Word: marshlands
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once it was a forbidding wilderness of marshland and saw grass that had to be drained and tamed before southern Florida could realize its rich potential. Today the Everglades -- what is left of it -- is surrounded by an urban sprawl of 4.5 million people. Thriving sugarcane farms carved out of its northern reaches drain pollutants into its water; Air Force jets boom over its skies. The 1.4 million-acre Everglades National Park, created in 1947, has become an endangered relic in the nation's fourth most populous state. "Make no mistake," says outgoing park superintendent Michael Finley, "the Everglades...
...Federal Government contends that Florida, despite overwhelming demands on its limited natural resources, can re-create the ecological balance necessary to keep the Everglades alive. The water that replenishes the marshland once spilled out of Lake Okeechobee in a shallow sheet 50 miles wide, moving slowly south for 180 miles before emptying into Florida Bay. But since the mid-1960s, the lake overflow has been channeled through a massive flood-control project -- 1,400 miles of canals and hydraulic pumps that can drain a field or rush water to urban centers on command. Using computers, engineers now try to mimic...
...river of grass turns into a sea of cattails, the water supply for coastal cities from West Palm Beach to Miami could dry up, and a sunny subtropical paradise could become a barren wasteland. Floridians are coming to realize how much they too depend on the vast marshland that once seemed so useless...
...foggy afternoon in tiny Arcata, Calif., strollers ambling through coastal marshland seem caught in the colors of an impressionist canvas. As they walk past, sandpipers and pelicans patrol the edge of Humboldt Bay. Just inland, a freshwater swamp is alive with thousands of mallard, teal and pintail ducks. Egrets and herons poke among islands of leathery bulrush. Joggers are framed against fields of daisies and Queen Anne's lace. One walker, former City Councilman Sam Pennisi, proudly points to a sewage pipe spewing dark water into the bay. "This," he tells a visitor, "is what home-rule democracy...
...State has awarded a $14,000 grant to a Charles River environmental conservation group to help protect marshland along the waterway from private development...