The Sad State of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
The National Academies has just released a report assessing the progress of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, the eight-year-old state-federal project to keep the Florida Everglades from drying up. The news is depressingly bad. The project is “bogged down in budgeting, planning, and procedural matters while the ecosystem that it was created to save is in peril”. Without a smooth flow of money, the project managers can’t manage the smooth flow of water. None of the plan’s component projects have been completed, and the key water-engineering piece, called the “Modified Water Deliveries to Everglades National Park”, which predates the plan and was first put forth in 1989, is still not done. The report brief says that the plan has been plagued for nearly 20 years by changes in direction and scope, parochial interests, litigation, cost escalation, engineering constraints, and a lack of coordinated leadership. The report puts more blame on the feds than the state.
Tags: Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, ecosystem, Florida Everglades