Eco-Voice Digest
Thursday, May 24th, 2012  #1315
 
In This Issue
Read "River of Interests"
CEPP PDT meeting 5/31
Water for Loxahatchee?
Lake O watersheds
Everglades News from the HUB
SWF Oyster Working Group
FGCU Oyster Restoration Project
Seagrass and carbon
Good Reads
Solar power for SWRegional
Phosphate Mining Permits
WRAC
Green News Links

 

 

 
 An Eco-Voice sponsor: 

 CCFW Logo

Family values taught here

Family values taught here
Big Cypress Indian Reservation
Click Mark Renz photo art for more

 

 

 

 

 

River of Interests: Water Management in South Florida and the Everglades, 1948-2010 (Updated 2012)

 

In 1948 Congress answered the outcry of Florida residents for both flood protection and a more reliable drinking water supply by authorizing the Central and Southern Flood Control Project, otherwise known as the C&SF Project. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on one of the nation''s largest infrastructure projects. While the project served its intended purposes far better than ever anticipated, it also caused extensive damage to the naturally occurring ecosystems of south Florida, including the Everglades ecosystem located within and beyond Everglades National Park.

"River of Interests: Water Management in South Florida and the Everglades, 1948-2010," is a history of the construction of the C&SF Project and the project's unintended impacts on the environment, and the evolution of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP).

DocumentsRiver of Interests: Water Management in South Florida and the Everglades, 1948-2010

by Matthew C. Godfrey, Historian, Historical Research Associates, Inc. with contributions by Theodore Catton
 

Download Complete Document


 

 

Fort Myers  

 
   
  

 

 

 

 

Project Delivery Team meeting for Central Everglades Planning Project

 

 May 31st, 2012

 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) will be holding a Project Delivery Team (PDT) meeting for the Central Everglades Planning Project (CEPP) Thursday, May 31 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Main Library, 3650 Summit Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL 33406.

 

PDT meetings enable federal, state and local agencies and tribal governments to provide their input into the Central Everglades Planning Project. Members of the public may attend the PDT meeting and provide public comment at the end of the meeting.

 

The agenda for the PDT meeting is coming soon and will be available at:
http://evergladesplan.org/pm/public_meetings/MeetingItem.aspx?meetingId=467

 

Additional information on CEPP is available at:
http://evergladesplan.org/pm/projects/proj_51_cepp.aspx  

 

 

 

Long-legged shorty
Long-legged shorty
(Black-necked stilt)
Mark Renz photo

 

 

 

  Water Management District seeks Mecca Farms deal

 

Palm Beach County taxpayers may not recoup $100M investment

 

By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel

 


 

The environment could get a boost, but taxpayers may not recover their $100 million investment under a new deal proposed for Palm Beach County's Mecca Farms.

The South Florida Water Management District is making a push to acquire the more than 1,900 acres of former citrus groves west of Palm Beach Gardens that the county once intended to turn into a biotech industry hub.

The county sunk more than $100 million of taxpayer money into a failed bid to turn Mecca Farms into a home for The Scripps Research Institute

and spin off high-tech businesses.

Environmental concerns in 2006 moved Scripps east to Jupiter and left the county stuck looking for a buyer to try to recoup taxpayers' costs.

The new proposal calls for the water management district to acquire the land north of Northlake Boulevard, using it for water storage and to create a long-planned "flow way" to get more water to the Loxahatchee River.

"We have been talking" County Administrator Robert Weisman said Tuesday. "It's possible we could have such an offer from [the district] by the end of the week."

That offer is likely to include a combination of a land swap and some cash, according to Ernie Barnett, the district's director of Everglades policy. How much land and how much money has yet to be determined, he said.

The district proposes entering a 120-day due diligence period for both sides to try to put together a deal that works, Barnett said.

Land on the trading block could include district property in the Agricultural Reserve - prime farmland west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach that the county is trying to protect from development.

"It's very early in the process," Barnett said. "The preliminary discussions have been very positive."

Selling Mecca Farms to developers was supposed to be the county's insurance policy for recovering taxpayers' investment in the land if the Scripps deal fizzled.

But South Florida's housing boom went bust at the same time as the plans to put Scripps on Mecca Farms, and since then the county hasn't had any buyers willing to pay close to what the land ended up costing the public.

That could make just a land swap for Mecca Farms a tough sell.

