The answer to the question: can Florida Bay be restored-- the answer is, yes. But we are twenty or thirty years beyond the time where nature's resiliency might have proven shortly. Florida Bay is heavily damaged. Its water quality bears little resemblance to what sustained remarkable biodiversity. Today, scavenger species roam the blighted underwater landscape. The scale of the tragedy is so great, that if its destruction had been above the surface, we would be squirming under withering international criticism.
Recently, AP published yet another report of Florida Bay "on the brink of collapse". It's a good update, but in truth Florida Bay is not on the brink of anything: it is gone. A rout of gargantuan proportions.
Twenty years ago, when the decline of the coral reef and shallow water wilderness of the Florida Keys came into focus, environmentalists talked gingerly about ecological collapse. They didn't want to scare off people. They didn't want to sound negative. The environmentalists began talking about decline as a cascading phenomenon. Each and every insult needed to be noted and carefully measured-- the loss of sea grass habitat, the effects of reckless boating on shallow water flats, the algae blooms and transformation of species. Those who agitated for law enforcement were instantly confronted by property rights activists and anti-government fools. Malcom Gladwell's explorations of "tipping points" was added to the mix. Then, "shifting baselines" gained currency in the public realm; a term applying equally to measuring change as to tourists whose happiness seemed to scarcely alter from watching nature's splendor to peering at each other through face masks and turbid, lifeless waters. Last but not least, investigators, scientists, NGO's and user groups grew from a cottage industry to a full-fledged movement, organized in hotel conference rooms, consuming powerpoint presentations, Danish, and contributions, issuing report after report about a place, Florida Bay, whose surface on many days is impenetrable as a mirror and shows, for the most part, our own shortcomings.
Florida Bay made a lasting impression as a young man in the early 1970's. On a handful of days with a fishing guide, I witnessed the bay firing on all cylinders. In the early morning light, there was riot of wildlife as far as the eye could see. Schools of bonefish--hundreds and more-- roamed like platoons of soldiers stitching together acres of bay bottom; their fins pushing wakes in nervous wedges. Sharks and rays. Bird life everywhere. Tarpon rolling in channels and deeper sloughs. You had to wait a long time for these moments to occur. Now you have to wait forever. Who knew my generation would be the last to witness the flickering of a splendid corner of creation: the Everglades? Florida Bay on unpredictable days and certain tides was like a diorama sprung to life. That movie, Ben Stiller in "Night at the Museum" where after closing the contents spring to life? It was Florida Bay. The silliness of ancient peoples and native Indians springing to life also has its own warped analogue there.
The AP calls attention to the role of the Miccosukee Tribe in litigation wrapping up the future of Florida Bay. The Tribe are descendants of native Americans chased into the swampy wilderness by the US Army in its last prosecution of the Indian Wars in Florida. In the beginning, they hid on tree islands. Today, their durable housing, satellite TV's, SUVs and other conveniences are still threatened by floods, at the mercy of a massive, mechanical flood management system that "controls" the Everglades.
With considerable revenue from slot machines and gambling, the Tribe can raise funds easily for litigation: an exceedingly difficult piece of the environmental agenda. But the Tribe's litigation strategy is a disturbing paradox. On the one hand, the Tribe has been stellar in suing on water pollution overlooked by the US government and the State of Florida in its operation of the South Florida canal system bordering and inside the Glades. Its chief litigator is a head-strong former US Attorney Dexter Lehtinen. On the other hand, the Tribe has been a vociferous opponent of pulling apart the dikes and levees and elevating Tamiami Trail that prevent and obstruct more fresh water from flowing through the Everglades to Florida Bay. Underlying its litigation is a sequence for "restoration" the Tribe agreed to, nearly two decades ago, that calls for opening up the Everglades carefully, depending on massive reservoirs to hold excess water, before releasing clean fresh water in gradual doses to mimic the natural flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee and its northern feeders all the way-- more than 90 miles-- to Florida Bay.
It is all hypothetical. The sequence depends on cleaning excess nutrients from polluting sugar fields and cities to less than 10 parts per billion: like removing dust from a bag of flour. The Tribe is insistent that polluters be forced to clean up their own pollution before allowing it to be injected into public waterways, including Everglades National Park.
The federal and state government, accordingly, have laid out a plan that includes a reliance on engineering solutions that principally fill campaign war chests for elections across the spectrum. Those fake alleyways include the "safe" manipulation of aquifers in porous limestone and the largest above ground, concrete lined reservoirs ever constructed. The initial results, a decade after the plan was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton and witnessed by former Gov. Jeb Bush at a Rose Garden ceremony (on the day that the Supreme Court was deciding the outcome of the 2000 presidential election), are pathetic.
It doesn't take much more thinking power than parsing the difference between a possum and a cat to know the core technologies used by federal and state agencies are a poor substitute for more paying to take lands out of sugar production-- more than 700,000 acres of historic Everglades are used to farm a crop, sugar, that is heavily dependent on federal subsidies-- and returning them to filtering marshes. Along this line, Gov. Charlie Crist --- now running for US Senate to fill the seat vacated by Mel Martinez, also a Republican-- set out to steer the state to acquire lands owned by the US Sugar Corporation. The Tribe strongly opposes the acquisition through an aggressive litigation strategy. While there are plenty of reasons to mistrust the federal government, the historical animosities have turned the Tribe into rigid, unyielding, and wealthy supporters of a failed plan to restore the Everglades. The AP report doesn't come right out and say so: it leaves room for interpretation.
