© 2000 Cable News Network
December 22, 2000
By John Zarrella
CNN Miami Bureau Chief

(CNN) -- Shortly after the start of the new year, the Army Corps of Engineers will begin moving earth in South Florida. And they will be moving it for at least the next 30 years. Scientists and environmentalists say putting Florida's Everglades back together again is the most ambitious restoration project in human history.

"You can't just simply build it and they will come. We have to make sure we build it right," said Ronnie Best, chairman of the Science Coordination Team.

Building it right comes at a high price. It's going to cost about $8 billion to fix the Everglades. The state of Florida and the federal government will split the cost. If it works, it will turn one of the nation's greatest environmental blunders into one of its greatest turnarounds.

'Controlling the monster'

Just over 50 years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers was given the monumental task of "controlling the monster," as the Everglades was referred too. Every bad rainy season brought tremendous flooding from the Glades. Crops were ruined. Development was impossible.

To control the Everglades, the Army Corps dug hundreds of miles of drainage canals and built levees and dikes. The plan worked perfectly. Flooding was controlled. Agriculture could now flourish in the thick, rich Everglade's muck. And urban development could spread west. But what could no longer spread was the water.

The Everglades is called a river of grass for a reason. The constant movement of water, sometimes only inches deep but covering millions of acres, is the lifeblood of the Everglades. As the water flows slowly through the sawgrass, cypress, marshes and mangroves, it is filtered, purified.

What no one seemed to know at the time was that diverting the natural flow of water would suffocate the Everglades. Nature's system was far more complex than anyone understood. And what man did to it caused a disastrous domino effect.

An environmental disaster

In the simplest terms, here's what happened: The Kissimmee River north of Lake Okeechobee was straightened. A meandering 100-mile-long river was turned into a 50-mile-long drainage canal. With the bends and turns removed, the natural filtration system was gone.

Farm runoff washed straight down channelized Kissimmee into Lake Okeechobee. That polluted farm runoff continued south, dumping from the lake into agriculture areas and picking up more fertilizer and pesticide runoff. Eventually, the water moved through the newly built canals and spillways into Everglades National Park and finally into Florida Bay.

Over the decades, increased farming and rapid urban growth shrunk the Everglades to less than half its original size. As increased pressure was placed on the system, signs of environmental disaster began to appear.

Algae blooms, caused by the farm residue runoff, covered huge areas of Lake Okeechobee in the 1980s. During the same period, migratory birds began disappearing. There are now nearly 70 Everglades species on the endangered list.

Florida Bay on the southern tip of the state fell ill too. The seagrass, a natural breeding ground for fish, died out. Nature's well-crafted system was totally out of whack. The real tragedy, environmentalists say, is that nothing was done sooner to correct the mistake.

Restoring the natural flow

For more than a decade, debate raged over who should pay for the repair and how it should be done. Already, 50 percent of the Everglades has been lost.

"We can't put the Everglades back the way they were, unfortunately, a hundred years ago. But we can restore the essential characteristics that make the Everglades unique, and we're very confident the plan that we've got will do that," said Stuart Appelbaum with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Among other things, the restoration plan calls for back-filling many of the canals, tearing out many of the water retention structures and building man-made marshes to filter water. More than 300 wells will be sunk to store water -- as much as 1.6 billion gallons a day.

Ultimately, the free flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico will be restored.

University of Florida scientist Frank Mazzotti says the plan will benefit both humans and nature.

"It not only looks at saving or restoring the Everglades ecosystem, but (takes) into account how we're going to integrate this human presence with the Everglades system," Mazzotti said.

"Nowhere else in the world do you have so many people, five million people, living next to such a large wilderness area. It's a true challenge of restoration and management." Error: Unable to read footer file.