U.S. Official: Everglades Restoration Project on the Back Burner

[seafan]

U.S. Official: Everglades Restoration Project on the Back Burner

By BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press

November 22, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH | The multibillion-dollar project to restore the Everglades has come to a near standstill, and the government can no longer estimate how much it will cost or how long it will take, the top federal official in charge of construction told The Associated Press.
In part because Congress has failed to come through with the promised money, some tasks have fallen years behind schedule. In the meantime, construction costs are rising, along with the price of the Florida real estate that must be bought up as part of the plan to restore the natural flow of water in the Everglades.

The largest wetlands restoration effort in the world - approved in 2000 and formally known as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP - was originally estimated to cost $7.8 billion and take 30 years. By last year, the price tag had been put at $10.5 billion, and experts said it could take 50 years.

.....

The Everglades once covered 4 million acres of swampland but has shrunk to half its size over the past 150 years because of the building of dikes, dams and homes in booming Florida and the effects of the sugar cane fields and other farms on its fringes. The swampland that remains is in ecological distress because of pollution from urban runoff and farm fertilizers.
The 2000 plan made the federal government and Florida 50-50 partners in the project to heal the River of Grass.

.....

But in large part because of the cost of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, Congress has appropriated only several million dollars. And the only work that has been done on any of the Corps' 68 projects has been on paper.
In the meantime, wildlife habitat continues to disappear, and pollution is killing native plants, allowing nonnative species to invade. ..... "There are a lot of other competing interests for the money. We have the Iraq war. We have the rebuilding of New Orleans," Buermann said. "And the Everglades continues to suffer. Who knows how long it can last without some real substantial restoration efforts? We can't stop the clock."

A review of Jeb Bush and Big Sugar's actions that have directly led us to this end:


1. In September, 2003, Jeb Bush and Big Sugar successfully http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/24/news_pf/State/Judge_in_Glades_case_.shtml">removed the respected federal judge who, for 15 years, oversaw the cleanup of the the Everglades. US District Judge William Hoeveler was ousted for publicly criticizing Jeb Bush, the Legislature and the South Florida Water Management District for dragging their feet in meeting the 2006 phosphorus cleanup standards in the Everglades, and warning of the legislation Jeb Bush was going to sign, which would extend the cleanup deadline for 10 additional years.

.....

In that stinging May 9 order, Hoeveler said he would appoint a special master to ensure the state did what it promised to do in cleaning up phosphorus pollution. Before he could name the special master, though, the sugar companies accused him of bias.
They were incensed by his comments in the order blasting the Legislature for passing a sugar-backed bill, which he called "clearly defective," that delayed the deadline for the South Florida Water Management District to clean up the pollution.

In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times a few days later, Hoeveler compared the appointment to posting a guard to protect the Everglades.
"When the governor signs this bill - and he will, I think, sign it - the South Florida Water Management District has got to be watched," Hoeveler said. He said Bush, who signed the bill, "is a good man and he means well. ... But I'm afraid he fell into the hands of those who don't like the Everglades."

Zloch's ruling singled out those two statements as reason to oust Hoeveler: "A reasonable interpretation of this statement is that Judge Hoeveler does not trust the South Florida Water Management District."
Taken together with other statements he made, Zloch wrote, Hoeveler gave the appearance of being biased against the sugar companies or anyone else supporting the bill that Bush signed.

2. The new judge picked in late 2003 to handle the case, Federico Moreno, a GHW Bush appointee, was widely seen as a gift to Big Sugar, which wanted to slow the cleanup. Moreno had little experience in environmental cases. He promptly closed the Everglades case a few months later, in March, 2004.


3. After all the new foot dragging for Big Sugar's benefit, suddenly, the 1998 $7.5 billion estimated cost of cleaning up the Everglades ballooned to $10.5 billion in 2005.


4. In March, 2006, this was the headline: Developer gets OK to build in midst of Everglades restoration project

A Miami developer wants to drop nearly 500 townhouses among live oaks and slash pine that are in the middle of a stalled Everglades restoration project in Collier County.

The South Florida Water Management District is playing a big role in planning the resuscitation of Belle Meade, a sprawling collection of subdivisions east of Collier Boulevard.

.....

So, when the state agency issued its blessing Wednesday for the Miami developer's proposal, it raised a few eyebrows.

Brad Cornell, policy advocate for the Collier County Audubon Society, criticized the water management district, saying it is giving away land that might be critical to the planned restoration project.

"They don't know if they don't need it because no one has done any planning," Cornell said. "That's why we can't go to the governing board and say don't permit this away, even though in general terms that's what they're doing."

Why, it sounds like the ousted Judge Hoeveler knew what he was talking about, not trusting South Florida Water Management District and Jeb Bush.



5. In 2006, Jeb Bush went to Washington, lobbying to end federal court oversight of the entire Everglades cleanup process, and leave it all to Jeb!'s Florida to handle it. Until then, federal money was supplementing state money to pay for the cleanup. And Jeb was intentionally jeopardizing this specific federal partnership with Florida.

