Last
Chance For The Everglades?
The Central And Southern Florida
Comprehensive Review Study
On July 1 the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers presented to Congress its final plan for the Comprehensive Review Study of the
Central and Southern Florida Project. The plan, which has become known as the Re-Study,
represents the culmination of more than six years of work by the Corps and other
government agencies at both the federal and state level, in particular the South Florida
Water Management District.
The Re-Study is one part of a
multi-year, multi-billion-dollar effort by a number of different agencies to reverse
environmental damage caused by past efforts to tame the Everglades. Under its auspices,
the Corps proposes to undo some of its past work.
The Corps’s plan, however,
has recently faced criticism for its skyrocketing open-ended costs, its critical
uncertainties, and its failure to promise measurable environmental benefits.
A PRICEY FIX
After severe floods in 1947
(according to some reports, you could have paddled a canoe from Miami to Orlando),
Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a system that would provide
flood protection, drainage, and a safe and reliable source of fresh water for the people
of South Florida. The resulting Central and Southern Florida Project reengineered South
Florida’s hydrology through a series of canals, dikes, and water-control structures
that equalized the supply of water between rainy and dry seasons. The drainage project now
serves close to six million people in a 16-county region.
In 1992, responding to dual
pressures for the restoration of the Everglades and growing demand on freshwater resources
in South Florida (where the population is expected to double by 2050), Congress instructed
the Corps to study changes to the earlier flood-control project. The Corps’s Re-Study
proposes a number of alterations to the original project that would take place over the
next 20 to 30 years. These include the filling in of canals, the creation of several
hundred underground wells, and a new series of complex pumps and water-control structures
intended to create a more natural flow of water into the Everglades. In total the Re-Study
consists of over 60 individual features.
The price tag for the Re-Study is
to be split 50-50 between the federal government and the taxpayers of Florida. When first
proposed, the project cost was estimated at $1 billion. As planning continued, the
estimates rose rapidly, first to $3 billion, then to $5 billion, and finally to the
current $7.8 billion price tag. But even $7.8 billion must be viewed merely as a starting
point. Ongoing restoration projects, which the Corps intends to fold into the Re-Study,
will cost an additional $2 billion to complete according to the U.S. General Accounting
Office. There has also been talk of dredging Lake Okeechobee, which will cost an
additional $1 billion. Thus the real cost of the Re-Study might be more accurately set at
nearly $11 billion.
Even this may not be the final
figure, however. Based on the GAO report, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), a leading member of
the U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee, has concluded that the
price tag for the Re-Study may double over time.
The Corps itself has indicated
that there are no fixed costs. A Corps report issued in April noted that the agency viewed
"ecosystem restoration in south Florida much more as an open-ended process than as a
specific set of targets. In that same report, the Corps also claimed that the bulk of
Everglades restoration would be completed by 2010. But just two months earlier, the
Corps’s head of ecosystem restoration, Stuart Appelbaum, stated emphatically that
"even with all the money in the world" the Corps could not finish this
restoration before 2017. It is difficult to justify that discrepancy in deadlines without
concluding that the cost of the Re-Study is only headed higher.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE WATER
The Corps has given repeated
assurances that the Re-Study will be able to provide an increased supply of water for
urban and agricultural needs. Yet it also admits that critical questions about this
objective remain unanswered.
To provide the men, women, and
children of South Florida with the water they will need, the Re-Study relies on a nascent
technology called aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wells to capture the nearly 1.6
billion gallons of fresh water that are currently flushed into the ocean each day. The
Corps plans to pump this water 1,000 feet underground into the Floridan Aquifer for
storage and then bring the water back to the surface when it is needed. The Corps admits
that ASRs have never been tested on the large scale contemplated in the Re-Study,
particularly in the unique geological conditions of South Florida. The Corps admits that
there are "substantial unique uncertainties" related to ASR, including the
relative youth of a 30-year old technology that "has no long-term track record."
Thus the Corps poses the
questions: "Will ASRs be able to provide the quality and quantity of water required
at the times they are needed and wanted? Are there likely to be any unintended
consequences of this technology? What will it cost?"
In the search for answers to
these pressing questions, the Corps plans a series of ASR pilot projects. These, however,
will not be completed until 2011, well after implementation of the Re-Study is in full
swing. In other words, the Re-Study depends on technology that the Corps itself admits may
be faulty, but which it intends to implement well before its own tests are complete. The
Corps has not clearly addressed the implications for success or failure of the plan should
the pilot projects not work as expected.
A further uncertainty left
unaddressed by the Corps is the potential threat to ASRs posed by Class 1 injection wells,
which are used for underground disposal of waste products. Florida is the only state in
the union that allows the use of these wells to inject municipally treated sewage
underground. Every day 400 million gallons of this waste are injected under the Floridan
Aquifer. Studies show that this waste is migrating up into the Floridan Aquifer in the
same counties where ASRs are planned. There is no program in place, however, to determine
if this waste could threaten water supplies should the Re-Study be implemented.
