Everglades cleanup at stake in court case

A four-foot alligator basks in the bright sunshine on the steep bank of a canal, as five plump cormorants leisurely digest their lunch while perched on a string of orange floats.

Aside from the steady din of a nearby flood-control pump and the man-made configuration of the waterway, the scene appears a slice of idyllic Florida.

Indeed, from the east side of the S-9 pumping station at the edge of the Everglades, it is hard to imagine this as the grounds for a major environmental case before the US Supreme Court.

But appearances can be deceiving. A few hundred yards over the levee on the west side of the pumping station, the picture changes. The torrent of water spewing from the backside of the pump has churned up a foot-thick blanket of yellow-brown froth. Blobs of foam drift over murky, greenish-brown water and out into what once were the pristine environs of the Florida Everglades.

"I've watched this park go from a beautiful paradise to a polluted pit," says John Pate, who has spent 30 years here guiding fishermen to trophy-sized bass.

Wednesday, the US Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether the agency operating the S-9 pumps may be held responsible under the federal Clean Water Act for the polluted water it transports from the urban flood-control system on the east side of the levee into the environmentally sensitive Everglades on the west.

The case has major implications for the $8 billion Everglades restoration project, the largest environmental cleanup ever attempted. In addition, it could dramatically increase regulations applied to the movement of water nationwide, particularly in the water-scarce Western states.

"This may seem like a little pump case, but the reality is this case is going to have an impact throughout the country in how folks manage water," says Scott Glazier, a lawyer with the South Florida Water Management District, the flood-control agency that runs the S-9 pumping station.

The precise issue before the high court is whether the agency is required to obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act to continue pumping water from the flood-control canal into the Everglades. Water in the canal is tainted with urban runoff, including pesticides, heavy metals, and the nutrient phosphorus.

The case highlights the difficult balance between environmentalists seeking to prevent the flow of pollutants into the fragile Everglades ecosystem and the interests of 136,000 residents who rely on the S-9 pumping station to prevent widespread flooding of their homes and businesses.

The Everglades restoration plan, approved by Congress in 2000, seeks to balance those competing interests. But some in south Florida are worried about what they see as the slow pace of the cleanup.

The Miccosukee Indian Tribe, which lives in portions of the Everglades, filed suit under the Clean Water Act. The suit asks a federal judge to order the state flood-control agency to stop polluting the Everglades. "The biggest lesson of Everglades restoration is these agencies don't act without a court order," says Dexter Lehtinen, the Miccosukee Tribe lawyer who filed the suit.

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