At a rainy news conference off the Tamiami Trail in the Everglades on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the groundbreaking of the first Everglades restoration project the state is taking over from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The project, known as the Blue Shanty Flow Way, will remove 10 miles of berm along the Tamiami Trail and allow massive amounts of water to flow south into Everglades National Park and eventually Florida Bay, said Drew Bartlett, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District.
The groundbreaking marks the first project in an agreement between the state of Florida and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which allows the state to take over construction of several of the most crucial projects in the $26 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, otherwise known as CERP.
CERP’s goal is to return the water flow of the Everglades to as natural a state as possible. Prior to the 20th century, the Everglades was a 50-mile-wide slow-moving river that flowed from near Orlando, through Lake Okeechobee, on south to Florida Bay and the Gulf.
Myriad canals and roads have drained and dammed the river, resulting in severe ecological degradation and significant economic damage.
“The purpose of this (project) is to deliver high volumes of water underneath the newly constructed bridges on Tamiami Trail,” said DeSantis at the podium. “Before, Tamiami Trail was a dam, basically. It would block the water from going south to the Everglades. …Now you’re able to uncork the flows of water.”
SFWMD’s Bartlett said “we’re going to take out ten miles of berm to get that water … into Everglades National Park.” Once complete, he said, the project will send 370,000 acre-feet of water annually into Shark River Slough and on to Florida Bay. “That’s equal to 15 million semi-trucks full of water.”
The project will ready the area for the eventual increase in water flow from another crucial component of CERP, the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, which is being built just south of Lake Okeechobee.
Many CERP observers, including DeSantis, refer to the EAA Reservoir as the crown jewel to overall restoration.
Canals and roads have disrupted the natural flow of the Everglades for more than 100 years. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel, Aerial support provided by LightHawk)
The state’s agreement with the Army Corps allows SFWMD to take over construction of the EAA reservoir as well, in an effort to speed completion.
“We have been able to dramatically … shorten the time and increase the delivery of when the EAA Reservoir will be completed,” said DeSantis. Previous Army Corps suggested the reservoir would be completed by 2034. “Now we are able to get it done by 2029,” DeSantis said.
The 10,500-acre elevated reservoir will receive water from Lake Okeechobee and store it before sending it through filtration marshes that remove nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen from the water.
Water from Lake Okeechobee often contains high levels of nutrients and algae that wreak havoc on aquatic ecosystems.
During wet years, the Army Corps, in order to protect communities around the lake, has had to send that polluted water east and west through canals to coastal estuaries near communities such as Fort Myers and Stuart, where algal blooms hurt the economy and the volume of fresh water decimated seagrass bed valuable to marine life and fishing guides.
Additionally, the lack of clean freshwater flowing into Florida Bay to the south caused extremely high salinity, which triggered algae blooms there and killed off seagrass.
“Man changed the hydrology of what God intended,” said DeSantis of the 20th century disruption of the Everglades. “Southern Florida was not getting the water that it needed; Florida Bay was not getting the water that it needed. If you look now … you see a much different picture. You see massive amounts of water flowing south.”