen levels. All clear signs of jumbled hormone signaling that occurred during embryo development. And the guilty agents? Guillette thought they were the manmade chemicals spilled into the Lake in 1980. But he had to prove it scientifically.

Guillette decided to run a more sophisticated experiment and treat eggs in the laboratory with p,p’-DDE and other chemicals. If he could reproduce the same abnormalities in the lab as were found in the wild Lake Apopka gators, the experiment would demonstrate that the chemicals caused the defects. Guillette’s research team collected a clutch of normal eggs from Lake Woodruff and added a mixture of manmade chemicals, hoping to reproduce the effects recorded in the Lake Apopka gator population.

The results were highly significant. Application of a combination of the two most common contaminants in Lake Apopka, DDD and DDE, caused depressed testosterone, genital deformities, and other anatomical defects in the Lake Woodruff male alligators that would have otherwise been normal. The same chemicals also caused abnormally elevated estrogen levels in tested females.

Guillette’s premise was right on target. He had demonstrated that the presence of those toxins in the environment resulted in abnormal alligator populations that had grave reproductive defects. His research results were significant far beyond the borders of Lake Apopka.

Implications

More recently, Guillette’s research turned up gators with shorter penises and abnormal hormone levels in relatively clean Florida lakes, not ones adjacent to highly polluted sites like Lake Apopka. His findings suggest that background or just slightly higher levels of chemical contamination may cause permanent changes in embryo development. At least in alligators. But biologists’ biggest worry is that humans are exposed to those levels of dangerous chemical toxins every day and very few scientists have looked into their effects on our reproductive organs. And that’s a really scary scenario. After all, mammals use hormones that are very similar to those that reptiles use. In many cases, they use the very same hormones, for example, the same estrogens and androgens.

Guillette would like people to consider the hypothesis that human sperm count, at least in some populations, has declined by more than 50 percent compared to our grandfathers’ time. He also wants us to wonder if our grandsons will be half the men we are, at least in terms of sperm count. His major concern is that some human populations appear to have experienced dramatic changes in the rate of testicular cancer, increases in abnormal penis development, and increases in prostate disease.

At least some of those changes have been attributed to endocrine disruptors such as phthalates, which are a class of chemicals developed within the last century that are widely used as plasticizers and are proven to be testicular toxicants. Phthalates are used as industrial chemicals added to many consumer products such as margarine, snack chips, baby milk formula, cheese, garden hoses, inflatable toys, blood-storage containers, intravenous tubing, children’s toys, vinyl flooring and vinyl flooring adhesives, detergents, printing ink (used on plastic, board and foil-packed products), lubricating soils, automobiles, home furnishings, solvents, food packaging, plastic bags, automotive plastics, construction, plastic clothing, personal care products and some pesticide formulas.

I specifically mention phthalates because not only are they endocrine disruptors and are widely used but also because they are easily released into the environment because of the absence of covalent bonding between the phthalates and plastics in which they are key components. As the plastics break down, the release of phthalates is accelerated. People are commonly exposed to phthalates from a wide variety of sources, including food and drink containers, flooring, coatings of pharmaceutical pills, adhesives and glues, agricultural vaccines, building materials, personal-care products, medical devices, detergents and surfactants, packaging, children's toys, modeling clay, waxes, paints, and printing inks to name a few. Disturbing facts about the chemical include that most Americans tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have metabolites of multiple phthalates in their urine and children's exposure to phthalates is greater than that of adults.

The fundamental questions Guillette raises are simple but they may affect us in ways most have never considered.

• Do those human reproductive system abnormalities constitute signs of previously unconsidered but continuing public health hazards?
• Are low-level environmental contaminants responsible for disrupting the human endocrine system?

Very scary stuff, especially if Guillette is right.

Today, the good news from Lake Apopka far outweighs the bad. Happily, no more birds have died since 1999. And no one is running around trying to measure gator peckers either. Additional areas of eelgrass have re-appeared in the Lake as part of the natural process. Water quality and sport fishing continue to improve. The Lake has a long, long way to go but it had taken many decades of destructive and conscienceless agricultural practices to degrade a once pristine natural resource. It should be no surprise to learn that the restoration phase of Lake Apopka is expected to continue for between 25 to 50 years. And perhaps much longer. But if that isn’t a solid sign of hope I don’t know how else it could be interpreted.

The bad news is that despite the restoration project, pesticide levels in bird eggs have not decreased. Nor, however, have aberrant behavior or physiological abnormalities been observed. In truth, the jury is still out on how much success has been or can be achieved with restoration of the Lake.

The lesson we can learn from Lake Apopka is the same one we learned from the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. The specific situation was very different but most of the elements were the same. Here’s a brief summary. A fragile environment had been degraded. A determined grassroots organization sprang into action to save it. They used public outrage to support their struggle. Intense political pressure was applied. Scientific evidence was collected. The movement didn’t stop until political pressure forced the State to intercede and become part of the solution. The environment remains damaged but restoration approaching a natural state may be a possibility.

That formula worked for the opponents of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal and for the Friends of Lake Apopka. It can work to save other fragile environments. But only if outraged citizens make it happen. That’s the real lesson offered by Lake Apopka.

Cross-Florida Barge Canal — EATING FLORIDA

Believe it or not, the idea for a canal across the Florida peninsula first surfaced in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries with the Spanish conquistadors. Hurricanes and English pirates lurking along the Florida coast had taken a terrible toll on their heavily laden treasure ships. So, they reasoned, why not dig a canal from the west coast of Florida across country to the east coast. Thus protecting their heavily laden treasure ships from natural disasters and human predators. Considering the primitive state of technology in the late 1500s and early 1600s, a cross-Florida ship canal was pure fantasy. In 1818 Secretary of War John C. Calhoun once again proposed a canal in order to reduce losses due to shipwrecks and piracy. Again, the concept was determined to be technically infeasible. But by the early 20th Century the idea was definitely within the realm of possibility. At least as far as technology was concerned. Economics and protection of the environment proved other matters entirely.

