Miami-Dade County’s Department of Environmental Resource Management — vital to the region’s natural resources, but reviled by some residents who consider it heavy-handed — already is a shadow of its former self. Now it looks like the county commission is poised to finish it off in the name of streamlining the county’s construction-permitting process and economic development.

That would be a mistake, putting the long-term environmental well-being of this community in danger. Environmental protection is not antithetical to either of those goals, and commissioners should seek balance when the issue comes up for discussion, scheduled for their Tuesday meeting.

County Mayor Carlos Gimenez last year combined the functions of the environmental, planning and zoning departments. It was part of his campaign promise to streamline county operations at a savings to tax-stressed residents. His idea of a “one-stop shop” for permitting functions makes a lot of sense. As he said: “You have to jump through 17 hoops for somebody to replace a sea wall.”

Now, in his pursuit of another overhaul, he and the commission must make sure that taxpayers ultimately don’t bear the high costs of a tainted, damaged environment. In many ways, it’s our bread and butter, drawing tourists, providing recreation and, yes, creating economic development. Compare the parks and condos that have come to line Biscayne Bay decades after it was cleaned of icky things that repelled rather than attracted water activities.

More important, this community is sitting on top of its water supply, a fragile resource that is under threat of contamination, along with the Everglades, which must be protected from further degradation.

Mr. Gimenez’s vision is to fold what remains of DERM into a new Regulatory and Economic Resources Department. DERM was responsible for enforcing a broad range of county, state and federal laws. But notice how “environment” is not even in the new department’s name. That’s worrisome, despite the mayor’s protestations that the environment — the air we breath, the water we drink, the landscapes and vistas we enjoy — remains a priority.

Apparently taking their cues from the state, which foolishly took a sledgehammer to its growth-management laws, some commissioners, too, seem ready to dismantle the policies that have stood between smart growth and a development free-for-all. One proposal would let small farmers fill wetlands without permits. This means that residents who have staked a claim in the 81/2-Square-Mile Area in west Miami-Dade could build in areas that, along with underground aquifers, provide the water the community relies on. Of course, these residents have waged a pitched battle with DERM — vilifying its inspectors and its fines — for almost two decades. But allowing building in designated wetlands would be a short-sighted sop to a very small group of disgruntled people, to the detriment of the rest of us.

Mr. Gimenez, however, is right to want to streamline the county’s construction-permitting process. It has been an impediment to getting businesses up and running and letting homeowners make necessary repairs and move on.

Still, replacing a sea wall remains a lot easier than replacing coral reefs and drinking water and wetlands. It was DERM’s responsibility to protect them all. And the mayor and commission must ensure that this responsibility does not disappear when the department does.

Posted on Mon, May. 14, 2012

Miami-Dade’s leaky pipes: More than 47 million gallons of waste spilled in past two years

By CHARLES RABIN AND CURTIS MORGAN
crabin@MiamiHerald.com

MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

The central district Wastewater Treatment Plant, on Key Biscayne, Monday.

Miami-Dade County’s antiquated sewer system has ruptured at least 65 times over the past two years, spewing more than 47 million gallons of untreated human waste into waterways and streets from rural South Miami-Dade to the ritzy condos of Brickell Avenue to the Broward County border.

The breaks and blowouts — topping out at nine in a single stinky month last October — were documented in nine warning letters that state environmental regulators sent to the county’s Water and Sewer Department between June 2010 and April.

The letters, warning that the county could be on the hook for “damages and restoration’’ and civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day, were the catalyst for ongoing negotiations with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Justice and Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The talks are expected to end with a legal settlement committing the county to a multibillion-dollar plumbing repair plan — and probable customer rate hikes.

The letters lay out more dirty details of “unauthorized discharges’’ not included in a 78-page draft consent decree released last week that declares the county in violation of federal water quality laws, in large part because some of the foul spills drained into canals and Biscayne Bay.

Many of the leaks from the county’s 7,500 miles of lines were relatively minor, posing minimal traffic disruptions and public health concerns. But at least eight topped 100,000 gallons. Six more released more than 1 million gallons of raw sewage from rusted valves or cracked concrete-and-steel pipes that county engineers acknowledge had long out-lived their intended life span.

The worst problem by far, according to the DEP letters, is the county’s aging Central District Wastewater Plant on Virginia Key, which is designed to discharge partially treated sewage out a pipe more than a mile off shore. State records show that between October and December 2011 four separate failures sent a total of more than 19 million gallons spilling from the plant.

The largest at Virginia Key, on Oct. 9, spilled 17 million gallons of raw sewage.

Doug Yoder, the Water and Sewer Department’s deputy director, blamed it on a broken pin holding a filter screen used to divert “chunks of stuff” from the liquid flow. Once the pin failed, the thick solids built up, triggering a massive back-up that forced workers to shut down that plant and divert incoming sewage to another site, causing even more of an overflow.

The public never heard about that failure, Yoder said, because “nothing actually left the plant site. The overflow went into the storm drains, then back to the plant.”

