Tribal leader: Quality is water key
Miccosukee chairman makes rare speech on Everglades restoration.
Members of the Miccosukee tribe — many who live in the southern Everglades — traditionally let their lawyers speak publicly about restoration of their homeland. Rarely are they seen at public meetings and court hearings in their 20-year-old lawsuit against state and federal agencies.
That changed Saturday when the tribe’s chairman, Colley Billie, took the stage at the Big Sugar Summit sponsored by the Sierra Club, and explained the tribe’s primary concern: Water quality. Longtime Everglades activists and litigators were shocked that Billie agreed to speak at the event and gave him a standing ovation after his 20-minute speech.
“When I was about 6
years old, the water was clean,” said Billie, one of seven children whose family lived in the Everglades. “Believe it or not, we used to drink directly from the Everglades.”
Many of the 200-plus people in the ballroom were activists who had devoted much of the year rallying unsuccessfully for a land purchase for a major water storage project. Water quantity had been their focus.
However, Billie focused on water qualit y, saying the nutrient-rich water now flooding tribal lands is killing wildlife.
“For hundreds of years the Everglades has been our home — a refuge as we avoided removal,” Billie said, referring to the forced removal of most of the tribe to the west in the 1800s. About 100 hid out in the Everglades. The tribe now numbers more than 600 and are direct descendants of those who eluded capture. “However, after years of degradation caused by others, our way of life has been irrevocably altered.”
In the 1990s, the Miccosukee filed and joined in several successful law- suits against the government for failing to clean up the Everglades. Billie criticized the state and federal government for failing to complete a single restoration project.
Billie acknowledged that some progress has been made, but said there are two issues on which the tribe will not budge: The Tamiami Trail bridge project and the maximum phosphorous limit of 10 parts per billion for water flowing into the Everglades National Park. The tribe believes raising the Tamiami Trail, which separates tribal lands from the Everglades National the Park, will destroy t wo villages, invade their privacy and hurt their businesses along the road.
As for phosphorous limits, water managers can’t move water under the Tamiami Bridge to the park because phosphorous limits are above 10 ppb — the limit approved by a federal judge. That means water stacks up at the southern end of the Everglades, flooding the Miccosukee lands. Although the exceedances are small, Billie said the Miccosukee will not budge on the 10 ppb. “I am here today to ask the Sierra Club and all of you to focus your efforts on restoring water qualit y. It is only by working together that we will be able to restore the Everglades.”