It will be beneficial to wildlife by reducing habitat fragmentation and preventing road kill. The project will create jobs and increase tourism while raising Everglades awareness at the same time. Best yet, an 11-mile skyway will serve as a visible symbol of Everglades restoration; a real benefit to the floundering project. The Sierra Club believes that Everglades restoration cannot happen without the full 11-mile skyway.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has tentatively selected a one-mile bridge in the eastern portion of the 11 mile area. This 1-mile plan is part of the 1989 federally-funded Modified Waters Delivery Project (Mod Waters), and not the $11 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) or any other state or federal transportation or environmental project. The Skyway Coalition has always said that if we were unable to secure the Skyway entirely in Mod Waters then the smaller project must be compatible with a full Skyway, and be built consecutively.

The entire Corps document can be viewed at: USAC Site

Sierra Concerns: 1. It’s generally acknowledged by all parties that the one-mile bridge alone will not provide enough water flow to restore Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. If the Skyway Coalition were to consider this as a first step to restore Shark River Slough and close out Mod Waters, we would need to see verifiable commitments from the state and federal officials that a project to build the remainder of the Skyway would break ground right after the one-mile bridge project is finished.

2.We are concerned that the 10 miles of asphalt, however thin, is a costly and long measure that might lend some permanency to the project. We wonder if this plan is designed to be the only bridge for 10-15 years or beyond. Tell us why that shouldn’t be a concern, and what are you doing to assure this doesn’t happen.

3.It behooves us to assure the public that finishing the Skyway starts immediately after the Mod Waters project because costs will only go up. We’ll look back at this 20-30 years from now and think that this was a bargain.

4.There doesn’t seem to be a plan to build the full Skyway after Mod Waters. We would like the Administration in its last months to work with Congress, the State of Florida and the Skyway Coalition, to craft a plan that blends a variety of state and federal and possibly private funds, possibly tapping existing and future tolling streams and financing options. We’d like that plan ready before Congresses’ July ‘08 deadline so that the public can see that the interim 1-mile plan isn’t the end of the road.

5.To show the agency’s commitment to restoring flow to the Everglades, would the Corps move up the Tamiami Trail decompartmentalization project of CERP, which could be a funding vehicle for much or all of the remaining Skyway bridging after Mod Waters?

6.The science chair of Miami-Dade County’s Global Warming Task Force and University of Miami Geology Chair, Dr. Harold Wanless, predicts a 3 to 5 foot sea level rise by 2100. He said that restoring natural historic flows may be pivotal to saving the Everglades. This week marks the 80th Anniversary of the completion of Tamiami Trail. In another 80 years, the road and much if not all the Everglades could be underwater if we don’t make the right choices now. We hope State and Federal officials agree on a post-Mod Waters bridging plan by July to address these predictions.

- Jonathan Ullman, Sierra Club Everglades Office

Call Governor Jeb Bush now at 850-488-4441 and tell him to "VETO" SB626, a
destructive bill that may allow the sugar industry to delay the cleanup of
America's Everglades. Every day, large parts of the Everglades are being
lost because of Big Sugar's pollution. The bill, backed by more than 40
sugar industry lobbyists, would extend pollution limits and jeopardize the
ability to truly restore this natural treasure.

* Call Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 850-488-4441 NOW and tell him to uphold
the state's commitment to restore the Everglades by VETOING SB626, "The
Everglades Whenever Act."

* You can also e-mail the Governor at jeb@myflorida.com

* You an also send/fax a handwritten or typed letter to:

        Governor Jeb Bush
        PL 05 The Capitol
        400 South Monroe Street
        Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

        Fax: 850-487-0801

-----------------------------------

The deadly "Everglades Whenever Act" (SB626) would:

- Require compliance of water quality standards only to "the maximum extent
practicable," threatening water quality as well as endangered plant and
animal habitat;

- Eliminate clear pollution clean-up deadlines, leaving polluters to comply
with water quality standards at the "earliest practicable date;"

- Re-open the 1996 voter-approved Florida constitution amendment that
clearly says polluters should pay. Instead, the bill states that payment of
the bulk of cleanup costs by homeowners and other real property owners --
instead of the actual polluters -- is fair;

- Undermine the Everglades restoration consensus between the state and
federal government.