By 1920, support for the canal was so strong that proponents in the two favored termini, Jacksonville on the Atlantic and Yankeetown on the Gulf, agitated the State Legislature so successfully that a feasibility study was prepared. Which found the idea singularly without merit in terms of economics. No problem. Not if you live in the Florida world of realpolitik. The canal’s supporters devised a simple but effective strategy. They hunkered down and prepared to outwait their opponents. Knowing full well that, in politics, economic feasibility exists purely in the eyes of the beholder. At least if those beholders are members of the Florida Legislature. After all, sizeable numbers of legislators change every session and those who are re-elected change their minds much more often than that. Especially where well-heeled political campaign contributors are concerned. Politics, the All-American Grease Machine. A sad but true tale in every state of the Union. Then and now.

In a burst of twisted inspiration, canal supporters saw a golden opportunity during the teeth of the Great Depression, especially in the dark days of 1932. They swung into high gear, forming the important-sounding National Gulf-Atlantic Ship Canal Association. With members from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, they collectively bowed toward that Mecca of Pork, Washington. In heart of the Great Depression who but the Federal government had the cash to bail out their state economies with huge infusions of canal construction money? Pork barrel politics at its very finest. Belly up to the trough, boys. Let’s all get fat.

In May 1933 the Florida Legislature, smelling the first fruits of victory, established the Ship Canal Authority, a special taxation district headquartered in Jacksonville and comprised of the six counties standing to benefit the most from canal construction. The Authority issued bonds and the line was drawn in the sand. Savvy Ed Ball, always the first to smell a financial windfall at the expense of the environment, tested the wind and smelled sure victory. Ed jumped on the bandwagon and bought Ship Canal bonds as though they were actually worth something.

The proposed route was designed to run in a dredged channel through the St. John’s River, from Jacksonville to slightly south of Palatka. From there a new canal would be dug overland to the untouched and pristine Ocklawaha River. The lower reach of the Ocklawaha would be dammed, straightened, and channelized to just south of Silver Springs, where the route would cut straight across the countryside in a concrete-sided canal 35 miles long to the Withlacoochee River and then into the Gulf of Mexico at Yankeetown. All in all, it was enough to excite the Corps of Engineers into a state of near-permanent arousal. Locks, dams, canals, pumping stations, and dredge and fill up the wahzoo. It was the stuff of a District Engineer’s wet dreams. Who gave a wood rat’s ass about damage to the natural environment? Who cared about that real costs exceeded the benefits? No one. Or so it seemed to the canal’s enthusiastic supporters.

With Florida’s Senator Duncan Fletcher and Louisiana’s always savvy Huey Long pushing the project with all their considerable political might, President Franklin Roosevelt fell into line and backed the project under the then freshly passed emergency Relief Appropriation Act. The Corps rubbed its hands together in gleeful celebration and then without hesitation hired 4,500 men and established five Florida base camps from which to stage construction. That’s when the shit hit the fan, so to speak.

Not long after passage of the Relief Appropriation Act, all three Florida mainline railroads, as well as the smaller short-line carriers, started screaming bloody murder. They had belatedly realized that a sizeable portion of the freight hauled through a cross-Florida ship canal would be at their direct expense. And to everyone’s genuine surprise their cries of outrage were supported by a prestigious and well-respected Federal agency, the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Historically, the USGS has been a largely apolitical agency whose long-standing practice was to stay on the scientific high ground well above the stink and slime of the pork barrel, unlike the Corps, which rolled and reveled in nasty slop-pit political deals that stank to high heaven from the time of George Washington to the present.

The USGS reported that the canal, as designed, would cut nearly 90 feet into the precious Floridan Aquifer, the main source of fresh water to the central and southern parts of the State, cutting in half the underground water used by 50 percent of the State’s population. The canal would also effectively eliminate the potable water supply of the cities of Silver Spring and Rainbow Spring. As a direct result of those freshwater losses, the canal would open the Floridan Aquifer to massive saltwater intrusion at both east and west coasts and cause unprecedented ecological disaster.

                                   KA-BOOM!

The USGS report was a heavy artillery barrage from a totally unexpected source. Suddenly, canal supporters were on the run and looked vulnerable. Which is always the kiss of death in vicious, cutthroat Washington. Look like a winner and every politician and ass-kisser in the Capital crowds around, desperate to be your friend and snarf up a piece of the action. But look like a loser and you’re standing alone, like you’re carrying the Ebola virus and AIDS at the same time. Hey, that’s how our national Capital has always worked. It was business as usual in Pork-Barrel Heaven. No more, no less.

Roosevelt’s Congressional opponents chose that moment to rap the President on the knuckles and teach him a hard political lesson. That he could not initiate major public works projects without first getting approval from the people who controlled the purse strings — none other than the U.S. House of Representatives. So the House refused to appropriate the necessary funds and that was that. Or so it seemed.

The canal concept was resurrected once again in 1942 at the beginning of World War II, supposedly in response to the presence of German submarines skulking off the Florida coast in the hopes of cherry-picking the heavily-laden, slow, and cumbersome freighters. The canal’s supporters also showed considerable political acumen when they had the beast re-engineered to modify its most objectionable features. The new canal emerged as a barge channel rather than an ocean-going ship canal and would be limited to a 27-foot slice into the Floridan Aquifer and cost only $45 million. But Congress refused to take the skillfully dangled bait. The war effort in Europe and Asia had priority for men and materials so nothing was done. But the idea was still alive. Even though it didn’t look particularly healthy at the time.

Sharp-eyed Florida businessmen who were holding on to what appeared to be worthless canal bonds, led by fearless and crafty Ed Ball, saw 1960 Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy as a potential ally in their desire to make a killing on their investment. They used their political contributions and clout to garner Kennedy’s support for the Barge Canal. I mean, think about it. The Canal was a perfect pork barrel, public dole type of project the always spend-happy Democrats loved. Of course, Kennedy would back it, especially if there was some “objective” evidence supporting it.

