The excavation of the public interest by the rock mining industry in South Florida was the subject of a major federal lawsuit in the 1990's, eventually won by Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The battle was won. The war was lost to the Great Destroyers, who successfully chew up Everglades wetlands to further the aims of land speculators, suburban sprawl, highway construction, malls and more branches of failed banks (cf. US Century Bank) whose lobbyists work hand-in-glove with zoning and transit officials and county commissioners.
Not far away, in Palm Beach County, in the early 2000's a plan took hold to use a big rock mine for Everglades restoration purposes -- much to the dismay of environmentalists who have bitterly complained for decades that the answer to restoration was not artificial solutions but restoration of lands in sugar production to cleansing marshes.
Andy Reid at the Sun Sentinel takes another look at the reservoir called the L-8 in west Palm Beach, but spends only a brief sentence on the controversial origins of this property for "restoration" (leaving out the politics; of Jeb! Bush authorizing its purchase to reward wealthy campaign contributors, as one of his first acts as governor, establishing a precedent for land appraisal/purchase price that was outrageous then as it is now; on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre for lands that had never sold for more than a few thousand.)
For the background on the Sun Sentinel story, read EOM in the archive section, or here specifically in 2009.
BTW, this deal did not just "oust" two Palm Beach county commissioners from office: it sent them to federal prison. Remember?
Revived Palm Beach County reservoir making progress
By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel
Mon Dec 30 2013
The extended arm of a crane peeks above the lip of a nearly mile-wide hole, which reaches about 50 feet deep.
A slow parade of trucks and big-wheeled construction vehicles descends into the worksite below, pumping out water and spreading concrete at depths usually not reached in swampy, flat South Florida.
After years of delay, progress is being made on the $64 million project to get a reservoir west of Royal Palm Beach pumping water south to replenish the Everglades.
"Nobody appreciates the size until they see it," said Gregory Coffelt, principal engineer for the South Florida Water Management District. "It's pretty mind boggling."
While the water-storage portion of the reservoir was completed back in 2008, the pumps, levee upgrades and other infrastructure improvements needed to get water flowing were left undone - hampering the ability to put the reservoir and its water to use.
Now after years of budget delays that slowed construction and controversies that dogged the project, the district expects to have the reservoir fully operational by 2016.
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