You can view the bill at:
 

http://www.flsenate.gov/cgi-bin/view_page.pl?Tab=session&Submenu=1&FT=D&File
=sb0626er.html&Directory=session/2003/Senate/bills/billtext/html/
 
 

Sierra Protest in Downtown Miami

  Fifty people attended the Sierra Club rally at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Friday, May 2. Sierrans came to downtown Miami on a work day to show the media, the judge and everyone, that Floridians want the cleanup of the Everglades to continue on schedule.  Apparently, Judge Hoeveler agreed, because at the end of the day he said that he was going to proceed with the cleanup by 2006 and that the legislature wasn’t going to interfere.
  At the courhouse, U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler had ordered an emergency meeting of state regulators, water managers and others involved in the cleanup plan in his courtroom two days after Florida lawmakers passed a bill to slow down and possibly de-rail the cleanup plan.
  The bill, put together by Big Sugar lobbyists and supporters, has rushed through the Florida legislature and it appears that only  Governor Jeb Bush can stop it.  That bill could stall restoration and jeopardize $4 billion in federal aid. According to a Sierra Club bulletin, the bill would:   replace efforts to set a 10 part per billion Water Quality Criterion for phosphorus with a “planning objective” of 15 parts per billion, a 50 percent increase in allowable pollution the Everglades cannot survive; prohibit the enforcement of any phosphorus discharge limits on waters flowing into the Everglades until 2026; freeze any possible expansion of the highly successful stormwater treatment areas and the addition of advance treatment technologies until the distant future, possibly after 2026.; thwart the will of the people expressed in a 1996 state-wide ballot referendum that polluters in the Everglades pay the full cost of cleanup. 
  Proposed legislative amendments would also attempt to secure approval for a plan to have all private property owners from Orlando to Key West pay the lion’s share of cleanup costs for agricultural pollution on a permanent basis. An overwhelming majority of voters in 1996 approved a constitutional amendment directing that polluters pay these costs. 
  Everglades activists are asking everyone to call and write and write again to Governor Bush and to Florida Senators and tell them  to stop the new Everglades Destruction Act, H1893/S626. Call and e-mail and write. 

Miami Group would like to thank Stuart Reed, Alan Farago, Jonalthan Ullman, Rod Jude Kent Harris Robbins, Mark Oncavage and Stephen Mahoney. Thanks also go to 
Broward Conservation Co-Chair Brian Lewis and Excom members Julia Heinlein,
Walt Slattery, Linda Brown.Special thanks to Maria Papazian and Elaine Codias who helped with signs and props and to Coky Michel for re-introducing our Big Sugar costumes.
 

The Everglades Ecosystem 

Spanning the southern tip of the Florida peninsula and most of Florida Bay, the Everglades ecosystem is home to an extraordinary number of rare and sensitive species of animals and plants. The area contains both temperate and tropical plant communities, including sawgrass prairies, mangrove and Cypress swamps, pinelands, and hardwood hammocks, as well as marine and estuarine environments. The area also supports a rich diversity of wildlife, including many species of large wading birds, such as the roseate spoonbill, wood stork, great blue heron and a variety of egrets. The Everglades has been designated a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. However, the ecosystem has suffered from the effects of human development. Since 1900, large tracts of Everglades wetlands have been converted to agricultural and residential uses. This abundance of "new" land supported and stimulated massive population growth. To support this expanding population, private developers cut numerous canals and built new roads through native habitat. In 1948, the federal government undertook the "Central and South Florida Project" -- a gargantuan and unprecedented program to replace the natural habitat and hydrology of the Everglades ecosystem with an elaborate system of roads, canals, levees, and water-control structures which were intended to provide flood protection for urban and agricultural lands. The alteration of regional wetland areas, estuaries, and bays - combined with increasing population pressures, changing land uses, and accompanying water pollution - have largely destroyed the natural functioning of the Everglades ecosystem. 

According to the National Park Service, over 50% of the original wetland areas in the Everglades ecosystem no longer exist. The numbers of wading birds, such as egrets, herons, and ibises, have been reduced by at least 90%. Entire populations of animals, including the manatee, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, the Miami blackheaded snake, the wood stork, and the Florida panther, are at risk of disappearing. Massive die-offs of seagrass beds in Florida Bay have been followed by the extensive losses of wading birds, fish, shrimp, sponges, and mangroves. As explained by Park Service biologists "[t]hese grim indicators warn of a system under assault and in jeopardy of collapse." 

Campaign Goal, Message, and Strategy Goal: Protect the Everglades Ecosystem by advocating for its restoration. 

• Decompartmentalize the Everglades by removing water blockage from canals, levees and roads (ie. Tamiami Trail) between Lake Kissimmee to Florida Bay 

• Eliminate a Corps of Engineersâ plan to store large quantities of water in the aquifer through seasonal pumping and retrieval (a technique known as Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR). 

• Halt mining of wetlands in the historic Everglades 

• Enforce the polluter pay provision of the Florida Constitution requiring the sugar industry to pay the full cost of cleaning up its phosphorus byproduct to 10 ppb. 

• Solidify a January 2001 Air Force decision to prohibit commercial aviation at the former Homestead Air Force Base. 

Primary messages: The key to Everglades restoration is to buy land now. Protect Everglades by halting activities that harm the Everglades. 

Recent Successes 

• Successfully Stopped Mining permits from being issued in 2000. 

• Air Force decided to prohibit commercial aviation at the former Homestead Air Force Base. 

• Successfully mobilized Sierrans around the state beat back what was called a "done-deal," state legislation to allow untreated water to be injected into groundwater through ASR wells, a major feature of the Everglades Plan. This was a crucial legislative victory for Sierra Club. 

