COLUMN ONE : Florida’s Apologies to Nature : In the name of flood control and progress, a winding, teeming river was made straight. Decades of damage later, engineers seek to restore the state’s watery ecosystem.

First, the clams died.

Then, along with other mollusks that lived in the river channel, they were buried in a black muck that quickly settled over the white sandy bottom when the Kissimmee River stopped flowing. Microscopic plants disappeared and tiny fish suffocated as the water was depleted of oxygen.

Thus began the gradual collapse of the intricate food chain that had functioned in the river for thousands of years, and the eventual disintegration of the ecosystem that formed the headwaters of the Florida Everglades.

Cow lilies, dragging tangled webs of roots, soon covered the surface of the stagnant water. Half a dozen species of game fish disappeared; the black bass and stripers that had made the river famous were replaced by “trash” fish. Egrets, wood storks and heron vanished. Migratory ducks no longer came for the winter.

The 103-mile-long river, which once meandered through south-central Florida, began dying nearly 30 years ago, a victim of human efforts at flood control. With it perished nearly 50,000 acres of bogs, marshes and wetlands on a broad flood plain that Congress will soon consider restoring to its original state.

The Kissimmee, and the wetlands that stretched as far as a mile on either side of it, were systematically destroyed when a canal was built to accommodate agriculture and explosive real estate development in central Florida. The wetlands that had trapped, filtered and distributed fresh water in the northern reaches of the 9,000-square-mile system became one of the last casualties of the digging and dam-building efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In retrospect, what happened was monumentally short-sighted.

The river’s winding course between Lake Kissimmee in south-central Florida and 730-square-mile Lake Okeechobee was turned into a canal 56 miles long and 30 feet deep. The river’s picturesque bends and curves were left as motionless remnants and the channel bottom filled with organic debris from decaying plants. An estimated 26,000 acres of wetlands were drained, much of it to become pastures. Another 13,000 acres were permanently flooded and 7,000 acres buried under the levees created from the soil excavated for the canal.

Instead of a river system gently filtering water on its way south, the Kissimmee Valley was being drained, in essence, by a high-speed gutter moving water, enriched by fertilizer and cow manure, into Lake Okeechobee.

Now, about two decades since the full effects of the environmental calamity were realized, the stage is set for the Corps of Engineers and the state of Florida to begin a monumental, unprecedented effort to undo the damage.

By April 1, the corps will send Congress a report declaring that a massive state and federal restoration project is feasible. For the first time ever, lawmakers are expected to authorize the dismantling of a corps project because of environmental damage.

The work will include attempts not only to restore the Kissimmee, but also to save the Everglades and Everglades National Park. Officials propose to fill in much of the canal, put the Kissimmee back into its old channel where the river’s original course has survived, restore the watershed that feeds it from the north and recreate marshes on the drained flood plain.

The undertaking, said William K. Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has significance far beyond Florida. “It is a very strong indication that we have entered a new era. Instead of merely fighting off bad projects, we are now driving to restore the degraded environment. We are looking for opportunities to bring nature back, to undo some things that shouldn’t have been done. The Kissimmee restoration indicates how far we have come.”

Chemicals in Water

One of the most important results, adds Louis A. Toth, a biologist for the South Florida Water Management District, will be a 22% reduction in the nitrogen and phosphorus that are damaging Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest fresh water lake in the United States. The chemicals promote overgrowth of vegetation in the lake.

Besides reducing the volume of pollutants flowing south and restoring the river system that once was home to 320 kinds of wildlife, the reclaimed system would help to recharge aquifers that supply Florida’s cities with fresh water. Officials say it also would help re-establish the Atlantic flyway of migrating waterfowl.

Congress will address the restoration at a time when wetlands represent one of the most politically sensitive environmental issues.

With half the nation’s original wetlands already gone and the rest disappearing at the rate of 450,000 acres a year, President Bush took office embracing an aggressive “no net loss” wetlands policy. Since then, in the face of complaints that wetlands protection law interferes with private property rights and hinders development, the Administration has backed off.

Two years ago, as Congress was considering authorizing restoration of the Kissimmee, opposition from the White House Office of Management and Budget blocked the project. The Administration has since proposed new wetlands definitions that many environmentalists and some government experts say could lead to the loss of half the remaining wetlands--including, by some estimates, another 110,000 acres adjacent to Everglades National Park and 80,000 acres inside the park.

