The Case Against Backfilling

It seems like only yesterday that SAFER was formed to represent the interests of freshwater anglers utilizing the Water Conservation Area 3’s miles and miles of canals for recreational fishing. I look at the faces of the guys seated around the tables at our monthly meetings at Bass Pro Shops in Dania, and they look the same to as they did eight years ago. Well, maybe a little grayer! But still very committed to maintaining a vibrant bass fishery in the WCA’s. Throughout the years, our message to the agencies participating in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project (CERP) has remained constant. SAFER believes that the goals of establishing the necessary sheet flow of water that scientists maintain is needed for Everglades Restoration, can be accomplished by degrading the levees without backfilling the canals. The canals become obstacles to sheet flow only if they are used as a means of conveying water. The water would simply sheet flow over the deep water refuge that the canals provide. This is the message we have been conveying to the Corps of Engineers and the Water District. The record of the first meeting back on February 6, 2001 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.”

SAFER has long felt that if the plan, as detailed in the “Yellow Book,” for the Modified Waters Delivery project (MWD) is carried out, it will surely result in the destruction of the Everglades fishery. Plans for this project call for the partial backfilling of the L-67C Canal—closing access to over 15 miles of fish-filled canal—as well as the backfilling of the Miami River Canal. All it will take, will be one low water incident, and deprived of the deep water refugia provided by the canals, the results will be a fish kill from which the fishery might not recover. This is not a question of “if,” but “when?” The inherent flaws of MOD Water, due to its lack of accommodation to fishermen and other recreationalists, has been a factor that has stalled this program for nearly 10 years. Mired in litigation and controversy, MWD has spent millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money, and has yet to move a gallon of water into Northeast Shark River Slough.

From the start we have questioned the validity of the 1992 MWD plans on several grounds. Most simply from the point of view that it made no provisions for recreational opportunities. The plan’s designers made no attempt to include recreational stakeholder groups in the design process.  More importantly, we have continuously questioned the validity of the hydrological modeling on which past plans have been formulated. Today, however, new and more detailed models have been developed by SFWMD. Models utilizing navigation channels, partial plugs, weirs, etc., instead of canal backfilling, need to be developed, and the results carefully analyzed. The onus of proving the necessity for canal backfilling, and reducing existing recreational access, enjoyed for decades by thousands of South Floridians, is squarely on the shoulders of the USACE/SFWMD. At a meeting hosted by the USACE, Dennis Duke, the Corps’ point man for Restoration, stated that the Corps was up to the challenge, and in the process of developing an experiment—Decomp Adaptive Management Plan (DAMP)—which would test a variety of scenarios, ranging from No Fill to Complete Backfill. We are still waiting for something to come of this assertion, as it is our feeling that DAMP has taken a back seat on the priority list, even as the Corps moves ahead to fill in the Miami Canal and the L-67C as called for in the antiquated Yellow Book. Canal backfilling is a decision that should not be made in a hurried manner, and before all the facts are in. Once a canal is filled in, it will probably never be dug back up, and another recreational opportunity will have been squandered to no purpose.

The Corps’ attempt to save time and money by attempting to form a smooth transition from Mod Waters to CERP is, in our view, a failure. Mod Waters simply does not fit under the CERP  “umbrella.” The Water Resources Development Act (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. SAFER’s position is summed up in the “Modified Water Delivery Consensus Report” published by the Recreational Issues Workshop of SFWMD’s Water Resources Advisory Commission: 

The Team discussed the challenge of maintaining the conveyance necessary for restoration while providing recreational opportunities. Mod Water proposes, as does the CERP, backfilling some canals. Recreational fishermen, bass fishermen in particular, are seeking solutions that maintain the quality of the existing fisheries within the canals.  The Team is seeking ways to do a better job of maintaining and improving existing recreation while achieving restoration.

Implementation must proceed in a programmatic manner,” reads WRDA, “using the principles of adaptive assessment as outlined in the CERP.” …“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 scientific or technical information or information that is developed through the principles of adaptive management are integrated into the implementation of the Plan.” (page 4) SAFER does not believe that any plan that starts with the backfilling of the WCA canals, this early in the process, falls within the philosophy of adaptive management. It would be more appropriate to start with something such as cleaning out and maintaining the culverts along the Tamiami Trail, something SAFER has advocated all along. Whatever the project is, it must be guided by the rules established by the enabling legislation.

And there-in lies the rub, for no such programmatic regulations govern the Mod Waters project. It’s purpose is simply to move enough water into Everglades National Park, and the short-sighted agenda of the staff at ENP does not extend much beyond the limits of the park. It is their view that the restoration of the park cannot be accomplished without the complete backfilling of the hundred of miles of canals in the WCA’s, unless the existing system is completely erased. As if it had never been.

But the times have changed, and so have the economics of Restoration. It happened the minute the citizens of the State of Florida agreed to taking on half 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.” We firmly believe that these issues cannot be left solely to the discretion of the Federal government and its agencies. Florida’s state government and its agencies need to protect the rights of its citizens to determine how the water created by the projects of the CERP should be used. We must not forget the huge tax burden we have assumed to help re-plumb the Everglades. The water needs of the citizenry in general, and the recreational access to the Everglades, in particular, are just as important as the environmental need to restore the “River of Grass.” No agency is better positioned to look after the interests of Florida’s recreational fishermen and hunters than the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). In the past, SAFER has noticed, the FWC has been treated as one of those minor agencies fluttering around the fringes of restoration. It is important for the fishermen of Florida, that FWC take a more important role in the planning stages of all CERP related projects.

And last but not least, the canals are great at what they do—one of the best man-made systems to control flooding during extreme weather conditions. A presentation by Dr. Thomas Van Lent of the National Park Service (NPS) at a meeting of the CSOP Advisory Committee indicates that there are serious concerns regarding the high water levels which will be the by product of  Mod Waters  and other-CERP related projects. Removing the canals and their ability to move water out of the system, believes Dr. Thomas Van Lent of the National Park Service, will result in the possibility that during a heavy rainy season (A big rain event in NPS parlance), the only direction in which water will be able to flow, will be south, right into ENP. This much water will surely drown the park. The canals were built, and have been hugely successful, in preventing flood conditions in the heavily built up areas of South Florida; leaving them in place will help to prevent flooding in the natural systems of the Everglades.

The recent purchase of the U.S. Sugar land re-enforces the belief that it is only the citizens of Florida, fishermen and hunters included, that are the driving force behind restoration. It is time for the federal agencies involved, to start shouldering their fair share of the burden, to broaden the scope of their project designs, and take a more pronounced interest in the needs of Florida’s recreational users of the Everglades.