Florida Frees A Historic River

Nearly two-thirds of the original 40,000 acres of important marsh wildlife habitat adjacent to the Kissimmee had disappeared after engineers dug a canal down the center of a floodplain between 1962 and 1971. Five flood-control structures were added. Intended to protect areas around the cities of Kissimmee and Orlando from flooding, the result was "not a river in any way," said Lou Toth, lead river restoration scientist for the South Florida Water Management District. Even before the Army Corps of Engineers had completed the transformation of a river into the C-38 Canal, the project sparked an outcry from citizens "taken aback by the magnitude and scale of this project," Toth said. Public pressure led to a $507 million federal-state effort to restore the Kissimmee River, a task slated to continue until 2010. To nudge the river, part of the Everglades' headwaters, onto its former footing, the water district and corps reconnected old river links, back-filled 7.5 miles of flood-control canal, carved nearly 2 miles of new river twists from scratch, knocked down levees and plugged cow pasture drainage canals to reclaim 11,000 acres of wetlands. "The response has just been phenomenal,"said Stefani Melvin, a water district biologist. "We expected it to be almost immediate, and it was. As soon as we got the water on the floodplain, birds moved in."