From Duke to the Everglades to Iraq
Curtis Richardson's Wetland Journey Sheds New Light on One
of Nature's Historically Maligned Assets p.3
Richardson and his group developed what he labels “a
new and innovative way” to determine the thresholds
above which phosphorus concentrations could become a problem.
Another startling discovery was that adding more nitrogen
and phosphorus actually increases, rather than reduces, the
varieties and densities of invertebrates and small fish available
to serve as food for many Everglades’ mammals and birds.
Richardson thinks with the new standards in place the nutrient
runoff from farming operations is far less of a problem in
the Everglades than water allocations within what has become
a complex hydrological system that both scientists and politicians
now agree needs fixing.
He notes that before engineers began crisscrossing the Everglades
with an elaborate network of canals to quickly dump runoff
into the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico during periods
of flooding, there was more water on the surface and in the
limestone aquifers underlying the Everglades.
“One hundred years ago there were waterfalls coming
into the city of Miami,” he says. Freshwater artesian
wells also bubbled up offshore in Biscayne Bay and were tapped
to provide pure, piped-in drinking water for residents.
A 30-year restoration plan, costing almost $8 billion, envisions
a massive revamping of the Everglades water system, including
large surface and underground reservoirs. The goal is to better
serve the needs of nature as well as the growing patchwork
of urban areas that fringe the Everglades. Richardson is skeptical
that it will work and is convinced that this plan takes little
Everglades ecology into account. “A careful reading
of the proposed restoration plans by the Corps of Engineers
will find precious little ecological understanding of how
the Everglades will function or respond to these massive water
alterations, but a lot of information on the plan is given
on how it will reroute water and provide water supplies to
population centers and agriculture.”
Overall, more than 30 scientists have worked at the Wetland
Center on Everglades’ projects, publishing more than
50 papers. Richardson is the principal author of a new book
to be published in 2004 on the effort, The Everglades
Experiments: Lessons for Restoration.
Richardson noted that “This project has been a tremendous
learning experience and has given me and my co-workers first
hand experience of how rough it can get when science clashes
head on with political agendas, environmental conservatives
and big business.” He and colleagues have been chased
off one part of the Everglades and also had to testify in
court during protracted legal disputes between state and federal
overseers. “We just kept our heads down and did our
work,” he recalls.
His research’s credibility has also been challenged
because Florida sugar growers funded some of it. “Since
other scientists later verified the Wetland Center’s
findings and we have published our work in the best journals,
there wasn’t a whole lot they could say about it,”
Richardson says of such critics.
Duke’s Wetland Center is now starting a new project
centered on the edge of the university’s West Campus.
A team has begun transforming part of Sandy Creek near the
Washington Duke Inn into eight acres of restored and new wetlands
whose contributions to water quality can be comprehensively
evaluated in an outdoor teaching and research laboratory.
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