SFWMD should redesign EAA reservoir, Sierra Club says; other environmentalists disagree

Change in Everglades restoration is afoot; but it's no time to stump your toe, say some environmental leaders.

Despite a new governor and (possibly) a new South Florida Water Management District board, now is not the time to contemplate a new EAA reservoir, some, but not all environmental groups say.

More:Gov. Ron DeSantis asks SFWMD board members to resign

In response to Gov. Ron DeSantis' announcement of increased spending for Everglades restoration, Sierra Club Florida called for the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir to be "redesigned to include a shallower, wider reservoir with a major land purchase to provide for the necessary treatment of water from the reservoir before it is released south to the Everglades."

More: DeSantis announces $1 billion increase for water quality protection

Representatives from several environmental groups that fought hard to get a larger project to help cut Lake Okeechobee discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers said Friday it's too late to redesign the reservoir.

"That ship has sailed," Eric Eikenberg, executive director of the Everglades Foundation, said Friday.

"The time for action is here, enough debating," Audubon Florida Executive Director Julie Wraithmell said via email.

More: What's been done, what remains on EAA reservoir?

The project originally envisioned by then-Florida Senate President Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican, in the run-up to the 2017 state legislative session called for buying as much as 60,000 in the Everglades Agricultural Area to build a shallow reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee as part of a $2.4 billion joint project by the state and federal governments.

More:Can reservoir built on state land move enough water south?

By the time the project was approved by legislators and then-Gov. Rick Scott, no farmland could be taken by eminent domain and bought only from "willing sellers."

The result: The South Florida Water Management District designed a project including:

• A 10,100-acre reservoir that's 23 feet deep with 37-foot levees to hold about 78 billion gallons of water.
• A 6,550-acre stormwater treatment area to clean water from the reservoir before it heads south toward Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.

Along with other environmental groups, Eikenberg's foundation protested, claiming the district's downsized design would do a pretty good job holding and moving water, but a lousy job cleaning it.

More: EAA reservoir won't clean water bound for Everglades, foundation says

But once the plan was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers, Congress and President Donald Trump, most groups got behind the better-than-nothing plan.

More: Trump signs bill authorizing EAA reservoir

"This is the design that worked its way through compromises in the (Florida) Legislature," Eikenberg said. "Sure, Big Sugar wasn't willing to sell land to expand it; but Congress has approved this design and the president has signed off on it. This is the reservoir that needs to be done."

Congress "authorized this project against all odds," Wraithmell said, "and it's something we've been trying to do for nearly 20 years. We have to move into implementation and get these restoration projects in the ground."

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Palm City Republican who helped push the reservoir project through Congress, agrees.

Mast also wanted a larger, shallower reservoir, spokesman Brad Stewart said via email, "but at this point, any wavering on it from the state could significantly delay a very beneficial project that has already received federal authorization."

The district has begun preliminary work at the reservoir site: clearing a 56-acre staging area and moving about 800,000 cubic yards of rock to be used in the reservoir walls.

More: EAA reservoir work continues with project to move rock to site