30th Anniversary of the Marshall Plan

Below is the Public Comment I gave to the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board on June 9, 2011:

This is a follow-up to my public comment of May 12, 2011, and yesterday’s electronic public comment to the Governing Board regarding CERP Baselines.

Today I am here as the spokesman for the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation, including our 2011 Summer Interns, commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the presentation of the Marshall Plan to the Governing Board, June 12, 1981, in Marathon, FL.

A hard copy of the written presentation was provided in the blue folder as part of public comment last month.

We also celebrated another anniversary this week, June 6, 1944. On D-Day, Art Marshall was in the second wave hitting Omaha Beach. We commemorate his survival, and the subsequent legacy he left for all of us. We have to wonder what he might have been thinking when he made his presentation close to the D-Day anniversary back in 1981.

Independent of getting some points across in 3 minutes, in the tradition of Art Marshall and invitations of the 1980’s governing board, it is appropriate that these comments be sequenced.

The Marshall Plan to Repair the Everglades was introduced in what Art called a “shirt-sleeve symposium held in November 1980, and was background for the 1981 presentation which we now commemorate.

In both instances he provided the case for Everglades Restoration in six pages, outlining what needed to be done for the govt and public, as only Art Marshall could do.

His basic premise for repair was easy to understand: Effective repair of the Everglades requires the restoration of sheet flow to the maximum extent practical from the Kissimmee Basin to FL Bay.

Art was about restoring processes that can be summarized by his three R’s of restoration.

Restore Flow; Re-vegetate; Restore peat; Re-Peat.

We are making some progress in this direction. We need to make more progress, so that on the 40^th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, we can celebrate rather than just commemorate.

I leave the rest of the story to a short read of copies of the six pages provided to the Governing Board back in June 12, 1981, which I have again provided by hard copy and electronic copy, and copies for the public.

Thanks for your consideration, and thanks to Art Marshall for leading us in this direction.

Respectfully submitted,

John Arthur Marshall,

Chairman of the Board.