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Fragile commitment damages Everglades restoration
It took years
to put the coalition together. Everyone knew it was fragile.
The
agriculture, development and environmental interests that came together
to turn the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan into a reality are
not natural bedmates. But make it happen they did.
Now the
coalition is beginning to fall apart. Three years after Congress finally
initiated the Everglades restoration, Sierra Club has abandoned its
support.
The
environmental organization blames the Bush administration in Washington
for tipping the plan's balance between economic interests and the needs
of the Everglades with "a web of details representing the interests of
urban sprawl and big agriculture."
The Club cites
the Bush administration in Tallahassee for its support of an amendment
passed by the Florida Legislature that "allows the sugar industry to
continue polluting the Everglades for at least 10 years." This is a
reference to last year's gutting of the Everglades Forever Act, a
cornerstone of water-quality protection, that came after the expenditure
of millions of dollars and the hiring of 40 lobbyists by the sugar
industry.
Back in 2000,
the Sierra Club supported the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
-- as did this newspaper -- but expressed misgivings that the most
ambitious restoration project in history could turn into a water-supply
bonanza for urban sprawl and for Big Sugar.
Other
environmental groups started crying foul within the year, when the
federal government began drafting "programmatic regulations" to oversee
the restoration. Essentially a weakening of the rules, these regulations
lowered standards and lowered goals.
Twenty
thousand acres of wetlands will be lost to mining under the new rules.
Several development projects will be permitted in Water Preserve areas.
The four-laning of Krome Avenue will imperil the ecosystem.
Meanwhile, the
science behind the restoration becomes more suspect.
Two years ago
the South Florida Water Management District promised to provide
alternative scenarios for surface water storage, since the comprehensive
plan's consideration of aquifer storage and recovery was so
controversial. To date, no alternatives have been presented. The delay
could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars as the cost of land
needed for water storage increases.
The latest
blow to the restoration project comes from recent budget cuts by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Congress apparently has overbooked but
underfunded the corps' projects this year. Now a 22-percent,
across-the-board reduction is squeezing each of the projects.
Such
developments clearly fail to ensure Everglades restoration as intended
by Congress. The Citizen joins with the Sierra Club in calling for the
original restoration road map to be itself restored. And we agree with
the club that fundamental reform of the Army Corps of Engineers is an
urgent priority for Congress. |
