Committed to healthy Everglades

By President Barack Obama, special to the Times

Published Friday, July 13, 2012

The Everglades are, and always will be, an important part of the cultural and environmental landscape in Florida. They are a national treasure and a source of pride. But more importantly, the ecosystems that make up the Everglades — from the northern freshwater marshes to the mangrove forests that lead to the Florida Bay — are critical to the local economies and jobs that so many Florida families depend on.

Over the last century, all of that has been put at risk. Population growth, development and other challenges have threatened the Everglades. For far too long, efforts to restore and protect the Everglades suffered from bureaucratic delays and a lack of leadership, including insufficient investment at the federal level. And recently, it has become clear that if we don't do something to reverse course, damage to the Everglades will continue to harm our water supply, diminish tourism, and ultimately cost us jobs.

That is why I've made restoring the Everglades a national priority. Over the last three and a half years, we have invested more than $1.5 billion in Everglades restoration — nearly as much as the previous eight years combined — to successfully jump-start restoration construction projects and support a conservation approach that is led by Floridians themselves.

On Friday, my administration released a report outlining our continuing efforts to cut the red tape, strengthen partnerships with state, tribal and local leaders, and create a strong foundation to help restore and rebuild the Everglades. This includes projects that reduce harmful runoff, and infrastructure projects — like the Tamiami Trail bridge — that will increase natural water flow while also creating thousands of jobs.

Last week, we also announced an additional $80 million investment to support farmers and ranchers who voluntarily conserve wetlands on agricultural land — helping to restore an additional 23,000 acres of wetlands vital to the water quality and wildlife habitat in the Everglades system. And to build on this success, I've proposed investing another $246 million in Everglades restoration.

These investments are critical to the long-term health of the Everglades, but they're also important for the long-term health of Florida's economy. The Everglades help provide billions of dollars in tourism, agriculture and outdoor recreation. In fact, one study estimated that every dollar we spend restoring the Everglades adds four dollars to Florida's economy. And at a time when too many families are still struggling, we need to do everything we can to give Florida families the economic security they deserve.

Restoring the Everglades is important for everyone. For cities, it means cleaner water. For rural Floridians, it means giving back to the land that's given us so much. And for all Floridians, it means more jobs, and healthier, more prosperous communities.

As we work together to boost the economy and create jobs across America, it's important to recognize the strength we draw as a nation from our abundance of natural resources. I'm proud of what we have accomplished in the Everglades — but we have much more to do. And I'm committed to building on our historic progress in the years to come.

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.

Posted on Wed, Jul. 18, 2012

By CURTIS MORGAN
Cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

Curtis Morgan / Miami Herald Staff - U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is aboard an airboat in the Everglades on trip to tout the Obama administration's progress on Everglades clean up.

From a helicopter over Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took in some of the daunting challenges of restoring the Everglades.

Down below, suburbs abut the refuge’s last cypress stands. Vast sugar farms loom to the north. Cattails, fueled by nutrient pollution, choke out native plants around its border. Massive man-made marshes filter dirty water flowing in, but not well enough. Giant pumps replicate a natural flow now blocked by canals and levees.

The visit to the western Palm Beach County refuge was intended to highlight Everglades restoration progress by the Obama administration, which has kick-started stalled projects with $1.5 billion in federal support over the last 3 1/2 years and struck an important pollution clean-up settlement last month with Florida.

But partisan election-year overtones buzzed almost as loudly as the cicadas. In what sounded an awful lot like Obama campaign talking points, Salazar ticked off a string of successes while also issuing a caution about the amount of work ahead and uncertain future state and federal support.

“Frankly, a great fear I have is there will be a U-turn,’’ Salazar told reporters after a chopper and airboat tour.

He questioned the long-term support of Republican Gov. Rick Scott for the deal, which will cost the state some $880 million to expand manmade marshes that reduce the flow of the damaging nutrient phosphorus.

“There has to be a continued commitment on the part of the state of Florida to get this thing done,’’ Salazar said. Scott, who had personally championed a settlement, released a statement saying his office has worked closely with federal agencies and environmentalists to secure the agreement.

