EVERGLADES NUTRIENT REMOVAL PROJECT

WETLAND TREATMENT SYSTEM


V11U3mUCN


AGRICULTURAL
SUPPLY


Comumet





SEPAGE
COLLECTION CANAL





UEST INTROR LAEE
(CULW M TS 0-254 A E)


FILTER ZONE
(25 ACRES)


CULVERTS -286 A E


0-s2 CONNECWNO
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- COl.CCON CANALS


PUMP STAON (0-251)


The Everglades Nutrient
Removal Project utilizes
State owned lands for
treatment of private
Agricultural 'discharges
prior to discharge to the
Loxahatchee National
Wildlife Refuge.


PUMP STAtION (0-250)


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Figure 2









of creating a treatment area through government purchase, regulation or a combination of
both.

Should the mechanism of use be by way of the regulatory process, considerable resources
are expended prior to the land becoming available for the treatment function. These
expended resources include not only the money spent associated with land purchases, but
also include opportunity (time) lost during confrontational processes that usually precede
the availability of the land for treatment use. These confrontational episodes may require
an inordinate period of time to conclude. Rule challenges, disputes over the valuation of
the lands, and the formal and informal dispute resolution processes may take years. One
example involves a large central Florida lake that to date has spanned eight years and is
still unresolved. In addition, political assets of both parties are diminished during the
adversarial stages of the regulatory process. Even if the regulatory process is relatively
nonconfrontational, the opportunity lost associated with the conversion of lands to a
treatment function is still a costly endeavor and encounters direct and indirect economic
and social consequences that impact regional and even state-wide sectors of the
community.

Now let us consider an unconventional approach to developing a treatment facility for a
water body. Rather than attempting to clear the hurdles of current methods of dealing with
the treatment of discharges, a different pathway is available: in-system treatment. Today
the use of waters of the state for treatment of non-point discharges is frowned upon by the
state's resource managers. Why? What makes the highly-degraded bottom of ruined
water ways like Lake Apopka, and the dead end canals of the Indian River Lagoon or
Biscayne Bay off limits for use as treatment areas? Would not part of a sweet pie be better
than the moldy and inedible whole? Yet to suggest that part of the degraded water body be
used to preserve and restore the larger remainder is considered heresy in the circles of
today's water managers. This policy may have served the state 30 years ago, a state of only
six million people as compared to the 14 million of today.

Today the land use options are greatly restricted when compared to three decades ago. The
land use map (Figures 3A-D) provides an illustration of the changes, development and thus
restrictions associated with Florida's landscape today. These changes not only restrict the
flexibility of today's water managers but also show the additional loss of natural areas and
the sources of the pollution to the adjacent water bodies. The current condition of our
society and its economic circumstance sets the stage for continued delays in implementing
the restoration of the state's lakes, rivers and estuaries. We simply can not afford to dig up
downtown Miami, buy out the Everglades Agricultural Area, or put stormwater treatment