Restoring the Florida Everglades

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Restoring the Florida Everglades

Chris Minor
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Introduction to the Watershed
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History

• Until late 1800s a large chain of wetland
• Covered 8.9 million acres
• 4 million acres River of Grass
• High diversity of flora and fauna
• Water moved slowly through the system, extending
  flows from season to season.

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History Cont.

• Late 1880s efforts began to drain south Florida
• Considered necessary for safety and commerce

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Today

• 1000 miles of canals
• 720 miles of levees
• Controlled by 16 pump stations
• 200 gates/other water control structures

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Today Cont.

• ½ of Everglades lost to agribusiness and urban
  development
• 100 mi. long Kissimmee River has been converted
  into a 50 mile long canal
• Flow to the Everglades reduced by 70. An average
  of 1.7 billion gallons of water is discharged to
  the ocean every day.
• The littoral marsh in Lake Okeechobee suffers
  from high water being backed to meet the high
  demand.

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Today Cont.

• 1 million acres posted with health advisory due
  to contamination
• Florida Bay suffers from a lack of freshwater
  causing hypersaline conditions, a sever decline
  of seagrasses and algal blooms
• All estuaries have suffered impacts to their
  ecological structure

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Whats causing the problem?
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Water Management Issues

• Top threat to the Everglades ecosystem
• Quality- Primarily agricultural runoff
• Quantity and Timing- Wet and dry seasons altered
  
• Distribution- Decrease in number of acreage
  inundated
• 2/3 of the area depends on the rain received by
  1/3 of the original watershed

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Introduction of Invasive/Exotic Species

• Hydrilla
• (Hydrilla verticillata)
• Water Hyacinth
• (Echlornia crassipies)

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Agriculture

• EAA-505,000 acres dedicated to agriculture
• The most productive area in the state
• 80 in sugarcane and 20 vegetables, rice and sod
• Provides 40 of the nations winter vegetable and
  25 of the nations sugar
• Largest single source of phosphorus to the
  everglades providing 47 of the historical load
• Each year 1.8 million tons of fertilizer applied
  costing 250 million for 3 billion worth of crops

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So what!
.

• High levels of phosphorus causes a shift in algae
  species
• Sawgrass to cattails
• Decline in wading birds

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Human Population Increase

• Currently 6 million people in South Florida
• 7 of 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas in the
  country
• Daily population increase of 900 residents
• 20-25 years expected to reach 12 million

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So what!

• For 900 people 200,000 gallons of water are
  needed
• Added square miles of building and paving reduce
  rainwater penetration into aquifers
• Obviously- it alters the land, changes the water
  flow and creates more runoff

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Review

• High demands for water from agriculture and human
  population increase
• Economic value of agriculture
• Scope of exotic species

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Now what?
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The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
(CERP)

• Army Corp of Engineers in 1999
• Endeavors to restore, protect, and preserve the
  South Florida ecosystem
• Principles that guide the plan include
• -Meeting restoration, preservation, and
  protection requirements while providing for
  the region's other water-related needs
• -Incorporating best-available science and
  independent scientific review
• -Openly including and engaging stakeholders
  Ensuring full partnership with federal, tribal,
  state and local agencies and taking their views
  into full consideration and
• -Creating a flexible plan that is based on
  adaptive assessment and recognizing that
  modifications will be made in the future based on
  new information.

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Land Acquisition

• The South Florida Water management District,
  as the Non-Federal Sponsor of the Comprehensive
  Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), is charged
  with the responsibility of acquiring the real
  estate needed for the construction, monitoring
  and operation of the CERP projects. The CERP
  projects are estimated to cost 7.8 billion of
  which 2.2 billion is allocated to the
  acquisition of lands (in October 1999 dollars).

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CERP Concept

• To capture and store freshwater currently
  discharged to the ocean and use it during the dry
  season to replicate natural flow
• This goal is to be achieved through the removal
  of 240 miles of levees and canals, and the
  building a network of reservoirs, underground
  storage wells, and pumping stations that capture
  water for redistribution.
• Responsibilities for implementing CERP are shared
  between the Army Corps of Engineers and the South
  Florida Water Management District.

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CERP

• First cost estimate is 7.8 billion.
• Annual operation and maintenance cost, including
  monitoring and management is estimated at 182
  million
• Implementation continued through 2038, the half
  way point is 2010

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CERP

• Realize complete recover is not possible
• There have been substantial and irreversible
  reductions in the spatial extent of the wetlands
  system (including an approximate 50 percent
  reduction in the Everglades) and in the total
  water storage, timing, and flow capacities of the
  systems, as well as well as permanent impacts
  from rising sea levels, establishment of exotic
  plants and animals, subsidence, and losses of
  organic soils.
• There is a significant lack of pre-drainage
  quantitative, qualitative, and ecological data
  available to contrast and compare efforts.

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CERP
Overall objective is to create a new
Everglades, one that will be different from
previous systems and will be substantially
healthier than the current system.
The restoration effort aims to restore a
sustainable ecosystem that preserves the
properties of South Floridas systems and
supports agriculture, fishery, tourist-based
economics and a Highly quality of urban life.
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Goals of CERP

• Enhance ecologic values through improving the
  total spatial extent of natural areas improving
  habitat and functional quality and improving
  native plant and animal species abundance and
  diversity.
• Enhance economic values and social well being
  through increasing availability of fresh water
  (agricultural/municipal and industrial) reducing
  flood damage (agricultural/urban) providing
  recreational and navigation opportunities and
  protecting cultural and archeological resources
  and values.

