from Maggy Hurchalla, via tcpalm.com 
Since the summer of 2013 we’ve been asking all the powers that be to buy the land and send the water south.
Last week Gov. Rick Scott asked the Army Corps of Engineers to send the water south.
They agreed.
Did we win?
Yes and no.
We won a really important step in sending the water south. It’s been waiting to happen since before the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was created.
The governor, the corps, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Department of Environmental Protection and the South Florida Water Management District all deserve to be congratulated and thanked.
They cooperated instead of blaming each other. One by one, they removed the constraints to implementing the Modified Water Delivery Schedule, a plan that has been in the works for decades. It’s about moving the water south toward the south end of the River of Grass. Among friends, the project is called Mod Waters. It gets water out of a diked conservation area, past the Tamiami Trail, into Shark Valley Slough and the heart of the Everglades and down to Florida Bay where it is desperately needed.
The blockage was the Tamiami Trail. Though the first bridge has been built and the second is on its way, we still couldn’t implement Mod Waters.
The next bottleneck was getting water out of Conservation Area 3A. Until the Central Everglades Project is built, there are only two ways for water to get out to the south. One of them, the eastern outlet, has been closed because of constraints below the Tamiami Trail. For years now, the federal government has been acquiring ownership of lands south of the trail as a part of Everglades Park expansion.
There were six parcels the federal government had not been able to purchase. If we bridged the Tamiami Trail and opened the gate from the conservation area, those lands would get flooded.
Last week, we acquired rights to flow water on those six remaining parcels.
Now, thousands of cubic feet per second can travel south down the Eastern portion of the Shark Valley Slough and into Florida Bay.
That’s what we won. It’s really important.
We should shout, “Hallelujah!” and say, “Thank you!”
Then we need to regroup and get cracking on buying the land south of Lake Okeechobee to send the water into the upper part of the River of Grass.
Even when all the Tamiami Trail Bridges are finished and Mod Waters is fully operational; when the Central Everglades Planning Project is implemented; when reservoirs east and west of the lake are finished; we still will get dumped on when it rains a lot.
The latest climate studies say South Florida will see more extremes in rainfall — more really wet years and more really dry years. They are predicting there will be twice as many El Niños.
If the governor, the corps, the DEP, the SFWMD and the Department of Interior can get together again and cooperate, we can identify the land we need south of the lake to make COMPREHENSIVE Everglades restoration work.
We can stop fighting over losing the option on the U.S. Sugar land and identify an acreage and location we can all agree on to meet the storage needs clearly identified by CERP and the University of Florida’s Water Institute study.
We need to do that now.
If we do, we can save our St. Lucie Estuary, restore the Everglades, save Florida Bay and protect the water supplies of the coastal urban counties of southeast Florida.