"The river of grass is not on track to meet a new water quality standard, according to the report. The state says recent data show the pollution is nearly within limits."
"Florida’s fragile Everglades are not on track to meet a new water quality standard set to take effect next month, even after nearly 40 years of costly restoration work aimed at addressing pollution in the river of grass, according to a new report.
The Water Quality Based-Effluent Limitation (WQBEL) is designed to measure nutrient pollution in the Everglades associated with fertilizer use on the sprawling sugar farms south of Lake Okeechobee, in a region known as the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA). Specifically, the standard will assess water flowing from some 60,000 acres of engineered wetlands scattered throughout the region, called stormwater treatment areas, constructed to serve as a buffer between the farms that make the region among the nation’s most bountiful and the river of grass, the primary drinking water source for millions of Floridians. Nowhere else on Earth have human-made wetlands such as these been implemented on such an expansive scale.
The stormwater treatment areas are one component of Everglades restoration, a $27 billion effort that is among the most ambitious of its kind in human history. The effort consists of dozens of landscape-scale projects spanning central and south Florida, including a reservoir in the Everglades Agricultural Area that Gov. Ron DeSantis has characterized as the “crown jewel” of the restoration effort. DeSantis, a Republican, has made the Everglades and water quality in general a priority since his 2018 gubernatorial campaign coincided with widespread outbreaks of toxic algae that sickened Floridians and left wildlife belly-up. Once complete, the reservoir will be the largest of its kind the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built anywhere in the country."
