ABSTRACT
The jetport controversy had shown dramatically that protection for the mosaic of wetlands and watersheds in south Florida was incomplete and that the largest unprotected piece was the Big Cypress. Establishment of the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District and the Everglades National Park had brought most of the Everglades under public control and better (if not always enlightened) management, but the controlling interests in Collier and Monroe counties had had nearly all of the Big Cypress excluded from both the park and the FCD system of conservation areas. Now, even with the jetport project forestalled, other new threats to this unique wilderness watershed and ecosystem were plainly visible. For instance, in May of 1971 the Florida Cabinet had found it necessary to authorize the attorney general to seek to enjoin a private drainage project that threatened to disrupt the diffuse flow of surface water to state lands below Gum Slough in the southeastern Big Cypress. (In this unprecedented suit, which is still undecided at this writing in the spring of 1974, it is asserted that a "downstream" landowner has riparian rights even to such ill-defined sheet flow.) Also, landowners were building new private roads and air strips in the Big Cypress, and the once somnolent hamlet of Ochopee on the Tamiami Trail was coming alive, with motels and a 1,050-unit mobile home park being built, land sales offices opening, and a large limestone quarrying operation getting underway.
