November 24, 2020
Restoring the Everglades'
Sawgrass Paradise
They Drained Paradise… And Put Up Over
$10 Billion to Restore the Everglades.
By Jessica Cody
America boasts a unique and breathtaking area on this planet in the Florida Everglades. It’s a flooded savannah also often called the “River of Grass,” a shallow, slow-moving river that flows from Lake Okeechobee southwest to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a habitat for tropical wildlife, such as alligators and wildcats. The restoration of the Florida Everglades is a cause that is especially dear to my heart. Over the past 5 years or so, I have become quite familiar with the Everglades. My grandparents grew up there, and I had heard story upon story about Lake Okeechobee, the gators, the drugstore they met at, the abundant fried and raw seafood, and the dirt they refer to as “muck."
In 2010 my grandfather, Tom Elliott, wrote Lakepoint: Murder on the Everglades Frontier, a novel set in this all-American swamp. His descriptions of the infamous River of Grass had my imagination running wild. The Seminole Indian tribe (the only Native American tribe the U.S. could not force a surrender from) were the original settlers there, and their influence on the culture back in the 1950s is evident in my grandfather’s book; for example, the name “Okeechobee” means “big water” in their language.
And I cannot forget the Herbert Hoover levee, or “dike” as it was commonly referred to. The dike, which my grandfather referred to in his book as “mammoth”, separated the town of Pahokee’s Main Street from the lake. With Florida being so prone to tornadoes and hurricanes, along with budding romances, the dike was “not only a protector against storms, but also an ideal lover’s lane.”
In 2018, I finally got the chance to visit my grandparents’ hometown, Pahokee, right smack in the middle of the Everglades and overlooking Lake Okeechobee, which is the second biggest freshwater lake in the United States.
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The writer's grandparents, Tom and Kay Elliott, grew up near Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades.
I got to see the water tower in the middle of town that my grandfather’s cousin Ronnie once climbed in the middle of the night, and the drugstore where my grandparents met. I ate the food my grandmother had made all my life: fried shrimp, hush puppies, fried okra, biscuits, grits. I also ate alligator for the first time and found it to be delicious.
When I got to Lake Okeechobee, I was extremely excited, so I got as close as I could and ended up falling in, almost losing my purse, keys, phone, everything. Luckily, I had my friend Tom with me who pulled me out. I was wearing white shorts that were at that point looking quite black, and that was when I became aware of how polluted Lake Okeechobee is. What’s funny is that not too long after that, President Trump was on TV down at Lake Okeechobee, standing exactly where I had been to address the pollution problem. I had never heard about this problem until I had recently experienced it firsthand.
But the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee were not always like this. My grandfather recalls learning to swim there when he was younger. When my grandmother was pregnant, her and my grandfather went fishing on the lake one night and there was person after person lined up on the dock with fishing supplies. The fish in Lake Okeechobee were indeed abundant. So much so that one time my great grandfather was fishing at the edge of a canal going into the lake, and his rod got tangled, so he tried to fix the reel. While he was doing that, the bait was in the water, and a fish bit. He caught a fish without even trying to.
So, what happened to the lake for it to get so polluted? Around the early 1900s, the draining of the Everglades began in order to make room for agricultural and residential development. The sugar cane industry was, and still is to this day one of the most profitable and large-scale industries in the area. In the 1920s, after a few very
The writer with her friend Tom on her first trip to the Everglades in 2018.
destructive hurricanes wreaked havoc on the area, leaving devastating property damage and killing over 2,500 people, the dike was installed around Lake Okeechobee. My grandfather recalls hurricanes such as these in his book, and one of the story’s main characters uses his Ford dealership as a storm shelter for anyone who needed it. This was adapted from my grandfather’s own life experience; his uncle had a Ford dealership and during a rough storm many would gather there.
In 1948 there was a need for more flood protection for the residential, agricultural, and commercial areas, and so began the construction of a comprehensive network of canals, dams, reservoirs, and other water control structures. This initiative, called the Florida Flood Control Project, drained about half of the Everglades. But, in the words of singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone,” and no one predicted the harmful effects it would have on water quality, wildlife and their natural habitats, and the Florida’s tourism industry, which the state relies on heavily.
