LIQUID LAND: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades

In 1948, the Army Corps of Engineers launched a project to deal with flooding in Florida's Everglades by building a system of canals, levees and spillways. Misunderstanding the complexities of the ecosystem they were trying to control, the engineers drained the Everglades. In this knowledgeable and carefully researched overview, Levin, a naturalist, writer and photographer, recounts the many negative effects this drainage has had on wildlife and plant life. Half of the original Everglades area has been converted to housing and farmland; the wilderness's ability to recover from natural disasters such as hurricanes has been compromised by human error. Levin, who covered the area by foot, boat and plane, successfully evokes the Everglades of yesterday and today, and details the possibilities that exist for its future. He mentions that $8 billion has been allocated for a Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), which is intended to reverse the decline and restore the wetlands by recapturing water flushed out to sea and redirecting it back without flooding corporate farms and cities. Drawing on extensive research, the author describes the interest groups, corporations and citizens who conflict with one another over the CERP project. A small group of homeowners, for example, composed chiefly of Cuban exiles, will be forced to move because they live on marshland that may be flooded. In this informative and timely account, Levin offers an accessible, engaging narrative of what environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas called "the river of grass." B&w illus. (Sept.)