Women of the Watershed

(gentle music) - [Chloe] It can begin as a drop of water falling silently into a hidden glade in the forest.

An unyielding stream of motion, that transforms rocks into rivers.

A never ending flow that eventually becomes the Everglades.

(dramatic music) There is no other like it.

It is a land created before all time.

A land of gentle streams that quench the prairies of Florida's interior.

Providing the life sustaining bounties necessary for survival.

A biologically diverse ecosystem of mangrove swamps, sawgrass prairies, and Cyprus forests.

Life affirming waters that nourish ever grander worlds filled with wondrous creatures.

A giant watershed that begins as quietly as it ends.

- Condition of the Everglades is very much like the condition of the Kissimmee Valley and the Okeechobee.

The whole Everglades, which is the central part of the Everglades, is a great flow of water from Okeechobee down to the 10,000 islands.

It supplies all the water of South Florida, and it's in the same condition that the water is everywhere.

It's been over drained, it is polluted, and it needs a great deal of good, sound, common sense management.

- Marjory Stoneman Douglas championed the cause for these Everglades.

She would teach us that it would only be a matter of time before our greatest resource would face an uncertain future.

Yet it was Marjory's courage as an advocate for women's rights that inspired a new generation of women who care for this land.

These are the scientists, advocates, and artists working every day to continue that legacy.

(gentle music) These are the "Women of the Watershed."

(wings rustling) (water running) Major funding for this program is provided in part by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

It was here at the small cottage where Marjory Stoneman Douglas would write her most important work, "River of Grass," in 1947, providing a blueprint for Everglades restoration.

It would also give us a better understanding of where our water actually comes from, and how the Everglades connects us all to the watershed.

(water bubbling) This is the Florida aquifer.

This is where our water makes it slow journey through the poorest limestone of the Florida Peninsula, and up and through and back again as rivers and streams are pulled and tugged in all directions, providing fresh water to the millions who depend upon this precious resource.

(water splashes) (gentle music) Ever since I could remember, I've been connected to the water.

Even after my evident challenges in becoming a mermaid, I was still drawn back to the sea, watching the wonders that dive below.

It would be on a recent diving trip to the coral reefs near Key Biscayne that I soon realized the innate connection between the seagrass and the sawgrass.

As these corals also depend on a fresh mix of water from the Everglades for their survival.

Recent extreme temperatures created catastrophic bleaching events that may have forever damaged these fragile systems.

And without this crucial freshwater flow from the Everglades, they may now never recover.

I realized that this was all interconnected, the ocean, the Everglades, the lakes, they all play a vital role in this fast water system.

And yet as the slow moving river of grass moves the water from north to south, what is pulled along with it?

Who is responsible?

Where does the source of these problems actually begin?

This story begins at the end, a journey that will take me from the quiet tranquility of Florida Bay through the thick sawgrass prairies of the Everglades and up through an oceanic lake called Okeechobee.

Searching for the headwaters of the Everglades, as the water begins its journey at the top of the Kissimmee River basin.

Ultimately with possible answers that could lie just outside the Orlando suburbs.

(bird chirps) My first trip to the back country of the Florida Keys was a fishing trip.

- Hey, that's a nice mangrove - [Chloe] Just outside of Islamorada.

- And that's a beautiful mangrove.

- [Chloe] A mecca for fishing and water sports, Florida Bay stretches all the way from the middle Florida Keys up through the 10,000 islands.

The waters here have always relied on a constant wash of fresh water from the Everglades providing a delicate mix of brackish water crucial for the Florida Keys' fisheries.

Recent decades have seen significant fish kills and seagrass die off as the flow of fresh water was severely reduced through a century of neglect.

And now with rising temperatures, the Florida Bay may be in even more trouble for the foreseeable future.

Emma Haydocy has worked for years in the Florida Keys and understands the challenges now facing Florida Bay.

- So we are the southern most terminus of the Everglades.

So where I was talking about the the northern headwaters of Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River Valley, we are on the receiving end of all of the water management decisions that happen elsewhere in Florida.

The primary threat to Florida Bay is a lack of freshwater flow.

