Everglades Restoration Project Pt. 3: Restoring the Flow

So when last we left this story, I believe we were discussing how they were a makin' improvements on the edges, kind of cleaning things up, like a surgical tech prepping the patient, cleaning up little, and not so little odds and ends created by 100 or so years of American habitation of the Florida Peninsula (that's all it took to screw it up.. industrious people, Flagler and them!).. but you young kids, you whipper-snappers, who haven't been waiting 60 years for a drink of fresh water like us old alligator types. We know how to just lull ourselves and sit in the sun and not eat for a year or so, but you kids want satisfaction, you want to know about the big show, the big problem, you rush right in..well, I gotto admire that.. you kids got guts.. you realize that unless the flow is restored, the icon of the Everglades, Everglades National Park, is gunna shrivel up, succumb to nitrogen overload and invasive species onslaughts, world sea level rise, and, well, won't be much left to see..
Now a tourist might not know the difference.. to them, brown grass is well, brown grass, and a gator can survive just about anything, but it's the million subtle differences we are talking about, Okeechobee being almost dry, and the 'glades themselves being just about dry as well.. what to do, what to do..



Alright, I'm a torturing you a bit.. it's an old gator's job... what to do? A lot.. and finally, it's happening, and not just on the edges like I described before in part II, but on the Tamiami Trail, and in the sugar lands.. sure we got a bit of a, well, how do they describe it, a budget crisis going on.. but somehow them boys up in Tallahassee and Warsh-ington, DC managed to find just enough bucks to really do two big things.. well, to do the start of two big things.. they kind of pulled short of the ideal, the full restoration, but I think you are going to see that it's a great start, and there is nothing to keep them from continuing with the two major steps I am about to describe, the two major steps that are essentially restoration as close to complete as one could ask for if taken to the n-th, and for me, the day they open up Shark Slough, maybe in about 6 months, I might have a piece of Key Lime pie or a shot o' Conch Republic Rum to celebrate.. although I just might make em with sugar from Cuba..

So let's start with the Sugar Deal, and a sweet deal it would have been... Charlie Crist, the democratic governor that drew a lot of flak, but had a kind of adolescent innocence that made him try things for heck's sake, he tried something big once.. he tried to make a huge deal to save the everglades, and it didn't quite work, but it did set the stage a bit..
So Charlie knew all the problems, he's Governor for Pete's sake, and he also knew all the guys at United Sugar.. since they are, umm.. big political supporters.. and he knew that the market cap of the business, it wasn't huge, and the people love business solutions.. they buzzwords back then were 'Running Government Like a Corporation', so heck, Charlie decided, why not think like a CEO, since United Sugar owns all this land around Lake Okeechobee that is basically cutting The Everglades in two, and they are farming the crap out of it, dumping more nitrogen than God ever could into the shallow flow that should exist there, and that makes it to the areas south to change the makeup of the plant life that does ever receive water, so why not just buy em out for 2 Billion Dollars, dissolve all domestic sugar production into the lemonade of our global economy, and just call it fixed.. heck, anyone can see that Florida can afford to do that.. well, that was the original intent, but somehow, like a wave crashing against a breakwater, it never made it to it's final destination.. what ended up happening was a 500 million dollar deal instead of the 2 billion or so full purchase, that was, well, a pretty sweet deal for United Sugar, which never had to dissolve.. wait, scratch that, we are down to a 200 million dollar deal, with options.. it just had to give up a patch work of some of it's likely less productive lands, but only after being allowed to use them for some 6 more years or so, so that the land could go fallow and help restore the link between the upper and lower everglades.. kind of.. starting I guess in 2016 (lord help us..):
http://enr.construction.com/infrastructure/environment/2010/extras/0818.asp
http://southeast.construction.com/southeast_construction_news/2010/0818_FlaWaterMgmt.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Sugar_Corporation
please note that at the bottom there, they are going pretty green, using their waste products for production and even perhaps for biofuel..

anyhow, the deal got done, with options pending, Charlie got in a mess running for Senate, but here we are with the land now kind of close to going fallow, not all of it mind you, and according to one environmental scientist from Florida, not any lands that were critical, it's not a clear corridor from the Kissimmie Side to the National Park, but hey it's Florida, it takes a lot of lard to make a good Cuban sandwich... so that was step one, but what about step two.. the 'glades are down there starving for water.. they would drink nitrogen soup if it meant they wouldn't thirst to death, and soon they will have their salvation.. well, in part, but to me, this is the best step of all:

