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Show e Everglades Family Weekly/ suty 5, 1970 By JEAN GEORGE(aciio:2 “My Side of the Mountain” protect precious wild lands from being bulldozed then chairman of the Central and Southern Florida Flood Contro} District, had got wind of the proposed jetport in Big Cypress and had called Dade County Port Authority commissioners asking to see their plans, He was shown a map on which was a tiny line. This, he was told, would be the only road to the jetport. Ten days later he happened to see another map on the wall of a State Road Departmentoffice in Fort Lauderdale. “There was my tiny voad,” he told me. “Kighty square miles of roadway right in the middle of my water conservation area!” Padrick-also worried lest one of the pipelines bringing fuel to the jetport fromthe coast should burst and the entire water system be polluted. He wrote 100 letters protesting the plan to presidents of leading conservation organizations—the AudubonSociety, the Sierra Club, and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, among others. PMbeanwhile, the Port Authority, F ; al. ov ar ia > assuring everyone that the jetport would not harm the Everglades,floated 14 million dollars of revenue certificates to finance initial construction. On Sept. 18, 1968, with a minimum cf fanfare, they broke ground. When, in January 1969, Padrick informed Nathaniel Reed, conservation aide to Governor ClaudeR.Kirk, that } the jetport was under construction, » Reed was incredulous. He and Padrick * flew over the Big Cypress site to see aii ve! 0) | a three-mile gash in the wilderness. E. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Reed | said. “But there it was!” = The following month, Reed joined . Padrick’s group of congervationists | at a meeting with the Port Authority © in Miami. Aiso present was a con: sortium of local politicians and air- = lines personnel. “I shall never forget | that meeting,” says Reed. “Here were B;150 of the best brains in conservation _ —state and Federal, private and sci- e entific. Yet our previously submitted _ questions were rebuffed. it o — Hhowever, public interest was <" aroused by this meeting and protest =‘letters poured in from all over the ~world—24,000 of them to Governor _Kirk in Florida and Secretary Hickel ee in Washington. The gist of the letters th "was: the Everglades belong to the | world. They must be saved. In Au- studies could be conducted. Three research teams moved in. One was a group from the National Academyof Sciences. The second was the so-calied “Leopold Committee,” led by Dr. Luna B. Leopold of the Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. The third was a committee Everglades would, in time, be doomed. Another persuasive argument came from the work of Dr. James Ferguson-Wood of the Institute of Marine Sciences, Miami, who had made a study concerning those tiny algae, the one-celled plants called periphy- Guide,” which discusses not only the ton. This microscopic cell, FergusonWood discovered, supports the whole thought to be dangerous to animal organized by former Secretary of the Intericr Stewart L. Udall and funded by $75,000 from the Dade County system.It is the beginning of both *he plant and animal food chain. To keep Commissioners, the Port Authority, the Glades filled witn birds,alligators, and the airline companies. The National Academy of Sciences group saw danger in the proposed jetport, but suggested that perhaps a mere “training strip”—the two runways already under construction— would not threaten the Park. The Leopold Committee found that any development above the Everglades was a distinct threat to southern Florida. The Udall group declared thata jetport could be safely developed there. They said that the Everglades could be “protected” if the port was built as a “clean enclave”’—no hangars, terminals, or parking lots, just runways—connected to Miami Interna- tional Airport by “acromobiles” (aircushion vehicles) or some other type of mass transit which could ferry passengers and cargo to and from the jetport. A sophisticated and expensive sewage system would be installed to protect the Park downstream. Uaairs plan was quickly denounced by conservationists as pie in the sky. For one thing, a jetliner on take-off consumes 4000 pounds of fuel below 3000 feet. Emitted in the fuel burn are carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, carbon, and nitrogen oxides. The latest studies show that as little as one-eighth of this accumulated exhaust could dangerously pollute the Park. The damage would probably occur at the lowest level of the food chain—the algae—and the Sawgrass, and trees, it must have absolutely pure water. Pollution by nitrates, some of which are thrown out in jet exhaust, would definitely kill it. And if periphyton went, all the rest of the food chain would go with it. Now business and professional people joined the conservationist crusade, armed with publicity and organizational skilis. Their entrance into the fight fcrcefuly drew theattention of top-level officials in Washington, and the decision—to build or not to build—ended up on the desks of the Secretaries of Transportation and Interior. (Transportation was helping to finance the jetport, and Interior is responsible for protecting the national parks.) In December 1969, Volpe, Hickel, and Kirk began the series of conferences with state andlocal officials that resulted in the defeat of the jetport and the training strip. They saw that the only way to preserve the ecology was to get laws passed, and that the way to do this was to educate thelegislators. Meanwhile, many of these new ecological vigilantes have now banded together. Typical is a group called Conservation 70s, presided over by 47-year-old sales and marketing executive Lyman E. Rogers. After collating a number of recant scientific studies, this group has organized and has recently published a booklet entitled ‘Legislators’ Environmental Everglades but a statewide develop- mental master plan. By disseminating recent scientific findings via the press and public meetings, the group was also instrumental in passing a law restricting statewide use of chemicals life. “Now,” says Rogers, “responsible land-developmentfirms are beginning to contact competent ecologists and to ask their advice in developing new housing in keeping with good environmental practices.” Today there are highways, dams, housing projects, and jetports threatening hundreds of areas of ecological importance throughout the country. The Florida experience wil! be instructive to environment defenders everywhere in the future. Basically, the Floridians won their fight by means and agencies available to all citizens. First, they called upon scientists who were expert in certain aspects of the local ecology, including the personnel of the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Then citizens’ committees were set up to keep the govevnment—both local aad Federal— informed of their findings. These findings were also widely publicized through organizations already set up to disseminate information—the Isaac Walton League, the Florida Audubon Society, and the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc., as well as churches and the press. High school and college siudents passed fliers and knocked on doors. Paasiviy the most important lesson that can be learned from the Floridians is that when people are given the ecological facts, they do act upon them. For instance, many of those whohelped stop the jetport are precisely the ones who, had they not received accurate information, would undoubtedly have supported it. As the smoke from the jetport battle dies down, the new vigilantes take stock of their victory. “It’s only a beginning,” says conservation aide Reed. “There are still numerouspollution threats to the Everglades and to Florida. However, the jetport struggle and its attendant research have brought them to the attention of an aroused citizenry, and we will win these battles, too.” As one scientist put it succinctly for me: “Man is an intelligent animal—if you show him that he is destroying his environment, he will not persist.” Family Weekly, July 5, 1970 5 |