So again, the system historically received flows from the Northern Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, and unfortunately the system now receives just a small fraction of the freshwater that it once did, because the historic system was before 9 million people lived in South Florida and before we saw vast swaths of land in the greater Everglades ecosystem transformed into agriculture and development.

We in the Florida Keys would not have an economy if it were not for clean water.

Our tourism economy is the clean water economy.

So in the Keys, and on Florida Bay have seen ongoing seagrass die offs.

Most recently in 2015, we saw the loss of more than 50,000 acres of healthy seagrass habitat on the bay.

And that event along with a number of events that have occurred out on the base since the late 1980s have all been a result of hyper salinity and a lack of fresh water flow.

For example, during that 2015 event we saw salinity levels three times that of ocean water in Florida Bay.

So normally the bay sits at about 30 PSU, or less, salinity level, 35 is marine salinities.

We saw 90 PSU in certain areas of the bay, which was of course attributed to that lack of freshwater flow and hyper salinity.

- So could you explain how the saltwater intrusion affects mangroves?

- Sure, so what's interesting about mangroves is that they can deal with the certain amount of salt, right?

They have different mechanisms to be able to sequester and emit or to get to get rid of that salt that they are not wanting to have.

When we talk about hyper salinity in the Everglades, we're always concerned that, how much is too much when it comes to salt and the health of mangroves and actually all the different mangroves are not in the same family.

They all just have different ways of dealing with salt.

When it comes to the red mangrove, they sequester that salt and will remove it and send that back out to the water.

- [Chloe] The effects of this salt water intrusion is even greater in areas like Miami Beach, as rising sea levels continue to threaten these barrier islands that were once home to a menagerie of wild creatures.

Conservation is serious business and yet it can manifest itself in the form of art as well.

Originally from Sweden, Christina Petterson uses inspiration from the natural world to inform her work.

A visit to her studio in downtown Miami reveals her personal form of advocacy.

- Any sort of understanding of beauty is really the same approach, whether it's art or whether it's nature.

But I think art has a possibility to reach a wider audience.

So that's what I'm doing, especially for people here who live in the city, don't get out, visit very much.

It's just a way to start a conversation and to try to get people engaged.

- How do you see the role of women in conservation?

- I think women have been empowered now to do all the same jobs that men have done and probably to do them better in a lot of ways, because women are natural caretakers.

I know that for sure there has been like a huge increase in women in the natural sciences, which is very interesting and I think that is again, probably does go back to caretaking and to having, sort of paying more attention to details.

But interestingly enough, in Florida, the women have played a role in conservation pretty early on like May Jennings who went up to Tallahassee and fought for the formation of the state park.

Women's clubs have always been a really, really vital element in conservation and that goes back to like the turn of the century.

There are the ones who fought to form the Royal Palm State Park, which eventually became the lake centerpiece of the Everglades National Park.

My show called "Take This Waltz," that's kind of like a carnivalesque funeral procession of people dressed up as various animals and plants, so black bears and panthers, and even like dire wolves and mangroves and all these things that we no longer would associate with the beach, but that used to be there.

But the exhibition is really about celebrating that and trying to move forward with that understanding, and not to be despondent about it all.

(singer singing) (upbeat music) - The Tamiami trail stretches over 275 miles from Tampa to Miami and cuts straight through the heart of the central Everglades.

Restoration efforts in recent years have led to a newly elevated highway that allows for better water flow.

Yet a century of intense water management has created an intricate system of canals and locks that now diverts water in every direction, bringing along with it the toxic blue green algae and the pollutants that have become so prevalent throughout Florida.

If Lake Okeechobee is the heart of the system, then the Everglades are the kidneys providing a natural filtration system for the entire watershed.

The Everglades is not just what we know as Everglades National Park.

It is actually an immense subtropical wilderness that begins in central Florida and flows south towards Florida Bay.

Over the years there were various attempts to change the course of the water, even drain the Everglades entirely.

And now we are in a race against time to repair this fractured ecosystem.