But three weeks later, on Oct. 31, another million gallons of partially-treated sewage spilled out a relief valve into surrounding bay waters, forcing Miami-Dade to issue no-swimming advisories. That was triggered by a power outage that shut down a pump as operators shifted from a generator to the power grid.

Yoder conceded operators have a difficult task at Virginia Key, the oldest and most decaying of the county’s three plants. It handles some 25 million gallons of raw sewage a day from Surfside, Bal Harbour and Miami Beach. The county has mulled replacing it, which would cost $500 million — money Yoder said the department doesn’t have. He also acknowledged the department has resisted pouring a lot of repair money into a plant it hopes to replace.

“We want to avoid spending a lot to keep it running if we’re going to take it out of service,” he said.

The federal enforcement action isn’t the county’s first. In 1996, Miami-Dade paid a $2 million fine — at the time the largest ever for a U.S. Clean Water Act violation — and agreed to expand the capacity of a system that was constantly pouring raw sewage into the Miami River and Biscayne Bay.

Since then, the department estimates it has spent some $2 billion on upgrades but hasn’t come close to covering needed fixes for a system in which many pipelines are approach a half-century in age or even older.

Blanca Mesa, an activist with the Sierra Club who has raised concerns about the county’s plans to replace only one segment of an aging and fragile sewer pipe under Government Cut, said the failures point to a long history of ignoring problems and putting off proper maintenance. She said today’s problems echo failures detailed in a 1991 grand jury report documenting sewage spills into the Miami River.

“Somebody has to understand we have to set the right priorities in this county, and we haven’t been doing that for a very long time,’’ she said.

Miami-Dade Commission Chairman Joe Martinez agrees the county has to find a way to pay for the repair work. One option might be to issue bonds, Martinez said, but he would insist that property tax bills don’t rise for residents as a result. Martinez said it’s possible that any increase in bond debt would be offset by a decrease in the property tax rate, if home values rise this year, as he expects.

“We’re going to have to wait until the tax rolls come out,” he said. “We definitely need to fix the infrastructure, but we must gain people’s confidence that [the money] will be used for that.”

Mayor Carlos Gimenez said he is waiting to learn how much money the county would need to spend before committing to a financing plan. First he would look to reduce water department costs, he said, then possibly enter some type of private-public partnership.

“The last thing we want to do is put any kind of burden on the public,” he said.

Past political decisions have compounded the sewer department’s problems, by cutting into reserve funds that could have helped finance the system upgrades.

Historically, county leaders tapped water department funds for other departments struggling to make ends meet. Though that practice stopped in 2007, last year the Water and Sewer Department still “loaned’’ $25 million to the county’s general fund to help balance the books. Payback is scheduled to begin in 2014, at $5 million a year.

Right now, the department has three reserve accounts. One is required to maintain a 60-day reserve, or $55.7 million. Another is expected to have about $30 million by the end of this budget year in September. A third is empty.

Another type of reserve account intended for unexpected repairs maintains between $50 million and $60 million each year — a fraction of the repair bill that county engineers estimate could run into the billions.

Adding to the problem, county commissioners and mayors have repeatedly resisted raising what rank as some of the lowest water and sewer fees in the state — though they did boost it 4.7 percent last year. The average homeowner pays about $135 quarterly, according to the county.

Miami-Dade certainly isn’t alone in struggling to mend its leaky and aging sewage system. Most major cities in the United States have similar problems. The EPA estimates there are 240,000 water and sewer main breaks across the country each year, and puts the price tag at hundreds of billions of dollars.

In Broward County, for instance, state regulators say sewer failures have sometimes drawn scrutiny but not a similar sweeping state-federal enforcement case. Waste there is handled by 28 different utilities with much smaller and generally newer systems. Miami-Dade’s system is the largest, and among the oldest, in the state with huge pipelines carrying large volumes over long distances.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward’s wastewater and water services, said less than 3 percent of the county’s 7 million feet of pipes is older than 50 years. About 40 percent of the county’s breaks are construction related, he said.

“We do an aggressive job of monitoring our pipes,’’ he said.

Jennifer Diaz, a Florida DEP spokeswoman, said Miami-Dade hasn’t tried to cover up its problems, acknowledging in an April 2011 “self assessment’’ sent to the EPA that numerous breaks were putting the county in violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act.

The DEP opened its own enforcement case against Miami-Dade in 2009. But the following year, after consulting with the EPA and Miami-Dade, all the parties agreed to draw up a joint state-federal consent decree that acknowledges “improper’’ management and maintenance practices.

In a written statement, Diaz said the spills “are mitigated by Miami-Dade to the greatest extent possible.’’

Still, the potential failure of some key pipelines could have disastrous consequences. Earlier this year a consultant warned that the sewer main running under Government Cut to Virginia Key was so brittle it could rupture at any time. It was constructed from pipe made by a now-defunct company named Interpace, whose notoriously defective products have been linked to a number of major failures.

Though county engineers maintain the pipeline remains safe for daily use, department director John Renfrow acknowledged an unexpected failure would be “catastrophic,” spewing tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay.