• Successfully worked with NRDC to place assurance language alternatives to Lake Belt mining pilot project. Led effort to formalize peer review by a committee such as the National Academy of Sciences into the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan ("CERP") bill. 

Political Realities 

The well drilling, sugar and rock mining industries are all very powerful and are currently controlling the direction of Everglades Restoration. They have the ear of Governor Jeb Bush, who is neither willing to fund research and science that could prove adversarial to the entrenched status quo, nor stop or curtail their activities or mandate that they pay for the pollution they cause to the Everglades. The well drilling industry stands to make hundreds of millions in profits from the CERP by poking holes in the earth to dump waste and stormwater in the vertical equivalent of channelizing the Kissimmee River. Their vision for a restored Everglades by storing and retrieving water in Floridaâs groundwater is being actively pursued by the state and by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. 

The Sierra Club will seek to reverse their efforts and promote a natural restoration. We will join forces with residents who are affected by those activities and other groups who seek to protect the Everglades. We will try to influence the Army Corps of Engineers decision makers and engage Federal and State lawmakers. 

Scientific Comment on Everglades Restudy

The Honorable Bruce Babbitt 
Secretary of the Interior 
U. S. Department of the Interior 
18th and C Streets, N. W. 
Washington, DC 20240 

January 28th, 1999 

Dear Mr. Secretary: 

We know of your personal deep commitment to protect and restore the Florida Everglades and are enormously heartened by the Clinton Administration's recent decision to expand the area of natural ecosystems to be protected. However, we are deeply concerned about the state of the C&SF Restudy. There are serious failings in the plans being considered. These are deep, systemic problems, ones unlikely to be overcome by tinkering with the existing alternative. 

This letter asks for more scientific study. The Restudy needs to be peer reviewed by external experts. The National Research Council would be an obvious choice to do such a review. 

Our concerns are these. 

1. The initial approach characterizes a "Natural Systems Model" to which subsequent models are compared. No one from outside the Byzantine world of Floridian water management will understand why this model has "Natural" in its title. We accept that some areas are urban, others in agriculture, and yet others so over-drained that restoration to natural conditions will be impossible. This accepted, there are too many other circumstances where the implied natural conditions are contradictory. For instance, NSM has a hydroperiod of 102 weeks ÷ dry downs every couple of years ÷ for Water Conservation Area 3B. The hydroperiod for the adjacent, down-stream portion of northeast Shark River Slough, within the extension of Everglades National Park is 400 weeks ÷ dry downs every eight years or so. There is nothing "natural" in these differences, only the basis for continued conflict. 

2. The NSM parameters now become the targets the other models must match. When these targets make little ecological or hydrological sense, they force solutions to be ever more complicated and expensive. 

3. Your staff in the National Park Service and the Biological Resources Division of USGS have continually pressed for structural and operation approaches to the Restudy that would favor minimal or passive water management. Such approaches include the dynamic storage and natural lag process of the undisturbed marsh. Your staff are right. Such natural processes have not been fully considered. The half century history of the region shows that a highly manipulated approach combined with an extensively compartmented system has consistently failed to restore the ecosystems. Indeed, it often has seriously harmed them during periods of drought or flood. It is also a recipe for continued conflict and litigation. 

4. The plans call for many new water resource technologies ÷ aquifer storage, waste-water reuse, storage in rock-mining pits, and so on. 

We applaud creative new solutions. But what if these expensive new technologies do not achieve their goals? Ecosystem restoration will then entail a greatly changed vision of balancing the allocation of water to the ecosystem and existing and future users. We do not underestimate the difficulties you face in managing the trade-offs between a National Park and its biological resources and the growing human demands for water that lie upstream. The Restudy effort has been exhaustive. Yet experience of other large-scale efforts suggests that outside experts should always vet the recommendations. A review might confirm the plans as the only ones that are practicable. If not, then it is better to notice them now before we Americans commit the many billions of dollars needed to develop the next centuryâs plan for the people of Florida ÷ and the ecosystems on which they depend. 

Sincerely, Stuart L. Pimm; University of Tennessee, Knoxville 
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 

and (listed alphabetically) 

Paul R. Ehrlich; Stanford University Gary K. Meffe; Editor, Conservation Biology Gordon Orians; University of Washington Peter Raven, Missouri Botanic Garden Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University 

A signature page follows: 

Stuart L. Pimm
Paul R. Ehrlich 
Gary K. Meffe 
Gordon Orians 
Peter Raven 
Edward O. Wilson 

Cc: Jamie R. Clark, US Fish and Wildlife Service Togo G. West, Jr. Secretary of the Army Col. Joe R. Miller, US Army Corps of Engineers Sam E. Poole III, South Florida Water Management District Steve Forsythe, US Fish and Wildlife Service Richard G. Ring, Superintendent, Everglades National Park 

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