Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2008). Funding from the federal government's
Internal Improvement Fund was used to support
these early drainage schemes. Government policy
for the Everglades shifted course in the 1920s
following two major hurricanes that hit the region
in 1926 and 1928. These storms resulted in severe
flooding around Lake Okeechobee and the loss of
many lives (Grunwald, 2006). These floods
ultimately led to a new emphasis being placed on
governmental authorities to provide flood defences
for those living and working in the Everglades.
President Herbert Hoover subsequently instructed
the Army Corps of Engineers to build a new levee
around Okeechobee and to construct a dam in
order to control the southward flow of water from
the lake into the Everglades (
Economist
, 2005b).
The state-orchestrated construction of a dam
around Lake Okeechobee represents a significant
turning point in the nature of state intervention in
the Everglades. While governmental authorities
had previously sanctioned the partial drainage
of sections of the Everglades in order to support
the agricultural industry, by damming Lake
Okeechobee, state officials were now tinkering
with the hydrological systems that controlled and
regulated the entire ecology of the wetlands.
The damming of Lake Okeechobee paved the
way for further state-sponsored intervention
within the Everglades. With the encouragement of
local boosters (promoters of local areas) and sugar
barons, the Army Corps of Engineers drained an
area to the south of the lake to make way for large
sugar plantations (see Hollander, 2008;
Economist
,
2005b). During the 1960s, the Corps of Engineers
undertook a series of river diversion and dyke and
levee constructions in order to allow the suburban
spread of Miami and Fort Lauderdale into the
Everglades (see
Chapter 6
for a more detailed
discussion of the political economy of the suburb-
anization process). Caught between the economic
interests of sugar barons and urban property
developers, the US state actively supported the
ecological transformation and degradation of the
Everglades. Estimates claim that half of the original
Everglades have now been lost to farming and
urbanization (
Economist
, 2005b). But this situation
is compounded by the fact that because less water
is now reaching the southern end of the Everglades
(due to modifications that have been made around
Lake Okeechobee), salt water (and associated
mangrove swamps) is moving into the Everglades
at an average rate of 12 feet every year (
Economist
,
2005b).
As is typical of the complex nature of
state-environment relations, national and local
governments have also played an important role
in trying to protect and restore the Everglades.
The first attempts to try to actively protect the
Everglades came in 1947, when the southern
section of the wetlands was dedicated a National
Park. The formation of Everglades National Park
was, in part at least, a reflection of changing
attitudes to the wetland system. At the heart of this
change was a realization that far from being a
'stagnant swamp' in need of human reclamation,
the Everglades were a dynamic riparian system in
need of protection (see Stoneman, 1947). In later
years, this desire for preservation was also driven
by an increasing realization of the economic value
of the Everglades as a tourist destination. In
practical ecological terms, the Everglades National
Park is ineffective at addressing the main threats
to the wetlands systems. While protecting a
segment of the Everglades from commercial
encroachment, the National Park has no jurisdic-
tional power to control the upstream processes
that ultimately threaten the sustainability of the
wetlands (namely the flow of water from Lake
Okeechobee).
During the second half of the twentieth century,
preventing the continued destruction of the
Everglades became a primary concern of American
environmental movements. These environmental
interest groups were central to the formation of
the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
(CERP). Unlike the Everglades National Park,
CERP has been designed to tackle the root causes
of ecological instability in the Everglades. Through
a series of 68 projects, implemented over a 30-year
period, CERP will attempt to re-flood large parts
