The news is about what could be expected: nearly 10 years after beginning Everglades restoration, no major component is complete. The 50-50 partnership established in 2000 isn’t faring too well either: the federal government isn’t paying its share, and the state has been unable to focus its priorities effectively.
All this in the National Research Council’s second biennial report on progress toward restoring the Everglades, available now via PDF download. In the preface, William L. Graf addresses the one substantial bit of news that might actually help restore the Everglades: the purchase of US Sugar land south of the Lake:
In late June 2008, after the committee had completed its deliberations and was about to send its report for external review, the state of Florida announced its intention to acquire almost 300 square miles of the Everglades Agricultural Area from U.S. Sugar Corporation. Given the timing of the announcement late in the committee’s reporting cycle, the committee was unable to assess the implications of the land purchase for the CERP in any detail in this report. The purchase of these lands could have some important implications for water quality and possibly water storage for the Everglades, and the committee does draw attention to these in appropriate places in the report, but these issues will undoubtedly be analyzed in greater detail in future biennial reviews.
That caveat aside, however, here are the conclusions of the committee:
The committee concludes that the CERP is bogged down in budgeting, planning, and procedural matters and is making only scant progress toward achieving restoration goals. Meanwhile, the ecosystems that the CERP is intended to save are in peril, construction costs are escalating, and population growth and associated development increasingly make accomplishing the goals of the CERP more difficult.
Hardly encouraging news, but also hardly unexpected. Anyone who’s been paying any attention to this situation knows that CERP is not blazing along at breakneck speed. Just like the water, which used to take months to get from the lake to Florida Bay (and which now zips down the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee channelized rivers) the restoration is proceeding very very slowly.
While I have yet to digest the full report, I invite you all to review it as well (click the link below to read it online, or go to the NAP website, register, and download the PDF). If you have any insights, please feel free to post your comments. (Comments are moderated, but only for civility.)
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