ABSTRACT
IN THE EARLY 1970s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a project that had been started nearly 120 years earlier by the citizens of the new State of Florida: taming the wild Everglades for the productive use of society. The Everglades, an enormous wetlands complex that dominates the South Florida ecosystem, was finally under the full hydrologic control of an extensive system of canals, dikes, and pumps. Also by the early 1970s, the population of Florida's lower east coast had reached 2.2 million, up from 694,000 in 1950. This dramatic increase in population and the massive alteration of the Everglades caused numerous problems. Debates erupted over insufficient natural surface water flows to Everglades National Park, altered nutrient flows and exotic species threatened the natural vegetation in the Everglades, and studies showed that the water quality of Lake Okeechobee and Florida Bay was in decline. Moreover, a 1968 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) report, Water Resources for Central and Southern Florida, concluded that South Florida could not meet projected urban and agricultural water supply needs beyond 1976. The evidence was mounting that the damaged South Florida ecosystem was failing to support the needs of natural and human systems alike.