Ever up to the task of charade, skulduggery, and shell games, the Corps of Engineers quickly produced a phantasmagoric benefit-cost analysis that demonstrated the Federal government’s $165 million investment in the canal would produce a five percent annual return to Florida’s economy. Which amounted to $8.25 million each year in excess of project costs. Yeah, right. And don’t we all believe in the Tooth Fairy and that whores have hearts of gold. Those guys either were on a major LSD trip or they were lying through their teeth. Duh. Those were the only real choices. What an outstanding work of fiction that benefit-cost analysis was. How the Corps engineers and economists got up in the morning and could look at their faces in the mirror without vomiting I’ll never know. But like it or not, the result was clear. The near-dead Canal suddenly roared back to life. It was resurrection city. Praise the Lord and buy more canal bonds.

That’s when a trio of dedicated environmentalists began a monumentally uphill struggle to defeat the enormous power of what had become a Federal steamroller. From Gainesville, a sluggish little college town, Marjorie Harris Carr, Jack Ohanian, and David Anthony started waging an all-out war against odds so monumental they couldn't be classified as low as staggering or enormous. They were determined to stop the Barge Canal and refused to back down from what looked like certain defeat. Marjorie Carr was a respected ecologist in her own right and the wife of internationally famous University of Florida biologist, Archie Carr. Jack Ohanian was a physicist with the University of Florida and David Anthony a biochemist in the University’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. All three were very active members of the Alachua Audubon Society and possessed stellar reputations for personal integrity and professional courage.

That their opponents were legion and incredibly powerful at both national and State levels went without saying. Chief supporters of the Canal included the State’s Canal Authority, the successor of the Ship Canal Authority, the pro-development Florida Cabinet, an institution with a long and rich history of environmental rape and pillage, and the Florida Board of Conservation, later to become the Department of Natural Resources and which functioned as the mouth-piece of the politically powerful — remember, trees don’t vote — rather than exhibiting any foolish and ill-founded desires to protect the State’s precious environmental heritage for its citizens. And of course, we can’t forget the inestimable Jacksonville District Corps of Engineers, a group of technocrats that never met a river they thought couldn't be improved with locks and dams or canals and never met a tree they didn't think looked better sawn into as many board-feet as possible. Along with them came the Corps’ slight-of-hand economists who could add two plus two and get eight point two-five million, or whatever number it took to manufacture a positive benefit-cost ratio.

In February 1964, with the requisite Congressional funding and approvals in place, President Lyndon Johnson triggered the dynamite explosion in Palatka that signaled the beginning of the Cross Florida Barge Canal construction. The project would ultimately destroy nearly 50 miles of what had been the least developed and most unspoiled stretch of the beautiful Ocklawaha River and eliminate 42 square miles of adjacent pristine river swamp and hardwood hammock.

The Corps of Engineers immediately galvanized into action and began constructing the canal, channel, and lock and dam system. Accomplishing their goal would bisect the lovely Ocala National Forest, reduce the flow of the crystal clear Silver Springs, cut potable water production in the Floridan Aquifer, and turn the Ocklawaha and Withlacoochee Rivers into artificial channels carrying increasingly turbid waters practically devoid of indigenous wildlife. All for the express purpose of satisfying the greedy but politically powerful Canal bondholders. Like that good old boy, Ed Ball, who never saw a tree or a spring he didn’t try to convert to money in his pocket.

Since we talking about what was happening on the ground, imagine this nightmare working in broad daylight: a monster, 310-ton diesel-powered, crawler-crusher machine whose only mission in life was to devour the ten square miles of pristine wetlands and diverse forests between what would become the Rodman and Eureka Dams. Its single goal: to make room for a sterile, 13,000-acre reservoir south of Palatka and, to top it off, a lock and dam that would connect what has come to be known as Rodman Reservoir with the St. John’s River to regulate the passage of barges and other water craft.

Between 1962 and 1969, the indefatigable Carr, Ohanian, and Anthony had organized the Barge Canal opposition, the Florida Defenders of the Environment (widely known as the FDE). They worked without rest at night and through one weekend after another educating members of the growing environmental movement and the general public to the very real threats posed by the Canal to the State of Florida and its inhabitants.

But the Corps was also busy. Perhaps a third of the canal was completed between 1966 and 1969. Three of the Canal system’s five locks were finished by mid-1969. With the adjacent lock and dam in place, Rodman Reservoir immediately began to fill with water.

But disaster wasn’t far off. By late 1969, some 3,000 acres of the Reservoir were covered with an out-of-control growth of water hyacinths. Which the Corps started killing with chemical sprays. The only problem with that solution was the dead vegetative material sank to the bottom of the Reservoir, adding to the already huge biological oxygen demand generated by the organic materials crushed and partially buried by the crawler-crusher mentioned above. Whether the Corps liked it or not, Rodman Reservoir was well on its way to a condition of rapid eutrophication. In other words, biological death, courtesy of chuckle-headed and clueless engineers at the Corps.

In 1969, the national Environmental Defense Fund sued the Corps to stop canal construction pending a determination of the “Total social costs and real social benefits.” Which meant that someone either knew or strongly suspected that the Corps had cooked the benefit-cost books. Hey. Corps economists cooking the books? What a shocking allegation that was. Also in that year, the EDF published a groundbreaking report on the environmental destruction that was being caused by canal construction that captured the public’s attention and galvanized the Canal’s opposition into action.

But perhaps the most important event at that time in terms of real world consequences for the Canal was passage of the National Environmental Protection Act, which at that time was a law with teeth. After several years of intense political activity locally, Statewide, and nationally, the EDF succeeded in a way no one thought possible. In 1971, the President’s Council of Environmental Quality in Washington, D.C., identified the Cross Florida Barge Canal Project as the top priority on its cancellation list. President Nixon shocked absolutely everyone in the country when he directed the Corps to abandon its Florida canal construction activities in 1971 and cease and desist all further involvement.

I remember the electric thrill that jolted me when I first heard that decision. Reluctantly, I have to admit that might have been the only Presidential action of Nixon’s that I supported as non-self serving or non-destructive to the country’s best interests. Well, there’s always the possible exception of his China gambit and several pieces of legislation that no good Republican of today would support — such as a national healthcare program that the idiot Democrats scuttled, led by none other than Ted Kennedy.