If we can better understand where our water comes from, we may have an opportunity to limit the damage at the source before it becomes an even greater problem.

(gentle music) Everglades National Park is the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi River, yet it represents just 20% of the entire watershed.

It is a steady flow from the north that continues to recharge the aquifer and sustains the hundreds of animals that call this area home.

The beauty of the Everglades is evident in the wild life that have inhabited these lands for centuries through a balanced cycle of dry and wet seasons.

However, water management practices can sometimes result in flooding events that leave our historic tree islands underwater for weeks at a time destroying both the plant life as well as a means of sanctuary for many of these animals.

These creatures of the Everglades are losing their natural habitats.

It is one of the reasons we now see the presence of these animals in our suburban neighborhoods.

Until we have the means to restore the natural flow, this balance will forever be disrupted.

The cyclical nature of the Everglades ecosystem is best represented by the Phoenix-like phenomenon of birth through fire.

It's very common to see smoke along the roads within Everglades National Park.

Prescribed burns like these are necessary for replenishing the habitats of the Everglades.

And as the summer heats up over the dry Savannah prairies, lightning storms will ignite fires far into the horizon as giant columns of smoke signal the start of a new period of growth.

(tense music) The ashes from the burns help to replenish the nutrients for the flora of the Everglades.

The park's fire managers keep these areas under strict controls and even set new fires when necessary.

It is a constant balancing act for which all the elements of earth, fire, and water all play a part in the natural lifecycle of the glades.

(fire crackling) The history of Everglades National Park is maintained through an extensive archive that documents the challenges faced since its first incarnation as Royal Palm State Park.

Bonnie Ciolino serves as the park's main archivist.

So could you tell us about the origin of the park?

- It all started at a time when there was a focus in women's fashion on using different types of wildlife as fashion accessories.

Women wore bird plumes in their hats and they wore animal furs as ornaments for their attire as well.

So there was an attention being paid to conservation, and making sure that the beautiful parts of our incredible ecosystem were protected because at that point they were being threatened with extinction.

In 1914, a woman by the name of May Mann Jennings, who was the wife of former Governor Jennings, had the vision along with other women who were part of the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs in and around the Miami area, to set aside a piece of land that was known as Paradise Key.

So that early action was really at the beginning of what would eventually become Everglades National Park.

This is a scrapbook that was donated by members of the Women's club.

This is a really special piece because you see some of these images of the women who were part of the Royal Palm State Park Committee, but in the 1920s the movement for women's rights and the eventual amendments to the Constitution that gave women so much more power and authority than they had before.

All of this was happening in the lead up to the first and second World Wars as well.

One of the more recognizable names, an individual that we know as being the author of the "Everglades River of Grass," a woman by the name of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

She was also part of these original committees to explore Everglades National Park and provide input to the United States legislature.

One of the things I wanted to show you though, is an image that was taken with President Truman at the event of the dedication of Everglades National Park on December 6th, 1947.

And here's President Truman.

He's receiving a shirt from one of the members of the Seminole Tribe and one of our tribal neighbors recognized this as being her grandfather and she was so touched to see him present on the stage with the president of the United States.

- And what was that relationship like between the park and the Indigenous people of the area?

- I think it was strained.

I think that there was a lot of hurt, because they were removed from their home, and the park recognizes that our tribal neighbors have always been here, they're still here, and we now have the opportunity to learn from them and to be engaged and view the beauty of their culture, and celebrate their opportunities to come back to this place.

The only remaining structure from the original Royal Palm State Park is the deer feeding station.

If you go out to the Royal Palm area in the park, and you go back into the woods, back along the old Ingram Highway, but you're gonna have to wear a bug jacket, because there are a lot of mosquitoes out there this time of year.

- I'm gonna suit up.

- [Cameraman] Uh-huh.

Make sure you swat swat 'em outta your way so you don't get 'em in your head.

- What inspires you about the women that helped to build the Everglades National Park?

- I think it's really admirable to learn about the individuals who contributed to the park and it's just so cool that there are significant women throughout our history from the Women's Club to Marjory Stoneman Douglas to many of the present day people that are often working behind the scenes and working on Everglades restoration.

