Cloudy Sunshine State

Florida has become a prime example of how Americans love-hate nature. A magnet for new people and industry, the beautiful, booming Sunshine State is also a monument to careless planning. Conservationists have just halted work on a Miami-area jetport that threatened to ruin Everglades National Park. But they are losing to despoiling highways, sprawling developments and coastal landfills that destroy estuaries, the breeding grounds of key marine creatures. The whole state seems to be flirting with ecological disaster.

Around Lakeland, phosphate miners are tearing huge holes in the earth that endanger the local water table. At the edge of Big Cypress Swamp, drainage ditches for new housing may interrupt the already imperiled water flow into the Everglades. To the north, Walt Disney Productions is building a City of Tomorrow for 50,000 people that may cut off some of Orlando's water supply, since the site is atop porous soil that lets rainwater into Florida's vital aquifer. That underground layer of limestone stores much of the state's annual 57 inches of rainfall. Any significant damage to the aquifer could let salt water seep in from the sea and contaminate Florida's lush farm land.

For years, towns along Florida's Gold Coast between Miami and Palm Beach have blithely dumped raw sewage about a mile offshore, assuming that the Gulf Stream would carry it away. Now the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey reports that the cleansing current is farther away than had been thought. As a result, the sewage may actually be trapped right off the hotel-lined beaches. Says Dr. Leonard A. Erdman, president of the Broward County Medical Association: "There is a very real cause to fear the possibility of hepatitis from this situation."

All these problems are currently overshadowed by two pressing issues. One is the Cross-Florida Barge Canal, which is inching across the northern part of the state. Long a dream of the Army Corps of Engineers, the 107-mile waterway will link Jacksonville on the Atlantic with Yankeetown on the Gulf of Mexico. The $177 million project is being heralded by the Army as a major economic asset for the state.

Florida's conservationists disagree. In carving out the canal's first 27 miles, the builders created two dams and a reservoir that have already flooded 13,000 acres of forests in the Oklawaha River basin. Unfortunately, the basin forms a unique "hydric hammock" that abounds with rare alligators, panthers and wild turkeys. The hammock harbors this life because the river bed is periodically exposed to air, thus providing alternating wet and dry seasons that are essential to the survival of the wild, beautiful river-swamp system. With permanent flooding, ecologists warn, the system's rare creatures will soon vanish.

Critics also fear that the canal may pollute groundwater, including the famed Silver Springs, only four miles away from the waterway. Others predict that the Corps of Engineers will eventually try to add other northward canal routes, cutting across the unspoiled Suwannee River.

Rare Combination. The Corps proudly notes that it is building new recreation sites for fishing, swimming, boating and camping in the Oklawaha River area. But scientists say that the new dam reservoir is likely to become clogged with flourishing water flowers and weeds. Even more to the point, critics argue that the locks are too narrow to handle a profitable traffic load. Says Ecologist Barry Commoner: "The Florida people are challenging the Corps' whole cost-benefit analysis. It's a precedent-setting attack." Last month President Nixon and Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel promised to review the entire scheme.

The other major issue is a new threat to Biscayne Bay. Stretching 30 miles south of Miami, the bay is still an aquatic wilderness that swarms with at least 27 varieties of major fish. It is also the home of many beautiful birds, including the pelican, egret, white ibis and cormorant. Except in the vicinity of Miami, the bay is virtually free of man-made pollution. In 1968, Congress was so impressed with the bay's "rare combination of terrestrial, marine and amphibious life" that it voted $24.6 million to create the Biscayne National Monument, most of which consists of the water itself.

Lifeless Zone. The bay's water has also attracted the Florida Power & Light Co., the state's largest power utility. To provide more electricity for more homes, including President Nixon's new retreat on Key Biscayne, the utility has built two big power generators on a promontory called Turkey Point. The oil-fired turbines require cooling water from the bay --as much as 820 million gal. per day. When the water is spilled back, it is at least 10DEG F. hotter than the bay's.

In less than two years, this thermal pollution has created what a recent scientific meeting in Miami called "a barren lifeless zone" around the principal discharge canal. Gone are the tiny mollusks, rock lobsters and small forage fish that once thrived in the area. Last June, after the plant operated at full capacity to meet a particularly heavy drain of power, thousands of fish were found floating belly up in the bay, apparently killed by the hot discharges.

Florida Power & Light is now building two nuclear generators at Turkey Point. Drawing three times as much water, the combined facility will at times heat the discharged water to a peak of 95DEG or more. According to some biologists, most marine organisms will die at 92DEG. In response, the Interior Department is seeking a federal court injunction that would force the utility to reduce the heat of the discharged water to within 4DEG of the bay's temperature in spring, fall and winter, and only 1.5DEG in summer.

The federal challenge is more significant than the fate of Biscayne Bay. Brought under an 1899 federal statute that bars contamination of navigable waters, the suit represents the first application of that law to thermal pollution. The proceedings are being watched by not only conservationists across the country but also by the many power companies that are either planning or building nuclear plants, all of which require great quantities of water to cool their reactors. One indication of the stakes: the Florida Public Service Commission, the state's own regulatory agency, has joined Florida Power & Light in fighting the Government's intervention. On the nuclear front, as well as on other environmental issues, it looks as though Florida has put economics ahead of ecology--and that Washington may have to protect the Sunshine State from its own abuse of nature.

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