For several years, this Editorial Board has advocated replacing two sections of the Tamiami Trail in Everglades National Park with up to 11 miles of a skyway bridge to increase sheet flow, particularly to the Northeast Shark River Slough area. Most recently we urged the U.S. Corps of Engineers to rethink its latest plan to build a single mile-long bridge, make some road modifications and raise the water level in a canal north of the Trail to increase flow.
No patience, largess
The Corps and park officials say that this plan is the most they can do given federal budget constraints and mounting construction costs. They say it would deliver strategically needed water and must be completed before the more complex Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) can begin. After studying this plan and taking a hard look at where Congress and enabling federal agencies stand, we are inclined to agree that a one-mile bridge is the best that can be done at this time.
The Corps was first ordered by Congress in 1989 to increase water deliveries to the park, with the understanding that the Tamiami Trail was the major impediment and had to be remedied. Now, 19 years and many proposals later, Congress and federal agencies that hold the purse strings have run out of patience and largess.
This is why the Corps says that the best it can do is build the one-mile bridge for $225 million. A scaled-down $400 million version of the skyway that the Corps had earlier considered was rejected by the feds as too costly. The Corps estimates that the best remedy, 11 miles of skyway, would cost $1.6 billion. We think that is an overstatement.
What the current plan will buy is time and some increase in water to the park south of the Trail, according to proponents. Since the 1989 mandate to increase sheet flow, the park's boundaries have been expanded through land acquisition, thus increasing the need to divert more water to the park. The Corps and park officials are committed to beginning the bridge project this year.
Too little, too late?
Since CERP restoration projects can't proceed until the problem of the Trail has been resolved, this timetable makes sense. What Corps and park officials hope is that, eventually, after CERP has begun restoring the Glades and Florida Bay, there will be enough political will and wherewithal to bridge more of Tamiami Trail.
We, too, hope that happens. Of greater concern now is that, at some point, hindsight will show the one-mile bridge plan to be just one of many half-measures that did too little, too late to help heal Everglades National Park.
The park can't afford to suffer any more man-made mistakes.
