Court restores tribal challenge to Everglades cleanup strategy

MIAMI -- An appeals court has revived a lawsuit by Miccosukee Indians challenging the federal approach to Everglades cleanup planning as bureaucratic foot-dragging shielded from public input.

The decision Wednesday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the third recent court victory for the small tribe whose reservation is in the middle of the Everglades.

While administrations in Washington and Florida support a $7.8-billion cleanup, the tribe has fought plans for changing water flows feeding the Everglades, the pace of work and the way decisions are made.

Tribal attorney Dexter Lehtinen said Thursday he expects the ruling to expand public participation in what critics say is an insular government program.

Brad Sewell, attorney for the Natural Resource Defense Council in New York, said the decision affects "a bubbling issue" involving a group led by the Army Corps of Engineers and state water managers. They are jointly coordinating Everglades work.

"For the environmental community, it's a good thing," Sewell said of the ruling. "The Everglades is in the degraded condition it is for a reason -- because these two specific agencies have run the show." He said the two agencies lack "a commitment to get things done and get things done right."

Lehtinen said the court ruling "will have a great future impact on the programmatic regulations" for cleanup. "These decisions are supposed to be made by the public officials, not by these groups."

Environmentalists say the Interior Department, which operates Everglades National Park, has been sidelined in spite of congressional insistence that the agency be part of a three-way solution.

The park is the destination for water flowing south from Orlando through Lake Okeechobee. Its wildlife has dwindled as historic water flows were altered and the water became more polluted.

A Clinton administration advisory group that drafted cleanup strategies through 1999 met without public notice. The tribe sued, claiming the task force's work should have been public and was an improper delegation of policymaking authority.

The lawsuit was dismissed by the trial judge and reinstated by the three-judge appellate panel on procedural grounds: whether the old task force was covered by a federal law governing advisory committees.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled that the committee didn't fall within the spirit of the statute, but the appellate judges said it was covered by the plain meaning of the law and sent the case back to Miami.

The tribe believes that advice provided by the defunct task force to federal agencies has added to damage on tribal lands in the Everglades.

The 500-member tribe has grown rich in recent years from a casino resort on the edge of Miami. With its newfound wealth, the tribe has become more active than environmental groups in legal attempts to direct restoration work in the marsh covering much of inland South Florida.

The tribe won a decision in February from the same appeals court requiring federal permits before polluted water from the suburbs can be pumped into the Everglades.

A federal judge also has agreed to hear evidence this month on tribal claims of cleanup delays.

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