Restoration of The Everglades - Background

Background

The Everglades are part of a very large watershed that begins in the vicinity of Orlando. The Kissimmee River drains into Lake Okeechobee, a 730-square-mile (1,900 km2) lake with an average depth of 9 feet (2.7 m). During the wet season when the lake exceeds its capacity, the water leaves the lake in a very wide and shallow river, approximately 100 miles (160 km) long and 60 miles (97 km) wide. This wide and shallow flow is known as sheetflow. The land gradually slopes toward Florida Bay, the historical destination of most of the water leaving the Everglades. Before drainage attempts, the Everglades comprised 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2), taking up a third of the Florida peninsula.

Since the early 19th century the Everglades have been a subject of interest for agricultural development. The first attempt to drain the Everglades occurred in 1882 when a Pennsylvania land developer named Hamilton Disston constructed the first canals. Though these attempts were largely unsuccessful, Disston's purchase of land spurred tourism and real estate development of the state. The political motivations of Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward resulted in more successful attempts at canal construction between 1906 and 1920. Recently reclaimed wetlands were used for cultivating sugarcane and vegetables, while urban development began in the Everglades.

The 1926 Miami Hurricane and the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane caused widespread devastation and flooding which prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a dike around Lake Okeechobee. The four-story wall cut off water from the Everglades. Floods from hurricanes in 1947 motivated the U.S. Congress to establish the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project (C&SF), responsible for constructing 1,400 miles (2,300 km) of canals and levees, hundreds of pumping stations and other water control devices. The C&SF established Water Conservation Areas (WCAs) in 37% of the original Everglades, which acted as reservoirs providing excess water to the South Florida metropolitan area, or flushing it into the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. The C&SF also established the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA), which grows the majority of sugarcane crops in the United States. When the EAA was first established, it encompassed approximately 27% of the original Everglades.

By the 1960s, urban development and agricultural use had decreased the size of the Everglades considerably. The remaining 25% of the Everglades in its original state is protected in Everglades National Park, but the park was established before the C&SF, and it depended upon the actions of the C&SF to release water. As Miami and other metropolitan areas began to intrude on the Everglades in the 1960s, political battles took place between park management and the C&SF when insufficient water in the park threw ecosystems into chaos. Fertilizers used in the EAA began to alter soil and hydrology in Everglades National Park, causing the proliferation of exotic plant species. However, a proposition to build a massive jetport in the Big Cypress Swamp in 1969 focused attention on the degraded natural systems in the Everglades. For the first time, the Everglades became a subject of environmental conservation.