"We will have to see what the details are," said County Commission Chairwoman Shelley Vana, who wasn't on the board that approved buying Mecca Farms. "[The county] spent a lot of money on it. ... We'll see."

The prospect of the district acquiring Mecca Farms for the benefit of the Loxahatchee River would be vindication for environmental groups that fought the Scripps proposal and spin-off development expected to follow.

"All along we have been supporting this kind of a decision," said Joanne Davis, of the growth watchdog group 1000 Friends of Florida. "Sometimes, we have to go back to what we knew was right in the first place."

The county's most recent plan for Mecca Farms was to lease it to farmers while continuing to hunt for a buyer.

A deal given initial approval in March called for leasing at least 750 acres to Pope Farms Inc. to crow crops. That deal, where Pope Farms would pay $200 an acre a year for at least five years, has yet to be finalized and would not stand in the way of a sale to the water management district, Weisman said.

Creating a "flow way," that could clean up pollution and help replenish the Loxahatchee River, has long been part of the plans for Mecca Farms.

The old Mecca development plan called for creating a 600-acre waterway that could double as an aesthetic attraction as well as environmental enhancement.

The flow way once envisioned would have cost $6 million and included a man-made marsh that could filter phosphorus and other pollutants from stormwater that would be redirected to the Loxahatchee.

The district's push to acquire Mecca Farms is driven by the agency potentially redirecting water from a $217 million, rock-mine-turned-reservoir west of Royal Palm Beach that hasn't delivered the water once intended for the Loxahatchee River.

The district may opt to send more of that reservoir south, instead of north to the Loxahatchee River, to help meet federal water quality standards in the Everglades. Storing and cleaning stormwater at Mecca Farms could allow the district to meet its commitment to replenish the river.

Florida for years has fallen short of federal water quality requirements as well as Everglades restoration goals. The Mecca Farms deal could become part of efforts to revamp state Everglades restoration plans.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2012, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAKE OKEECHOBEE AND ITS 9 WATERSHEDS - - - really go together
  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southwest FL Oyster Working Group Meeting - Tomorrow
  
We will be meeting May 25th to review the initial output of our oyster habitat suitability model. We will also be discussing how to prioritize restoration sites.   Please RSVP using the Doodle poll, and let us know if you will be attending in person or via WebEx.
 All maps are posted to the CHNEP ftp site. Look for the folder labeled "SW FL Oyster Working Group".
Directions to CHNEP FTP site:
Address: ftp://ftp.swfrpc.org
 
User Name: chnep
 
Password: chnepaccess

 

 

Rabbit magic

Rabbit magic
Click Mark Renz photo to watch a rabbit pull a wand out of its mouth

 

 

 

 http://www.fgcu.edu/CAS/OysterResearch/

 

 

Southwest Florida has witnessed tremendous urbanization in recent years. To accommodate this growth in population, resource managers have been forced to develop and manage watersheds (the regions where water drains from upstream), thereby compromising the habitat of aquatic organisms and impacting estuarine ecosystems downstream. These estuaries, (areas where fresh water meets salt water, such as in bays,) provide critical feeding, spawning and nursery habitat for ecologically and economically important species of finfish and shellfish, including oysters (Crassostrea virginica). Oysters are important commercial species commonly found in estuaries of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S.. This project works to restore oyster reefs in SW Florida estuaries, through collaboration with community-based volunteers and several local, state and federal agencies.

 

 

 

 

 