(leaves rustling) This is it.

So this was a deer feeding station and it was associated with the Royal Palm Lodge.

This was an attraction for the guests staying here where they would have feed out for the deer and ideally to draw the deer in so that the guests would have a chance to see some of the animals.

And today we wouldn't have anything like this.

We don't feed the wildlife.

There's plenty of natural food for the wildlife that's here in a national park.

And one of the things about national parks is that we protect the environment as well as the plants and animals that are in it.

- This deer stand is the last remaining structure from Royal Palm State Park.

It represents the heart of Everglades National Park.

This primordial landscape called the Everglades has been inhabited by various Indigenous tribes for thousands of years, including the Miccosukee Indians, who still reside along the Tamiami Trail.

Betty Osceola still lives on the same lands as her ancestors and continues to advocate for Indigenous rights.

- The Everglades is not even half the size that she was, a skeleton of herself.

She's in a, it's in a crisis.

When you talk about the Everglades in the environment of the Florida landscape, even back in the earlier days when you had a movement of I think, well-meaning women, who thought to protect the area from development, that a national park needed to be established, protect the area, they had to gain support.

And also you had the Indigenous people that lived in those lands already and they started advocating and telling the Indigenous people that establishing this park would further protect their rights to be out here and to be able to hunt and fish and live and be who they are.

And at the time they did the big ceremony, the park was established, there was this big signing, a president came down.

But after that happened, all the hoopla, the Indigenous people got their eviction notices.

After they were promised that their lives wouldn't change and it would be even better and more protected, after the creation of the Everglade National Park, they were told they couldn't live in the park anymore.

They had to move, because they were incompatible with the park, which was very different than what they were told that was gonna happen.

History, good or bad has to be told.

Basically it was a land grab.

(engine revving) (gentle music) Yeah, this actually was one of the camps that the late Buffalo Tiger, William Buffalo Tiger lived in, they call it Tear Island.

We lived on the tree islands with with the chickee huts.

Some of our families like myself still live in the Indian Village but off of the Tamiami Trail now.

So this is, for us, this is almost like how some people talk about, George Washington and his house.

You know, we have Buffalo Tiger's house.

- What kind of stories were passed down, through your family before the Tamiami Trail was created?

- They started with the Tamiami Trail around the 1920s.

But before that we didn't really have much contact with the outside world.

We were living in our villages, whether in the greater Everglades area that is now called Big Cypress Preserve, or out here where we're at, with the road being built and the canals, it disrupted that natural flow, and also the building of the canals started draining the landscape quicker and also their mode of travel.

They couldn't go across the Everglades and the dugout canoes like they used to be able to and they started seeing wildlife decrease, 'cause of more flooding of how those canals and road systems brought more water into areas at a time when they didn't have as much water.

(bird chirping) Growing up as a child, I would ask my mother, how does she exist in the Everglades?

Her family, I remember her saying, when she was a young child, there were times of the year in the dry season where they could cross the Everglades on foot.

She had said that you could cross the east coast of Florida all the way to the west by dugout canoe.

Wildlife was abundant, they lived a hundred percent off the land.

Also too, the water was very clear and clean, like almost like a bluish green color.

And the reason that we call it Kahayatle, like "shimmering waters," is that from what I understand is for as far as the eye could see, you saw open water, you didn't see cattails and sawgrasses as dense it is now.

And when I was growing up, even she would remark trying to grow crops on the islands was getting more difficult because the soil was changing.

She would say it is (speaking in Mikasuki) which means it's getting more bitter.

We were born from the earth and we return from the earth.

So our loved ones, when we put them out to rest, we actually return them in to the Everglades, and over time their body becomes part of the soil, nourishment for the soil.

I don't know who else can say their DNA is actually in the Everglades itself.

It's in the soil, it's in the water, it's in the trees.

And so we're a part of that ecosystem.

- What is something that we can do to help heal the Everglades?

- Understand, the Everglades, if you want fresh water in Miami-Dade or Broward, you have to have a healthy flowing Everglades that recharges those underground aquifers.