To look back at the lost decades of Florida Bay fills one with foreboding. It brings to mind a moment -- my last conversation with the late Congressman Dante Fascell, whose district encompassed Florida Bay and the Florida Keys. It was October 1995, and I spotted the Congressman and his beloved wife, sitting quietly and unnoticed where I joined them on a banquette in the anteroom of the Biltmore Hotel ballroom in Coral Gables where President Clinton was holding a final fundraiser before the November election.
Many decades earlier, Congressman Fascell had helped shaped federal policies to protect Florida Bay. He had been a giant and his time was nearly done. "What are you doing here?", Dante asked me quizzically. I followed his glance over the crowd of lobbyists organized around clusters of well-heeled clients waiting their turn to slip into the big ticket fund raiser. I told him, "I'm delivering a letter from NRDC to the Clinton administration informing them of our intent to sue if they convey the Homestead Air Force Base to Miami-Dade County without performing adequate environmental studies on its impacts to Florida Bay and the Everglades." He nodded wanly. "I made a mistake not including the Keys in Everglades National Park," he said. A silence fell between us. "Dinosaurs. We are all going to be dinosaurs."
Hours later, I was able to hand deliver the letter. "I hate the government for making my life absurd," the late urbanist Jane Jacobs told one interviewer. I know exactly what she meant.
Posted on Wed, Aug. 05, 2009
Florida Bay's ecosystem on the brink of collapse
By BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press Writer
Boat captain Tad Burke looks out over Florida Bay and sees an ecosystem that's dying as politicians, land owners and environmentalists bicker.
He's been plying these waters for nearly 25 years, and has seen the declines in shrimp and lobster that use the bay as a nursery, and less of the coveted species like bonefish that draw recreational sportsmen from around the world.
"Bonefish used to be very prevalent, and now we don't see a tenth of the amount that we used to find in the bay, and even around the Keys because the habitat no longer supports the population," says Burke, head of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association.
Experts fear a collapse of the entire ecosystem, threatening not only some of the nation's most popular tourism destinations - Everglades National Park and the Florida Keys - but a commercial and recreational fishery worth millions of dollars.
Florida Bay is a sprawling estuary at the state's southern tip, covering nearly three times the area of New York City.
The headwaters of the Everglades - starting some 300 miles north near Orlando - used to end up here after flowing south in a shallow sheet like a broad, slow-moving river, filtering through miles of muck, marsh and sawgrass.
Historically, the bay thrived on that perfect mix of freshwater from the Everglades and saltwater from the adjacent Gulf of Mexico. It was a virtual Garden of Eden, home to a bounty of wading birds, fish, sea grasses and sponges.
But to the north of the bay, man's unforgiving push to develop South Florida has left the land dissected with roads, dikes and miles of flood control canals to make way for homes and farms, choking off the freshwater flow and slowly killing the bay.
The ill effects extend even across the narrow spit of land that makes up the Florida Keys to the shallow coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. Many popular commercial fish like grouper and snapper begin their lives in the bay before migrating into the ocean to the reefs.
"If Florida Bay heads south and there's a lot less fish in there, well, when that's done, it's all over down here," Burke says. "When that goes, your reefs are going to go, too, and it'll just be a chain reaction.
"You could argue that the bay has already collapsed," he adds.
Algae blooms block life-giving sunlight from penetrating the water's surface. Sea grasses that filter the water and provide habitat for the food chain are dying. And some migratory birds aren't returning.
"The health of Florida Bay is very much tied to the state of the Everglades, and the Everglades isn't improving either," says Tom Van Lent, senior scientist with the not-for-profit Everglades Foundation. "Their fates are one and the same."
For decades, the state has struggled to find a way to restore natural flow through the Everglades and curb the pollution caused by runoff from sugar farms, cow pastures and urban sprawl. It is the largest such wetlands restoration effort ever.
"Having that water coming down from the Everglades is key," says Rob Clift of the National Parks Conservation Association. "It has to be restored."
Attempts to fix the Everglades by constructing water treatment marshes and reservoirs, among other things, have been dogged by politics, funding shortfalls, and contentious, litigation-filled disagreements over the best solutions. And while land has been purchased and some projects completed, key restoration components are undone.
"It's really aggravating," Burke says. "We've seen very little, if any, really ground breaking projects that would help change the flow into Florida Bay."
A litany of lawsuits filed by parties favoring one solution over another are partly to blame, says Carol Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, the state agency overseeing Everglades restoration.
Name an environmental group, and the agency has been sued by them.
Wehle calls them "obstructionists." Her agency heads back to court Aug. 6 for closing arguments in yet another lawsuit.
"There are a handful of people that choose not to participate in this process and instead use litigation, and who is losing? The environment is losing," Wehle says.
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, who call the Everglades their ancestral home, have sued the water district repeatedly. It's the tribe and a few others who now have the district back in court as part of an effort to block the state's planned $536 million purchase of land in the Everglades from U.S. Sugar Corp.
Tribe spokeswoman Joette Lorion says the deal could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, leaving little money to pay for actual projects, and will create more delays as officials figure out exactly what to do with all the new land.
"Meeting upon meeting, and the Everglades continues to die," Lorion says.
The water district says the deal is a historic opportunity to take sugar out of production and provide land to build much-needed reservoirs and treatment areas to clean and store water.
Back on Florida Bay, Burke just wants something done before it's too late. To the casual onlooker, the area is stunning even today. But Burke knows better.
"In a lot of ways," he says, "it's still pristine and beautiful down here, but it's also on its last dying breath."
© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
2 comments:
Wouldn't the removal of the dike, known as the Tamiami Trail, further exacerbate this problem, by allowing more nutrient (good and bad) rich water to flow through the southern everglades, in to Florida Bay, and across the keys into the Atlantic Reef System. Allowing that "natural water flow" into the southern everglades might have some significant unintended consequences.
m
great poster! critters beware, humans are the new fascinating wildlife.
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