the swamp
The Swamp: the Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise
by Michael Grunwald 450 pp. $27.00
Simon and Schuster
It is timely, in its way, this harrowingly academic study of the history of Florida and its battle with its extraordinary natural makeup. A most unlikely book, indeed, to catch this writer's fancy, as I am neither tree-hugger nor Southern History buff.
Nevertheless, this history of the Sunshine State is lively and surprising from beginning to end. From Ponce de Leon's arrival, through the various homicidal campaigns against the native Indians in the Andrew Jackson years, Grunwald (a writer at the Washington Post) provides ample prologue for a book that ends up being about something else entirely. Grunwald's (and Florida's) story is essentially about Man Against Nature; the bulk of this volume sets about documenting in painstaking detail the various attempts to tame the Everglades. The pendulum of progress swings from dominance to submission and from development to reclamation until the state (the most astounding example in history of high-speed capitalist modernization) reaches a sort of grudging stalemate with Mother Nature.
Not many people realize that South Florida was nearly uninhabitable until around the time of WW I. The southern half of the state was outback long after the West had been Won. South Florida suffered so many boom and bust cycles in such a short time (due to land speculation, mostly) that homesteading or farming there came to seem like a ride on one of that rural state's carnival ferris wheels amidst the sucker's midway of the con game the land market so closely resembled. The men like Disston and Flagler and Broward had, this book indicates, the very best of intentions. But the various Florida development schemes inevitably resembled just that -- schemes. The drainage projects went uncompleted or botched. The market imploded, the land was ruined, but the economy continued to percolate even as the fish began to float dead to the surface of every river, stream, bay and lake. The farmers and fishermen complained and the efforts to drain the Everglades grew in cost by thousands of percentage points. The drainage was so costly and counterproductive that reclamation became a preferred strategy and the engineering efforts of more than 100 years were abandoned, acknowledged as misguided, and readied for razing. The Army Corps of Engineers got involved, trying to correct the mistakes of previous pioneers/engineers. The Corps bollixed things even worse by forging ahead with the Central & South Florida drainage project -- a hard-fought political victory which had initially been a triumph for those who saw Everglades drainage as a win-win situation for both the citizenry and the business community in south Florida. These grab-ass land speculation orgies are indeed instrumental to the development of nations such as ours. It's why we are doing so well (comparatively). Excepting Henry Flager's developments at Palm Beach and elsewhere (leading all the way down to Key West), hugging the Atlantic coastline for dear life, Florida was a hard row to hoe, a difficult place to settle, a final frontier for all but the few southern native American bands too stubborn to leave. The Seminoles and the Miccosukees were the only ones sufficiently recalcitrant to accept the hardships of the Glades and refuse to join the so-called Trail of Tears (wherein all southern Indian tribes were forced west into the Oklahoma territories), essentially telling the post-Civil War State Department to go fuck itself, "we are staying here."
What makes this book so wonderfully odd and timely is this: The world's top hydrolic engineers met recently in Rotterdam (in Holland, a country that knows something about water mangement) to brainstorm about intelligent ways of rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. It has been said that water will be the oil of the 21st century. "The Swamp" makes clear that mankind's ability to control the flow and usage of water has always been a defining characteristic, if something of a losing battle. In fact, as this book makes clear, the history of man's efforts to control and direct water IS the history of man. The experience of south Florida's efforts is both awe-inspiring and cautionary. Today, ironically, the great engineering struggles in the region are struggles to ERASE the previous hundred years of human meddling.
The pendulum swinging in this historical chronicle is both long and heavy. Today the pendulum swings toward "reclamation" of the Everglades, but throughout the past century, the pendulum pointed toward "reclamation" of the land -- an effort to tame the glades and render them safe for sustained agriculture. Are we reclaiming something when we render it habitable to Man or when we return it to its original Natural state? Such are the positively Orwellian usages of words tailored to shifting political imperatives in the Everglades saga.
Not many people realize that South Florida was nearly uninhabitable until around the time of WW I. The southern half of the state was outback long after the West had been Won. South Florida suffered so many boom and bust cycles in such a short time (due to land speculation, mostly) that homesteading or farming there came to seem like a ride on one of that rural state's carnival ferris wheels amidst the sucker's midway of the con game the land market so closely resembled. The men like Disston and Flagler and Broward had, this book indicates, the very best of intentions. But the various Florida development schemes inevitably resembled just that -- schemes. The drainage projects went uncompleted or botched. The market imploded, the land was ruined, but the economy continued to percolate even as the fish began to float dead to the surface of every river, stream, bay and lake. The farmers and fishermen complained and the efforts to drain the Everglades grew in cost by thousands of percentage points. The drainage was so costly and counterproductive that reclamation became a preferred strategy and the engineering efforts of more than 100 years were abandoned, acknowledged as misguided, and readied for razing. The Army Corps of Engineers got involved, trying to correct the mistakes of previous pioneers/engineers. The Corps bollixed things even worse by forging ahead with the Central & South Florida drainage project -- a hard-fought political victory which had initially been a triumph for those who saw Everglades drainage as a win-win situation for both the citizenry and the business community in south Florida. These grab-ass land speculation orgies are indeed instrumental to the development of nations such as ours. It's why we are doing so well (comparatively). Excepting Henry Flager's developments at Palm Beach and elsewhere (leading all the way down to Key West), hugging the Atlantic coastline for dear life, Florida was a hard row to hoe, a difficult place to settle, a final frontier for all but the few southern native American bands too stubborn to leave. The Seminoles and the Miccosukees were the only ones sufficiently recalcitrant to accept the hardships of the Glades and refuse to join the so-called Trail of Tears (wherein all southern Indian tribes were forced west into the Oklahoma territories), essentially telling the post-Civil War State Department to go fuck itself, "we are staying here."
What makes this book so wonderfully odd and timely is this: The world's top hydrolic engineers met recently in Rotterdam (in Holland, a country that knows something about water mangement) to brainstorm about intelligent ways of rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. It has been said that water will be the oil of the 21st century. "The Swamp" makes clear that mankind's ability to control the flow and usage of water has always been a defining characteristic, if something of a losing battle. In fact, as this book makes clear, the history of man's efforts to control and direct water IS the history of man. The experience of south Florida's efforts is both awe-inspiring and cautionary. Today, ironically, the great engineering struggles in the region are struggles to ERASE the previous hundred years of human meddling.
The pendulum swinging in this historical chronicle is both long and heavy. Today the pendulum swings toward "reclamation" of the Everglades, but throughout the past century, the pendulum pointed toward "reclamation" of the land -- an effort to tame the glades and render them safe for sustained agriculture. Are we reclaiming something when we render it habitable to Man or when we return it to its original Natural state? Such are the positively Orwellian usages of words tailored to shifting political imperatives in the Everglades saga.
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