Despite a Federal judge’s 1974 ruling that Nixon had exceeded his power in canceling the Barge Canal project, in that the project had been authorized by an Act of Congress, construction was never resumed. For the first time in living or historical memory, the State of Florida, via Governor Reubin Askew and the publicly elected members of the State Cabinet, voted in favor of the environment and against development. They opposed all future work on the Canal and recommended that the existing portions of the project be dismantled and the dams and reservoirs be back-filled with dirt.

In 1985, the Cross Florida Barge Canal Project was dropped from Congress’s list of appropriated projects but with the recommendation that the existing structures must be maintained in place indefinitely. On November 28, 1990, President George H. W. Bush deauthorized the Cross Florida Barge Canal project and changed the purpose of the previously designated lands to recreation and conservation by signing Senate Bill 2740 into law. Several months later, on January 22, 1991, Governor Lawton Chiles and Cabinet of the State of Florida signed a resolution agreeing to the terms of that Federal deauthorization act. Their action led to the creation of the Cross Florida Greenway State Recreation and Conservation Area that in 1998 was officially renamed the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway in honor of the main individual who organized and spearheaded the long struggle to kill the Cross Florida Barge Canal project.

Today visitors can have the distinct displeasure of viewing Rodman Dam’s thousands of acres of hyacinth-choked water and drowned trees. It’s a bitter reminder that a blood-sucking monster with political connections has many lives and isn’t dead until it’s buried without its head and heart. Which it isn’t, even to this day. Another critical lesson is that the natural environment can never be put back the way it was prior to being raped and pillaged, no matter how hard we try or what lies the civil engineers and water managers tell us.

Implications

We can’t close the book on the Barge Canal without tipping our hats to three most extraordinary people: Marjorie Harris Carr, Jack Ohanian, and David Anthony. Despite heart-stoppingly enormous odds, by their single-minded dedication and determination they have shown all environmentalists the way. Committed individuals who organize to fight the actions of powerful and politically connected insiders who are in cahoots with the State and Federal governments to destroy the environment can make a real difference. The combination of highly motivated grassroots organization, credible evidence complied by respected members of the scientific community, a few sympathetic political leaders (especially U.S. Senator Robert Graham), and well-focused legal actions can result in victory. It’s a lesson no one who is concerned about the environment can afford to forget. In truth, their names and their story should be enshrined in a large granite memorial along the canal route in recognition of their inspiring, selfless dedication, and real-world accomplishments.

BIRTHDAY MESSAGE

Today is my birth anniversary. To celebrate I'm going to post a bunch of things that I enjoy, starting with one of my favorite jokes.

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Several men are in the locker room of an exclusive golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings. A man sitting nearby picks it up and engages the hands-free speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room can't help but overhear the conversation.

MAN: "Hello."

WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club? It's hard to hear your voice."

MAN: "Yeah, I'm in the locker room. I'm all wet so I have to use the hands-free."

WOMAN: "I am at the mall now and found this absolutely stunning leather coat. It's only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it? It's exactly what I've been looking for."

MAN: "Sure. Go ahead if you like it that much. We're doing pretty well."

WOMAN: "Great, I’m so excited. I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2011 models. They have a convertible in that pearly white color I really like."

MAN: "How much is it?"

WOMAN hesitates and then says: "$87,500."

MAN: "OK, but for that price I want all the options. But don't let the guy drive the cost way up. Make sure you stay close to the original quote."

WOMAN gushes: "That’s terrific! Oh, one more thing. That house we wanted last year is back on the market. They dropped the price almost two hundred thousand and are only asking $950,000."

MAN: "That's not too bad. Go ahead and make them an offer, but not full price; somewhere around $875,000. We can offer more if they reject the first offer."

WOMAN: "Perfect. I'll see you later. Hey! I really love you!"

MAN: "I love you, too, sweetheart. Bye."

The man closes the phone and places it on the bench. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in open-mouthed amazement. Then he looks up and says in a loud voice, "Hey! Anyone know whose cell phone this is?"

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The Ralph M. Rap Song 

Ralph M. is my hero that’s all I wanna say.

He was a workaholic every night and every day.

He didn’t finish high school but became an engineer.

Founded a big company and named it after him.

The man is a model for all who want to play the game of consulting that’s what we wanna do.

We whore for the money but we love it yes we do.

I want to be just like him so I can make the grade

And manage all those projects that will get me big time paid.

He was a straight arrow trusted through and through.

The tattoo on my butt tells it straight and true.

Ralph M. is my hero that’s all I wanna say.

Rap song about Ralph M. Parsons, founder of the Parsons Corporation. Recited to a rap beat at SOB’s 5-year Employee Recognition ceremony at Parsons St. Louis office on 1-27-03. And yes, it actually happened.

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Here’s a Beautiful Message about Growing Old:

Shit.

I've forgotten what it was.

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And here’s one of my favorite poems.

Ultimo Instante — The Final Moment

by Jorge Luis Borges

If I were able to live my life anew,

the next time I would try to make more mistakes.

I would not attempt to be so perfect

and would relax more.

I would be more foolish than I had been.

Truly, I would take few things seriously.

And I would be less neat.

I would run more risks, travel more,

watch more sunsets, climb more mountains,

swim more rivers.

I would go to more places I had never been.

I would eat more ice cream and fewer vegetables.

I would have more real problems and fewer imaginary ones.

I was one of those persons who lived

each minute of life sensibly and productively.

Clearly, I had moments of happiness.

But . . .

If I were able to live my life again,

I would try to have only good moments.

In case you don't know, life is made only of moments.

Don't lose sight of the present.

I was one of those who never went

to other places without a thermometer,

a hot water bottle,

an umbrella and a parachute.

If I were able to live my life again . . .

I would begin by walking barefoot

from the first of Spring

and continue until Fall.

There would be more twists and turns on my street.

I would watch more dawns

and . . .

If there were another life ahead of me,

I would play more with my children.

But now I am 85 years old, blind and am ready to die.

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Now here’s one of mine.

I Am a Chauvinist No Doubt

I am a chauvinist no doubt.

Gently bouncing breasts

sweetly curving asses

cotton-molded lower lips

my gaze instantly focuses.