A Political Bog

The wetlands policy debate has escalated to the point that some Washington observers believe the issue will be put aside until after the November election.

The immediate obstacle to the Kissimmee restoration, however, is not the debate over what constitutes wetlands, but the cost. The Corp of Engineers’ most recent estimate was $422 million. Millions of dollars more will be needed to acquire land along the flood plain and to improve water storage capacity along the headwaters and at Lake Kissimmee.

The corps wants the state, which is paying for all the land acquisition, also to pay half the cost of filling in the canal and restoring the river’s course.

“We find that to be an outrageous suggestion,” said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who promoted the project during his eight years as governor. “It is wholly in conflict with the Bush Administration’s stated commitment to wetlands restoration. We have always proceeded on the assumption that the cost of restoration should be shared, as was the cost of the destruction.”

Supporters of restoration fear that the dispute over cost-sharing and rising cost estimates could cause the plan to be reconsidered--a lengthy process that would probably take years and might eventually kill the project.

That appears unlikely, however, since demands for restoration have persisted for 20 years. In fact, the momentum of the Kissimmee project spurred a more ambitious objective: saving the whole Everglades system. Even before the corps had finished digging the canal in 1971, the Governor’s Conference on Water Management in South Florida and the Central and South Florida Flood Control District called for re-flooding the Kissimmee wetlands.

Five years later, state lawmakers approved the first restoration studies. In 1983, then-Gov. Graham expanded a Kissimmee River Council mandate to restore the river to include the whole Kissimmee Valley-Lake Okeechobee-Everglades ecosystem.

The corps did not easily accept the need for restoration. Some environmentalists and supporters still insist that the engineers undertook a 12-mile restoration demonstration program believing that it would prove reconstruction could not be done.

Over the years, the corps has acquired an enormous stake in Florida, with numerous projects aimed at improving on nature. The Kissimmee channelization was only the last major earth- and water-moving effort in a long series of projects that drastically altered the ecology and economy of the state’s southeast corner.

Until massive levees and canals changed the landscape, runoff from Lake Okeechobee after heavy rains moved as a sheet of water 40 to 60 miles wide across the Everglades’ “river of grass.” A south Florida land boom, bountiful agriculture and a disastrous hurricane in 1928 brought demands for flood control. After the enormous storm passed directly over Okeechobee, more than 2,000 Floridians south of the lake drowned.

Soon after, the corps built a 20-foot-high levee south of the lake. This helped the south Florida agricultural economy boom, and has been sustained and protected ever since by a massive checkerboard of canals.

Thirty-one years later, with the change in south Florida’s ecology already evident, the corps began channeling the Kissimmee--at the invitation of state officials.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials strongly objected to turning the rich and picturesque stream into a canal, but they were overruled.

“The mistake was not a flood-control project, but the magnitude of it,” Toth said. “Flood control could have been accomplished in the basin without channelization on the scale that was done. It was justified on an economic basis that gave no concern to environmental values.”

Undoing a Big Mistake

The challenge of undoing this mistake is a staggering prospect. Of the original 103 miles of river channel, 35 have been obliterated by fill from the canal excavation. Remaining are 68 miles of disconnected remnants severed by the huge canal, mountainous levees that serve no purpose and the drained wetlands.

Draining in the valley did not end with the channelizing of the Kissimmee, however. Perhaps 300,000 acres of wetlands beyond the river’s flood plain have been wiped out by secondary drainage systems, which will have to be considered in fully restoring the river system.

Several schemes for partial restoration were considered. One would have simply plugged the canal at a few locations. And, when the idea of refilling the canal was seriously addressed, some experts said they feared the dirt eventually would be flushed into Lake Okeechobee.

Because of this and other concerns, the South Florida Water Management District five years ago hired a UC Berkeley team, led by hydrology expert H. C. Shen, to develop a mathematical model and a 60-by-80-foot physical representation of the stream showing the various restoration options.

Of four plans considered, the study recommended the most ambitious--extensive backfilling of the canal, linking remnants of the river by dredging a new channel and, eventually, removing four dams and navigation locks.

