District needs rescuing from Everglades muck

Legislators consider turning to transportation department

By Neil Santaniello

Think about it:

The state agency that slathers Florida in asphalt is called upon to manage repairs to the Everglades.

Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Ben Watts said he
thought a legislator was kidding this week when he suggested the DOT
come to the rescue.

It's no joke.

Tapping the DOT is one option Senate Resources Committee Chairman Jack Latvala and other state legislators are considering to pull the South Florida Water Management District- and its $700 million-plus Everglades cleanup project- out of a financial hole.

Other possibilities for Everglades white knights are on the table.

Among them:

A House-Senate oversight committee.

A multi-national construction company.

A special governing authority.

"I think we all agree we're not happy with the way this project has been carried out to date," said Latvala, R-Palm Harbor.

He said he had not latched onto any one of the proposals himself but
was talking the matter over with the Governor's Office and U.S. Interior Department.

Overhyped cost overruns in the project and a U.S. Sugar campaign to
make the district look bumbling is spurring the Capitol cavalry call, the district and environmental groups charge.

Water managers on Tuesday told legislators that the cleanup, an environmental public work of unprecedented size and cost, is facing a
$29 million deficit.

That number, however, has tumbled dramatically downward since
February, when district managers pegged it at $100 million or more.

It makes sense Latvala said, to enlist Florida's roadbuilding agency to oversee construction of 63 square miles of marshes, mechanisms
designed to catch phosphorous carried by farm run-off before it
reaches and damages the Everglades.

The restoration, entailing a massive amount of earthmoving, may not
be another interchange, but "it's a construction project just the same," Latvala said.

And the DOT's track record in handling some of the state's largest and costliest construction jobs is sterling, he said.

"There's one guy in state government we all trust to a project of this size, and it's Ben Watts," Latvala said.

But the DOT proposal is not yet being ranked above other oversight
ideas, Latvala said.

House leaders said they planned to file a bill on Monday calling for
another solution: a joint legislative committee to keep tabs on the
district's work.

Sheparding that approach is Rep. Lee Constantine, chairman of the
House Governmental Responsibility Council.

"Before we start pushing the panic button, we're going to find out
where we are," he said.

"Clearly, they are having difficulty getting a handle on how much extra
they think it's going to cost."

The Legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Governmental Accountability already is trying to do that.

This week it launched a 21-day audit of cleanup finances, prodded by
the House Committee on Water Resource Management.

Water district executive Sam Poole said the demand for stricter accountability is prudent because the complex and exhorbitantly costly cleanup "is something out of the normal line of work for water manage-
ment districts."

It could clear away what he contends is misinformation surrounding
the project, and dispel "the sky is falling" view some legislators are
taking, he said.

But Poole says his agency can handle the cleanup and work out
looming cash-flow problems.

A prototype cleanup marsh built and operated by the district the past
two years is extracting twice as much phosphorous than expected,
he said.

"That's just one piece of evidence of the capabilities of people here,"
he said.

Megadoses of phosphorous are turning the Everglades sawgrass
prairies into cattail thickets.

Poole said attacks on the district's management ability are being spurred
by U.S. Sugar, which fears its share of cleanup costs will rise with the project's pricetag.

Florida Audubon Society lobbyist Charles Lee said sugar growers are
also angry over the recent appointment of two conservationists, Vera
Carter and Mitchell Berger, to three open seats on the water district
board.

Also taking aim at the district are legislators unhappy with its quasi-independent status. Poole said.

THE DISTRICT'S NINE-MEMBER BOARD IS APPOINTED AND
CAN LEVY TAXES WITHOUT LEGISLATIVE APPROVAL.

There is good reason for the fiscal concern, but branding the district
unable to carry out its filter- marsh-building job is "gravely premature," Audubon's Lee said.