EcoWatch, February 9, 2024
We’ve made a mess, and now it’s time to fix it.
These are the unspoken mandates of Everglades conservation organizations working to restore healthy freshwater flow through the Sunshine State.
Water is life for planet and people. Therefore, when its flow is interrupted or cut off, there are dire consequences.
History of Water Flow
In Florida, freshwater from Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state naturally flowed south through the Everglades and into Florida Bay and the present-day Florida Keys. In doing so, it nourished entire ecosystems.
According to the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), farms and communities developed around the lake in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Catastrophic hurricanes in 1926 and 1928 caused millions in damage and deaths by flooding, prompting the government to step in to control the water.
The Army Corps of Engineers built a series of canals to severely restrict how much water flows through the state. Instead of coming south through the Everglades, most is now discharged east and west, through concrete sloughs dredged for this specific purpose.
The result has been catastrophic for this ecosystem that evolved around the flow of water. One of the most invisible harms is hypersalinity.
Hypersalinity Is Getting Worse
“In general, hypersalinity refers to the salinity in a coastal water body,” explained Steve Davis, the chief science officer at The Everglades Foundation. “Ocean salinity is roughly 35 parts per thousand (ppt). If you’ve ever swam in the ocean and tasted it, you know what that is. When salt content gets higher than that of the ocean, we call it hypersalinity.”
Florida Bay is a body of water that sits south of Everglades National Park, thereby receiving any freshwater flows through that ecosystem. It’s flanked by saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. As such, it’s naturally a brackish environment.
Unfortunately, because of the restricted water flows through the state, Florida Bay currently receives less than half of its historical freshwater flows. “It’s all driven by water balance, and we changed the plumbing,” Davis explained. “It’s a wetland. If you deprive a wetland of water, especially freshwater, it’s going to have implications on the habitat and the ecology of the system in general.”
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