Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305160087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN SEWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: OVER FLORIDA BAY LENGTH: Long
But look closely into what was once crystal-clear water, and the colors become more menacing - smothering blankets of algae, covering plant life that used to nurture lobsters, bonefish, shrimp.
"The tarpon used to just loll around in here," says George Barley, pointing to a stretch of shallow water. "Now, it's a soupy mess."
Barley is chairman of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's advisory council; a wealthy Orlando businessman, he used to fly down here for fishing.
He has spent most of his private hours the past year trying to rally support for the bay and the Everglades, a fragile and complex system U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has described as "the ultimate test case" for our nation's ability to manage its environment.
The way the struggle plays out has implications that may touch almost every American, as billion-dollar industries and a billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded preservation effort try to coexist.
The main domestic growers of sugar cane and winter vegetables are under attack - environmentalists say their demands for fresh water have hurt Florida Bay, and phosphorus runoff from their fields has hurt the Everglades.
But corrective measures could be costly, boosting the price of sugar and vegetables or forcing the growers to move elsewhere.
For southern Florida's nearly 5 million residents, the future likely will bring tough water-use restrictions and higher taxes to pay for water-purifying efforts. And environmental havoc endangers tens of thousands of jobs in agricultural, tourism and fishing industries.
The bay lies at the bottom of an ecosystem that begins above the Kissimmee River, continues through Lake Okeechobee, the bass-fishing paradise and South Florida's "liquid heart" also bothered by algae blooms and plant damage, and across the Everglades "river of grass."
"It's a real lesson about how these systems work and how they can be damaged," says Tom Martin of the National Audubon Society.
Biologists say lack of fresh water increased the bay's saltwater content, replacing natural seagrasses with a strain of less hardy "turtle grass." Droughts - probably worsened by development's disruption of evaporation cycles - and man-made disruptions in freshwater flow have apparently killed grass and spurred the algae.
In the Everglades, environmentalists say phosphorus from farms has caused the growth of wasteful species that choke out naturally occurring plant life.
The Florida Bay area and the Everglades mainland host dozens of endangered or threatened animal and plant species, including bald eagles, American crocodiles and wild Florida panthers.
Their problems are spreading gloom among laid-back island residents who recognize threats to lobster, stone crab and shrimp habitats and the related jobs of processors, commercial fishermen and recreational fishing guides. The coral reefs off the central Keys that draw snorkelers and divers also are in peril, biologists say.
Environmentalists are urging that freshwater flows diverted to accommodate farmers and residents be restored to reduce the salinity. They also want to buy farmland and an 8 1/2-square-mile residential area on the fringes of the Everglades to help return wetlands to their natural state.
State water managers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are holding public hearings on a two-year experimental project to test the effects of increasing freshwater flow in a slough that feeds the bay.
Not enough, say some. "We don't want more surveys, we don't want more slide shows or meetings or scientific research. These have gone on for years, and the bay continues to die," said Spencer Slate, chairman of the Keys Association of Dive Operators.
As with nearly every aspect of Everglades preservation, there is disagreement about the real causes. And there is a hesitancy to plunge ahead with expensive, untried programs that involve dislocating people and jobs.
To the north, at the 700,000-acre Everglades Agricultural Area, government officials, federal mediators and sugar executives are negotiating to avoid a months-long administrative hearing on what to do about pollution of water flowing from the farms rimming Lake Okeechobee.
Some still insist the agricultural runoff isn't the problem.
They note that sugar has been grown south of Lake Okeechobee since the 1920s, and that Congress ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to build the vast system of canals, dikes and levees in the flood control project five decades ago that enabled expansion of agriculture and urbanization.
Many growers also say the urban growth boom is the real culprit and they are targeted because they're outnumbered politically.
Some activists urge that government subsidies end and that the farmers simply be driven out to ease Everglades restoration. The farmers warn that Americans should think carefully about forcing dependence on foreign supplies of sugar and winter vegetables.
"Why not take down all the condos so I can go walk on the beach like we used to?" asked Walter Parker, a U.S. Sugar employee whose father moved to Clewiston from Georgia in the 1950s to work for the company.
Ten years ago, when Bob Graham was governor, he sought to fire public enthusiasm by pulling together preservation programs in a "Save Our Everglades" initiative.
Graham, now a U.S. senator, said there has been "some significant progress" toward the goal for the year 2000: making the Everglades function more as it did 100 years ago, when massive drainage began.
"The Everglades, which had been sort of a backwater, is now front and center," he said.
by CNB