His warning echoes one issued exactly two decades ago about potential sewer line breaks by a Miami-Dade grand jury appalled by environmental and other conditions in the Miami River.

“The Miami River and Biscayne Bay would experience the worst environmental catastrophes in modern history,’’ the 1991 report warned. “The detrimental impact of a spill of this type and the cleanup and mitigation costs are incalculable. If we are seriously concerned about the bay, we must address this known environmental hazard now.’’

Miami Herald staff writer Carli Teproff contributed to this report.

Posted on Sun, May. 13, 2012

By CURTIS MORGAN

Walter Michot / Miami Herald Staff

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, the fairways and greens are irrigated with 'reclaimed' waste water.

South Florida has suffered through some dreary declines of late — home values, paychecks and the Miami Dolphins, for instance.

But in the case of the public thirst for one precious commodity — fresh water — the decline has actually turned into a major money-saving plus.

The 53 water utilities serving Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties pumped about 83 million fewer gallons a day in 2010 than they did in 2000 — despite a population that grew by some 600,000 over the decade — according to a new draft analysis produced by the South Florida Water Management District.

Do the math and it adds up to South Floridians using about 20 percent less water each day for drinking, bathing and sprinkling yards per person than they did a decade ago. That’s about 30 billion gallons over the course of a year, enough unused water to fill 45,900 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It’s an unexpected but entirely welcome drop-off in public demand in a region that only a decade ago was worried about taps running dry in relentlessly sprawling suburbs.

“It’s not a surprise that it went down,’’ said Mark Elsner, administrator of water supply development for the water management district. “It’s a surprise it went down so much.’’

WHAT’S BEHIND IT

Though water consumption per person has been declining for decades, water managers point to a combination of factors that are accelerating the trend. They include newer water-efficient toilets and other fixtures, tougher restrictions on lawn irrigation and stepped utility rates designed to make customers pay a premium for excessive water use.

Water managers and state and local environmental regulators have pushed conservation programs and also demanded that utilities expand use of “reclaimed” wastewater — often by using it to irrigate parks and golf courses.

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, for instance, every drop from the sprinklers is recycled wastewater — cheaper and in totally unrestricted supply.

“We have a very good deal for water. We could use a million gallons or 10 gallons and we pay the same amount,’’ said Lewis Rissman, Hillcrest’s general manager. “The city of Hollywood doesn’t even know what to do with all their reclaimed water.’’

Clearly, South Florida’s economic downturn, housing market collapse and flattening population growth have contributed to the slaking thirst as well.

“There are a lot of things working together,’’ said Elsner, whose agency oversees the water supply for 16 counties stretching from south of Orlando to Key West. “What you’re seeing is a conservation ethic being developed. People are understanding the value of water.’’

What the decline in demand from public utilities does not mean is South Florida is in the clear when it comes to water shortages

South Florida depends on wildly varying annual rainfall to replenish its underground aquifers and Lake Okeechobee. Right now, for example, an unusually dry winter has left ground water levels lower than normal.

The district’s long-term planning analysis, revised every five years with new consumption and population figures, also covers only four counties in the region and doesn’t track similar trends for agriculture, which consumes an estimated 37 percent of the region’s water. It also doesn’t account for some critical future demands — such as the massive volumes of water needed to help restore the Everglades. The draft study predicts the four counties will still need to expand the public water supply by 18 percent by 2030.

But improved conservation has eased pressure on traditional public water supplies and utilities contemplating new, far more expensive water systems designed to reclaim wastewater and tap other new sources, from deep aquifers to sea water.

SCALING BACK

The drop-off has been significant enough that Miami-Dade’s Water and Sewer Department has been able to scale back projects considered essential only five years ago, saving the utility — and its customers — hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2007, Miami-Dade, which had historically relied almost entirely on the cheap, clean Biscayne Aquifer, was forced to draw up a $1.6 billion expansion plan to serve a then-booming population. Under pressure from water managers, who warned that drawing more from the underground supply could hurt regional water supplies, the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade designed projects to tap the deeper brackish Floridan aquifer or to treat wastewater.

Bertha Goldenberg, assistant director of the water and sewer department, said the county has since been able to cancel or defer a handful of projects, including one that would have piped highly treated wastewater back into the ground near Zoo Miami to increase ground water supplies.

“We basically saved $300 million by changing that,’’ she said.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward County’s water and wastewater services, said the decline has allowed the agency to push back a $46 million project to tap the Floridan until at least 2023 and explore other potentially cheaper options for the future, such as teaming up with other Broward and Palm Beach utilities in constructing a massive reservoir.

Garcia said county figures show per person usage falling sharply in some areas, down almost by half between 1990 and 2008 in one area that includes Lighthouse Point and parts of Pompano Beach.

“People have finally started to see they don’t need to water their lawns four or five days a week,’’ he said. “It’s expensive water and they don’t need to use it.’’

Miami-Dade’s Goldenberg also points to irrigation restrictions the district first imposed in 2006 during a severe drought as a major factor in the decline, with county usage dropping by 20 gallons a day per person over the following two years. In 2010, both Miami-Dade and Broward made twice-weekly lawn watering rules permanent.

