Environmental Intersection by George Lindemann

The Miami Herald Editorial
Posted on Wed, Jul. 18, 2012

Ailing after a decade of broken deals, choking, invasive exotic plants, runoff from sugar and other farms, federal lawsuits, and even deadly pythons, the Everglades finally has a fighting chance to be restored to that fabled River of Grass that Marjory Stoneman Douglas sought to save more than 60 years ago.

In dispute for years: how to reduce nutrients from nearby farms and urban runoff that have poisoned the Everglades with heavy concentrations of phosphorous, changing the very character of the swampy river that Florida wildlife counts on to survive.

Under the Everglades Forever plan, Big Sugar has reduced the amount of phosphorus flowing south from Lake Okeechobee — the latest count by regional water managers was down 71 percent from 1994 levels. Despite that strong performance by farms using marshes to stem the flow into the river, the damage accumulated over decades has been hard to reverse. The water, though significantly cleaner, still does not meet the federal standard for a healthy Everglades.

That, too, seems to be resolved with U.S. District Judge Alan Gold’s order last week that clears the way for a historic $880 million cleanup plan agreed upon by state and federal governments. The Obama administration also announced an $80 million program to preserve 23,000 acres of farmland by buying up the development rights to ensure that ranchland in the Northern Everglades remains pristine in perpetuity — a key to saving the endangered Florida panther.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the Editorial Board on Wednesday that he has been meeting with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians to hear their concerns about road improvements to Tamiami Trail. It’s good to keep an open door, but unless the facts change it’s difficult to see, after years of studies, how else to protect animals in that corridor without an elevated roadway.

Mr. Salazar visited the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge to celebrate these new efforts to clean up the Everglades — part listening tour and part stump speech for President Obama’s reelection. He told the board that Gov. Rick Scott’s support is crucial to ensuring a steady course for the clean-up, instead of more stalling. The governor says he’s committed. Good.

This is not a quick fix. The landmark cleanup will take a dozen years to complete. Not only is the Everglades and the lake the source of drinking water for millions in South Florida, its survival depends on removing the canals and dikes that have drained the natural water flow and cleaning up the pollution.

As it is, the clean-up target of 2025 comes two decades after the project was to be completed. South Florida’s future depends on keeping to the timetable. No more deadly delays.

Environmentalists are applauding a pledge from the Obama administration and a Glades cleanup ruling by a federal judge.

By CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

Everglades restoration got a double boost this week — first from a Miami federal judge who approved a landmark $880 million pollution cleanup plan and then from the Obama administration, which announced an $80 million expansion of a program that already has preserved nearly 100,000 acres of rural wetlands in the Northern Everglades.

U.S. District Judge Alan Gold on Wednesday issued an order clearing the path for resolving long-running legal battles over reducing the flow of damaging nutrients from farm, ranches and yards into the struggling River of Grass.

The administration followed up Friday with an announcement that it will pay farmers and ranchers $80 million to place “conservation easements” on some 23,000 acres in the Northern Everglades, including a key parcel in Glades County that biologists consider critical to saving the endangered Florida panther. The 1,278-acre American Prime tract, named for a company that once wanted to develop it, provides a corridor for the big cats to cross the Caloosahatchee River and allow a population concentrated in Southwest Florida to expand northward.

The news conference in Kissimmee, featuring four top White House aides overseeing Glades issues, included the release of a report touting some $1.5 billion in Everglades funding over the past three years — a major increase over the previous four years under President George W. Bush.

“With the president’s leadership, we are making real and measurable progress in Everglades restoration,’’ said Nancy Sutley, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in a news release.

Charles Lee, a longtime activist for Audubon of Florida, acknowledged the announcement was aimed at burnishing the president’s image in a swing state important to his reelection hopes but also called that typical election-year politics.

“From our point of view, $80 million and 23,000 acres is nothing to sneeze at,’’ said Lee, who attended the announcement at the Disney Wilderness Preserve. “That’s more than the entire state program has done in the last two or three years.’’

Among other projects, the report cited continuing work to restore 3,000 acres of historic floodplain along the Kissimmee River, construction of a new bridge along Tamiami Trail and plans to establish the 150,000-acre Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area north of Lake Okeechobee.