 
RedOrbit.com - by Michael Crumbliss
 
This week new research was published that points to seagrasses as a solution to climate change. Seagrass can store up to twice the carbon of the world's terrestrial forests. The paper, "Seagrass Ecosystems as a Globally Significant Carbon Stock," is the first global analysis of carbon stored in seagrasses and was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The research was led by James Fourqurean of Florida International University, in partnership with scientists at the Spanish High Council for Scientific Investigation, the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia, Bangor University in the United Kingdom, the University of Southern Denmark, the Hellenic Center for Marine Research in Greece, Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Virginia.
The results are compelling.
Coastal seagrass beds can store 83,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer. Most of the carbon is stored in the soil beneath the beds. Terrestrial forests store about 30,000 metric tons per square kilometer in wood.
Seagrass meadows make up 0 .2 percent of the world oceans but are responsible for 10% of the carbon buried in the sea annually.
"Seagrasses only take up a small percentage of global coastal area, but this assessment shows that they're a dynamic ecosystem for carbon transformation," said James Fourqurean, the lead author of the paper and a scientist at and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site.
Seagrass meadows, the researchers found, store ninety percent of their carbon in the soil-and continue to build on it for centuries.
In the Mediterranean, the geographic region with the greatest concentration of carbon found in the study, seagrass meadows store carbon in deposits many meters deep.
"Seagrasses have the unique ability to continue to store carbon in their roots and soil in coastal seas," said Fourqurean. "We found places where seagrass beds have been storing carbon for thousands of years."
Seagrasses are among the world's most threatened ecosystems. Some 29 percent of all historic seagrass meadows have been destroyed, mainly due to dredging and degradation of water quality. At least 1.5 percent of Earth's seagrass meadows are lost every year. However, seagrass meadows can be brought back and carbon sinks re-established.
Seagrass has other benefits: it filters sediment from the oceans; protects coastlines against floods and storms; and serves as habitats for fish and other marine life.
The new results, say the scientists, emphasize that conserving and restoring seagrass meadows may reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon stores-while delivering important "ecosystem services" to coastal communities.
Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1cyZ6)


 

 

 


 Good Reads-2012 Orion Book Award Finalists Announced EcoWatch

If you're looking for a good read, Orion Magazine has just made things easier with the announcement of their 2012 Orion Book Award Finalists. According to Orion's website, the Orion Book Award "is given annually to a book that.......

 

 

Old kid on the block 2

New kid on the block
(Juvenile tri-colored heron)
Mark Renz photo

 

 

 

 

 

The Lee County Port Authority is inching closer to making solar energy at Southwest Florida International Airport a reality.

The Airports Special Management Committee ranked bids from three firms to design, finance, build and manage a photovoltaic solar panel system for the airport at a meeting on Tuesday.

The rough idea behind the bid: the company that's selected to do the work would pay for and manage the system, then lease it to the airport for a 20-year term. At the end of the term, the airport would keep the system.

"The capital investment to create these solar fields is significant, so we're looking for someone else to put out that capital investment and then we can do a lease payment," said Mark Fisher, the deputy executive director of development for the port authority.

The total electric bill for the airport was $2.9 million for the 2011 fiscal year ending Sept. 30, said Victoria Moreland, a spokeswoman for the port authority.

The one-megawatt, solar panel system would power the airport's chiller plant, which cools the passenger terminals for the airport. The lease agreement also outlines that the winning company would include annual maintenance of the system, plus offer a one-year warranty after the lease is completed.

There are many variables to the project, and final negotiations with the company that secures the bid to build the system will determine what kind of a cost-savings it could give the airport, Fisher said.

The special management committee ranked Regenesis Power LLC in first place, with Sodexo Solution Center and ESA Renewables LLC in second and third places, respectively. Regenesis estimated the project cost at about $4.4 million.

Regenesis has a local presence in Southwest Florida and has worked on solar energy projects at FGCU and for other airports as well.

The port authority staff has been looking into alternative energy sources for the past five or six years to slash energy costs and find renewable options. It already has one alternative energy project under its belt. The port authority completed a $700,000 solar power project at Page Field about a year ago and secured a $500,000 grant to build the system.

The energy it puts out helps the port authority recognize savings sooner - it produces roughly 18 percent of the energy used to power the terminal, Fisher said.

"From the port authority's perspective, we'd love to save the most money possible," Fisher said, "but because the cost for these systems is so high, we're not sure we can do that."

 

 

 

 

 

Environmental Impact Statement in the Central Florida Phosphate District
This message is being distributed on behalf of John Fellows/USACE:

Dear Interested Party:

Pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Regulation (33CFR 230.11), this communication constitutes the Notice of Availability of the Draft Areawide Environmental Impact Statement (AEIS) on Phosphate Mining in the Central Florida Phosphate District. The Draft AEIS is downloadable from the AEIS project website at http://www.phosphateaeis.org.   

 

 Any comments you may have must be submitted in writing to the USACE address shown herein within 45 days of the date on which the notice of availability appears in the Federal Register, which is expected to be on June 1, 2012. Comments may be provided using the form on the website, by e-mail to teamaeis@phosphateaeis.org, 

The USACE will conduct two public meetings to brief the public on the AEIS findings: June 19 in Lakeland and June 21 in Punta Gorda. 

 

 

 

 

Soft landing
Soft landing
Giant swallowtail -- Mark Renz photo art

 

 

 

 

   

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