The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan:
Map
of geographical features:
Map and map text from
http://www.sfwmd.gov
Lake Okeechobee spans 730-square miles, and is the second largest freshwater lake located wholly within the United States.
The Caloosahatchee River stretches 67 miles, from Lake Okeechobee west to the Gulf of Mexico, at Fort Myers.
The St. Lucie Canal is Lake Okeechobee's eastern outlet, extending 25.5 miles from Port Mayaca to the south fork of the St. Lucie River.
Three Water Conservation Areas (WCA), located in the western portions of Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties encompass 1,337 square miles. The northernmost WCA is also known as the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahtachee National Wildlife Refuge. The WCAs, along with Everglades National Park, preserves about 50% of the original Everglades.
Florida Bay and the Florida Keys are the southernmost components of the Greater Everglades system.
Much of the land in the Big Cypress Basin is undeveloped. Included in this natural land area is the Corkscrew Swamp and Sanctuary, the Big Cypress National Preserve, the Fakahatchee Strand, the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed (CREW) and the 10,000 Islands.
The CERP:
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) is the largest ecological undertaking the United States has ever embarked upon. The 7.8 billion program will take many decades to implement and has the potential to affect the lives of every resident of South Florida.
The Everglades is a unique network of subtropical wetlands whose network historically stretched over 200 miles from Orlando in the north to the southern tip of Florida. The slow moving body of water would overflow from Lake Okeechobee and gradually move southwards in a huge 40 mile wide and shallow 'river' through sawgrass marsh, emptying into the sea. This area, due to subtropical temperatures, rich soils and abundant water is a rich, diverse and unique ecosystem, and is a habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna.
The aim of the CERP is to restore and preserve South Florida's ecosystem, while enhancing water supplies and maintaining flood protection. Majorie Stoneman Douglas' 'Rivers of Grass', have been increasingly under pressure, especially since The Central and Southern Florida Project was authorized 50 years ago. This ecologically catastrophic program diverted water for flood control and reclamation of land. Whilst this was inherently important for South Florida's development at the time, the diversion of 2 billion gallons of water into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic by way of the Caloosahatchee River and St. Lucie River has deprived the Everglades of a large proportion of its vitally important fresh water. The Everglades as a result is now half its former size, and its flora and fauna are suffering intensely from the reduced fresh water flow from Lake Okeechobee and the accompanying salt water intrusion from the sea in the South. This has created a situation where 68 animal and plant species are threatened or endangered, wading bird populations have experienced a 90-95 percent reduction in numbers and three quarters of the Everglades have been infested with invasive plants. The need for a plan has been heightened by the economic and social realization that serious and more frequent water shortages are imminent: by 2050 the population of the 16 counties of South Florida will have doubled to 12 million; and water demand will double to 2 billion gallons a day.
Thus the CERP needs to address the problem of water supply, not only to restore the Everglades, but to quench the increasing thirst of South Florida, to ensure its continued economic development, and to provide for the projected explosion in population. But it is not a simple task of diverting water by building a few levees and digging a few ditches. An intricate network of reservoirs, treatment areas and recovery wells, totaling 217,000 acres will be coordinated to hold wet season water, distribute for dry season shortage, and clean up the contamination of water of mercury and other damaging pollutants. The CERP was enacted by title VI of the Water Resources Development Act of April 2000 after years of negotiations between The State of Florida, the Clinton Administration, Congress and a huge array of groups including environmental organizations, sugar growers, home building groups, the Seminole Tribe of Florida and numerous others. It also involves an intricate array of public awareness schemes, outreach programs and education attempts, as well as many other social programs, imperative for a Plan which will last so many years and one which will affect such a large sector of Florida's population.
The CERP therefore is a program which is inherently important to South Florida, one which will continue to affect the lives of millions of people in Florida for decades to come, and one on which a bright future depends.
For an excellent magazine article about the CERP see Florida Trend, March 2001
The CERP website can be found at www.evergladesplan.org