-
Everglades
The Everglades, the subtropical
wetlands of southern Florida, which also contains the southern half
of a huge watershed, beginning near Orlando, with the Kissimmee
River, that then flows into the immense but shallow Lake Okeechobee.
The water that leaves the lake, during the summer wet season starts
to form into a slow moving river that is 60 miles wide and over 100
miles long, going south over a limestone shelf into Florida Bay at
the southern tip of the state. The glades are formed by fire and
water, with frequent flooding in the wet season and hot draught in
the dry season. It was Marjory Stoneman Douglas the writer who made
the term, "river of grass" a popular saying that does describe the
sawgrass marshes, that belong to a very complex system of ecosystems
that encompass cypress swamps, tropical hardwood hammocks, an
estuarine mangrove forest of the Ten Thousand Islands, pine rockland
and the marine environment of the Florida Bay. Ideas to drain
areas of the Everglades had been suggested as early as 1848, but it
wasn't tried until 1882, with canals built to accommodate that idea.
During the first half of the 20th century these canals helped
increase the economy, which in turn brought in land developers, but
with the continual and yearly hurricanes that caused devastating
flooding, the engineers involved in the project began to rethink
their remedies. Then in 1947, the Congress created the Central and
Southern Florida Flood Control Project that constructed 1400 miles
of levees, canals and flood control devices. South Florida began to
grow, as the water was diverted to the cities that grew up and many
regions of the glades were changed into beneficial farming lands
that could and did produce sugarcane. Soon, almost half of the
original everglades area had been transformed into farmland or
cities. Then a major airport for the area was suggested to be built
just north of the Everglades National Park, but an environmental
study said the plan would destroy the ecosystem, so that was
scrapped, but restoring the glades began to gain momentum. During
the 1970s, many areas of the country were realizing the damages that
had been done, thoughtlessly, to the environment, which in turn
caused other problems, so this became a priority all over. UNESCO
and the Ramsar Convention decided the everglades were one of three
wetlands in the world that had global importance. Restoration began
in earnest in the 1980s, beginning with the removal of a canal that
had straightened the Kissimmee River and Lake Okeechobee, a huge
water reservoir for southern Florida, was now of major concern. The
continual deterioration of the environment soon became evident that
it was effecting the quality of life for southern Florida urban
areas and in 2000, an expensive and expansive plan to restore the
Everglades was passed by Congress. The Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan was signed into law; but, unfortunately, like many
bills that have been passed in this new century, the partisan
politics that plague them also affected this plan. Only time will
tell, especially since the biggest polluters of the Everglades were
and are the sugarcane plantation owners, who managed to wriggle out
of paying for any of the repairs needed to clean up the Everglades,
and who continue to be the main polluters of that marvelous body of
water.
|