Miami-Dade programs to offer rebates and exchanges for high-efficiency toilets and shower heads and to improve homeowner associations’ irrigation systems also combined to save nearly 8.5 million gallons a day last year, according to a water department report completed in April.

The district analysis shows that, based on 2010 figures, Miami-Dade remained the largest consumer of the public water supply, slurping some 347 million gallons a day. Broward trailed with 217 million gallons a day, followed by Palm Beach County with 207 million gallons and Monroe with 16 million gallons.

But Palm Beach County’s agricultural industry, dominated by sprawling sugar farms, made it the thirstiest county overall. Farms, which draw from their own wells and pumps, pushed Palm Beach’s total daily demands to over 600 million gallons. Miami-Dade’s combined farm and public total runs just over 400 million gallons a day, according to the report.

Measuring by usage per person, Palm Beach recorded the greatest decline between 2000 and 2010, at 28 percent, followed by Broward at 19 percent and Miami-Dade at 17 percent. Miami-Dade’s updated numbers, which include figures through 2011, show a 21 percent reduction since 2000.

THIRSTY MONROE

Officially, Monroe ranked far and away as the thirstiest county per person at 198 gallons per day in 2010 but water managers said that number was heavily skewed by tourists in the Florida Keys, who use much of the water but aren’t included in the calculations.

Lower population projections also have eased the pressure to expand water systems. The last time the district produced its analysis, in 2006, when South Florida was in the midst of a super-heated housing boom, water managers calculated the four counties would be using nearly 2.3 billion gallons of water a day by 2025 for everything from home faucets to farming.

That estimate is now down by some 400 million gallons — for 2030, five years later.

“I don’t think the question is are we going to run out of water but are we going to run out of less expensive water,’’ said Elsner, of the water management district. “What this does is extend the traditional fresh water sources further down the road.’’

Miami-Dade now believes it can cover much of its future demand through 2030 with a plant in Hialeah already under construction and expected to be completed later this year that will tap the Floridan and a second plant in South Miami that is being designed to use less expensive technology.

“We’re a lot better off than we were in 2005,’’ Goldenberg said. “Our demands were above our allocations so we were really in a crisis.’’

South Florida has suffered through some dreary declines of late — home values, paychecks and the Miami Dolphins, for instance.

But in the case of the public thirst for one precious commodity — fresh water — the decline has actually turned into a major money-saving plus.

The 53 utilities serving Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties pumped about 83 million gallons a day of water less in 2010 than they did in 2000 — despite a population that grew by some 600,000 over the decade — according to a new draft analysis produced by the South Florida Water Management District.

Do the math and it adds up to South Floridians using about 20 percent less water each day for drinking, bathing and sprinkling yards per person than they did a decade ago. That’s about 30 billion gallons over the course of a year, enough unused water to fill 45,900 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It’s an unexpected but entirely welcome drop-off in public demand in a region that only a decade ago was worried about taps running dry in relentlessly sprawling suburbs.

“It’s not a surprise that it went down,’’ said Mark Elsner, administrator of water supply development for the water management district. “It’s a surprise it went down so much.’’

Though water consumption per person has been declining for decades, water managers point to a combination of factors that are accelerating the trend. They include newer water-efficient toilets and other fixtures, tougher restrictions on lawn irrigation and stepped utility rates designed to make customers pay a premium for excessive water use.

Water managers and state and local environmental regulators have pushed conservation programs and also demanded that utilities expand use of “reclaimed” waste water — often by using it to irrigate parks and golf courses.

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, for instance, every drop from the sprinklers is recycled wastewater — cheaper and in totally unrestricted supply.

“We have a very good deal for water. We could use a million gallons or 10 gallons and we pay the same amount,’’ said Lewis Rissman, Hillcrest’s general manager. “The city of Hollywood doesn’t even know what to do with all their reclaimed water.’’

Clearly, South Florida’s economic downturn, housing market collapse and flattening population growth have contributed to the slaking thirst as well.

“There are a lot of things working together,’’ said Elsner, whose agency oversees the water supply for 16 counties stretching from south of Orlando to Key West. “What you’re seeing is a conservation ethic being developed. People are understanding the value of water.’’

What the decline in demand from public utilities does not mean is South Florida is in the clear when it comes to water shortages

South Florida depends on wildly varying annual rainfall to replenish its underground aquifers and Lake Okeechobee. Right now, for example, an unusually dry winter has left ground water levels lower than normal.

The district’s long-term planning analysis, revised every five years with new consumption and population figures, also covers only four counties in the region and doesn’t track similar trends for agriculture, which consumes an estimated 37 percent of the region’s water. It also doesn’t account for some critical future demands — such as the massive volumes of water needed to help restore the Everglades. The draft study predicts the four counties will still need to expand the public water supply by 18 percent by 2030.

But improved conservation has eased pressure on traditional public water supplies and utilities contemplating new, far more expensive water systems designed to reclaim wastewater and tap other new sources, from deep aquifers to sea water.

