I am sorry to say that the Florida Everglades and the clean up project has suffered the loss of Marjorie Stoneman Douglass recently. These pages are dedicated to her memory, and all the hard work she put forth on saving her beloved "glades". She will never be forgotten.

The Everglades was first called The River Of Grass by native Marjory Stoneman Douglass. The Miccosukee call it Pa-Hay-okee, meaning grassy sea. It covered about 4 million acres of South Florida befor it was dredged and drained. Streching from Lake Okechobee to The Florida Bay, the river is 120 miles long and 50 miles wide, but seldom over 2 feet deep. At no point is it above 8 foot sea level.

Of the original 4 million acres here is, to the best of my knowledge, where it went. The Everglades National Park and the water conservation area take up approx. 2 million acres today. 700,000 acres are under agriculture use, most of which is used to grow sugar cane. Now that leaves 1.3 million acres unaccouted for? No, it is now housing about 5 million people in the Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties.

Now that we have this big mess down in the glades, would you like to know what we are doing to clean it up?

In the 1950's and 1960's the Army Corps of Engineers built 1,400 miles of canals and levees to prevent floods and create dry land in what was the Everglades at that time. Prior to all this digging and dredging it took almost a year for the river of grass to flow to the bay.

As a result we have a 95% drop in the wading bird population and more than 50 species of plants and animals are now endangered. Including the Florida Panther.

The river once served to recharge the Biscayne Aquifer, and now that it is not there salt water from the sea is backing up. Now it is a threat to the main water supply for Miami.

The cost of the massive clean up is expected to be between 3 and 5 billion (not million) dollars and will take well into the next century to complete. The Corp Of Engineers plans to reverse the water flow back to a more natural state. It will require an open-air plumbing system about the size of Maryland.