Forgotten the slogans

the rallying cries of liberation

when brushed by a heavily laden

melon of flesh.

Valiant efforts made many times

to shed the snake-skin machismo.

No luck. I stopped trying.

Today my sins are acknowledged

without pride

accepted not denied or excused.

But now private lusts replace

public display.

I am a chauvinist no doubt.

Life Models

Throughout my life, the individuals listed below were my heroes. Each person on the list demonstrated incredible courage and determination in achieving her or his goals. Most, though not all, were well educated. All were extraordinary in different ways. After compiling the list I realized that eleven of the seventeen were activists of one sort or another and five were scientists and one a painter, which should tell Readers a lot about me.

Harriet Tubman—born enslaved in Maryland around 1821 or 1822, escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 and became free. Despite risks of capture and death, especially since a bounty of $40,000 was placed on her capture by enraged slave owners, Tubman returned to Maryland and other Southern states nineteen times, typically disguised as a man or elderly woman, helping more than three hundred slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad to the North. Unknown until recently, Tubman also worked as a spy for the Union Army, becoming the first woman to successfully plan and lead a military expedition against the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 2021, Tubman was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.

Eugene Debs—Founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World and outspoken champion of workers and the oppressed.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—Founder of mass civil resistance movements and nonviolence; in many ways the creator of modern India.

Rosalind Franklin—Physical chemist and discoverer of DNA’s double helix who was aced out of the Nobel Prize by colleagues who used her work without paying her the credit she was due.

Chien-Shiung Wu—Chinese-American experimental physicist who changed the way physicists understand the world. Her critical discovery, that parity is not conserved, resulted in her colleagues winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics while Wu’s pioneering work went unrewarded.

Thurgood Marshall—Perhaps America's greatest 20th Century lawyer; a civil rights whirlwind nonpareil and first black American Supreme Court justice. 

Pauli Murray—Pathfinder, lifelong civil rights and women's rights activist, lawyer who graduated first in her class, Episcopal priest, author, gender-bender, and intersectionalist long before the term was invented. She became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School and was the first African-American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.

Saul Alinsky—Labor organizer, writer, founder of modern community organizing; an unapologetic leftist.

Malcolm X—unapologetic advocate of black self-determination; a towering figure vastly underrated by white America.

James Baldwin—Author, civil rights advocate, powerful intellectual who saw America's race problem for what it was and is: white supremacy.

Wilma Rudolph—World-class athlete, polio survivor who was told by her doctor as a child she would never be able to walk unaided but didn't know the meaning of can't.

Tommie Smith/Peter Norman/John Carlos—Olympic medalists/athletes who put their careers on the line for human rights and were punished by white racists for their beliefs.

Daniel Elsberg—Harvard PhD economist, courageous whistle-blower who released the Pentagon Papers and winner of the 2018 Olof Palme Prize for his "profound humanism and exceptional moral courage."

Marjorie Harris Carr—Biologist, environmentalist, organizer without equal, winner of lost cause battles against opponents far more powerful than she.

Helen Frankenthaler—Pioneering Color Field painter who changed American art in what was then an extremely macho art world; a master of fluid shapes, abstract masses, and lyrical gestures especially in large formats.

Dorothy Day—American journalist, social activist/anarchist who converted to Catholicism without abandoning her political radicalism and who, with Peter Maurin, co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement.

Rosa Parks—Civil rights activist who refused to compromise her dignity as a person or her humanity.

Martin Luther King Jr.—Civil rights activist who struggled mightily to awaken the conscience of white America.

Aldo Leopold—Ecologist, environmental ethicist, and writer who inspired generations.

John Gofman—Physical chemist, medical doctor, courageous critic of nuclear energy whose legacy will live for many decades.

Rachael Carson—Marine biologist and writer who inspired global environmentalism.

Cesar Chavez/Dolores Huerta—Farm workers, union organizers, labor activists, role models to millions. Full credit to Dolores for creating the acclaimed warcry: "Sí, se puede!"

Paul Crutzen—Atmospheric chemist, Nobel Laureate who refused to give up his dream of being a scientist.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg—The Notorious RBG, the U.S.’s most successful litigator on behalf of women's rights, she was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 where she has fought tirelessly for the rights of women and minorities.

Edward Snowden—computer systems expert and courageous whistle-blower who kept his vow to protect the U.S. Constitution while the U.S. Government did its best to subvert that Constitution by destroying the privacy of every American citizen.

Cape Canaveral — EATING FLORIDA

If you’ve ever taken a good look at a map of Florida, my guess is the shape and location of Cape Canaveral have caught your eye. The shape is somewhat like a protruding skeletal knee. That interpretation may be re-enforced by its position smack dab in the middle of the State. The Cape is a complex of intertwining, ever shifting barrier islands, sand bars, and lagoons along Florida’s east coast. The two most important of those barrier islands are Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral, which were created by the constant and ever-repeating wind and wave cycle of destruction and renewal. Although hurricanes are a significant seasonal factor, the Atlantic waves that pound relentlessly along the eastern shore are the most persistent force shaping the area. In stark contrast, the usually calm waters of the Indian River, Banana River, and Mosquito Lagoon lap quietly on the west.

The quiet lagoons and inland waterways combine with the Gulf Stream to moderate what could be a brutally hot climate and ensure a year-round subtropical refuge. Well, only if you have access to industrial strength insect repellant and air conditioning. Hey, the name Mosquito Lagoon should be an instant give-away. If you want to know the brutal truth, the good old days really sucked when it came to creature comforts. Try living in central Florida through the summer without electricity, air conditioning, or screens on your windows if you don’t believe that statement.

The geological evidence of ancient dune lines that are about ten to fifteen miles inland paralleling the existing coastline tells us that the present location of the Cape was likely underwater for many thousands of years. What is certain is that at many times in the past the ocean waves receded and a combination of tidal action and local topographic irregularities allowed a small point of land to jut out from the coastline into the sea. After centuries of rising and falling sea levels, largely due to glacial and inter-glacial periods, that small promontory served as an anchor that accumulated silt, mud, sand, organic detritus, and sea shells that had previously been gypsied about by shifting ocean currents and periodic tropical storms. Until we have the present complex land/seascape that forms the Cape.