The drop-off has been significant enough that Miami-Dade’s Water and Sewer Department has been able to scale back projects considered essential only five years ago, saving the utility — and its customers — hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2007, Miami-Dade, which had historically relied almost entirely on the cheap, clean Biscayne Aquifer, was forced to draw up a $1.6 billion expansion plan to serve a then-booming population. Under pressure from water managers, who warned that drawing more from the underground supply could hurt regional water supplies, the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade designed projects to tap the deeper brackish Floridan aquifer or to treat waste water.

Bertha Goldenberg, assistant director of the water and sewer department, said the county has since been able to cancel or defer a handful of projects, including one that would have piped highly treated waste water back into the ground near Zoo Miami to increase ground water supplies.

“We basically saved $300 million by changing that,’’ she said.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward County’s water and wastewater services, said the decline has allowed the agency to push back a $46 million project to tap the Floridan until at least 2023 and explore other potentially cheaper options for the future, such as teaming up with other Broward and Palm Beach utilities in constructing a massive reservoir.

Garcia said county figures show per person usage falling sharply in some areas, down almost by half between 1990 and 2008 in one area that includes Lighthouse Point and parts of Pompano Beach.

“People have finally started to see they don’t need to water their lawns four or five days a week,’’ he said. “It’s expensive water and they don’t need to use it.’’

Miami-Dade’s Goldenberg also points to irrigation restrictions the district first imposed in 2006 during a severe drought as a major factor in the decline, with county usage dropping by 20 gallons a day per person over the following two years. In 2010, both Miami-Dade and Broward made twice-weekly lawn watering rules permanent.

Miami-Dade programs to offer rebates and exchanges for high-efficiency toilets and shower heads and to improve homeowner associations’ irrigation systems also combined to save nearly 8.5 million gallons a day last year, according a water department report completed in April.

The district analysis shows that, based on 2010 figures, Miami-Dade remained the largest consumer of the public water supply, slurping some 347 million gallons a day. Broward trailed with 217 million gallons a day, followed by Palm Beach County with 207 million gallons and Monroe with 16 million gallons.

But Palm Beach County’s agricultural industry, dominated by sprawling sugar farms, made it the thirstiest county overall. Farms, which draw from their own wells and pumps, pushed Palm Beach’s total daily demands to over 600 million gallons. Miami-Dade’s combined farm and public total runs just over 400 million gallons a day, according to the report.

Measuring by usage per person, Palm Beach recorded the greatest decline between 2000 and 2010, at 28 percent, followed by Broward at 19 percent and Miami-Dade at 17 percent. Miami-Dade’s updated numbers, which include figures through 2011, show a 21 percent reduction since 2000.

Officially, Monroe ranked far and away as the thirstiest county per person at 198 gallons per day in 2010 but water managers said that number was heavily skewed by tourists in the Florida Keys, who use much of the water but aren’t included in the calculations.

Lower population projections also have eased the pressure to expand water systems. The last time the district produced its analysis, in 2006, when South Florida was in the midst of a super-heated housing boom, water managers calculated the four counties would be using nearly 2.3 billion gallons of water a day by 2025 for everything from home faucets to farming.

That estimate is now down by some 400 million gallons – for 2030, five years later.

“I don’t think the question is are we going to run out of water but are we going to run out of less expensive water,’’ said Elsner, of the water management district. “What this does is extend the traditional fresh water sources further down the road.’’

Miami-Dade now believes it can cover much of its future demand through 2030 with a plant in Hialeah already under construction and expected to be completed later this year that will tap the Floridan and a second plant in South Miami that is being resigned to use less expensive technology.

“We’re a lot better off than we were in 2005,’’ said Goldenberg. “Our demands were above our allocations so we were really in a crisis.’’

Posted on Mon, May. 07, 2012

Everglades scientists play risky game of tag with near-extinct predator

By SUSAN COCKING
scocking@MiamiHerald.com

Sean McNeil and Jordan Kahn / PressLaunch.US

Researchers from the University of Florida captured, tagged and released two sawfish in the 13-foot range near East Cape Sable in Everglades National Park as part of a larger recovery project for the endangered species.

The boat captain and the scientist wielded their lasso like seasoned cowboys instead of fishermen. A good thing, since their lives literally depended on it: roping an upset, 13-foot-long, prehistoric creature waving a double-toothed saw in the water is just as dangerous as grabbing a bull by the horns.

“There’s a swing,” Captain Jim Willcox warned as the saw slashed the air. “Careful, it’s pretty green.”

But Willcox and Yannis Papastamatiou, a University of Florida scientist, managed to secure the line around both the saw and the tail of their quarry: an endangered smalltooth sawfish, the rarest marine species in U.S. waters. Now the huge brown creature lay quietly alongside their skiff near East Cape Sable in Everglades National Park, enabling them to safely complete their research mission.

“He’s a good boy!” said UF research assistant Bethan Gillett, who had caught the giant fish on a rod and reel moments earlier.

