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ON THE KISSIMMEE RIVER, Fla.-A hard rain falls on the Kissimmee River, breaking the glassy, motionless surface with small splatters.It's a brief reprieve from the unprecedented drought that has plagued much of Florida, but it won't do much to solve the problem.Water managers say the river basin needs about five feet of rain to catch up with normal levels. Even then drought conditions would persist to the south, where rain has been falling recently along the coast but not nearly enough to make up for the 18-month dry spell.Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Everglades and a backup drinking water source for millions of South Florida residents, hits a new record low almost weekly.It's main artery, the Kissimmee River starting near Orlando, hasn't flowed south in more than 240 days, depriving the lake of 50 percent of its water.The lack of rain in the Everglades' northern reaches means continued pressure on the region's utilities to find alternative means of producing clean water, such as desalinization from the sea. It also has put renewed pressure on water managers to hasten efforts to engineer nature to work more naturally.Florida's natural water systems have been so manipulated over the last century to make way for man that the only way to restore it is to manipulate it even more, state officials say."You can't just backfill everything and let the water flow like it used to because we'd be drowning out people, highways, farms and homes," said Ernie Barnett, director of policy and legislation for the South Florida Water Management District."We now have to engineer a solution to mimic nature." To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
