Everglades Special Master Rips Cleanup Committee In Report

[hatrack]

"An interagency committee needs to be more vigilant policing the state-run Everglades cleanup, and the project still faces daunting hurdles with little time left to surmount them, suggests a new report delivered to a federal judge supervising the project.

The report, by Miami environmental lawyer John Barkett, the special master to the Everglades cleanup, admonishes a five-member technical oversight committee for not adequately monitoring a court-ordered Everglades cleanup agreement. It also calls into question the ability of the state to meet pollution limits for the marsh by a Dec. 31, 2006, court cleanup deadline that will arrive "in the blink of an eye."

Barkett wrote the 33-page report as an adviser to the cleanup's federal court monitor, U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno. The watchdog committee cited in the report the two state agencies carrying out the cleanup, the South Florida Water Management District and Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and three federal agencies involved in it: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Everglades National Park and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Audubon of Florida said the rebuke shows that the oversight committee, a watchdog that can suggest corrective measures for cleanup problems is "nonfunctional." "The committee has bumbled and fumbled through this process without doing it's job," said Audubon of Florida Senior Vice President Charles Lee."

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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pjudge11may11,0,2228547.story?coll=sfla-news-palm