“I would be shocked if Secretary Salazar said that, knowing how hard we’ve worked on our historic agreement to restore water quality and water flow to the Everglades,’’ he said. “I, along with all Floridians, care deeply about the Everglades and recognize it as an international treasure.’’

But notably absent from Salazar’s visit were representatives of the South Florida Water Management District, which is in charge of Everglades restoration for the state and headquartered a half-hour drive from the refuge. The district — which last week tentatively agreed to trim $100 million from its budget, money environmentalists argue should be put toward clean-up costs — referred questions to the governor’s office

Salazar, whose agency oversees federal parks and refuges, also warned that a budget drafted by Republicans in Congress would amount to a “death knell’’ for programs that fund conservation projects – not just Everglades restoration but nationwide.

“It’s not the kind of conservation agenda that Teddy Roosevelt or Barack Obama or I would support,’’ he said. “I will do everything I can to fight that, as will the president.’’

Salazar’s visit followed one last week to Orlando by four high-ranking administration aides to announce an $80 million purchase of “conservation easements’’ that will preserve 23,000 acres of rural wetlands in the Northern Everglades. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a fellow Democrat facing a tough election battle this year, made a similar Glades-as-a-backdrop stop in Miami-Dade County in April.

Matt Connelly, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, accused the White House of using the Everglades to distract from more pressing national problems.

“It’s clearly a political move that highlights how desperate the president is to talk about anything besides his failed economic policies and political cronyism for campaign donors,” Connelly said.

Salazar insisted restoring the River of Grass had been his and the president’s top environmental priority from day one, Salazar said. He acknowledged there were decades of work ahead but argued “we have been able to move more the last 3 1/2 years than we have, I think, in the last 20 years."

The administration calculates that the $1.5 billion it has put into restoration in the president’s first term nearly matches the previous eight years under President George W. Bush — an uptick in federal funding that helped break ground on a number of long-stalled projects, including the bridging of Tamiami Trail. The White House banned the importation of the Burmese python that had invaded the Glades – an effort championed by Salazar – and after 18 months of intense negotiations cut a pollution clean-up deal with the state intended to resolve two long-running federal lawsuits.

How much Everglades support will resonate with typical Florida voters is uncertain but environmentalists heaped praise on the efforts by the administration. Historically, candidates from both parties have pledged to save the Everglades but so far Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney hasn’t taken a public position on continuing support for the $12.5 billion state and federal restoration project, said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon of Florida.

“It looks like Romney has ceded the Everglades to the president,’’ Draper said. “The message that Romney sends out about smaller government and less taxes is antithetical to Everglades restoration.’’

Miami Herald Staff Writer Marc Caputo contributed to the story.

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.’’

After five years of debate and hearings in Washington, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce the Burmese python will soon be illegal to import.

With a 17-foot skin from a python killed in the Everglades, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson urges a Senate panel to help ban the import of Burmese python into the U.S.

U.S. Senate Staff

• Photo

By CURTIS MORGAN

Cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

The United States is poised to formally and finally ban that slithering scourge of the Everglades, the Burmese python.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has championed the ban, is expected to make the announcement Tuesday morning during a press conference at a flood control pumping station off Tamiami Trail in the Everglades — a spot that is pretty much ground zero for a giant exotic constrictor that has become one of the nation’s most notorious invasive species.

In a hesitant but hopeful voice, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said he was "delighted" with Gov. Rick Scott's recent trip to Washington to unveil the governor's Everglades restoration plan. But as for the plan itself, Salazar questioned its science and how it will take to get the job done.

"It was a thoughtful review but the jury is still out," Salazar said Monday morning, at a meeting with the editorial board of The Palm Beach Post. "If there is a dance going on between the United States of the America and the State of Florida, we hope it's a good dance."

And after meeting with Scott Monday afternoon, Salazar's office issued a terse, three-sentence press release.

"In Florida today, I met with Gov. Rick Scott to continue our dialogue on the restoration efforts in the Everglades. Over the last three years, the United States has invested upwards of $600 million towards Everglades restoration.

 

http://m.pbpost.com/pbpost/db_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=50MHfXG2&ful...