The worst of the pollution to Lake Okeechobee, which is known as the “gateway to the Everglades”, has been in the past six years. The water has been heavily contaminated with blue-green algae, a type of algae that is very toxic, because it produces cyanobacteria. This produces a blanket of green slime known as an “algae bloom”, which cuts off oxygen, killing fish and other marine wildlife. These blooms continue to grow, and in some cases go on for miles and miles. The blooms have also now moved into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers, throughout the canal systems. Among the main root causes of the blooms are nitrogen and phosphorous, which are found in agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, which run off into the canals, rivers, and lakes. According to Michael Turnbell of the Sun Sentinel, the canals can be up to fifteen feet deep, and are “murky, unsafe for swimming and have been used as a dumping ground for cars, weapons used in crimes, barbed wire and construction debris -- even bodies.” Indeed, the fact that the Everglades would be the ideal setting to commit and cover up a murder is evident in my grandfather’s novel.
In the Everglades, soil is referred to as "muck," pictured above.
Other issues such as climate change and septic problems are thought to contribute to the scope of the blooms as well. Besides the blooms, the water quality has also been compromised due to an inadequate balance of saltwater in the Florida Bay and not enough fresh water in the Everglades. These factors are essential to the survival of the local habitat. Scientists continue intense testing of the water quality to fully understand how and why these algae blooms develop. The solution to removing these blankets of algae might seem simple at first: get rid of the excess bacteria and minerals that cause them. But with politics involved it’s been less straightforward. Back in 2000, President Clinton signed a bill for a substantial joint restoration effort involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service and the Florida Department of Transportation. It became the largest water restoration project ever in the U.S., and cost 10.5 billion dollars over over the course of almost four decades. Over the years, however, there have been delays due to lack of funds, political differences and complications made by certain court rulings.
The solution to removing these blankets of algae might seem simple at first: get rid of the excess bacteria and minerals that cause them. But with politics involved it’s been less straightforward. Back in 2000, President Clinton signed a bill for a substantial joint restoration effort involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service and the Florida Department of Transportation. It became the largest water restoration project ever in the U.S., and cost 10.5 billion dollars over the course of almost four decades. Over the years, however, there have been delays due to lack of funds, political differences and complications made by certain court rulings.
In 2015, the Obama administration reinstated federal protection to almost 30% of Florida’s streams and other wetlands with the Clean Water Rule, which was first proposed in 2014 by the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. According to a May 2015 Environment Florida News Release, the legislation “restores Clean Water Act safeguards to streams and wetlands that have been vulnerable to development and pollution for nearly ten years.” It gained support from over 800,000 Florida residents, including farmers, local officials, and small businesses. But there was continued resistance against the law coming from the oil and gas industry, which resulted in other bills passed to make the Clean Water Rule less effective.
Draining of swamps in The Everglades started in the early 1900s to make room for agricultural industries such as sugar cane, pictured above.
Nevertheless, there have still been 3 additional stages of the project that have been funded for completion. And in 2014, Florida voters supported an amendment to the Constitution requiring legislature to disburse funds each year for land conservation and Everglades restoration endeavors. In 2016, another law was passed that required a $200 million fund for Everglades restoration.
In 2019, Trump’s administration had originally cut the budget down to $63.3 million for the restoration projects, but Florida lawmakers were no longer willing to accept insufficient funding for such a large undertaking. So, after Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rick Scott and Governor Ron DeSantis lobbied the president, Trump agreed to increase the federal government’s commitment to $200 million. Trump also added another $50 million to the annual budget proposal for 2021. In an opinion piece written by Marco Rubio in February for the Tampa Bay Times, he said that this commitment of $250 million would “allow the corps to break ground on the Central Everglades Planning Project, which I have long championed, this year.”
And, finally, the million-dollar question: what has actually been done so far to restore this sawgrass paradise? There has been a lot of work done on raising the Tamiami Trail, which is near completion. According to Samantha J. Gross of the Miami Herald, the advantage of this project is that it “will allow more water to flow under the 91-year-old road that has dammed up the marshes and parts of Florida Bay for decades, and reconnect pieces of a vast water system that stretches from Lake Okeechobee through the Everglades to Florida Bay.” Also underway is a $417 million undertaking to redirect water into the Shark River Slough, and a $25 million effort to undo the damage caused by a canal that cut off water to Taylor Slough. And the swamps aren’t the only thing being brought back to life: my grandparent’s hometown, Pahokee, is in the process of rebranding itself, in order to remove stereotypes of crime and prompt economic growth. Some of the changes they have made so far are renovating the marina on the dike, the city’s football field, and commissioner’s park.
After my trip to Pahokee and experiencing Lake Okeechobee, the dike, the fields of sugar cane and taking an airboat ride through the marsh where I spotted alligators for myself, I re-read my grandfather’s novel. What a difference now that I could picture myself in the setting as he described it. Indeed, this “forgotten” part of Florida is getting the attention it needs, and my experience there has been imprinted in my mind.