Although maps containing a rough outline of Cape Canaveral date from 1502, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León is credited with first exploring the general area in 1513. His second landing in Florida was just south of Cape Canaveral, most probably near present day Melbourne Beach. Not realizing the area was dominated by the fiercely warlike Ais, who also had a taste for the flesh of their enemies, de León tried to establish a beachhead. But he was forced to beat a hasty retreat with his tail between his legs after being repulsed by the fierce and determined natives.

How the Cape received its name remains unclear. The oldest known map containing the name Cape Canaveral was drawn by LeMoyne in 1564, well after the initial landing by de León. Although the name has a Spanish origin — Cabo, indicating a point of land jutting out into the sea and Canaveral, meaning canebrake — it might have had several different meanings depending upon who chose the name and why. The name Cape Canaveral has been roughly translated as “Cape of Reeds” and “Cape of Canes.” Sugar cane is not indigenous to the Cape Canaveral area but there are several native plants that resemble it, including a type of bamboo reed called “normal” cane by early American residents of the Cape (as opposed to “sugar” cane). A good guess is that Spanish sailors named the area Cape Canaveral because they thought they spotted sugar cane along the coastline. But none of the several historical accounts of the name’s derivation is generally accepted.

That east-central Florida proved of little interest to Spanish should not come as a shock. The Ais were too tough a nut to crack easily and the area possessed no gold, no silver, no tangible natural resource treasures of any kind. Which meant no reason to tempt the greed-driven Spanish to hang around. It was a simple matter of time management and economics. The conquistadors tried their damnedest to spend their time where gold and silver were readily available and easily ripped from the hands of their former owners and deposited into their deep pockets.

However, despite its evident lack of tangible resources and based on its outstanding geographical assets, Cape Canaveral itself quickly evolved into a critical landmark for passing ships and became a regular fixture on all early maps of Florida. Even the oldest known maps of the area contain two important geographical features for navigators: the Florida Keys and Cape Canaveral. Sailing by dead reckoning was the principal means of navigating, therefore, if the ship’s captain had a choice he preferred to remain within sight of the coastline, using it as a reassuring reference. Remember, a whole lot of those guys still believed, in their heart of hearts, that if they sailed too far west or even got out of sight of land they would fall off the edge of the Earth.

Although Cape Canaveral remained a well-known and highly useful landmark for sailors in the decades that followed, human settlement of the area would not be successful for another three centuries. But when Florida, and Cape Canaveral as well, became part of the United States after the Revolutionary War the first American pioneers slowly made their way to the mainland west of the Cape. Between 1830 and 1835 an enterprising fellow named Douglas D. Dummitt from St. Augustine and who originally hailed from Barbados, at the tender age of 23 no less, established a grapefruit grove on Merritt Island directly west of Cape Canaveral. By 1828, Dummitt was so successful he began shipping commercial quantities of citrus to northern markets via the Indian River. To demonstrate our not so distant ties to Spanish settlement, Dummitt’s grove had been started from a grove near Port Orange that were reputed to had been budded from seedling stock brought to Florida by the Spanish.

The physical conditions on Cape Canaveral itself, however, proved far less hospitable to permanent settlement than Merritt Island and continued to discourage all comers. It wasn’t until the 1840s that the first group of American settlers established permanent residence on the Cape. Those first settlers constructed a barebones community of a few simple houses. They were able to maintain a low-level but self-reliant existence in what at the time was a hostile environment marked by brutal summer heat, plagues of mosquitoes and sandflies, and a challenging sand and scrub environment that must have seemed to willfully repel all efforts to plant crops. But their biggest problem had to be the all but total isolation from civilization.

In 1843, the U.S. Government recognized the geographic significance of the Cape’s easternmost point and established a permanent lighthouse, which was completed in 1847. Originally called St. Lucie, in 1855 the Florida mainland west of Cape Canaveral was renamed Brevard County. Regardless of that new political designation, the Cape still had no access other than by sea. Roads, bridges, or railroads were non existent, making travel problematic, to say the least.

However, by the 1880s steamboat traffic was running on a fairly regular basis from the St. John’s River in north Florida south to Brevard County. Although that economic tie did little to increase the population of isolated Cape Canaveral it did encourage population expansion on the mainland just to the west, which experienced steady growth through the 1890s. Truth be told, most of that credit was due to the efforts of none other than that famous entrepreneur, Henry Flagler. Who was pleased as punch to extend his rail line into and through Brevard County, if only because it was en-route to Palm Beach and then to Miami and Key West. By June 1893, the Flagler Railway had reached the northern Brevard County community of Titusville, which had been a popular port as early as the 1880s, and was quickly extended southward along the western bank of the Indian River through the towns of Cocoa, Rockledge, and Eau Gallie.

Once the Flagler Railway reached Eau Gallie, the entire mainland area west of Cape Canaveral was served by railroad. Titusville, Cocoa, and Melbourne sprang to life and quickly became major local population centers. But the Cape itself remained almost completely unsettled and isolated, still accessible only by boat. Although population was gradually increasing on the mainland and on nearby Merritt Island, only a few additional families set up permanent residence on Cape Canaveral. The separation of the Cape from the mainland by the Banana River, Merritt Island, and the Indian River constituted obstacles to growth and development that proved extraordinarily difficult to overcome.

An important lesson may be learned about what has happened to Florida in terms of human occupance but I’ll let that tempting topic slide until later. When I can draw on a comparison or two with other locations in the Sunshine State.

With development pressure slowly increasing year by year, Cape Canaveral was opened to settlement under the Homestead Act. As the relative prosperity of the early 1920s dawned, a number of families and small businesses slowly trickled onto the Cape. Although the area had no permanent roads, was still accessible only via boat, and remained isolated, several small settlement clusters emerged. The most developed and populated area of Cape Canaveral was known as DeSoto Beach, which was located in the vicinity of NASA’s present day Launch Complex 36. DeSoto Beach featured about fifteen permanent homes, a small hotel, a store, and even a brothel that reportedly did a brisk if seasonal business. Think it was all that fishing that made the guys horny or was it because they were free from their wives?

