South Florida Anglers For Everglades Restoration

(First in a series of position papers defining SAFER’s stance on issues of concern in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan)

 SAFER and Everglades National Park

SAFER is extremely concerned regarding the restoration requirements of Everglades National Park (ENP) under the auspices of the Modified Water Delivery to Everglades National Park Plan. The issue of most concern for us right now, is ENP’s insistence on that part of MOD Waters which proposes the backfilling of more than half of the L-67C Canal in Water Conservation Area 3. In tandem with the L-67A Canal, this canal constitutes one of the finest bass fisheries in the state of Florida. Filling in any portion of these canals, given the size and draft of modern bass boats, would, for all intents and purposes, close the WCA off to recreational fisherman. We feel very positively, that our needs (maintaining the canals open to boat traffic for their entire length), are not inimical to the overall scope of Everglades Restoration, and that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and recreational fishermen can work together for the benefit of all concerned. I wish we could say the same for the other Federal agencies involved in the Restoration process. We have found, in past dealings with ENP, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interior, that they view the restoration of ENP as the end all and be all, of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project. And damn everything and everyone else. We have reviewed the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 (WRDA), and quite frankly, we don’t understand how ENP ended up with so much power, so much say, over the CERP process.

When Congress approved the Water Resources Development Act of 2000, it authorized the Secretary of the Army to “modify the Central and Southern Florida Project to restore, preserve and protect the South Florida ecosystem.” The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan defines the “South Florida ecosystem as those “lands and waters within the boundary, existing on July 1, 1999, of the South Florida Water Management District, including the Everglades ecosystem, the Florida Keys, Biscayne Bay, Florida Bay, and other contiguous near-shore coastal waters of South Florida.” Everglades National Park, though part of the “natural system,” is not even mentioned by name. It merely takes its place alongside Biscayne National Park, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Big Cypress National Preserve, Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, as one of the beneficiaries of the many components of CERP.

No one disputes the fact that Everglades National Park is a park whose habitat is in major decline, and that much of the blame can be placed on the levees and canals that were dug as part of the Central and South Florida Project (C&SFP). The unnatural alterations to the land produced results that were to prove disastrous to ENP. By the late 1980’s, it was apparent to everyone that ENP needed help. To that end, legislation was authorized, and the Modified Waters Delivery to Everglades National Park bill was passed into law in 1992. Theoretically, MOD Waters was intended to restore the historic sheetflow of the Everglades, by reconnecting the Water Conservation Areas north of the Tamiami Trail, to North Shark River Slough, which lies to the south of the roadway. A series of proposals by the Corps of Engineers provided increased water flow to the slough and then down into Everglades National Park. It quickly became bogged down in all kinds of controversies, including a heated debate over the most expensive of the proposals, the construction of an elevated, 11-mile bridge, costing over $130 million, which was clearly outside the budgetary parameters of MOD Waters. And yet, the idea refused to die. “Scientist from various agencies,” said Frank Jackalone, director of the Florida Sierra Club, “have told the Corps that Everglades restoration will not take place without raising the road.” (Miami Herald, 6/23/01). ENP swallowed this hook, line and sinker. “I think it’s the pivotal piece for restoration in South Florida,” said David Sikkema, a hydrologist for the Park. And because ENP was picking up a good portion of the financial cost of the work to be done under MOD Waters, it became gospel. As did the theory that in order to restore the Everglades, we had to return the Glades to their pre-C&SFP days, that is, degrade the levees, and back-fill the canals. “At a recent meeting,” writes Kim Taplin, project director for the South Florida components of CERP, “Everglades National Park staff seem to view the back-filling as not just a way to dispose of the levee material, but as a necessary component of Everglades restoration.”

But more than the park’s habitat was in decline during this time period, for the park’s infrastructure was also in a state of decay. “Environmentalists tend to ignore it,” wrote Curtis Morgan, a reporter for the Miami Herald, who has been reporting on developments in the ongoing saga of Everglades Restoration for the past year, “but tourist numbers have plunged since 1972, flattening out over the last decade at about 1 million annually….Park surveys also show about half those people barely pass through, spending less than four hours; about the time it takes to drive to the closest attraction, the Anhinga Trail, stroll the half-mile boardwalk, snap some pictures, buy some postcards and drive out.” (Miami Herald, 1/1/02). Only 1 out of 5 visitors to the park returns for a second visit, and of these only a handful are residents of Florida. It is a classic example of you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it all. “It’s beautiful,” said visitor Brian Grayson, “We’ve seen the sawgrass and the alligators and that’s about I, right?” That’s about it, agrees Jesse Kennon, the owner of the Coopertown airboat rides on the Tamiami Trail.  “So many people go there and find there’s not much to do,” he says. “It’s along boring ride down an asphalt road to Flamingo.” At the end of the road is a decrepit old hotel built in the 1950’s, constantly plagued by water and electrical problems, and the source of most of the park’s complaints. Even the park’s superintendent, Maureen Finnerty agrees, stating, “It basically needs an entire overhaul. Flamingo is very shabby. It’s almost past the point where you can do much about it.” The National Park Service, and Everglades National Park, would like to have you believe that the declining attendance is tied to the decline in the health of the Everglades habitat within the park’s borders. That, they claim, is more than enough reason to ram through the park’s vision of Everglade’s restoration.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, is that ENP is an exclusionist organization whose policies seem to be to maintain ENP as the largest, most isolated wilderness east of the Mississippi River. Coopertown’s Kennon maintains that his business, centered around airboat rides into the Glades, hasn’t suffered any declines in attendance. The Herald’s Curtis Morgan maintains that it’s because “he provides the airboat tours that visitors picture as part of the Everglades experience but that the park bans.” In 1989, a planned expansion of the park resulted in the purchase of 107,000 acres of land along the southern bank of the Tamiami Trail, and the park continues in its efforts to buy out and then shut down the tourist attractions of Coopertown, Everglades Safari and Gator Park. “I’d like to stay as long as I live,” says Jesse Kennon. “I’d like to pass it on to my kids. But I don’t see that happening.” Whether by design or not, closure of the airboat rides, would, for all intents and purposes, make more than 90% of the park off limits to any but the most dedicated outdoors person. It’s what ENP wants.

