Signs of Everglades recovery emerge

MIAMI — After decades of planning and pleading for political support and dollars to restore the Everglades, there are growing signs that the massive multibillion-dollar effort is beginning to “get the water right.” That’s long been the measure of success for the federal and state agencies tasked with the job. And scientists are seeing rising rates of bird and alligator nesting to the south in Shark River Slough, where Steve Davis, chief scientist for the Everglades Foundation, said “we are seeing historic levels of flow.” But water managers also point to how the partially re-engineered system performed during the major recent test of Hurricane Ian. This kind of project works,” Drew Bartlett, the executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, that state agency leading restoration efforts, said during a presentation at last month’s Everglades Coalition Conference. But newly installed underground steel walls that protect the Las Palmas community, a neighborhood right on the park’s edge, kept homes and streets dry even as water flowed south — unlike previous years. We want to see the benefits to the Everglades and the environment but Melodie Naja, director of the National Park Service’s South Florida Natural Resources Center, said water levels have reached as high as two feet in the northeast part of Shark River Slough.