The point of this hazardous maritime rodeo is for researchers from the Smalltooth Sawfish Recovery Team to learn as much as they can to help bring back one of the top predators in the marine ecosystem — nearly wiped out through its entire range over the past century.

“These guys started disappearing before we as biologists started figuring out they were going,” said George Burgess, who runs a sawfish database at the University of Florida’s Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Once common from New York south to Florida and west to Texas, these huge members of the ray family that can grow to 25 feet are rarely seen today, except for the waters of Everglades National Park and the Keys. Not a lot is known about their life history, but scientists say they may live 25 to 30 years, reaching sexual maturity after about 10 years. Females give birth to litters of 15 to 20 pups.

With its slow growth and late maturity, the smalltooth sawfish met its demise decades ago by becoming entangled in gill nets, being slaughtered by collectors of its bill, and squeezed by shrinkage of its shallow mangrove habitat. It was declared an endangered species in the United States in 2003. Its cousin, the endangered largetooth — formerly found in the Atlantic — now is functionally extinct in U.S. waters, according to Burgess.

Burgess says recovery of the smalltooth will take a very long time.

“Even with a total ban on death, it will take 100 years, and we’re 10 years into that process, so we’ve got 90 years to go,” he said.

Sawfish numbers are so beaten down that even scientific experts like Burgess and colleagues from the National Marine Fisheries Service and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission must obtain a federal permit to handle the species. Anyone else who molests or harasses them faces a possible $10,000 federal fine.

This year, Burgess had a permit to tag 11 sawfish, which he did over the past couple of months with help from Willcox — a veteran Islamorada light-tackle guide — and several UF colleagues. They deployed the final two sets of tags on April 27 near East Cape Sable on two males in the 13-foot range. Both swam forcefully away when the procedures were completed.

Papastamatiou drilled holes in the animals’ tough dorsal fins and fastened a cigar-shaped satellite pop-up tag, an acoustic transmitter tag and a small streamer tag with the research lab’s phone number. The satellite tag records water temperature, depth and light levels at short intervals, then pops off after five months, broadcasting the accumulated data to a satellite, which sends it to the scientists’ computers.

The acoustic tag beeps a signal to underwater listening stations that tell how many times the sawfish passes through the area. The three tags are intended to back each other up.

Willcox and the scientists have been catching and tagging sawfish in the park for about three years — not enough time to draw conclusions about the animals’ movements or growth rates. Their ability to continue the research is imperiled by money problems: Federal funds are running dry, so they’re seeking private donations.

“It’s going to be a long haul,” Burgess said. “We can’t grow weary of the fight. Hopefully, our children and grandchildren will have a shot at this down the line.”

One thing in the sawfish’s favor is its charisma — a giant, brown apex predator that slashes its prey, mostly fish and some crustaceans, with its deadly bill. A recent study by scientist Barbara Wueringer of the University of Queensland in Australia found that the animals have a “sixth sense” in their bills — a series of pores that can detect movements or electrical fields of hidden fish or crabs.

The sight of a sawfish is awe-inspiring, Willcox says.

“When people see that for the first time, they feel like they’ve gone back in time,” he said. “It’s not something you want to mess with casually. That bill can come up vertically and take your head off. For me, it’s like fishing in a tournament and getting a victory. It’s about as big a rush as you can get in fishing — or anything in life.”

These photographs were taken under the authority of NMFS Permit No. 13330.

Peace may finally be at hand in the decades-long Everglades dirty-water war.

Eight months after Gov. Rick Scott flew to Washington to extend a political olive branch and personally pitch Florida’s latest plan for stopping the flow of polluted farm, ranch and yard runoff into the Everglades, state and federal negotiators are on the verge of an accord expected to be hailed by both sides as a major milestone.

A settlement crafted with the goal of resolving two protracted and paralyzing federal lawsuits — one goes back almost a quarter century, the other eight years — could be soon finalized, possibly within the month, according to officials on both sides of the confidential negotiations.

The agreement would commit Florida to a significantly expanded slate of Everglades restoration projects pegged at an estimated $890 million. Still, that’s a considerably smaller price tag than a $1.5 billion plan drawn up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that a Miami federal judge has threatened to impose.

Most key technical issues — such as the size of additional artificial marshes used to scrub dirty, nutrient-laced storm runoff that has poisoned vast swaths of the Everglades — have been largely sorted out. But both sides cautioned the deal could still be delayed as negotiators work through the nuts and bolts of rolling out, implementing and enforcing a complex and likely controversial agreement.

Environmental groups and sugar growers have heard increasingly encouraging reports from negotiators over the past few months, though they have not been briefed on key details. But they agree the new cleanup blueprint that emerges will stand as a landmark in the costly, contentious legal and political battles to revive the struggling, shrunken River of Grass.

“It would be huge for everyone,’’ said Gaston Cantens, a vice president for Florida Crystals, one of the region’s largest sugar growers. “For a business, whenever you can have stability and certainty, then you can make long-term plans with confidence.’’

Environmentalists are reserving judgment, with some bracing for a deal they fear will be a compromise that might fall short of providing the Glades the pristine fresh water it needs and will push cleanup deadlines, already repeatedly delayed, back by years.

