Everglades

Fragile Environment

Extensive areas of vegetables and sugar cane capture large volumes of the water that perennially flowed south to the Florida Keys. As population quickly grew along Florida's Atlantic coast, vast amounts of water were moved along canals directly from Lake Okeechobee to West Palm Beach and the nearly continuous line of cities south to the Miami metropolitan complex. Robbed of its natural flow of water, the Everglades would not have survived without widespread public concern over its possible demise; and a series of governmental actions began in the 1970s. In 1972, a series of laws were passed in the Florida legislature to protect the fragile environment of the Everglades. Among them was the Land Conservation Act, authorizing the purchase of recreation lands and areas deemed to be environmentally endangered. The Save Our Everglades program was launched in 1983, which brought together federal and state governmental agencies and the South Florida Water Management District in a large-scale effort to restore the entire region to what it was 100 years earlier. Included in the program were the Kissimmee River Basin, Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, and adjacent areas all affected by the diversion of waters from the ecosystem—the Big Cyprus Swamp; Florida Bay, the water body separating mainland Florida and the Keys; Biscayne Bay on the Atlantic coast south of Miami; and the Ten Thousand Islands, a mass of small islands off the Florida coast on the Gulf of Mexico.

Subsequent legislation created the Local Government Comprehensive Planning and Land Development Regulation, which was aimed at attaining sustainable state growth within a fully integrated planning process: local plans were required to be linked to the plans of adjacent communities and to fit well within comprehensive plans produced for the region and the state. An important plan emerged in 1987 aimed at the cleanup of polluted waters throughout the region. The Surface Water Improvement and Management Act of that year required every Florida water management districts to implement plans to ensure sustainable water quality throughout the region. As extensive as plans were through the 1980s, they paled by comparison to the scope of projects unfolding a few years later. A major redesign of the entire regional water management system was prepared for U.S. congressional approval in July 1999. The plan proposed the expenditure of $7.8 billion over a 20-year period to guarantee the life of the Everglades, the sustainability of Florida's economic growth, and a continued supply of fresh water to the burgeoning urban concentrations along the Atlantic coast.

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