The conservation easement program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has emerged over the past three years as a promising new restoration strategy. Since 2009, the administration has spent $373 million, far more than any other state, to purchase similar easements on some 95,000 acres of wild lands mostly west and north of Lake Okeechobee.

The easements come much cheaper than outright land purchases. And they allow farmers and ranchers to continue using land while blocking development, preserving habitat and helping store and clean up damaging nutrients from water flowing south toward the greater Everglades. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration’s Everglades efforts also have created nearly 7,000 jobs.

Cary Lightsey, a Lake Wales rancher whose family has participated in the program, told the Tampa Bay Times that future residents will appreciate the conservation program more than voters today.

“If we didn’t do anything, then most of this land would become houses,” he said.

The decision from Gold, who over the past few years has issued a series of rulings blasting state and federal agencies for “glacial delay” and repeatedly failing to enforce water-pollution standards tough enough to protect the Everglades, cleared the way for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue the state permits for a slate of new projects.

They’re part of a plan worked out between the EPA and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection with the goal of settling two lawsuits over Everglades pollution, one going back to 1988. Gold, who handled a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the Miccosukee Tribe and the environmental group Friends of the Everglades, had pressured both sides to draft a new plan.

It calls for the state to expand an existing network of 45,000 acres of artificial marshes that absorb damaging nutrients from farm and suburban storm runoff that damages native plants and the Everglades food chain.

Though most environmental groups have applauded the plan, the tribe and Friends of the Everglades have been lukewarm. They filed briefs calling it a step in the right direction but arguing it will push back cleanup deadlines to 2025 — almost two decades beyond an original 2006 target — and questioning whether the state has a firm plan to pay for the work.

 

A new Everglades restoration plan proposed by Gov. Rick Scott will delay restoration and will be unenforceable, according to the group Friends of the Everglades.

U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold has scheduled a July 18 hearing in Miami on a framework agreement for restoration proposed by Scott in 2011. The $880 million, 12-year agreement was approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on June 13.

While Audubon Florida and the Everglades Foundation supported the proposal, Friends of the Everglades only had issued a short statement last month raising concerns.

Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians sued the federal agency in 2004 for failure to clean up sugar industry pollution flowing into the Everglades. Gold sided with the plaintiffs in 2008 and EPA issued an amended determination in 2010 ordering Florida and the South Florida Water Management District to construct additional stormwater treatment areas to treat phosphorus-rich water.

The new plan proposed by Florida calls for construction of 6,500 acres of additional stormwater treatment areas and water storage areas capable of holding 32 billion gallons, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Gold set the July 18 hearing date and required all of the parties in the case to file briefs in response this week.

In its filing, Friends of the Everglades said the proposed new timetable for restoration extends through 2025, five years longer than EPA had directed the state in 2010. The group also has concerns about technical shortcomings in the plan, its lack of interim standards and its enforceability.

In an opinion column submitted to news media, Friends of the Everglades President Alan Farago quoted President Ronald Reagan's approach to nuclear arms negotiations: "Trust, but verify."

"So far, what the state and EPA propose is a step in the right direction but lacks the iron-clad commitments that (Friends founder) Marjory Stoneman Douglas fought for and that our organization is determined to achieve for Florida and the nation’s interest in the Everglades," Farago wrote.

Spokespersons for the DEP and the EPA were invited to comment on Tuesday but had not provided responses by deadline.

DEP's federal court filing said the plan complies with a 2010 court order, EPA's amended determination and the federal Clean Water Act. DEP said no further discussions with EPA are necessary because the matters raised in previous court orders have been resolved.

The EPA said the timetable is based on estimates provided by the South Florida Water Management District for reliably financing and constructing the restoration projects. Assuming a consent order is approved in a timely fashion, all of the issues raised by the court will have been resolved, the federal agency said.

Related Research: Access pleadings and other documents filed in the Friends of the Everglades federal court case.

Reporter Bruce Ritchie can be reached at britchie@thefloridacurrent.com.

 

 

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.’’