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dam-l Fw: LS: Dam destroyed to help restore the Kissimmee (fwd)



----- Forwarded message from Michael A Rozengurt -----

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Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 18:54:28 -0700
Subject: Fw: LS: Dam destroyed to help restore the Kissimmee
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From: Michael A Rozengurt <mrozengurt@juno.com>



--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: owner-irn-wcd@netvista.net
To: Undisclosed-recipients:;
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 11:53:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: LS: Dam destroyed to help restore the Kissimmee
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Published Tuesday, June 20, 2000, in the Miami Herald

  Dam destroyed to help restore the Kissimmee

  BY PHIL LONG
  plong@herald.com

  LORIDA, Florida. -- A thunderous red-and-yellow flash rocked the 
noontime stillness, sending chunks of
  concrete hurtling through the air.

  The blast, on the Kissimmee River south of Sebring, signaled the 
destruction Monday of a concrete
  dam, one of the last vestiges of what many say was perhaps Florida's 
worst environmental mistake.

  Workers dynamited the lock/dam in Highlands County as part of a $500 
million restoration of the
  Kissimmee River.

  About 40 years ago, in an effort to provide flood control for 
developing residential and business areas
  in the upper reaches of Central Florida -- including Walt Disney 
World -- the Army Corps of Engineers
  turned the meandering Kissimmee River into a 30-foot-deep by 
300-foot-wide, 56-mile-long canal.

  That project, which destroyed 30,000 to 35,000 acres of wetlands, 
was widely criticized as one of the
  state's poorest environmental decisions.

  Today, at a cost of about $500 million, the state and federal 
governments are a year into a 50-50
  restoration of 22 of those 56 miles of river and surrounding 
wetlands. Because wetlands are natural
  filters, the restoration is expected to reduce the amount of harmful 
nutrients going into Lake
  Okeechobee by about 20 percent.

  It will also greatly increase the amount of habitat for 320 species 
of fish, birds and other wildlife.

  Monday, workers blew up the last remaining water-control device, one 
of five dam-like structures that
  had regulated the flow of water among the river basin's five mostly 
stagnant retention areas.

  As the smoke and dust cleared, an Okeechobee youth put the event 
into perspective.

  ``It means all the alligators and everything else are going to have 
their homes back,'' proclaimed Tony
  Padgett, 11, who came to watch the blast with his mom, Julee, and 
sisters Agnelene and Mollee.

  His dad, Dale, a heavy equipment operator for the firm doing the 
restoration, brought his family out to
  see history in the making.

  The restoration, said Lou Toth, project scientist, is one of the 
biggest ever of its type and will restore
  40 square miles of river and flood-plain wetlands.

  The main element of the restoration is returning the dirt that was 
excavated in the late 1960s to create
  the channel.

  Most of the dirt being used in the restoration, Toth said, is the 
original dirt dredged out when the canal
  was dug.

  The amount of dirt it will take to erase the channel would fill a 
space about the width of the I-95
  corridor from the Golden Glades Interchange south into Kendall.

  The flood plain will stretch from 1 1/2 miles to a little more than 
three miles wide along the 22-mile
  corridor, covering at its broadest point an area almost the 
equivalent of the distance from Biscayne
  Bay to Miami International Airport.

  ``The bottom line is that real rivers don't have dams, they don't 
have water-control structures, they
  don't have locks,'' Toth said. ``We are getting rid of all three of 
those to allow the river to have an
  opportunity to heal itself.''

  The restoration movement started in the early 1970s. The South 
Florida Water Management District
  got involved in 1984 as the lead agency in the restoration.

  ``We can completely restore this river to what it was like before,'' 
Toth said. ``It is simply a matter of
  returning the dirt back into the canal from where it came and 
removing the water control structures and
  navigation locks.''

  The project will still maintain flood protection. Confining the 
restoration to the middle 22 miles will do
  that, Toth said.

  About 40 percent of the project's cost has been for acquisition of 
land, some for recreation.

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----- End of forwarded message from Michael A Rozengurt -----