Glades restoration passes House

Reconciling differences with a Senate version seems likely and Clinton has said he'll sign it.

By JOHN BALZ and CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 20, 2000

WASHINGTON -- The House gave near-unanimous approval Thursday to the first step in restoring the Everglades, prompting a stampede to the microphone and the fax machine by politicians across the country for some congratulatory back-slapping.

They evoked words like "historic" and "landmark" to describe the 394-14 vote in favor of a big water resources development measure, which includes the $1.4-billion first installment of the Everglades restoration.

The bill authorizes the construction of 10 projects that will break ground beginning in 2004. The ambitious plan will eventually cost $7.8-billion, shared by Florida taxpayers and the U.S. government, and take some 36 years to complete.

The Senate's version of the bill passed last month and legislators, with less than a week to go before Congress closes shop, will now be pressed for time to hash out differences. But in an election year, passage seems a no brainer.

The administration has long supported restoration. So do both Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and Republican candidate George W. Bush, as well as Bush's brother Jeb, the governor of Florida.

The Clinton administration is unhappy with other portions of the bill centering on reforms to the Army Corps of Engineers that are unrelated to the Everglades. House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, has vowed to attach the Everglades bill to other legislation to get it passed before lawmakers go home.

"We're one or two yards from the goal line, ready to score a touchdown, but we've got a little ways to go," said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale.

At a news conference held after the vote the mood was buoyant. Lawmakers again brandished their green and white Everglades 2000 buttons just as they had when the Senate passed the bill, and spoke glowingly about what had just transpired.

"This is a historic moment for America's Everglades," said Rep. Peter Deutsch, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat. "Today we are affirming our nation's commitment to restoring the River of Grass."

Gov. Jeb Bush phoned in on a conference call to thank the Florida congressional delegation for its work. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner affirmed that the Everglades is now a national treasure on par with Yellowstone and Yosemite. And news releases covered a wooden table at the back of the room, includingone from Rep. Bill McCollum who "hailed" the Everglades bill but was absent from the actual vote because he was campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat.

"In my opinion, this is probably the most significant congressional action on the environment since they passed the Clean Air Act amendments a decade ago," said David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "The reason is because it signals that Americans have moved beyond just wanting to preserve nature and we want to make a commitment to restore nature."

Environmental activists have been clamoring to restore the Everglades ever since the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote her seminal study The Everglades: River of Grass in 1947 -- a year before the Army Corps of Engineers started ripping up the flow of water through the Everglades and routing it through a complex system of canals, levees and pumps.

But some environmentalists continue to harbor doubts about what is the largest ecosystem restoration project in the world's history. Their lingering questions center around the scientific basis of a major component: Injecting 1-billion gallons of freshwater into more than 300 deep wells, to be held as bubbles in the brackish aquifer 1,000 feet beneath the surface until needed.

Aquifer Storage and Recovery, or ASR, accounts for more than $1-billion of the price tag for the $7.8-billion Everglades restoration plan. ASR has been employed successfully on a small scale, but no one has ever attempted it on such a gigantic scale.

"If ASR doesn't work, there is no restoration," said Stephen R. Humphrey, dean of the University of Florida's College of Natural Resources and the Environment and a member of the scientific panel reviewing the Everglades restoration plan.

The panel of national scientific experts was created last year by the National Academy of Science in response to a letter from five prominent scientists sharply questioning the basis for the restoration plan. Committee members expect to begin reviewing the ASR aspect of the Everglades restoration this week.

Although they backed the bill, some environmentalists did so without enthusiasm.

"We have a lot of apprehension, a lot of fear," said Frank Jackalone, the Sierra Club's Florida representative. The Sierra Club is worried that ASR "would be an environmental disaster," he said. The organization also objects to another part of the plan that would allow rock-mining of sensitive areas so the resulting quarries can be used as reservoirs.

However, Jackalone said many environmentalists are hopeful that, once the money starts to flow, they can get the plan changed to something they can support whole-heartedly.

Even the group that Marjory Stoneman Douglas founded to work for restoration, the Friends of the Everglades, actively opposed this Everglades restoration bill. The 36-year proposal involves 68 engineering projects designed to pump fresh, clean water back into the Everglades and let water flow naturally through the wetlands. But in letters sent to House and Senate leaders last month, Friends of the Everglades argued that the bill is a restoration in name only.

"It doesn't do much for restoration of a good variety of habitat," said Juanita Greene, conservation chairwoman for the 4,000-member group. "It looks like it's nothing but a water supply plan for additional growth."

To really restore the Everglades will require buying a wide swath of land and returning it to wetlands, she said. But the restoration plan makes no effort to at recreating the Everglades historic expanse, she said. Instead it relies on manmade structures to recreate the flow -- about what you would expect from the Army Corps of Engineers, she said.

"The same people who messed up the Everglades are in charge of repairing it," Greene said. "Engineers don't think the way environmentalists do."

This spring the Florida Legislature, prodded by Gov. Bush, approved spending $136-million as the state's first payment toward sharing the cost of the restoration project.

Over the next 20 years the state and local governments in Florida will have to come up with nearly $4-billion of the project's cost, as well as sharing half of its annual operations and maintenance expenses.

The Bush plan for paying the state's share of the Everglades cost calls for funneling all the money through a trust fund of the type that, in the past, state lawmakers routinely raided to pay for other programs. Bush has dismissed fears that a similar fate could befall Everglades funding.

Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, said he hoped future generations of lawmakers would ante up the necessary dollars, but that decision would become more complicated if the economy turns bad.

"The environment is often the first to go," he said.

But first, politicians must face the voters. And in his praise of the Everglades bill, Gov. Jeb Bush took time to complain that Democrat Gore is airing an ad touting Florida's environmental jewel.

"There are TV ads up right now saying Al Gore's going to save the Everglades," Bush said. "To politicize it now after all the work has been done is a bit ironic."

- Staff writer Julie Hauserman contributed to this report.

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