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River of Grass

• August 2010: In light of continued economic impacts, a decline in District revenues, and the need to address recent federal court orders related to Everglades restoration, the Governing Board will consider on August 12, 2010 a second amended and restated agreement for purchase and sale of land from the U.S. Sugar Corporation.

• May 2009: After gathering key input from the public, legislators and South Florida's communities and recognizing the nation's current economic climate, the South Florida Water Management District and U.S. Sugar Corporation amended the agreement providing for an initial purchase of close to 73,000 acres for $536 million, with options to purchase the remaining 107,000 acres during the next ten years when economic and financial conditions improve.
• December 2008: Following extensive negotiations, due diligence and public deliberation, the South Florida Water Management District's Governing Board voted to accept the negotiated proposal to acquire more than 180,000 of agricultural land for $1.34 billion, contingent upon financing and affordability.
• June 2008: Governor Charlie Crist announced that the South Florida Water Management District would begin negotiating an agreement to acquire as much as 187,000 acres of agricultural land owned by the United States Sugar Corporation for Everglades restoration. Acquiring the enormous expanse of real estate offers water managers the opportunity and flexibility to store and clean water on a scale never before contemplated to protect Florida's coastal estuaries and to better revive, restore and preserve the fabled River of Grass.

Designing Everglades Restoration incorporating U.S. Sugar land

At the May 20, 2010 SFWMD River of Grass planning meeting in Clewiston, SFWMD staff provided some new information and cut one of the proposed configurations. The reservoir within the lake concept was cut from future planning and modeling after agencies and municipalities spoke out against the concept.

To evaluate flowway design, a new hydrolic modeling tool, not available in Phase I, is being employed to evaluate the way water flows within flowway systems. The latest information indicates that any flowway needs a deeper center channel to keep water from backing up. One of the key features of a flowway is that they need to be kept wet, even during drought, to keep plants alive and prevent phosphorus from being released when soils go dry. So a modified system of aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) is still being looked at to cluster around flowways to keep them wet during dry season and droughts.

On the cost side the planning group is working to finalize the operations and management evaluations. Unfortunately, as a direct result of two recent federal court decisions (Moreno and Gold) the District has suspended the Phase II planning effort until further notice so that staff and resurces can address Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) capacity to meet existing water quality needs. This information will be very useful in the Phase II evaluation of capacity for future flows as well.

Financing for the U.S. Sugar land purchase will be raised through Certificates of Participation.  Click here to learn more about COP's and the legal challenge being used to attempt to block the purchase.

Estuary Driven Everglades Restoration

So how will the U.S. Sugar land will be incorporated into Everglades restoration? To answer that question the SFWMD invited stakeholder teams to propose their own restoration plans to the District in March 2009. SCCF Policy staff joined with a team of stakeholders from the St. Lucie River area to form the “Estuary Driven Everglades Restoration” (EDER) team. (You know there is an acronym for everything!)

With our counterparts from the Rivers Coalition, Indian Riverkeepers and Audubon of SW Florida, the EDER team established performance targets that include a 95% reduction in discharges to the estuaries while maintaining Lake O in its target range of 12.5 – 15.5 feet deep 85% of the time.

To accomplish this, our design maximizes storage north of Lake O to accommodate one million acre feet. This storage would provide water quality treatment at the water’s source before it gets into the Lake. It would also provide a supply of water for Lake O in drought conditions.

The design calls for 380,000 acre feet of flow south per year which will provide the Everglades demand 93% of the time and the Everglades dry season target 95% of the time. In addition to relieving discharges out the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers and estuaries, rehydrating the Everglades is the key to eliminating damaging fires in the glades that destroy the muck soils.
In all, nine teams proposed plans, each with their own specific objective for the restoration project. The District will evaluate the engineering and estimate costs for each plan in order to present a final plan to the SFWMD Governing Board this summer prior to the September closing on the U.S. Sugar land purchase.

To see all the plans, video and access other documents related to the River of Grass planning go to: https://my.sfwmd.gov/portal/page?_pageid=2814,23936300&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL (scroll down to the Fort Myers workshops held April 16-17).