April 2005     

Restoring (?) the Everlades

By Fred Gielow

Doesn't it sound wonderful: The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). Who could be against a project dedicated to restoring the Florida Everglades to its original glory? Well, I might be.

And, I'm definitely against it without good answers to a couple of key questions. First: how much is it going to cost? The "experts" tell us the price tag will be $7.8 billion, and the project won't be completed for at least 20 years. (Source) Hmmm. Do we really need to seize so much taxpayer money (from citizens all across the country, I might add) for such a project? Moreover, what is estimated today to cost $7.8 billion, will in all likelihood, cost closer to double that, or more, by the time the project's finished. Just ask the Big Dig folks.

Next, the CERP promises to restore the Everglades - that's the whole purpose, we're told - but restore it to what? What it was ten years ago? A hundred years ago? A thousand years ago? And, of course, that's the trick. The public doesn't know, and even the planners themselves don't know, because it's not going to be restored. It's going to be "changed" into something it isn't today, and never has been in the past. So the whole idea of "restoration" is a scam, but a very successful one, as the CERP has been approved, and is moving ahead full steam.

Read what's posted about the CERP on some of the many Everglades restoration websites. They talk about the beauty and majesty of the Everglades. For example:

"They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, and the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of sawgrass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas in
The Everglades: River of Grass
(Source)

Tell me why it's necessary, to not only protect the existing Everglades, but to enlarge it as the CERP envisions. Do we need even more "vast glittering openness?" Why? For whom? The bugs, birds, and alligators?

Then, the websites talk about how the Everglades is in terrible, terrible trouble, because of evil humanity and our desire to build homes, and live here. We are careless and thoughtless, and we badly mistreat this sacred "river of grass," which has now been named a United Nations World Heritage Site: "Today, discharges to the Everglades are often too much, or too little, and frequently at the wrong times of the year. An over-abundance, or scarcity of water affects plants and wildlife accustomed to the Everglades' historic range of water flows and levels..." (Source)

Please, tell me just who, or what, will stop us from discharging "too much" or "too little" water in the future? And by the way, who determines what's "too much" or "too little"?

What the websites and the "experts" don't explain is how unproven technology, proven incompetence, a vast bureaucracy, and total government control are going to solve the Everglades' "problems." It's a little like expecting the United Nations to rule the world, without selfishness, corruption, and fallacy.

About ten years ago, I spoke during a citizen-comment portion of a meeting of the "Restudy" Project (later renamed CERP). My point was that the name, itself, "Restudy," was undescriptive and inappropriate. I suggested instead: the "Boondoggle" Project.

Fred Gielow is the author of "You Don't Say," and is involved in property rights activities at: www.youdontsay.org.