The phosphorus enters from urban areas to the east and lakes, rivers, and farmlands to the north, as well as in rain. Overspending . . . Meanwhile farmers in Florida's Everglades Agricultural Area are seven years ahead of schedule in cleaning up water from their own lands. Except for one test marsh, the Water Management District has yet to turn more than the first few shovels of earth on its project, construction of some 40,000 acres of filter marshes to capture the phosphorus before it reaches the wetlands. In the face of a looming disaster, legislators made several rescue proposals and put the project under a bipartisan legislative committee.
Oversight is clearly essential.
The program requires them to clean 25 percent of the phosphorus from the water running off their land no later than 2003. The water flowing south out of their agricultural area is now cleaner than the water flowing into it from Lake Okeechobee to the north. In other words, while the bureaucrats talk of cost overruns, the farmers are not only cleaning up their own phosphorus, but cleaning up a large percentage of the phosphorus coming from other man-made and natural sources. The impact has been dramatic. Everglades National Park itself has reached levels of 10 parts per billion or less, the goal for 2006.