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Projects of the CERP
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Restoration

• A daunting task
• 18,000 square miles
• The most ambitious ecological restoration ever
  attempted
• 55 federal, state and county agencies as well as
  two Native American tribal councils

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Restore Natural Flow

• Somewhat unknown after all still need to provide
  water for agriculture and residents
• Perhaps a system of aquifer storage and recovery
  (ASR) the aquifer storage and recov-ery plan
  proposes drilling more than 300wells in South
  Florida that would funnel up to 1.7 billion
  gallons of a day into underground aquifers to be
  stored and pumped out as needed.
• Will it work?

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Restore Natural Flow Cont.

• Sawgrass ridges running parallel and open-water
  sloughs, dotted with higher tree islands were
  landform the contributed directly to the
  historical flow.
• Degradation of these areas in association with
  canals, levees and roads seem irreversible

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Improving Water Quality

• Everglades Forever Act of 1994 significantly
  changed business in the EAA
• The Act ensures 320 million will go from the
  sugar industry to restoration of lands by 2014
• Water flow to the Everglades will be increased by
  28 through re-routing of rivers and release of
  stored water
• 40,000 acres of EAA lands will be converted into
  an artificial filtering marsh to help cleans the
  water before it leaves the area
• By 2006 water runoff will be 10 times as pure as
  rainwater

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Improving Water Quality - BMP

• Everglade Best Management Program (BMP)
• Requires the EAA to achieve a 25 reduction in
  total phosphorus discharge to the everglades.
• BMPs include covering crops to reduce wind and
  water erosion, spread soil removed from canals to
  fields, laser level fields, modify pump
  practices, vegetation along banks, minimize
  fertilizer application, crop rotation, growing
  rice during the summer allowing higher water
  tables, use vegetable drainage water in sugarcane
  fields and retention of drainage on-farm

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BMP Continued

• Financial incentives are provided to grower who
  exceed the 25 minimum.

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Improving Water Quality - Storm Water Treatment
Areas

• Advanced treatment technologies consisting of
  47,250 acres of synthetic wetlands built to
  remove phosphorus
• These areas will receive on average 1.4 million
  acre-feet year of stormwater runoff from the EAA
• The natural system was nutrient poor with less
  than 10ppb concentrations of phosphorus so
  several strategies have been developed to
  increase the phosphorus uptake (Direct filter,
  membrane filters, dissolved air filtration,
  neutralizing chemicals

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Improving Water Quality - Aquifer Storage and
Recovery

• Will allow for storage of water during the wet
  season to be used in the dry season which will
  decrease the loss of flow to the ocean and
  reducing water loss to the everglades

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Restoration Program in the Kissimee River Basin

• Revitalize habitat for 320 wildlife species
• Federal and state government cost sharing
  379,000 million, 15 year project to recharge the
  river and restore the meandering bend that were
  channelized in the 1960s

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Restoration Program in the Florida Bay

• Nearly 6 million supported over 70 research
  projects designed to assist restoration efforts
• Thorough study will provide knowledge necessary
  to help restore the estuary

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Restoration in the East Everglades

• The Everglades Protection and Expansion Act added
  107,600 acres of critical habitat in Shark Slough
  added to Everglades national park.
• Directed the ACE to modify water management
  structures to allow for sheet flow of water.

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Then and Now
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Achieving Progress

• The ultimate success of CERP will be a reflection
  of its implementation over
• more than 30 years. Successful implementation
  will require a well-coordinated
• strategy that recognizes, first and foremost,
  that ecosystem restoration is the
• overarching objective. CERP will begin to
  reverse, in a relatively short time,
• the pattern of ecological degradation that has
  been occurring in the natural
• system for many decades.
• Implementation also will be guided by a set of
  principles
• Utilization of interdisciplinary and interagency
  teams
• Incorporation of outreach and public involvement
• Maintenance of regional system focus
• Integration with ongoing and future projects
• Integrated contingency planning
• Consideration of water quality needs
• Plan evaluation through adaptive assessment
• Addressing of uncertainties
• Assurances to water users
• Development and refinement of models and tools

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Future

• The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
  will revitalize the ecosystem, while providing
  future fresh water supplies for the people and
  farms of the region, too. It is considered the
  world's largest such project.
• But its success is up to all of us citizens
  across the nation and state from the public, and
  the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department
  of Interior, the South Florida Water Management
  District and other agencies. Both input and
  support will be required over the coming decades
  as we construct this ambitious ecological
  restoration effort.
• Twenty years from now, today's children should
  have the opportunity as adults to visit this
  majestic and captivating ecosystem and see its
  expansive sawgrass marshes and towering blue
  skies. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration
  Plan will ensure the River of Grass will be a
  healthier place than it is today, and one which
  will remain strong and vital in the future. We
  hope the information presented in this web site
  will help explain the problems of the Everglades
  and what we are doing to restore this national
  treasure.