page_title: Restoration of the Everglades
section_title: Everglades Forever Act
hierarchical_section_title: Restoration of the Everglades / Water quality / Everglades Forever Act
caption_attribution_description: A stormwater treatment area in the Northern Everglades surrounded by sugarcane fields
context_page_description: The restoration of the Everglades is an ongoing effort to remedy damage inflicted on the environment of southern Florida during the 20th century. It is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental repair attempt in history. The degradation of the Everglades became an issue in the United States in the early 1970s after a proposal to construct an airport in the Big Cypress Swamp. Studies indicated the airport would have destroyed the ecosystem in South Florida and Everglades National Park. After decades of destructive practices, both state and federal agencies are looking for ways to balance the needs of the natural environment in South Florida with urban and agricultural centers that have recently and rapidly grown in and near the Everglades.
  In response to floods caused by hurricanes in 1947, the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project was established to construct flood control devices in the Everglades. The C&SF built 1,400 miles of canals and levees between the 1950s and 1971 throughout South Florida.
context_section_description: In an attempt to resolve the political quagmire over water quality, Governor Lawton Chiles introduced a bill in 1994 to clean up water within the EAA that was being released to the lower Everglades. The bill stated that the "Everglades ecosystem must be restored both in terms of water quality and water quantity and must be preserved and protected in a manner that is long term and comprehensive". It ensured the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) would be responsible for researching water quality, enforcing water supply improvement, controlling exotic species, and collecting taxes, with the aim of decreasing the levels of phosphorus in the region. It allowed for purchase of land where pollutants would be sent to "treat and improve the quality of waters coming from the EAA".
  Critics of the bill argued that the deadline for meeting the standards was unnecessarily delayed until 2006—a period of 12 years—to enforce better water quality. They also maintained that it did not force sugarcane farmers, who were the primary polluters, to pay enough of the costs, and increased the threshold of what was an acceptable amount of phosphorus in water from 10 ppb to 50 ppb. Governor Chiles initially named it the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act, but Douglas was so unimpressed with the action it took against polluters that she wrote to Chiles and demanded her name be stricken from it. Despite criticism, the Florida legislature passed the Act in 1994. The SFWMD stated that its actions have exceeded expectations earlier than anticipated, by creating Stormwater Treatment Areas (STA) within the EAA that  contain a calcium-based substance such as lime rock layered between peat, and filled with calcareous periphyton. Early tests by the Army Corps of Engineers revealed this method reduced phosphorus levels from 80 ppb to 10 ppb. The STAs are intended to treat water until the phosphorus levels are low enough to be released into the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge or other WCAs.
caption: Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right
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