The barrier island area south of Cape Canaveral was not settled until 1923, when the first bridge was extended from Merritt Island eastward to the Atlantic coast. The eastern terminus of the bridge was incorporated in 1925 as the city of Cocoa Beach and soon began to expand. Suddenly, the handwriting was on the wall. With the bridge in place it was only a matter of time before settlement mushroomed. You should remember the developers’ mantra because it is right on the money: “Access is everything.”

Although at the dawn of World War II the permanent Cape Canaveral population still numbered only about 100, the area had begun to attract what today we would call eco-tourists. The largest group of visitors consisted of saltwater fishermen eager to take advantage of the excellent fishing the Cape waters provided. Well, it’s not a stretch to suppose that the whorehouse held out the lure of certain creature comforts not offered in the Compleat Angler. Hey, they were only meeting one of the many demands created by growing eco-tourism. It was traditional American enterprise in action.

In the period of international unrest just prior to World War II, events outside of Florida intervened to change the future of Cape Canaveral. In 1938, under the Naval Expansion Act, which called for reinforcement of the Atlantic Coast Defense System, two naval installations were authorized on the east coast of Florida. A narrow strip of the barrier island located roughly between Melbourne and Cocoa Beach was selected for a naval air station. Construction began in late 1939. The resulting Banana River Naval Air Station was commissioned on October 1, 1940. It covered nearly 1,800 acres and was roughly four miles long by a little over a mile wide. Although the facility continued to support the Navy for several years after World War II, the Station was officially deactivated in 1947. But it was a Federal foothold that would prove to be highly significant.

Enter the Cold War, Werner von Braun, his German colleagues, and the age of rocket science. American post-war development of ballistic missiles as a long-range weapons delivery system quickly progressed from our stealing a terrific idea from the Germans to a critical struggle with the Soviets, who had stolen their own German rocket scientists, over shaping a new geo-political reality. The race for world domination was on and turning back was not an option.

It soon became obvious to the U.S. Government that their existing testing facilities weren’t up to the new rocket-based standards. The Department of Defense had to find a new engineering and scientific research facility where tactics and techniques for guided missile operations could be developed and tested.

With the exploding arms race, tremendous amounts of activity were required in a tightly constrained time frame. Highly qualified personnel had to be recruited, run through an elaborate security screening process, and then trained in the rapidly evolving scientific techniques. Equipment used to operate and ultimately control the missiles had to be designed, tested, redesigned, and built to ever evolving but exacting standards. And the new guided missiles had to be subjected to rigorous ground and flight testing to determine their effectiveness.

All those steps were required to be conducted in relative secrecy. Preferably in a location far from prying eyes and ears, not only those of our enemies but the public’s as well. Therefore, the most suitable locations had to be relatively isolated from existing population centers. They also had to be near extensive unpopulated spaces over which missiles could be launched (and possibly destroyed if they began turning off course), thereby avoiding politically messy problems like civilian injuries and deaths. And they needed to accommodate the installation of downrange tracking stations to make sure that the then typically unreliable buggers stayed on course. Land for a military base that would serve as the operational headquarters for the missile program was also part of the locational requirements.

White Sands, New Mexico, had a missile range that was associated with development of the nuclear bomb in Los Alamos. It had been in operation since the close of World War II. However, at 135 miles long the range’s dimensions were unsuitable for new, far more powerful missiles. Plus, it had the additional negative of being located much too close to a number of large cities, especially Almagordo, Las Cruces, Socorro, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez, among others. When the more powerful, and therefore more dangerous, missiles were tested in the late 1940s, the glaring deficiencies of the White Sands Range with respect to its size and poorly chosen location were dramatically demonstrated.

The concerns of the Los Alamos/White Sands scientists and engineers over the safety of firing larger and larger missiles powered by high-explosive fuel became reality in May 1947. To the shock and dismay of the assembled scientists and engineers, a modified V-2 rocket went badly off course, wheeling south instead of heading north over the White Sands Range. The missile scared the living shit out of thousands of residents as it thundered directly over El Paso, Texas, and eventually crashed across the Rio Grande into the Tepeyac Cemetery in nearby Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, creating a blast crater at least 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep. Although no one was injured — luckily, the dead were already dead and the living had taken off running as if the very devil himself were in hot pursuit — the wayward rocket quickly turned into a full-fledged international faux pas. After suitable negotiations and the consumption of a large serving of humble-pie, the U.S. government settled damage claims with their highly pissed-off neighbor, Mexico. Which understandably added considerable incentives to the identification and selection of a new, larger, and safer missile range.

Three potential sites quickly emerged as front runners. One was based on the coast of northern Washington, with a range that ran through the Aleutian Islands. A second was located at El Centro, California, with a range along the coast of Baja, Mexico. The third option was the Banana River Naval Air Station in Florida, which would serve as the missile center headquarters and Cape Canaveral would function as the launch site, with the range extending eastward over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Washington State site was quickly rejected because its isolation and poor weather conditions made it a less than stellar alternative in the first place. Although the California site would have been highly suitable and even preferable owing to its proximity to existing aerospace equipment and systems manufacturers in the Los Angeles area, it was summarily rejected when Mexican President Aleman refused to agree to allow the rockets to fly over the Baja region. Remember that wayward V-2 that had crashed and exploded just outside Juarez, Mexico? Well, the Mexicans hadn’t forgotten it either and had no reason to believe that additional high-powered rockets fired over their country would do them much good. Scratch El Centro from the list of alternatives.

Our good friends the Brits, however, proved very amenable to allowing missiles to take off over the sparsely populated Bahamian archipelago, whose natives were largely black and poor so didn’t count for much in the eyes of their then rulers. They also were willing to lease island properties to the U.S. military for the then important tracking stations. That cooperation, coupled with the inherent geographical advantages of Cape Canaveral and a lack of serious physical or political constraints, pushed it to the forefront. It was quickly selected as the first U.S. long-range missile proving ground.

