Trapped inside a 56-mile-long canal for decades, the Kissimmee River is finally breaking free.
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."
Thanks to Sheryl Stolzenberg
FULL STORY: State erases 30-year-old blunder with restoration of Kissimmee River

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