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Buford-Johnson’s plight in Orlo Vista is perhaps unsurprising considering Florida’s history predominately as wetlands. Water is intrinsic to Florida. The state is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water: the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay. Florida’s springs to the north are some of the most majestic in the world. The Everglades begin in Central Florida with Shingle Creek, which flows into a watershed that encompasses much of the peninsula and includes the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee and storied river of grass. To the east of Shingle Creek, the St. Johns River, Florida’s longest river, courses north to Jacksonville and out to sea.
“Wetlands were a signature of Florida, and you didn’t have to be in the middle of a cypress swamp to be in a wetland,” Lee said. “Central Florida was pockmarked with a large number of very shallow wet prairie situations that gradually were used for agriculture, when the farmers that converted them into agriculture built marginal drainage ditches.”
Historically, these wetlands would have served as natural sponges, absorbing Ian’s and Nicole’s monumental rains while their trees, shrubs and other vegetation helped disperse the floodwaters. Instead a lot of these wetlands were filled in during the past century for Florida’s explosive growth and development. Most notably, the Everglades were drained to a fraction of their size through a vast system of canals, levees, water control structures and pump stations that together represent some of the most complex water management infrastructure in the world.
Today, Florida’s waters are overseen by the state Department of Environmental Protection and five water management districts, three of which converge in Central Florida: The St. Johns River Water Management District is responsible for much of the northern half of the region, and the South Florida Water Management District is focused on the southern part. The Southwest Florida Water Management District’s territory includes Sumter and parts of Lake and Marion counties.
The South Florida Water Management District and St. Johns River Water Management District are faced with two starkly different situations. The South Florida district oversees the Everglades’ massive infrastructure, which also was designed for flood control after a hurricane in the 1920s caused Lake Okeechobee to flood, killing thousands of people.
The river of grass now is the subject of a multibillion-dollar restoration aimed in large part at recapturing its water and revitalizing the ailing watershed. Sean Cooley, the district’s spokesman, points out that while hurricanes are projected to become rainier as temperatures warm, Ian’s rainfall levels had not been documented in at least hundreds of years and are unlikely to occur again in the near future. Nonetheless, the district and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are reexamining the system to look for improvements.
By contrast, the St. Johns River Water Management District oversees a system in the upper basin of spillways, pump stations, levees and canals that can be used to influence water levels and enhance flood control. But the system is much smaller than that in South Florida, and the upper basin is the only area where the district has any control over water levels, said Mike Register, the district’s executive director.
Instead the district relies more on the natural function of floodplains. He said Floridians like to live near the water, and that puts them in harm’s way.
“We focus on trying to acquire as much of that floodplain as possible so that when the (St. Johns River) does come up,” he said, “it is able to go into these natural areas and spread out like it was designed to do and not move into neighborhoods and into people’s homes.”
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