Ironically, one of the largest groups utilizing the Everglades is South Florida's avid fishermen. Every year tens of thousands of anglers fish Florida Bay or the canals in the Water Conservation Areas just to the north of the park. These canals have been a point of contention between anglers, and the staff of ENP, on previous occasions. Unfortunately, an examination of the ENP’s staff, (and the Corps of Engineers’) record with regards to canal access/closures, dating back to the early 90’s, reveals an organizational mindset that gives us serious reason for concern. In the early 90’s, the Corps of Engineers (COE), acting at the urging of ENP, made their first effort to deny fishermen full access to the canals. The plan called for the building of a series of locks on the L-67A Canal in an attempt to divert water into WCA 3B, then down into North Shark River Slough. Of this effort, wrote the Miami Herald on Sept. 6, 1990, “Fishermen are angry and state biologists are concerned about a proposed $70 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project that could degrade Everglades water quality and would restrict angler access to the most productive and heavily used bass-fishing region in Dade and Broward counties.” Hard lobbying by the Miami-based Fisherman Against the Destruction of the Everglades (FADE), stayed the Corps of Engineers’ hand on that particular issue, but the organizational culture that supported the closure of the L-67 Canal to anglers, remains in place to this day. Ten years later, the public’s message to COE, as well as Everglades National Park, remains the same. At a public meeting, held on Feb. 6, 2001, to discuss Tamiami Trail Modifications under the auspices of Modified Water Delivery (MWD), the PDT’s Meeting Summary states, “The public voiced the desire to maintain recreational access in the project area and have consistently requested maintaining the canal for recreational fishing/boat access from L-29 to Holiday Park, which would require not removing L-67.”

We are dismayed to hear from the COE that the so-called 1992 plan has been resurrected. “The 1992 authorized plan,” responds the COE, “would provide boat access from the south end up to about 1/3 of the full length where the canal would be blocked by the water conveyance channel extending across from the L-67A Levee structure.  The 1992 plan was a compromise for major angler groups at the time and the then Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission resigned to this compromise plan.”

That was then, and this now, and the times have changed in the intervening 10 years. SAFER wasn’t around at the time all these compromises were being made, and it is clear to us that these compromises are inimical to the interests of our organization. We’d also like to point out that CERP wasn’t around then either. Just as surely as MOD Waters is giving way to CERP, so too, is the emphasis on the revival of ENP giving way to the broader goals of WRDA 2000. Those goals are described by WRDA 2000: “CERP…provides for the improvement and protection of water quality in, and the reduction of loss of fresh water from the South Florida ecosystem, as well as providing for the water related needs of the region, including flood protection, the enhancement of water supplies, and other objectives served by the C&SFP.”

ENP’s intransigence in the issue of canal closures is hard to understand in light of the split in financial responsibilities between the State of Florida, and the Federal government. The Park seems to have forgotten that Floridians are paying for 50% of the cost of this huge undertaking. “The state,” warns the Congress, “with its financial responsibilities for project implementation and capabilities in the planning, design, construction, and operation of CERP, must be a full partner with the Federal government.” What this means to us, as fishermen, as South Floridians, and as concerned environmentalists, is simple. What ENP does within the limits of the park, and with their money, is their prerogative. If they choose to close the park to a trespassing mankind, that’s their business. So be it. What happens north of the Tamiami Trail is our business. WRDA has charged the Secretary of the Army with ensuring that “implementation of CERP…does not cause substantial adverse impacts on existing legal water uses, including…water for the preservation of fish and wildlife in the natural system, and other legal uses as of the date of enactment of this Act.” We at SAFER are convinced that backfilling the canals will result in irreparable harm to this fantastic bass fishery. 

And finally, we want to touch briefly on the issue of the programmatic regulations, which were recently entered into the Federal Register. It is our understanding that these regulations were created to ensure an even playing field for all concerned parties. “Implementation must proceed in a programmatic manner,” reads the Act, “using the principles of adaptive assessment as outlined in the CERP.” At a recent interview with the staff of the U.S. Foundation for Environmental Conflict Resolution, SAFER went on record as stating that we would acquiesce in any eventual decisions concerning canal back-filling, arrived at by the interested parties, with the understanding that those decisions were reached after extensive hydrological modeling, and other scientific data, had been run through “adaptive assessment.” As highly interested shareholders, and in order to move CERP forward, we have agreed to abide by the rules of the process the ACE has created. We feel strongly that ENP, however, is not in sync with the principles of the programmatic regulations. Their long-held insistence on the back-filling of the WCA canals, completely lacking in any current hydrological modeling data, is in direct contradiction to the stated purpose of the programmatic regulations.

 “The purpose of these programmatic regulations,” states the Initial Draft, dated December 2001, “is to…ensure that new information resulting from changes or unforseen circumstances, new scienticfic or technical information or information that is developed through the principles of adaptive management are integrated into the implementation of the Plan.” (page 4) ENP has had ample time to foist their close-minded vision of Restoration on an unsuspecting South Florida citizenry. The inherent flaws of MOD Water, due to its lack of accomodation to fishermen and other recreationalists, and just about every other interested party, has stalled this program for nearly 10 years. It has spent millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money, and has yet to move a gallon of water into Northeast Shark River Slough. We urge the Corps of Engineers to send Everglades National Park a short, blunt message: Get with the program!!