Letter to the Editor--Palm Beach Post

This is the letter I submitted to the Palm Beach Post editorial board on April 6, responding to the court's decision concerning the EAA Reservoir:

Letter to Editor/Point Paper; Laws of man on reservoirs and laws of nature are in conflict!
[Authors’ note: These 2 pages are in response to a Judge’s reservoir remedy decision 20 pages long]

A major problem in Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) implementation is getting to the water quality standard, set at 10 ppb (parts per billion) phosphorous (P), resulting from a federal law suit, scientific findings, and legislation.

In March 31, 2010 legal adjudication regarding failure to achieve the P standard, the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) reservoir has been proposed as a remedy.

The decision to impose the reservoir as a remedy for the water quality problem goes mostly in the opposite direction of meeting the P standard; further it does not meet the science of restoration, nor Webster’s definition of to restore, nor the plainly stated objectives of CERP 1999.

Reservoirs are not known for water quality treatment solutions, and in most cases, have negative water quality consequences. In this case, the proposed reservoir would take up thousands of acres needed for treatment, while adding requirements for more P treatment area, a real catch-22, making fully successful CERP implementation mission impossible.

In terms of to restore, the reservoir remedy abandons Webster’s definition; there were no deep water reservoirs in the Everglades watershed, per se. The exception was Lake Okeechobee, which are the headwaters of the Everglades. What the reservoir remedy generates is a miniature Lake O, with a billion dollars worth of dikes built to dam standards, a cost overrun of almost three times the originally projected cost of $420 million, and more polluted water left to clean, without the means to clean it.

A deep-water reservoir imposed on what use to be the historic Everglades, AKA the River of Grass, does not fit the overarching goals & objectives of CERP 1999, simply stated in CERP Table 5-1 under Enhance ecological values:
• Increase the total spatial extent of natural areas
• Improve habitat and functional quality
• Improve native plant and animal species abundance and diversity.
A reservoir furnishes none of these attributes; there was no deep-water habitat in the historic Everglades south of Lake O. A flow-path south, from Lake O to FL Bay provides all these attributes, and more.

One objective of the reservoir was excess water storage during extremely wet events. The reservoir will store only about a foot of Lake O water when it is dry. When Lake O fills during heavy rains, so will the reservoir, so expect less than a foot of storage, and minimal relief for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries. The CERP(+) solution is the River of Grass consensus solution: A restored flow-path south!

What the judiciary and litigants for the reservoir have not recognized, is that a fatal flaw in CERP 1999 was the failure to connect the missing link between Lake O and the rest of the Everglades, by restoring natural flow, AKA sheet flow, as described in CERP Section 2.3.1, Dynamic Storage and Sheet Flow. An axiomatic premise of greater Everglades ecosystem restoration is that sheet flow was/is the primary characteristic of the Everglades; thus, to restore sheet flow is the primary goal that meets all the CERP Table 5-1 Goals & objectives, and the bold promise to restore natural flows on CERP(-) 1999 page 1.

A restored flow path was proposed by the late Art Marshall in 1981, taken up by a govt Science Group in 1993, and included in the 1994 USACE Recon study, predecessor study to CERP(-), (read CERP minus)

The recommended flow-path was specifically not included in CERP (-) because the govt did not own the land needed to restore the previous recommended flow path, and getting the land from a willing seller did not appear in the political play of the day. There is more politics than meets the eye, here.

Thus it became politically incorrect to push for the flow-path, and scientists put their careers at risk for pushing same. As an eye-witness to the formulation of CERP 1999 (-), several scientists came to the undersigned, and asked him to keep pushing the flow path issue, because they couldn’t. Enter more politics. The rest of the 1999 (-) story regarding the stifling of scientific speech is reduced for brevity.

Whether to endorse CERP(-) was a debate in the non-govt conservation community. Those who endorsed it noted (1) the bold statement on CERP page 1: The plan will restore natural flows, (2) the inclusion of a concept called adaptive management, (3) asked for greater consideration of flow, and (4) envisioned that the concept of adaptive management and science would eventually prevail. Enter more politics.

On June 24, 2008, a willing seller was announced by the Governor of Florida, generating the possibility of acquiring at least some of the land need for the flow path. Enter more politics.

To restore the flow path also requires meeting the P standard. However the placement of the EAA reservoir not only inhibits achieving the P standard; it also blocks a re-vegetated flow path that would achieve virtually all goals & objectives of CERP, including a much better chance of meeting the water quality standard. Decision support begs for a benefit to cost analysis here, not more politics.

Planning for the use of projected land acquisition is on-going in the SFWMD River of Grass (ROG) workshops, with maximum public participation, and all matter of science-based information available at the SFWMD.gov/River of Grass website. Progress here has not been considered in the reservoir remedy decision; the decision insults the process of democracy by ignoring public involvement.

Summary
• The litigant claim that the ROG flow path was not included in CERP(-) 1999 is correct and at the same time, absurd, as it ignores the definition of to restore, i.e., ignores the fatal flaw of CERP(-) not to include a flow path thru the EAA, and disregards the CERP tenets of adaptive management.
• Adaptive management now holds the possibility of correcting the fatal flaw with a flow path.
• There has been no govt analysis of alternatives regarding the benefits(+) of restoring the flow path relative to costs, to compare the benefits(-) of the reservoir, relative to costs.
• Estimates indicate the benefits/cost of the flow path far out-weigh the benefits/cost of the reservoir. Footnote: Restoration of the Catskills watershed to provide water to the environment and NYC is an example to follow; so is the restoration of the Kissimmee River Watershed.
• The laws of man and the laws of nature are in severe conflict, given the EAA reservoir remedy.
• CERP(+) implementation must include the River of Grass workshop findings, including a restored, re-vegetated flow-path, long term, for any chance of successful CERP(-) implementation.

Those saying Everglades restoration can now proceed with the building of the EAA reservoir need to check their premises, de novo.

Respectfully submitted,
John Arthur Marshall, Chair Science & Technology Committee; Chairman of the Board
Arthur R. Marshall Foundation and Florida Environmental Institute, Inc.
2806 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405; 561-805-8733