Florida Drought Renews Pressure to Fix Glades*

Saturday July 7, 2007 5:46 PM

By BRIAN SKOLOFF

Associated Press Writer

ON THE KISSIMMEE RIVER, Fla. (AP) - One hard rainfall won't even come
close to solving the unprecedented drought withering much of Florida.

Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Everglades and a backup drinking water
source for millions of South Florida residents, has been hitting a
record low almost weekly. Its main artery, the Kissimmee River starting
near Orlando, hasn't flowed south in more than 240 days, depriving the
lake of 50 percent of its water.

Water managers say the Kissimmee River basin needs about 5 feet of rain
- just to catch up.

The 18-month dry spell means continued pressure on the region's
utilities to find alternative sources of clean water, such as
desalinizing sea water.

It also has put renewed pressure on water managers to hasten efforts to
engineer nature to work more naturally.

Florida's natural water system has been so manipulated over the last
century to make way for man that the only way to restore it is to
manipulate it even more, state officials say.

The Army Corps of Engineers has already spent millions on restoration of
the Everglades, the largest such project in the world.

``You can't just backfill everything and let the water flow like it used
to because we'd be drowning out people, highways, farms and homes,''
said Ernie Barnett, director of policy and legislation for the South
Florida Water Management District. ``We now have to engineer a solution
to mimic nature.''

One of the district's most pressing needs is to find storage sites on
land north of Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake
entirely within the contiguous United States, to capture water during
wet times so it can be slowly released during dry periods.

That process once occurred naturally before flood control diversion
projects prevented storm overflow from spreading out over surrounding
wetlands. Now, when rain falls heavily during normal wet years, overflow
polluted with farm and urban runoff flows south into the lake and
eventually is pumped east and west through rivers into the ocean.

``If you had a way to capture it and store it and then, when it's dry,
put it back into the natural system, mimicking what nature used to do,
that's really what Everglades restoration is all about,'' Barnett said.

``True restoration is going to rely on catching the water earlier and
cleaning it up before it gets into Lake Okeechobee,'' said George Horne,
the district's deputy executive director of operations and maintenance.

``The real answer is conservation if we want to continue to have
population growth. And that means tough growth control decisions and
alternative water supplies,'' Horne said.

Environmentalists argue that Florida's drought is exacerbated by the
district's continued manipulation. They say nature can't be restored
with more manipulation alone, such as simply building reservoirs to
store water.

``If we want to recreate the Everglades natural drought resistance,
which was always there before the government started manipulating the
system, then we've got to be able to put water back onto the landscape
and that means back into places that people are using right now,'' said
Eric Draper, policy director for Audubon of Florida.

He said the state must recognize that in order for true Everglades
restoration to be successful, and for water to return to its historical
abundance in South Florida, land in the flood plain has to be reclaimed
for natural water storage.

``We're in such a severe drought now because water managers have
deliberately lowered the lakes and drained the swamps in the entire
Everglades system,'' Draper said. ``We've got to allow the lakes and
rivers and streams that make up the Everglades to overflow back into the
flood plains naturally.''

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On the Net:

Water Management District: http://www.sfwmd.gov/