Harsh Review of Restoration in Everglades

MIAMI — The eight-year-old, multibillion-dollar effort to rescue the Everglades has failed to halt the wetlands’ decline because of bureaucratic delays, a lack of financing from Congress and overdevelopment, according to a new report.

The 287-page study by the National Research Council, a biennial review required by Congress, warned that South Florida’s stunning river of grass was quickly reaching a point of no return. Without “near term progress,” the report said, more species will die off “and the Everglades ecosystem may experience irreversible losses to its character and functioning.”

William L. Graf, chairman of the committee that wrote the report, put it more simply. “There is no other place like this,” Mr. Graf said. “It’s existed for 5,000 years this way, and we’re in danger of losing it for our kids and their kids.”

The harsh review of the federal effort, known as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP, comes in the midst of what could be a major shake-up. Florida is negotiating a proposed $1.75 billion purchase of nearly 300 square miles of farmland from the United States Sugar Corporation to add storage space for millions of gallons of water south of Lake Okeechobee.

The plan, which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, was praised by the National Research Council. But with the acquisition’s impact at least a decade away, the report’s authors concluded that it would not be a panacea.

“The bottom line,” said Mr. Graf, a professor of geology at the University of South Carolina, “is I don’t think we can wait and see what happens.”

He emphasized that there were larger problems that needed to be fixed. Money remains the most obvious. The restoration plan, finalized in 2000, made the federal government and Florida equal partners, but Congress has failed to match the state’s commitment of more than $2 billion.

Behind the shortfall, the report found, is a planning and appropriations process that requires the Army Corps of Engineers to show the benefits of each project individually, making it difficult to get money for the interconnected plumbing and environmental components of the Everglades effort.

Mr. Graf said progress could be forthcoming because the corps and Congress seemed open to rewriting the rules so projects could be clustered. And an amendment in the stopgap spending measure the House passed last week could, 19 years after Congress approved it, create a $225 million, one-mile bridge on the Tamiami Trail to let water flow south toward Florida Bay, alleviating a significant clog.

By Damien Cave, New York Times, Sept. 29. 2008.