If we wanna save the coral reefs, we gotta understand we can't send all this nitrogen down there.

Yeah, we advocate for phosphorus, but we don't do anything about the nitrogen in the water which is gonna kill the corals.

In order for Miami and the urban areas to survive, they have to save the Everglades.

That's where their fresh water comes from and they have to help the animals of the ecosystem, 'cause you know, everybody knows about bees and pollination, but you gotta have the birds that also help that cross pollinization.

You also have these animals that help the landscape get healthy and thrive.

It's a symbiotic relationship that all these animals have and some animals need to have lower water.

So, fire is a way to help that renewal cycle.

All of that in the dry season.

The rebirth of the Everglades happens in the dry season, but if you don't allow it to have that dry season, you're taking out the rebirth cycle.

It's lack of really understanding how that landscape is.

You can learn stuff in a book, but if you don't learn stuff in observation of that landscape, then you're gonna advocate for decisions that aren't healthy for that landscape.

And we go back to mankind, because the way the water is managed, the way projects are designed is for people.

It's not for the environment.

They're all designed for people.

If they would stop designing it for people, and design it for the healing of the environment, then we could heal the environment.

So people are the biggest threat.

(gentle music) - [Chloe] Continuing west on the Tamiami Trail, I returned to the Clyde Butcher Big Cypress Gallery, which I previously visited in 2013, where the nexus of art and nature coexist through the large format prints of Clyde and Nikki Butcher.

Resident master naturalist, Conny Randolph explains how their work inspires people to experience the beauty of the Cypress swamps firsthand.

- Nikki Butcher is a black and white photographer that brings in her colors after she hand develops her negative in the dark room.

She uses oil paints, cotton balls and swabs and brings in kind of the feel that she had while she was there in that environment.

Over here, people ask all the time, what's my favorite season in the swamp?

Or what's the best time to come?

And I say, "Every season is in beautiful in the swamp."

We're seeing some of the endangered and threatened bromeliads and ferns and orchids that inhabit this endangered and unique wetland area.

(mystical music) (water trickling) - [Chloe] How do cypress benefit the Everglades?

- Cypress trees offer habitat not only to the wading birds that rest upon it and build their nest up there, but they also provide habitat for the bromeliads and the ferns and the orchids that make this place so florally diverse.

Without them we wouldn't have the diversity of plant life, but I would say that mostly it's a filtration system in terms of what the relevance is for our communities.

It's allowing the water to percolate through the limestone bedrock and come out as a pure clean aquifer that is replenishing people's drinking water.

It's generally a high water season that you're gonna start noticing a very, very subtle current that passes through these areas.

Otherwise the level of flow is so slow you could, you could move two feet a minute.

Almost every branch is adorned with another plant life.

This whole habitat is kind of like a greenhouse.

It's protective in from the winds, it's protective of the cold, it's protective of the drying heat of the sun in summertime.

(water trickling) But this is a rare tree, seeing these bromeliads in bloom.

The soft leaf bromeliad only grows in these deeper parts of the swamp, much like the ghost orchid.

You'll never see this type of bromeliad in the prairie situation or where shallow waters tend to accumulate.

It'll always evidence a deep water hole.

Even if this was dry season, there was no water present.

If you see this plant, you know that this is going to be a deep water zone.

And it just happens to be a gator habitat, a gator hole.

So that's why we see more fish in this region and plant life too, just because of the depths of water.

(water trickling) (gentle music) (wings rustling) - [Chloe] Cattle and horses have always been an integral part of the Florida economy ever since their introduction by the Spanish in the 16th century.

It is a legacy that represents one of our nation's oldest cattle industries.

- My name is Pauletta Bowers and I'm a cattle rancher.

I'm also the president of the Florida Seminole Cattle Women.

- [Chloe] The Big Cypress preserve is also the home to the Seminole tribe of Indians, who have inhabited these lands for centuries.

Pauletta Bowers explains how the preservation of these wide open spaces have become an invaluable tool for the overall conservation of the Everglades.