David Guest, an attorney for EarthJustice who represents several environmental groups in a 24-year-old lawsuit brought by the federal government that first forced Florida to deal with Glades pollution, said he has heard enough about the framework of the deal to know he’ll find plenty to question.

But even Guest acknowledges, “It’s absolutely going to be progress, there is no doubt about that.”

The South Florida Water Management District, which oversees restoration projects for the state, responded to questions with a statement, saying the state plan was “scientifically sound, economically feasible and would bring about long-term protection for America’s Everglades.’’

“We’ve had productive dialogue with our federal partners and have made significant progress toward an agreed-upon approach. However, there are some outstanding issues that are important to Florida.” For both the Obama and Scott administrations, finalizing a major Everglades deal would represent a political win and a rare example of bipartisan cooperation. It would be particularly notable for the governor, a tea party-backed, anti-regulation Republican healthcare executive who infuriated environmentalists in his first year in office by slashing environmental programs and gutting much of the state’s grown management oversight.

With the state facing the threat that U.S. District Judge Alan Gold would impose the $1.5 billion EPA cleanup plan on the state, Scott last October flew to Washington to pitch Florida’s alternative plan, meeting with high-ranking White House officials, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

He has continued campaigning since, in meetings and letters, including a Feb. 1 letter to President Barack Obama discussing encouraging settlement talks and stressing a message repeated in a state court brief filed this month requesting more time for negotiations: that the state’s time and taxpayer’s money would be better spent on projects than “pointless, expensive and time-consuming litigation.’’

In an April 5 response to Scott, EPA administrator Jackson echoed the upbeat tone, noting “we share a common desire to take advantage of the opportunity in front of us for quick, historic progress towards clean water for the Everglades.’’

Though four federal agencies initially found the state’s plan inadequate, the state has made a number of tweaks and additions during negotiations, officials said, adding some 8,400 more acres of treatment marshes — still far less than the 42,000 additional acres the EPA had proposed. In addition, the state plan calls for expanded water storage in a string of new “flow equalization basins’’ intended to keep the marshes more effective by limiting flooding or damaging dry-downs.

To save money, land swaps are being considered and water managers also intend to convert a massive reservoir that water managers halted two years and $272 million into construction in 2008 would be turned into one of new, shallower basins.

The nearly $900 million in projects would add to the $1.8 billion the state has already spent to construct a 45,000 acres of existing marshes, with an additional 11,000 acres scheduled to come online later this year. But that massive network hasn’t been enough to meet the super-low standards needed to protect the sensitive Glades ecosystem from phosphorous, a common fertilizer ingredient that drains off farms and yards with every rainstorm. It fuels the spread of cat tails and other exotics that crowd out native plants.

Though Scott has earned praise from some environmentalists, Guest, the EarthJustice attorney, isn’t among them, arguing the governor didn’t lead so much as he was pushed by courtroom defeats and mounting pressure from two federal judges.

Gold, in a 2004 suit brought by the Miccosukee Tribe and the environmental group Friends of the Everglades, has issued a series of rulings blasting the state and federal agencies for “glacial delay’’ and repeatedly failing to enforce water-pollution standards tough enough to protect the Everglades. In 2010, he ordered the EPA to draw up a cleanup plan that water managers said they couldn’t afford.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, who oversees the original 1988 cleanup suit by the federal government, has expressed similar frustrations and urged both sides to come up with a viable plan.

Barbara Miedema, vice president of the Belle Glade-based Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative, said she expects it will still take a while to nail down the deal. With multiple federal and state agencies, more than a half-dozen environmental groups, the Miccosukee Tribe and two federal judges involved, there are numerous legal, practical and political hurdles to clear, she said.

“We hear they are close, but we have been hearing they are close for months,’’ she said. “A lot of signs say it’s likely. I’m not betting on it.’’

Pythons Swallow Whole Deer in Florida, $6 Million Tab

By Mike Di Paola - May 3, 2012 12:01 AM ET

The meandering trail in the Everglades marshlands was made by alligators, I’m told, so be careful. There’s also poisonwood, fire ants and the recently added Burmese python.

“It’s really a very harsh place to work,” says Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a close follower of the python, which has invaded the Everglades in startling numbers.

Pythons Swallow Whole Deer in Florida, $6 Million Tab

South Florida Water Management District via Bloomberg

A Burmese python. Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks there are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, but says the number could be higher.

A Burmese python. Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks there are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, but says the number could be higher. Source: South Florida Water Management District via Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Biologists use radio signals to track pythons in the Everglades. Eight tagged snakes are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes.

Biologists use radio signals to track pythons in the Everglades. Eight tagged snakes are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Wildlife biologist Brian Smith tracks a Burmese python using radio signals in the Everglades. Researchers implant radio transmitters in snakes in order to track their movements in the Everglades and to record other biological data.

Wildlife biologist Brian Smith tracks a Burmese python using radio signals in the Everglades. Researchers implant radio transmitters in snakes in order to track their movements in the Everglades and to record other biological data. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

An 8-foot female python slithers through the cattails in Everglades National Park. Pythons eat birds and small mammals and, like this one, blend seamlessly into the habitat.

