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Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Study

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The everglades is a portion of a large watershed that runs in the locale of Orlando. The restoration of the everglades has been an ongoing program to remedy the damage done on the environment during the 20th century in southern Florida. It is the most comprehensive and costly attempt to repair environment in history. The degradation of the everglades watershed became an issue in the US in 1770s after the construction of a jetport in the big cypress swamp was proposed. The studies that followed showed that the port would destroy the ecosystem in everglades national park and south Florida (Ogden 803). After a long time of destructive practices, the federal and state agencies have been looking for ways to create an equilibrium of the ecosystem …show more content…

Commercial and tourism interest were to be affected by the trends if the environmental decline was not resolved. An eight year evaluation study on the C$SF was submitted to the congress in 1999. A strategy named Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) was passed with the aim of restoring the Caloosahatchee River, Florida Bay and Lake Okeechobee to after the 50-years damage. The strategy would cost $7.8 billion and 30 years to implement. Though the plan was enacted in to a law in 2000, funding problems and politics have compromised its implementation. The estimates for this project have now …show more content…

The polluted waters flowing to the gulf and Atlantic Ocean are sending wake-up call for additional and immediate steps to prevent calamities that might come in later rainy years. We need to make fasters moves on CERP with a series of not less than 60 projects. All of this new ventures need authorization. The completion of the project is now seen to take 34 more years. As of now, the anticipation on repair of the Dike will take more than ten years to complete.
The next everglades restoration project is called Central Everglades Planning Project (CEPP). The project is anticipated to do storage, treatment and conveyance of 200,000 acre feet of water into the central everglades. CEPP is not yet authorized and its implementation can take additional ten years. Moreover, the congress does authorization of water projects every seven years. This needs to be reduced to 2 years- to take care of the urgent situation.
Although I support CERP, CEPP and Dike repairs-as important and crucial in protecting south Florida and restoration of water flows, I don’t agree with the current schedules-considering the likelihood of another potential El Niño. The remedy to this will be prioritization and speeding up of projects that are underway and also the pipeline

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