The very physical characteristics that had over several centuries discouraged human occupance made Cape Canaveral the near-perfect site for a missile range. Covering more than 23 square miles, the Cape was relatively isolated from heavily populated areas but would be accessible by road (if the roads and the required bridges were to be constructed by the Department of Defense), rail, and ocean-going vessels. The weather was also favorable most of the year, if you allowed hurricane season as a significant exception to that generalization.

Cape Canaveral’s east-facing orientation into the open Atlantic provided a huge over-water flight area that was well removed from populated land masses and heavily trafficked shipping lanes. A second important bonus was the accessibility of Bahamian and South Atlantic island sites for the installation of the then required optical and radar tracking stations. The additional fact that the Banana River Naval Air Station, located just 15 miles south of Cape Canaveral, was immediately available to serve as the missile center’s headquarters encouraged the American Government to push full steam ahead with the development of a missile range at the Cape.

On May 11, 1949, President Harry S Truman signed legislation establishing Cape Canaveral as the Joint Long-Range Proving Ground. The Banana River Naval Air Station, which had been transferred from Navy control to the Air Force, was renamed the Joint Long-Range Proving Ground Base. Although the U.S. Government already owned several square miles of real estate on Cape Canaveral, more land was needed to fulfill existing and future program needs. Government agencies began condemning and purchasing private property and moving residents out. Which caused no end of trouble because in their heart of hearts people everywhere are either NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) or BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), no matter how critical the governmental mission is to the country’s national welfare and safety. Construction of the first permanent access road, launch sites, instrumentation facilities, and missile operations areas on the Cape began in 1950. Cape Canaveral would never be the same.

Anxious to get the show on the road and demonstrate their new-found rocketry expertise, the Army launched two modified German V-2 rockets from Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950. A few days later came a new name, Patrick Air Force Base, by which it goes today, for what had previously and inelegantly been called the Long-Range Proving Ground Base. Even the Air Force balked at calling it the LRPGB. Patrick AFB was so much easier to spit out.

After that things at the Cape accelerated to a fast and furious pace that never seemed to slow. The prime cause was the quickly evolving ballistic missile program. Ballistic missiles were high explosive metal monsters that consumed everything in sight. The program’s ever growing special needs drove operations at the Cape and expanded everyone’s horizon. Again and again. Year after year. Continual expansion quickly became a way of life. Launch Pads 1, 2, 3, and 4 quickly proved insufficient to handle the newly developed requirements. New programs meant new ballistic missiles, which meant new facilities. Cape Canaveral became Construction Central. From their relatively humble beginnings, the launch facilities at Cape Canaveral doubled and re-doubled until ultimately they sprawled across the entire Cape. What incremental human settlement was unable to accomplish in 400 years, the military did in less than a decade. The Cape had been tamed and would never again in human history resemble what it had been in the so recent past.

In 1975 Congress created the Canaveral National Seashore. That legislation protected the Kennedy Space Center from potential urban encroachment slowly creeping south from Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach by setting aside the last major hunk of undeveloped beach property in eastern Florida. It was a land developer’s wet dream turned nightmare. All that pristine oceanfront property and no way to slice it into bite-sized pieces to be sold to irrational bidders who had been whipped into a state of frenzy by over-hyped marketing techniques. That must have made a ton of real estate agents sick at heart. To see all that easily saleable land pulled off the market. It was almost a crime. I mean, didn’t the Federal Government know that people had to have some way to make money? Hellfire, that’s what the free enterprise system is all about. Selling sun and fun on the Florida coast. Hey, peckerwood, it ain’t called demand for nothing.

Today, the Canaveral National Seashore is a quiet land and water wilderness populated largely by birds, mosquitoes, and those always nasty sandflies. Approximately 25 miles long, it consists of 60,000 empty acres of off-shore bars, sand dunes, brackish and salt marshes, lagoons, and shifting islands. It extends north from the Space Center and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, separated from the mainland by the Indian River. If you’re a birdwatcher a trip to Canaveral National Seashore or Merritt Island is a small piece of Paradise, with more than 280 recorded species. If you get there early enough and move slowly and quietly so as to not spook the little critters, you might catch sight of herons, egrets of all kinds, ibises, pelicans, gulls, sand-pipers, terns, osprey, bald eagle, reddish egret, and roseate spoonbill. The list goes on and on and on. And if you’re a night-owl and arrive during the summer months, you just might be rewarded by a sighting of giant loggerhead turtles or green sea turtles. They’re the real deal, as the great biologist Archie Carr would have been delighted to tell you.

Implications

Now for that word on human occupance patterns to which I eluded previously. Cape Canaveral was spared much of the environmental destruction that has been visited on the vast majority of coastal Florida for two primary reasons. First, its isolation was a direct result of geographic barriers and constraints that discouraged settlement over a long period as other, more easily accessible and developable locations went under the development gun. And second, just as pressure to open the Cape to urban development was increasing, the entire area was purchased and thus protected by the Federal Government from the typical Florida coastal urbanization process.

In a somewhat similar manner, that’s what happened to the Ocala National Forest and what has not happened to the Green Swamp in central Florida. Both of those areas were relatively isolated or at least difficult to access at times when other places around them were being exploited for human use. But only one was protected by U.S. Government action. And that’s why Cape Canaveral and the Ocala National Forest are still relatively pristine environments. With of course the terrible exception of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal that rips through the National Forest. And that’s also the reason the Green Swamp is threatened with piecemeal destruction. Because neither the State nor Federal governments have seen fit to step up to the plate and act as legitimate environmental stewards. A condition natural for the State since it exists only to serve its corporate paymasters.

The State of Florida seems paralyzed at the wheel, unable to protect sensitive, critical environments from insatiable demands for more and more land, more and more development. If you don’t believe that assessment is factual, take a close look at what is happening to the coastal areas of the Panhandle, throughout southwest Florida and specifically at the margins of the Big Cypress-western Everglades, and in the Green Swamp Basin. If those conditions of State preference for development and callous indifference to environmental preservation continue, then the future of Florida’s sensitive and relatively natural places is certain. If you listen closely, you can already hear the bulldozers roaring.

But the example of Cape Canaveral is one of hope, however faint. It holds up yet another sign that the future of Florida’s natural environments is not necessarily bleak if certain actions are taken.