The Kissimmee (stress on the SECOND syllable, please) River flows from around the Disney Magic Kingdom near Orlando into Lake Okeechobee. The winding river and its swamps and wetlands were channelized and straightened to drain land for farming and cattle ranching, and now the combined load of cow manure and fertilizer flows unimpeded into the Big Water. The lake used to periodically overflow, creating phenomenally rich topsoil, but sugar interests lobbied the government to build levees around it to irrigate and protect the cane fields from flooding, so the natural flow of water down into the Everglades was interrupted. This had the additional benefit of almost single-handedly creating the real estate industry in SE Florida by artificially draining about half of the ‘Glades. It also had the unanticipated consequence of slowly drying out one of the major sources of recharge for the Florida Aquifer, the ultimate source of drinking water for over four million people.

Overflow from the Lake in rainy season was channeled out through two long artificial rivers, one to the Gulf of Mexico and another to the Atlantic. This made it possible for pleasure boats to navigate from the East to West Coasts of Florida, with a stop in the vast bass fishing paradise of Lake Okeechobee itself. Think of it as urban renewal for yachtsmen and waterfront property owners, funded by the tax contributions of people who live far inland, rent their houses and will never own a boat in their lives.

But Florida’s century long experiment in planetary engineering is starting to show signs of backfiring.

Nutrient-rich agricultural runoff from the Kissimmee Valley, no longer cleansed and purified by the wetlands and swamps, has led to vast algae blooms in the Lake, and the thick mats of dense green goo die and rot, sinking to the bottom of the shallow lake, decomposing into an anaerobic slime that supports no life. And when the lake threatens to overflow in hurricane season, the locks on the two drainage channels must be opened to relieve the pressure, carrying the algae towards the coasts, where it clogs the bays and estuaries between the mainland and the barrier islands. And there, it decomposes in the hot sun, creating a foul stench that offends the sensitive noses of Mondo Condo, and impedes the free navigation of sport fishermen and elegant yachts. Even far from the ubiquitous coastal settlements, the tidal environment, one of the biologically richest and most productive places on the planet, is gradually being turned into a toxic cesspool.

Realization that South Florida is rapidly becoming uninhabitable, and that soon it will simply not be able to support millions of people, has prompted government agencies into attempting to do something about the problem. There has been an effort to restore the wetlands and the Kissimmee to its original condition, and to reestablish the normal drainage patterns in the River of Grass. But it is expensive, and difficult, and exactly how to go about it is not scientifically clear and there is constant political and corporate opposition, not to mention competition for funding, particular from Big Sugar, one of the already most highly subsidized industries in America.

Meanwhile, the earth is getting warmer, the algae rots faster, the people keep coming, the water table keeps dropping, and the lobbyists fight over the development of the shrinking islands of paradise that still remain. Maybe a little sea level rise wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Oh, and by the way, this algae bloom has nothing to do with the coastal invasion of Sargassum weed that I talked about in an earlier post below. That’s something else all together.