Scientists, Everglades restoration leaders feud

State officials say panel overreaches

Science is fine. It’s the scientists themselves that concern the people responsible for restoration of the Everglades.

The head of the South Florida Water Management District says a scientific board that advises Congress about Everglades restoration is becoming too concerned about legal and budgeting matters, at the expense of science.

That’s why the water district is threatening to stop cooperating with the scientists’ team, said water district Executive Director Peter Antonacci.

The dust-up is the latest between scientists who believe plans for Everglades restoration may need to be updated to reflect climate change and state agencies that believe holding up plans already in motion may mean nothing gets done at all.

Environmentalists have called the water management’s decision a rejection of mainstream science, but officials with the district say

what they want out of the board is more science, not less.

“Bring on the science. Help us,” Antonacci said. “What we want are practical tools to help us with implementation of Everglades restoration. That means, to me, how’s the salinity doing? How’s the water level doing? Are we getting enough water? How are the critters doing? How are the flora? Are the estuaries healthy? … We want all of it because all of it will be helpful to decision making.”

The independent board of scientists was mandated by the 2000 federal law that created the Central Everglades Restoration Plan, the series of reservoirs and other developments meant to restore the flow of water through the Everglades after decades of draining and development.

But since the board began advising the district and others in charge of Everglades restoration, according to Antonacci, it has suffered from “mission creep.”

An upcoming meeting of the scientists, set for Aug. 1 and 2 in West Palm Beach, was initially scheduled to include speakers from the water district. Antonacci pulled his people after seeing a draft agenda that included “legal concerns over water quality and endangered species during the transition” as well as how a new, massive reservoir mandated by state law will affect funding for other Everglades restoration projects.

“They’re talking about ‘legal concerns.’ Lawyers, we don’t need,” said Antonacci, who previously worked as Gov. Rick Scott’s general counsel. “The world has plenty of lawyers. I could use some scientific method.”

But the committee of scientists say they don’t make recommendations on nonscientific factors to Congress or any other group overseeing Everglades restoration.

Instead, they say that some data on funding, legalities and other concerns not directly related to the ecology of the Everglades is necessary if they’re to give sound scientific advice.

“The committee does not make policy, legal or budgetary recommendations to the [Central Everglades Restoration Plan] program or to Congress,” Senior Program Officer Stephanie Johnson wrote to Antonacci earlier this month. “Some information on budget and management is necessary for the committee to understand the broader context for restoration progress and the relative impact of scientific issues.”

But the water district’s initial loggerheads with the scientists, in 2016, had its roots in climate change, leading to accusations that the entire fight is over climate change denial on the part of the district.

Climate change is among “issues we have to be facing head on in restoration,” Julie Hill-Gabriel, of the environmental group Audubon Florida, told the Sun Sentinel.

And last year, given the increasing effects of manmade climate change, the group of scientists posited that the entire Central Everglades Restoration Plan might have to be updated.

This caused consternation.

“I cannot impress upon you more urgently the magnitude of delays and distractions this would cause and the absurd gauntlet of administrative and bureaucratic gyrations that would be set into motion by anything remotely resembling an agreement or endorsement from the committee on this item,” water district Governing Board Chairman Dan O’Keefe wrote in a letter to the scientific committee in May 2016.

But the committee’s 246-page report released in 2016 specifically states, on page 194, that “implementation of projects already planned, authorized, and funded should continue” while agencies and scientists update the Central Everglades Restoration Plan to take climate change, sea-level rise and other factors into account.

While the district’s employees won’t be attending the committee’s workshop in August, Antonacci hopes the situation is temporary.

“Look, they’ve got some crackerjack people on this committee,” he said. “I hope there’s a way that we can have the benefit of the brilliant scientists that they have on this committee without the burden of the intrusion into areas that the governing board, the Legislature and Congress are responsible for.”