An 8-foot female python slithers through the cattails in Everglades National Park. Pythons eat birds and small mammals and, like this one, blend seamlessly into the habitat. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Biologists slog through the wetlands on the trail of a Burmese python in the Everglades. Government agencies have spent at least $6 million in the past five years to develop a plan to control the growing python population in southern Florida.

Biologists slog through the wetlands on the trail of a Burmese python in the Everglades. Government agencies have spent at least $6 million in the past five years to develop a plan to control the growing python population in southern Florida. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

“We don’t know how many there are,” Hart says, “and that’s ultimately the question everyone wants to know.”

She reckons tens of thousands in the Everglades, but allows the number could be higher: “I think there could be more here now than in their native range” of Southeast Asia.

I’m with Hart and other wildlife biologists tracking an 8- foot, 20-pound (2.4 meter, 9-kilo) female python that had been captured and implanted with radio transmitters a few weeks earlier.

There are many reasons why the python thrives in the Everglades, beyond the obvious fact that it eats just about anything, while almost nothing eats it.

Pythons prey on mammals, other reptiles, fish and birds. The invaders in Florida have consumed everything from the endangered Key Largo woodrat to the threatened American alligator.

Last October, a snake in the Everglades was found to have swallowed a 76-pound (34-kilo) deer. Another specimen was discovered with an adult alligator bursting from its insides -- a tooth-and-claw encounter neither animal survived.

‘Dramatic Declines’

In January, the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study showing “dramatic declines” of mammal populations in southern Florida -- raccoon, opossum, bobcat, deer and rabbit -- all believed to have become snake food.

It is not known how the Burmese python was introduced to the Everglades. Large pythons -- almost certainly escaped or discarded pets -- have been spotted here since the 1980s. By 2000, however, it was clear that the snakes were not escapees, but a growing, breeding population.

“People think this is a Florida thing,” says Ken Warren of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “But there have been reports of large constrictors found in Texas, Georgia and California, as well as the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This is bigger than Florida.”

Federal agencies and local governments have spent more than $6 million since 2005 to figure out how to control the snakes. Eradicating them is not a realistic goal; managing them is imperative. To that end the biologists are gathering data.

‘Control Strategies’

“What we’re ultimately trying to do is understand the biology,” Hart says. “How do you exploit what you know to really knock them down? Where might the pregnant females be? What is their preferred diet? That’s the kind of information we need to design control strategies.”

Besides the python we’re tracking, there are seven other snakes implanted with transmitters, including a female weighing 140 pounds. Their movements are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are doing the legislative equivalent of closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Earlier this year, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to widen the ban on imported snakes to include the Burmese python and other large serpents.

Big Babies

Aside from their indiscriminate diet and unchallenged position in the food chain, Burmese pythons have other survival advantages. Hatchlings are big -- two to three feet long when they wriggle out of their eggs -- and so are not easy pickings for a potential predator. It is believed that females can reproduce without a male partner.

They are excellent swimmers, can survive for extended periods in salt water if they have to, and are barely visible in the Everglades habitat, so can sneak up on dinner with ease.

“I think she’s right between us,” the biologist next to me says. He points his antenna at my feet, which I can’t see in the murky water. Nor can I see the snake, until the slightest movement betrays her location, about a yard away.

Her head looks to be the size of my fist. Her colors aren’t brilliant but they are beautiful, a delicate patchwork of tawny lines that match the grasses all around us.

The biologists record the salient details: habitat, predominant flora, GPS coordinates, and so on. The snake doesn’t flee at our approach. For an invasive species, she looked very much at home.

(Mike Di Paola writes on preservation and the environment for Muse, the arts and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

BY CURTIS MORGAN

CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Though the previous washed-out weekend might have suggested otherwise, South Florida’s rainy season has not yet begun — at least officially.

But when it does start sometime this month, expect it to be a bit wetter than normal, forecasters and water managers said Thursday.

South Florida’s wet season, which usually begins around May 20 and runs until mid-October, typically produces about 70 percent of the regional rainfall. Those five months help keep the Everglades healthy and water supplies recharged or — if the rains don’t show — produce droughts that kill crops and lawns.

Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Miami office, said a number of indicators, including the easing of the global La Niña weather pattern, point to a wetter season into June. The remaining months appear likely to be close to average.

With the region still showing lingering effects from an unusually dry fall and winter, a bit more rain would help, said Susan Sylvester, chief of water control operations for the South Florida Water Management District, which oversees the water supply for 7.7 million people from Orlando to Key West.

Above-average April rainfall, much of it delivered last weekend, helped Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties but only provided a bit of recharge for Lake Okeechobee, which serves as the region’s water barrel.

Overall, the 16-county district’s rainfall deficit since November is about 5.5 inches. Lake Okeechobee was at 11.63 feet above sea level Thursday, about two feet below its average mark for the date.

The typical wet season produces about 35 inches of rain but one tropical storm or hurricane can easily push the figure higher.