Trouble in the Swamplands
As a reporter covering the environment for the Washington Post, Michael Grunwald spent a year slogging through the Florida Everglades while also wading into the region's rich natural and political history. His goal: to understand and document the unprecedented $8 billion effort to restore the dying 3 million-acre ecosystem, which once blanketed the peninsula south of Lake Okeechobee. What he found was a man vs. nature tale that predates the arrival of Europeans. Today, half the Everglades is gone, thanks to a massive mid-20th-century flood-control and drainage project by the Army Corps of Engineers and a booming agricultural economy, which together with other changes brought 7 million residents to south Florida. As the state's restoration project continues--and Louisiana struggles with its own plans to restore wetlands--Grunwald's new book, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, offers plenty of cautionary lessons about government efforts to fool with Mother Nature. Grunwald spoke to U.S. News last week. Excerpts:
Why write about a swamp?
I found out that the Army Corps of Engineers, which had once helped to destroy the Everglades, was now in charge of the largest environmental restoration project in the history of the planet. I was fascinated by the idea of man trying to make amends for his abusive treatment of nature.
Your book peels back stereotypes about everyone from Indians to conservationists.
There's a lot of black-and-white-ism when people talk about the Everglades. The Indians tried to mold nature for their aims, too. They dug canals for transportation. They had reservoirs. They generally were more utilitarian about what they were doing, but I tried not to make them into one-dimensional heroes. The drainage advocates of the early 20th century were progressives. They saw themselves as protecting the Everglades from corporations, which would have constructed railroads but little else, and draining it for use by the people.
It's been five years since the Army Corps of Engineers began its massive restoration project, which aimed in part to undo the corps's disastrous previous efforts. What kind of progress has been made?
The ecosystem is in lousy shape. Lake Okeechobee looks like espresso. The estuaries are really in a state of horrible collapse. On the other hand, it's certainly possible to restore parts of it. The corps started to restore the Kissimmee River, which was a magical, sinuous river they had turned into a sewage pipe and straight as an arrow in the '60s. Now they're restoring the bends and getting out of the way; the river is almost instantly coming back.
The Army Corps also built the levees and canals that enabled New Orleans's growth. But the projects are often blamed for the loss of Louisiana's wetlands, which act as a natural storm buffer. Has the corps done more harm than good?
I've tried to see both sides: In 2004, four hurricanes zipped through Florida, and I wrote a piece reminding people that this is why the corps built this big [Everglades] flood-control project. People are still keeping dry, and that's because man has done a pretty terrific job of controlling nature. It's just that there have been some unintended consequences.
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