The readers’ forum

SFWMD returns to its core mission

A more streamlined, mission-focused budget at the South Florida Water Management District will continue to deliver progress in Everglades restoration without abandoning the science that supports it, as some critics fear. In streamlining operations and returning the agency to its core mission of flood control, water supply and ecosystem restoration, the District is appropriately assessing the scope of science, research and monitoring.

Over the past six years, we have invested more than $250 million in the monitoring and assessment of South Florida’s ecosystem and flood-control system. To gather water-quality information alone, the District annually collects samples from close to 2,000 monitoring stations and runs more than 300,000 laboratory tests. To evaluate water flow, we gather data from 4,500 sensors at more than 500 sites throughout the greater Everglades.

More than $32 million has been committed for monitoring to produce data that will be helpful to restoration projects.

This funding is further enhanced by significant investments made by other government, academic and environmental organizations.

As a partner in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), we also finance a Monitoring and Assessment Program (MAP), in which we have invested $75 million over 10 years together with our federal partners. We now have in hand more than a decade of pre-project data, plus the knowledge that some of the data aren’t as applicable to restoration objectives as originally thought.

As CERP projects become authorized by Congress and construction a reality, we can verify the level of pre-project data and refocus our monitoring efforts on measuring the response of the ecosystem to implemented restoration projects. In the meantime, it’s incumbent upon state, federal and local partners to reevaluate the MAP program. We must strike the right balance between allocating taxpayer dollars toward monitoring the environment and building the projects that will improve it.

Melissa Meeker, executive director, South Florida Water Management District, West Palm Beach

Should private individuals own land in the middle of state and federal parks???

"South Floridians who have cabins or lodges in the remote reaches of the Everglades savor the tranquility and wonder at the beauty of nature."

via link: miamiherald.com

An upcoming Water Supply Summit hosted by the Everglades Foundation will include a “Legislative Briefing Breakfast” and a “Capital Lobby Day,” according to information released by the group. 

Everglades National Park (Pic by Rodney Cammauf, National Park Service; via army.mil)

The summit will kick off in Tallahassee on Tues., Jan. 17, with a luncheon, and will wrap up the next day with “briefings, meetings, and advocacy to save America’s Everglades.” According to a press release, the event will be attended by top government officials and business leaders and will feature a performance by recording artist Gavin DeGraw.

An email sent out to supporters highlighted the recent problems plaguing the Florida Everglades — including one of the worst droughts the state has ever seen.

From the email:

In 2011, Florida witnessed one of the worst droughts in history. It was the third drought in the past ten years. This lack of rain sparked wildfires across the state and set large-scale destructive algal blooms in motion in the Caloosahatchee river. West Palm Beach and other municipalities came within days of running out of water.

The drought highlighted the issues that Florida should have been focusing on from the beginning: storing rainwater, cleaning it and supplying it to the millions of Floridians who need it.

The Everglades ecosystem is a crucial link between water storage and water supply for almost 7 million Floridians. And at less than half its original size, one out of every three Floridians relies on the Everglades as the source of their fresh drinking water.

For over a hundred years, we have built canals and levees to re-direct the natural southerly flow of freshwater from the headwaters of the Everglades in the Kissimmee river basin towards urban areas and coastal cities, disrupting the ecosystem’s delicate natural balance.

Meanwhile, 1.7 billion gallons of freshwater are dumped into saltwater estuaries every day.

Florida’s boating, tourism, real estate, hunting, recreational and commercial fishing industries all depend on a healthy Everglades ecosystem, supporting tens of thousands of jobs and contributing billions to our economy.

The Summit is being touted as “the first of its kind.”

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.

 

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