Everglades’ Struggle at Crucial Stage : Ecology: The future likely will bring tough water-use restrictions and higher taxes. Dozens of endangered species and tens of thousands of jobs are at stake.

From the air, they look like gobs of paint flung against a canvas: a splash of dark blue-green here, a long stream of brown there, a puddle of yellow over there.

But look closely into what was once crystal-clear water, and the colors become more menacing--smothering blankets of algae, covering plant life below that used to nurture lobsters, bonefish, redfish, pink shrimp.

“The tarpon used to just loll around in here,” said George Barley, pointing to a stretch of shallow water. “Now, it’s a soupy mess.”

The plane passes over the 9-Mile Bank, where George Bush bonefished on vacations. Now there is a dark bloom and no sign of fish or fishermen.

In the waterfront bars, this is known as “The Dead Zone.”

Barley is chairman of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s advisory council; a wealthy Orlando businessman, he used to fly down here for fishing.

But he has spent most of his private hours the last year trying to rally support for the bay and for the Everglades, a fragile and complex system Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has described as “the ultimate test case” for our nation’s ability to manage its environment.

The way the struggle plays out has implications that may touch almost every American, as billion-dollar industries and a billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded preservation effort try to coexist.

The main domestic growers of sugar cane and winter vegetables are under attack--environmentalists say their demands for fresh water have hurt Florida Bay, and phosphorus runoff from their fields has hurt the Everglades.

But corrective measures could be costly, boosting the price of sugar and vegetables or forcing the growers to move elsewhere.

For southern Florida’s nearly 5 million residents, the future likely will bring tough water-use restrictions and higher taxes to pay for water-purifying efforts. And environmental havoc endangers tens of thousands of jobs in agricultural, tourism and fishing industries.

Barley carries color satellite photos that trace the growing and deepening discoloration of the bay over the last two years.

Shifting slowly on windy days, one large algae bloom meanders across the bay’s southern portion, while another starts in the western bay and reaches several miles into the Gulf of Mexico. Other, scattered small discolored areas indicate localized blooms, and cover an estimated total 450 square miles.

The bay lies at the bottom of an ecosystem that begins above the Kissimmee River, continues through Lake Okeechobee, the bass-fishing paradise and South Florida’s “liquid heart” also bothered by algae blooms and plant damage, and across the Everglades “river of grass.”

“It’s a real lesson about how these systems work and how they can be damaged,” said Tom Martin of the National Audubon Society.

Biologists say lack of fresh water increased the bay’s saltwater content, replacing natural sea grasses with a strain of “turtle grass” less hardy than the grasses it crowded out. Droughts--probably worsened by development’s disruption of evaporation cycles--and man-made disruptions in freshwater flow have apparently caused grass die-offs and spurred the algae blooms.

In the Everglades, environmentalists say phosphorus from farms has caused the growth of cattails and other species that choke out naturally occurring plant life.

The Florida Bay area and the Everglades National Park mainland host dozens of endangered or threatened animal and plant species, including bald eagles, American crocodiles and wild Florida panthers.

Environmentalists are accustomed to scornful reactions from people who don’t share their devotion to wildlife.

A March report on a $343-million project to preserve habitat for the species’ 30 to 50 wild survivors, for example, drew a letter to The Palm Beach Post from Boynton Beach resident J. A. Rorick: “Oh, to be a Florida panther . . . while the taxpayers and other deserving humans moan.”

But the Florida Bay problems are spreading gloom among laid-back island residents who recognize threats to lobster, stone crab and shrimp habitats and the related jobs of processors, commercial fishermen and recreational fishing guides. The coral reefs off the central Keys that draw snorkelers and divers are also in peril, biologists say.

“This is like an atomic bomb hitting the Keys,” said state Rep. Ron Saunders (D-Key West), noting that nearly every job in the Keys is linked to tourism or fishing. “If the ecology goes down, the economy goes down.”

Environmentalists are urging that freshwater flows diverted to accommodate farmers and residents be restored to reduce the salinity. They also want to buy farmland and an 8 1/2-square-mile residential area on the fringes of the Everglades to help return wetlands to their natural state.

State water managers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are holding public hearings on a two-year experimental project to test the effects of increasing freshwater flow in a slough that feeds the bay.

Not enough, say some. “We don’t want more surveys, we don’t want more slide shows or meetings or scientific research. These have gone on for years, and the bay continues to die,” said Spencer Slate, chairman of the Keys Assn. of Dive Operators.

As with nearly every aspect of Everglades preservation, there is disagreement about the real causes. And there is a hesitancy to plunge ahead with expensive, untried programs that involve dislocating people and jobs.

To the north, at the 700,000-acre Everglades Agricultural Area, government officials, federal mediators and sugar executives are negotiating to avoid a months-long administrative hearing on what to do about pollution of water flowing from the farms rimming Lake Okeechobee.

The debate has inched along for more than a decade. Finally, in 1988, then-U.S. Atty. Dexter Lehtinen sued the state, demanding it stop pollution near Everglades National Park. That suit’s settlement, tied to a $400-million plan to set up filtering marshes between the farmlands and national park, is clouded by the growers’ legal challenges.

The giant U.S. Sugar Corp. and Flo-Sun this year offered separate compromises with authorities that would reduce phosphorus emissions. But smaller growers continue to balk at costly plans they say could drive them out of business.

“Why not take down all the condos so I can go walk on the beach like we used to?” asked Walter Parker, a U.S. Sugar employee whose father moved to Clewiston from Georgia in the 1950s to work for the company.

Ten years ago, when Bob Graham was governor of Florida, he sought to fire public enthusiasm by pulling together preservation programs in a “Save Our Everglades” initiative. He compared the campaign to President John F. Kennedy’s call for a space program that would put a man on the moon.

Now a U.S. senator, Graham said there has been “some significant progress” toward the goal for the year 2000: making the Everglades function more as it did 100 years ago, when massive drainage began.

Graham traces progress on programs ranging from “buffer zone” land acquisitions to an attempt to return the channeled Kissimmee River to its meandering original path. The preservation programs are expected to easily top $1 billion and could hit $2 billion.

But Graham says bipartisan support among Florida politicians now will be bolstered by the Clinton Administration, with such pro-ecology officials as Vice President Al Gore, Interior Secretary Babbitt and Floridians Janet Reno, as attorney general, and Carol Browner, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The Everglades, which had been sort of a backwater, is now front and center,” Graham said.