Isn't that sweet?


And, as predicted, the headline was:


State bid for Everglades control may slow clean-up.


Further slowing down the cleanup process for Big Sugar....

Today, it's a balancing act as scientists work to restore natural flow and reverse degradation while maintaining a water supply for residents and farmers.

Just as progress is being realized, federal funds could now be in jeopardy. Gov. Jeb Bush, who leaves office early next year, is lobbying to cease federal court oversight that came from a 1992 settlement reached after the federal government sued the state for not abiding by its own clean water standards.

The deal produced a consent decree under which a federal judge in Miami oversees Everglades cleanup.

Many say a move away from the court would take the teeth out of the plan and could frighten away congressional funding for the cleanup.

"If there's a perception that (the state is) trying to bypass the consent decree there will be a direct impact on federal funding," said John Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. "We're not exactly flush with cash. We don't need a lot of excuses to cut funding, even from something as important as the Everglades."

The 30-year, $10.5 billion federal-state partnership is the largest wetland restoration effort in the world.

Jeb Bush and Big Sugar: ****"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"****



So now, we are at a standstill, as illustrated in the first article in this post. Because of Jeb Bush protecting and coddling his sugar buddies, we don't know how much it will cost, how long it will take, or even whether we will be able to save our Florida Everglades from the ravages of pollution, greed and thievery.


And this guy still thinks he is bred to rule.

[JCMach1]

1. The rape of my home state continues

The developers won't be happy until all of south Florida looks like the Bronx (no offence to ny)

[nightrider767]

2. I grew up in Miami

Ahhh, DU'ers what a wonderful place, the Everglades. A piece of heaven. Efforts to save it ave very worthwhile.

[seafan]

3. So.... Who Lost America's Everglades?

Who Lost America's Everglades?

November 22, 2007
By ALAN FARAGO

.....If the failure of Everglades restoration has a father, a Darth Vader if you will, it would be in 1995-three years before Jeb Bush took office-when the federal EPA "delegated" responsibility for water resource laws to the State of Florida, opening up a chasm into which common sense would be swallowed whole.

Here is the ultimate result of turning over responsibility for water to Florida politics: the loss of accountability by any government agency or decision-maker for the destruction of water resources, including the Everglades.
If the devolution of authority from the federal to state government was seized by President Clinton to take the wind out of the sails of a Republican majority that had made its Contract with America in the 1994 mid-term elections, it was Jeb Bush who seized the rudder and swung it hard to port, to put Everglades "restoration" on a new tack.

And it is Jeb Bush who, despite billions of dollars he committed on behalf of the state to "accelerate" restoration, who bears responsibility for unzippering the Everglades in order to instill massive growth of construction and development at the fringe of the Everglades, according to the imperatives of key campaign fundraisers.
Under Republican leadership in the legislature and Governor's Mansion, Jeb planned to use water resource management in Florida as a pipe to gather political capital, with strategically placed spigots where massive water infrastructure projects would need to be implemented in order to accommodate the Growth Machine.
Never mind the Everglades: it was always about campaign money in Florida.

Jeb Bush arrived in Tallahassee with a conservative mission and playbook by Karl Rove and Grover Norquist calling for the dismantling of government authority. Period. The environment would be taken care of by industry cooperation. Conflict and litigation would be resolved by a firm, paternal hand that rewarded compliant environmentalists and punished the unruly.
In the euphoria of his very first inaugural address, Governor Bush's eyes lit on the Tallahassee landscape and he expressed his hope that his tenure would be measured by fewer government employees in those buildings, a better-dressed way of espousing the Norquist dictum, to shrink the size of government so it could be drowned in a bathtub.

.....

(...continued)

[seafan]

4. "If we lost our way, it happened in Florida."

How wrenchingly true that statement..


More from Alan Farago:

.....

The question is, of course, can the Everglades be saved?

The answer is no: not so long as government agencies charged with protecting the environment remain passive hostages to the status quo and not so long as environmental organizations play right into their hands.
The answer is yes, if the public embraces and acknowledges what is at stake.
Florida's Growth Machine and everything that its politics represent have had their day-what the state's crashing housing markets and quality of life say to voters is this: the Growth Machine failed Floridians and failed the Everglades.
It is time for a new balance to emerge, but it won't happen if environmental groups remain beaten down by passivity and decorum. It won't happen if contributors to progressive causes like the environment in Florida are simply pulled along by the current.

And it won't happen if scientists who know better, allow themselves to be shackled by retirement packages and fear for their careers: the time to act is now. It is also time for the mainstream media to grasp where its herd behavior has led its readers and viewers.
We may indeed get to keep the planet, if we can marshal the political will to save the Everglades. But if we don't, the American century is over. Despite our trillions of GDP and investment, the United States is increasingly irrelevant to the outcome of crises and conflicts afflicting the world. We had a vision for the Everglades, and, for the planet.

If we lost our way, it happened in Florida.

Show us what you're made of, Governor Crist.