Pick up pace of Everglades protection

Saving the Everglades from sea-level rise means much more to South Florida than just protecting panthers, alligators and the bald eagle.

Without the Everglades as a source of drinking water and a buffer to hurricanes, the people living in South Florida are the ones who risk becoming an endangered species.

The Everglades guards our western flank during hurricanes, absorbing drenching rains and rising waters. And long after storm season passes, its fresh water replenishes the underground supplies we tap to drink.

But if a rising sea creeps up from the south and swallows parts of the Everglades, the storm surge we face on the Atlantic Coast after hurricanes could appear from the west, too.

And if the rising tide turns the freshwater Everglades salty, our region’s western drinking water wells are at risk, too.

So just as South Florida communities are collaborating to address the flooding expected from a two-foot rise in sea level between now and 2060, it’s more important than ever to accelerate Everglades protection by restoring its once-abundant freshwater flow — the biggest and best muscle for keeping saltwater at bay.

To do so means reworking the restoration plan to accommodate the faster rate of sea-level rise we’re experiencing, provoked by the warming atmosphere.

It’s likely going to mean building bigger reservoirs and other water storage options, as well as more projects that allow the water to flow under roadways and past other man-made obstacles.

Without question, it’s going to take a faster flow of dollars for such big-ticket fixes. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was supposed to cost $8 billion when launched in 2000 as a partnership between the state and federal governments. But because of funding delays, construction problems, legal fights and political wrangling, it’s now expected to cost more than $16 billion.

It sounds like a lot, and it is. But the nation has a lot riding on Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Among metro areas, South Florida is the nation’s 11th largest in economic activity, with an annual GDP of more than $318 billion.

It’s unfortunate that about 70 years ago, we changed the flow of the Everglades to make room for sugar cane fields and housing developments. Yes, we needed the canal and drainage system to manage flooding in South Florida’s core. But overengineering stripped the ecosystem of the land that allowed shallow waters to flow south — unfettered, and slowly filtered — from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.

Worse, for decades we have allowed water laden with fertilizer and other pollutants to flow into and damage the famed River of Grass.

Like a dying patient desperate for a cure, the Everglades “has no chance of surviving” without implementing the restoration plan, said Randall Parkinson, a Florida International University coastal geologist. “We are better off trying to keep the patient healthy.”

Plans call for storing and cleaning more of the water we now drain out to sea for flood control. Once free of pollutants, that freshwater could instead be used to replenish the Everglades and, in turn, boost our drinking water supply.

“That’s the only way,” says Jerry Lorenz, an Audubon Society scientist based in the Keys.

But unless we pick up the pace on projects that get more freshwater flowing south, we could lose the fight against the steady creep of saltwater.

Already in the Everglades National Park’s Cape Sable area, at the southwestern tip of the Florida peninsula, the freshwater marshes “have disappeared almost entirely,” the park’s website says.

“We are losing ground, literally, to the effects of sea-level rise,” says Robert Johnson, director of the South Florida Natural Resources Center.

As saltwater pushes coast-hugging mangroves farther inland, the “peat” soil that makes up the Everglades’ marshy ground is washing away and not getting replenished.

“As that (peat) falls off, the Everglades are shrinking and are more susceptible to sea-level rise,” said Ashley Smyth, a University of Florida scientist.

You don’t have to be a tree hugger, bird watcher or airboat enthusiast to have a stake in the Everglades.

Whether you are someone who canoes through Shark River Slough or someone who doesn’t even notice the Everglades when you drive along the Sawgrass Expressway, if you live in South Florida your fate is tied to what becomes of the fading River of Grass.

We must save the Everglades, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because our survival depends on it.

“The Invading Sea” is a collaboration of four South Florida media organizations — the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and WLRN Public Media.