- Cattle ranching and the Seminoles have been together since about 500 years, probably when Ponce de Len came with the first few head of cattle and horses that they brought.

If we didn't have cattle ranches, we wouldn't have places for water to settle and go into the earth, and filter out into the Everglades.

The earth is like a mother type figure.

She provides you water, animals to eat, provides trees.

We didn't last this long by being weak.

I tell my daughter that as long as we take care of the land, it'll take care of you.

- What is the leadership role of the women in the tribe?

- The women here, they instilled strong values into the children.

Seminoles come from a matrilineal society, and they have a clan system which they get from their mother.

A lot of 'em are named after different animals found in these areas.

So I get it from my mom, and my mom was bird clan, so her mom is bird clan and my dad is a panther clan, which his mom was panther.

When a man marries a woman, he moves to her camp.

The Seminoles lived here, it was their home.

They found ways to adapt and adjust to thrive in these environments.

We gotta appreciate what we got.

People who ranch lifestyle be gone, we have a lot more pollution, I believe, otherwise we're gonna look like Orlando, or the cities, we won't have nothing here.

(wings rustling) - [Chloe] In 1954, the National Audubon Society became the caretaker for an area known as the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in the Western Everglades.

Dr. Shawn Clem is a biologist who leads conservation efforts in one of the most unique ecosystems of the Everglades, now under threat of suburban development.

- Alligators are actually ecosystem engineers.

They actually use their bodies to dig the mud, to dig these little holes and then they are able to have water and food throughout the rest of the season.

Most importantly, the water.

These non-native apple snails are just so much bigger than the natives.

And when they first came into Florida, the snail kites and the limpkins were unable to get them out of their shells, especially the juveniles.

What we see is as these come in, we're seeing fewer and fewer native apple snails.

But interestingly then we're also seeing species that eat snails do a lot better.

So things like limpkins and snail kites, their populations are actually increasing because of this non-native.

So while it's not all bad news, it is a case of a non-native kind of throwing the whole ecosystem outta whack.

This property has been on Audubon's map since the early 1900s.

Back in like 1910 or so, Audubon actually deputized and paid a warden to come and live here.

We didn't own the property yet, but he came and he lived near the Wood Stork Colony, and was an armed deputy trying to protect those wood storks from plume hunters who in that time were wiping out, decimating wading birds throughout the Everglades for their feathers, for the feather trade.

These are the bald cypress and they lost their needles in the winter.

They're just starting to get them back now in the spring.

So bald cypress, you need to grow in the water.

So these are trees that love a wet environment, whereas the pine love a dry environment.

They might have their feet wet or have water under the trees for just a few weeks out of the year, but primarily they're gonna be dry throughout the year.

- What is the role of the western Everglades compared to the northern, southern and eastern Everglades?

- The whole Everglades system, there's pretty much all the same plants and animals in the whole system.

And so I think of the western Everglades often as having, being kind of this microcosm of the rest of the Everglades.

You see all these other habitats closer together in this kind of mosaic habitat.

Rainfall that falls here slowly flows towards the Gulf of Mexico.

So this wetland has a really important role in slowing down that water as the water's flowing through, it's refilling the aquifer.

All of the wetland plants, that you see behind us here are removing nutrients from that water so that we're improving the quality of that water before it gets to the Gulf.

So places like Corkscrew are really important to the water quality and the delivery of fresh water to the estuaries of Estero Bay all the way down to Naples Bay.

When we get a lot of rain, we don't have anywhere to put it anymore.

We are seeing natural areas flood, we're seeing roads flood or we're sending water out to the estuaries and we're seeing red tide and blue green algae.

And then along the way all of that water is picking up nutrients and picking up toxins and pollutants.

We're sending all of that out to the estuaries.

Just driving out here every day, the changes that you see in this part of Collier County are, they're incredible.

We're seeing development push farther and farther in.

It seems like every other week you're seeing a little stand of woods that you used to drive past that's turning into houses, and so we're seeing land be converted from farms and from wetlands to homes.

So that's a big part of what my job has become here, is trying to advocate for the ecosystem and trying to figure out how we can support the growth that we know is inevitable in this area in a way that still protects special places like this.