The corps’ report to Congress will be based primarily on a $1.5-million demonstration project--paid for by the state--in remaining stretches of the original river. It shows that the river and its wildlife can be returned to conditions similar to their original state.

In the mid-1980s, three steel walls were built at strategic points in the upper canal to divert the water back into the old channel. While the flow is intermittent--it stops when the water level is low--the results have been promising.

“What has happened is that we have flushed out the bottom, which had accumulated the very thick layers of organic material since channelization,” Toth said. “Some of the diversity has been restored. Sandbars have been recreated. The invertebrate community at the base of the food chain has showed positive changes reflecting a more normal river community. Game fish have returned, though they quickly move back out when we have extended periods of no flow.”

Richard Coleman, a conservationist who opposed the channel and has fought for restoration, recently maneuvered around sharp bends in the demonstration area in a bass boat and expressed amazement at the recovery he saw.

“This is marvelous!” he said, pointing to a new, white sandbar rising out of the water in an area that had been covered by weeds.

“A few years ago, you couldn’t get through here because of the cow lilies on the water. The place was nothing but a death trap, but the return of flow has made it live again,” Coleman said. “Someday, you will have to conduct an area survey to know that the canal was ever here. This is a wildlife habitat envied throughout the world.”

Sandbars are not the only evidence of recovery. Indigenous plants, such as cabbage palm and dog fennel, are reappearing. Occasionally, a bald eagle can be seen, as well as giant blue heron, wood storks, snowy egrets and purple-faced gallinules.

The demonstration project included re-watering parts of the flood plain. Although limited in scope, it has shown that even after 20 years, wetlands plants begin to return where they once flourished. With them come the birds--a significant development, since 90% of the wading species had disappeared.

“We found that by putting water back on the flood plain, we attracted flocks of 400 or 500 ibis to an area where there had been none,” Toth said. “And we have seen the return of the endangered wood stork, although the flooding has been minimal, compared to what we are attempting to do with full restoration.

“The flood plain is such that you would have almost immediate response. The seed sources are still there. It is almost as though you add water and have an immediate marsh.”

Estimates are that the entire recovery process--filling the canal, dredging a new channel to reconnect the river remnants and giving the flood plain a chance to return to normal--will take at least 15 years. The demonstration project has shown that recovery of the ecosystem would occur more quickly, with 60% to 70% of the eventual benefits coming within the first few years.

Conflicts Revived

Inevitably, the plan has produced the usual wetlands conflicts--the interests of private property owners versus conservation. By the latest estimates, restoration might displace 900 people and require relocation of 356 homes, five farms and two dozen other buildings.

The most serious opposition to restoring the river comes from Okeechobee-area residents who have homes or trailers on the flood plain. State officials say they hope to deflect opposition by compensating the residents for their land--the same way they appeased several farmers who were opposed to the plan.

But the Florida attorney general’s office has suggested that the water management district, which has already spent $35 million buying 26,000 acres of land on the Kissimmee flood plain, may have been paying private owners for land already owned by the state. The state reserves title to all land that was submerged and navigable at the time Florida was admitted to the Union, but when the canal drained the Kissimmee wetlands, ranchers claimed thousands of acres that may be re-flooded.

Buying State Lands

The state still needs 51,000 acres to complete the project, and, rather than risk lengthy court battles, Gov. Lawton Chiles last November authorized continued purchasing of the property in question. State land agents were told to use the disputed ownership issue as leverage in their negotiations.

The next crucial decision will come from Washington.

“We have resolved the issues of hydrology and we have resolved the question of whether fish and wildlife will return,” said Kent Loftin, a former employee of the Corps of Engineers and former manager of the demonstration project for the South Florida Water Management District. “We can demonstrate what we are getting for our money. We have a very mature project, with all the emotionalism and hysteria behind us in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Now it is a social, political and economic question. Is it worth it?

“We think it is. We think this is a grand project for the Administration in Washington to decide what its position is going to be on environmental restoration.”

Putting the Twists Back Into a River

The Kissimmee River is the pipeline that feeds Lake Okeechobee and the delicate Everglades system. In the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned the river into a 56-mile-long flood control ditch. The result was destruction of tens of thousands of acres of wetlands. But the stage is now set to restore the bends and loops of the river that are critical to the river basin’s wildlife.

Source: South Florida Water Management District