Is Reservoir Plan Enough To Save The Glades?

By Jenny Staletovich
March 8, 2018
Miami Herald

South Florida water managers signed off on a $1.4 billion reservoir Thursday, approving one of the costliest projects yet in the decades-long effort to stop coastal pollution and send clean water to the Everglades’ ailing marshes.

The decision also created a rare moment of unity for the Republican-controlled state, farmers and environmentalists usually at odds over fixing the River of Grass.

“We’ve come a long way in just two short years after national news covered an emergency here in Florida,” Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg told the governing board at the South Florida Water Management District, referring to a 2016 algae bloom that triggered a state of emergency along the Treasure Coast. “We didn’t quiver and run to the corner. We stood up and figured out a way to solve it.”

The project now heads to Washington for Congressional approval and another hurdle: federal funding to cover half the cost.

While the state’s major environmental players have rallied around the plan, the yearlong effort was often tense, and still has doubters. The Sierra Club and Bullsugar, a Stuart nonprofit started by residents and fishing guides, remain concerned that cutting the amount of dirty discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the coasts may be overstated. They also fear reducing the pollution to the coastal estuaries of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers could come at the expense of Florida Bay.

And until this month, the Everglades Foundation argued that the project would fail to deliver clean water and needed to double the size of the proposed artificial marshes that will treat water going into the reservoir. In a February report, the foundation also said the project might jeopardize the success of an existing network of treatment marshes by adding more water than they were designed to clean.

This week, Eikenberg said those concerns were eased when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the district’s pollution permit, issued an order spelling out the need to meet strict standards for phosphorus, the fertilizer nutrient that kills marshes, or add more treatment.

But Thursday, Sierra Club organizer Diana Umpierre said the district had still failed a critical mission: rather than present the best plan needed, it backed into a reservoir hobbled by lawmakers who restricted its size to state-owned land.

“As a result, we do not know if your tentatively selected plan represents the actual optimal configurations or [the] best buy,” she told the board. “The District has failed to show the public what else is possible and therefore we cannot judge what is on the table.”

The massive reservoir was originally planned as a final piece of the state’s restoration plan approved in 2000 to reconnect Lake Okeechobee with South Florida’s marshes and Florida Bay. But the 2016 Treasure Coast bloom and deteriorating conditions in the bay — in 2015 a seagrass die-off started that eventually covered more than 60 square miles — drew widespread public support for a faster solution. The Trump administration’s opposition to environmental causes, from denying climate change to shrinking environmental agencies and clashing with scientists, also raised concern.

State Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, made the reservoir a priority during his final year as senate president and initially pitched a 60,000-acre project — big and shallow enough to both store and treat water.

But that ambitious proposal fell apart under pressure from the state’s powerful sugar industry, still smarting from a failed 2008 effort by Eikenberg’s former boss, former governor and current U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, who wanted to fix the Everglades by buying about 187,000 acres owned by U.S. Sugar. During the bitter legislative fight, farmers repeatedly complained the reservoir was an attempt to put them out of business, although on Thursday they commended the “science-based plan” that they say complies with the law and allows farmers “to continue to supply homegrown, fresh food for millions of Americans.”

The reservoir approved Thursday calls for a 23-foot deep, 10,500-acre reservoir and a 6,500-acre treatment marsh. District planners have said it will work by piggy-backing onto other projects.

They were less emphatic in a February report, since removed from the district web site, that raised questions about levels of phosphorus in some parts of the system. While the district scientists felt confident water entering conservation areas could largely be cleaned, they were less certain about water in Shark River Slough. Shark River runs through Everglades National Park and into the Gulf and marshes around Florida Bay, so water flowing must meet strict criteria hammered out in a landmark lawsuit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The report found that the ways they predict how the system will work once huge volumes of water begin flowing south are too limited. They also lacked historical data. They concluded the project “presents some risk of future non-compliance.”

On Thursday, district planner Matt Morrison said any problems could be addressed through managing the system and getting other work completed. About $1.6 billion approved under a 2016 suite of projects intended to speed up work is ongoing, although not all of it is funded.

“Everything we’ve done continues to improve our ability to utilize the existing infrastructure and we’re confident we’ll meet all the water quality requirements,” he said.