Environmentalists have been virtually silent on this issue, perhaps for fear of delaying
the Re-Study.
EVERGLADES RESTORATION? MAYBE
Yet the safety of the water
supply is not the only critical uncertainty in the Re-Study. There have been many doubts
expressed about the plan’s ability to deliver the promised environmental benefits. In
February a host of scientists and environmentalists blasted the Corps’ plans. For
example, Dr. Stuart Pimm of the University of Tennessee said, "It’s not that
there are gaping holes in this plan. It’s that we scientists are having trouble
finding even a thread of restoration upon it."
Shannon Estonez of the World
Wildlife Fund complained that "Congress isn’t going to go for this. We
can’t be 10 years and $3 billion down the road and see almost no improvements in the
natural system."
The Sierra Club wrote that,
"Overall, the plan does little to restore the Everglades and a lot to exacerbate the
region’s ecological problems."
And in the most scathing
criticism, scientists at Everglades National Park wrote, "[There is] insufficient
evidence to substantiate claims that the Re-Study will result in the recovery of a
healthy, sustainable ecosystem. Rather, we find substantial, credible, and compelling
evidence to the contrary."
In a report issued in April, the
Corps attempted to address these concerns. The Corps stated emphatically that
"implementation of the [Re-Study] will result in the recovery of healthy, sustainable
ecosystems throughout South Florida. ... There are many reasons for having confidence that
it will be successful."
Yet a closer reading shows that
the Corps still harbors serious doubts. For example, the Corps confesses its inability to
predict what effect the Re-Study will actually have on the environment: "There is
very real and, to a great extent, unresolvable uncertainty about what the new ecosystem
will look like. Because no one knows for sure what the ecosystem will look like, no one
knows for sure what the hydropattern required to produce it will look like. This is, in
our view, the greatest uncertainty in the entire study. Moreover, we do not know with
certainty what the linkages between hydropatterns and the ecosystem are."
Of course the Re-Study has never
been about restoring all of the original Everglades ecosystem. Half of the great marsh has
been built on, paved over, or drained beyond all recognition. The Corps, and almost
everyone else, agrees that the "new" Everglades that might result from the
Re-Study would look — and behave — differently from any version that has existed
before. A less charitable assessment might conclude that the Corps plans to turn the
"managed" system created by the earlier drainage project into a micro-managed
system under the Re-Study. The question remains: will the Corps’s micro-management
actually do anything to improve the Everglades?
Many environmental groups, and
the Corps itself, have stated that the Re-Study is the last opportunity to save the
Everglades. Congress may disagree.
Even before the final plan was
presented there were grumblings on Capitol Hill that the $11 billion cost of the Re-Study
had risen out of control, that the Corps had no clearly defined strategy, and that there
existed no means to measure the plan’s success — or failure.
These criticisms were enough for
the Florida Legislature to enact legislation giving the state greater oversight of the
Re-Study. Congress might go a step further and actually put the brakes on the plan.
This may not be the disaster for
the Everglades and South Florida that many will portray it to be. If, in fact, the
Re-Study is the last chance for the Everglades, it is critical that the plan be more
carefully thought out and able to demonstrate a higher probability of success.
Twenty to 30 years down the road
will be too late for the Corps to decide that the Re-Study cannot do the job. That
eventuality, rather than a year or two of delay, would be the real disaster for South
Florida.
Glenn Spencer is the deputy director of environmental
policy at Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation (e-mail:spencer@cse.org).
While the Re-Study
is certainly the largest and most expensive part of the overall South Florida restoration
effort, it is not the only component. A number of other projects are already ongoing.
Among these are the following:
Modified Water Deliveries: This project was authorized
under the 1989 Everglades Park Protection and Expansion Act. It is intended to add 107,000
acres to Everglades National Park and restore natural water flows into Shark River Slough
and the park. The project has been held up by legal wrangling over a government buyout of
homes in what is called the 8.5 Square Mile Area.
Cost: At least $132 million
Completion date: 2003
The Everglades Construction Project: Authorized by the
1994 Everglades Forever Act, this project is intended to reduce the flow of phosphorus
into the Everglades from about 200 parts per billion to as low as 10 parts per billion.
This will be accomplished through a series of artificial filtration marshes and a change
in agricultural practices.
Cost: An estimated $3 billion
Completion date: 2006
C-111 Project: The C-111 Project is intended to restore
natural water flows into Taylor Slough and Everglades National Park. The completion of
this project has been held up due to disputes between Everglades National Park and local
residents and farmers.
Cost: At least $121 million
Completion date: 2003
Kissimmee River Restoration: In the 1960s the Corps
hemmed in the winding Kissimmee river, filled in most of the surrounding marshes, and
created a series of dams. The result has been an environmental disaster. The Corps is now
seeking to recreate the original flow of the river.
Cost: An estimated $500 million
Completion date: 2010
Ten Mile Creek Project: This project will create a
reservoir and marsh to store and filter storm water before it is released into the St.
Lucie River, which eventually joins the Indian River Lagoon.
Cost: An estimated $34 million
Beginning date: 2001