So that system of ditches and dikes I have been talkin' about, includes a few highways, and sure, again, around the edges, they have been closing off and modifying a few ditches (canal's as they are referred to) like mentioned before in part two, and a few minor project I haven't mentioned like changing the flow of water into Biscayne Bay National Wildlife Refuge, not to be forgotten next to his bigger federal brother the Everglades National Park, or the big tank they are building to replenish the everglades aquifers with settling waste water after they get pumped away to satisfy south Florida's thirsts, but if you had to identify one dyke and canal combo that is stopping the main flow to that aforementioned bigger federal brother, the poster child, the golden hope, it is the Tamiami Trail, US 41, the classic everglades highway, dotted with air boat tours and alligator farms where you can watch some good cracker on gator wrestlin' action for what might set ya back 30 bucks or so.. it's the least obscure but perhaps most iconically satisfying of the Florida back roads, the road so interesting it seems to even give the traffic guy a smile every day to say it's name.. the Tamiami Trail. It's got Indian Casinos that got their tacky second rate infamy for claiming the Marylin Monroe of the 90's, Anna Nicole Smith (Bigger, Bustier, and Uncut!), Goodland where the west coast of Florida Midwesterners troop for a good time show, and the subtropical forests where the orchid thief plied his trade, it's a regular Florida icon bonanza, but it might as well be the Glen Canyon Dam to the Everglades NP's Grand Canyon. It is blocking off the flow of water to such a degree that along with all it's northerly cousins, it's been estimated that in total the lands in the park are getting 5% of their original flow... and that that is changing the composition of the ecosystem so dramatically, with everything from salt water intrusion to species composition change, that it might as well be a different park for all who have to live there even though to the untrained eye it is the same place, hot, flat, buggy and filled with some sort of grass...
So who is the savior that is coming in to change a problem that the experts see.. well, none other than Ken Salazar, the Department of the Interior, the South Florida Water Management District, various funding sources of the Federal Government, and of all things the Florida Department of Transportation... and how are they going to start restoring the flow, as all the culverts on the Tamiami trail now spout with huge head pressure during the rainy season but it still isn't enough.. you got it! Another big public works project, but you gotta spread the fat around to get something done in Florida.. Here it is, the Shark Slough Restoration Project elevated road bed!

http://photojournalclydeniki.blogspot.com/2011/10/society-of-environmental-journalists.html
http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wetlands/tamiami-trail-bridge-restores-flow-to-everglades-but-it-wont-be-enough/1198510
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2009/dec/04/work-starts-81-million-bridge-part-florida-evergla/
http://media.naplesnews.com/media/static/bridge_project_plan_view.jpg
well, doesn't look completely stunning.. umm.. well here was the original set of options
http://www.nps.gov/ever/naturescience/upload/009032009FinalPowerPoint.pdf
You can see, if you wade through some 90 pages of, well, actually, kind of geeky cool graphics, that they had a lot of options put on the table..one of them called for 6.5 miles of bridging, likely a 2 billion dollar project... and heck, if we had all the money in the world, might be fun to make the whole thing a causeway, or pay for planes or hovercraft to take you from Naples to Miami so you can put some money on that Jai Alai match in Dania and make it back in time for Bingo, but umm.. times are tough, and a start is a start..so they.. umm.. picked the cheapest option... but a start is a start!
if that 90 pages wasn't enough for you, vacuum brain, here is the rest of the discussion:
http://www.nps.gov/ever/naturescience/nessrestoration.htm
now since I am pretending to be the expert here, I must admit that I can't for the life of me figure out what the Miccusokee's are crowing about, not sure what their angle is, but I will say for the record, reservations on a bunch of nitrogen being dumped in as well aside, that this must be good for the Everglades, but in Florida, God bless it, nothing is ever quite what you expect.. but hey, the gator's don't complain, the law man does what he will, and I bet the fishin' improves.. in fact, that reminds me.. I'm gunna grab my rod and head out..
The 1 mile bridge is set for completion this summer some time, 2013.. they are a workin' on it as we speak:
http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsReleases/tabid/6071/Article/6614/early-morning-road-closure-on-tamiami-trail-dec-3-and-dec-5.aspx
they'll lift up the barriers and let her rip.. we'll see what happens then..
T minus 3-9 months and counting, sometme from Summer to December of 2013 the one mile bridge should be flowing. They are building the road deck as we speak, then they pull out the old levee/road and voilâ:
http://www.evergladesplan.org/pm/projects/non_cerp_sf_projects_tamiami.aspx
Oh by the way, them government boys are already askin' for them 5.5 additional miles of bridges.. so don't worry, us gators are waiting patiently..
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/showFile.cfm?projectID=26159&docType=public&MIMEType=application%252Fx%252Dpdf&filename=EVERTamiamiTrailModifications_FEIS_post_chpts1to6%2Epdf&clientFilename=EVERTamiamiTrailModifications_FEIS_post_chpts1to6%2Epdf

Epilogue:
Finally, May 15, 2013.. the scoop that set it free!

Oh and, I guess it was considered a success, even by Tea Party standards,
http://www.keysnet.com/2013/09/04/489780/90m-okd-for-glades-bridges.html
because the Governor found 90 million to match federal cash for a 180 mil total to build 2.2 more miles of bridge during the 1013 budget season.. I guess fiscal austerity will have to wait a bit. Thankfully this swampland boondoggle will make a few gators happy, and not just a few construction companies!