From 'River of Grass' to CERP: How Everglades Restoration Took Shape

The Everglades once spread across much of South Florida as a slow-moving sheet of water. Over the last century, the state and federal governments drained, diked and channeled much of it, then committed to an expensive effort to undo part of the damage.

A book and a park in 1947

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, born in 1890, published The Everglades: River of Grass in 1947, the same year Everglades National Park was established, according to the National Park Service. The book described drainage and development harming the wetlands and called for protecting what remained, the Everglades Foundation notes. Douglas later founded Friends of the Everglades at age 79, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 and died in 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says.

Congress authorized the park on May 30, 1934, for up to 2,164,480 acres, and President Harry Truman dedicated it on Dec. 6, 1947, in Everglades City, the Park Service says. Landscape architect Ernest F. Coe had spent years pushing for it.

Building the plumbing

Severe floods in 1947 and 1948 led to the Central and Southern Florida Project for Flood Control, according to a National Academies report. Congress authorized the project in 1948, and the state created the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District on June 2, 1949, the Florida Specifier reported. That district is the forerunner of today's South Florida Water Management District, which manages more than 2,175 miles of canals, more than 2,130 miles of levees and more than 90 pump stations.

The system protected farms and cities but came at a steep ecological cost. The Everglades Foundation says the project formalized the loss of half the original ecosystem. The National Academies report says it effectively eliminated 160 square miles of Everglades that had extended east of the perimeter levee.

The 2000 restoration plan

Congress approved the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in Title VI of the Water Resources Development Act of 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service. The plan included 68 projects, an estimated cost of $7.8 billion and a timeline of more than 30 years, with federal and state-level partners splitting costs evenly. Its central idea was to capture fresh water then being sent to the ocean and store it, with an estimated 80% going to the natural system.

The price and the schedule have both grown. The Park Service now describes the plan as costing more than $10.5 billion over a timeline of 35 years or more.

How we reported this: This explainer was drafted with AI assistance from the sources linked above, and every fact was checked against those sources. See an error? Contact us and we'll correct it.

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