And that allows us to have fresh water, for the people that live here because we need places like these wetlands to refill the aquifer if we're gonna be able to support this development.

(gentle music) (wings rustling) - [Chloe] One of the most contentious issues has been the management of water in and out of Lake Okeechobee, which serves as the heart of the watershed.

Before the deck was built around the lake, water naturally spilled over the southern rim, bringing with it some of the richest nutrients and creating some of the most valuable agricultural land in Florida.

Now known as the Everglades Agricultural Area, it has been dominated by the sugar industry that utilizes methods that include pre-harvest sugarcane burning that continued to threaten the health of the local community in Belle Glade, Florida.

(gentle music) Christine Louis Jeune grew up here and has witnessed these problems firsthand, resulting in her advocacy with the Stop the Burn campaign.

- When do we want them?

- [Protestors] Now!

- I'm a long time resident.

I was born and raised in Belway and they have never to my knowledge issued a health advisory warning residents about the dangers of being exposed to that smoke.

Our soil here is very precious, we're known for our muck.

We have 400 acres of sugarcane plantation here.

And because we have such a large farming industry here that just goes to show how much our soil does for us and in our community, it employs a large portion of our community and it feeds a lot of other communities across Florida.

Since we are south of a Okeechobee, we are heavily dependent on it and their agricultural practices.

All that agricultural runoff goes into our waterways.

It can allow for like more algae blooms, which again disrupts the ecosystem.

So I think it's important to be considerate of those marine ecosystems because when we aren't, the only people who are really gonna like see it is us because we have to take care of it.

This part right here, this is like the actual cane and since it is about 70% water, the cane doesn't burn, the leaves itself burn.

So when they set fire to it, these are controlled fires, and once the fire like resides, they are able to just go in, pick it up, put it on the truck, transport it to the sugar mill.

- Pre-harvest sugar cane burning is a destructive practice that releases harmful smoke and ash into the air and continues to create serious health issues for the residents of Belle Glade.

(gentle music) However, more affluent communities in the western parts of Palm Beach County, were able to lobby for healthier, green harvesting methods.

So what are some of the health concerns that are facing your community?

- Like a lot of our community is predominantly Black community and as we know, Black people are more susceptible to respiratory issues.

People in the Belle Glade area, in the Glades area need to be considered.

We've talked about burning practices in Brazil and how Brazil's able to make the change from pre-harvest sugarcane burning, to green harvesting.

Sugar farmers in Louisiana have made switches from pre-harvest sugar cane burning to green harvesting.

The sugar growers in South Florida, they produce the most sugar in the south and I don't think that this is something that will be too hard for them to do considering they already have the materials that they need.

- So, it's also about methodology of it.

- Yes, the method, because there is a way to do it.

I've seen them do it, they constantly do it in Belle Glade.

They green harvest around whiter communities in Belle Glade, they do it on State Road 80.

Why aren't they doing this in the Black communities or near the Black communities in Belle Glade, Florida?

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Modern Florida swings to another tempo, a 30 ton bucket on the largest drag line in the world.

That's how Florida gets at her plentiful phosphates.

Huge hoses are used to dissolve mountains of the valuable natural chemical.

So it can be piped to up to the minute processing plants, but it's purified by the most modern methods.

There's nothing primitive about the phosphate industry.

Florida phosphates help make Florida citrus fruits the best in the world.

- [Chloe] Phosphorus is a naturally occurring element found in large quantities throughout Florida.

And while it serves as an essential part of our food systems, the overuse of phosphorus laden fertilizers on lawns and in agriculture is amplified by the inability of our current watershed to completely filter out this harmful pollutant, and is the major cause of the algal blooms that are diverted into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers.

These rivers were never formally connected to Lake Okeechobee, yet in 1881 there is a controversial plan by real estate developer Hamilton Disston, to create a cross Florida waterway through the lake, resulting in an artificial connection to these rivers, as well as a large earthen dike created by the Army Corps of Engineers to contain the lake's waters.

Recent conservation efforts have led to the creation of a giant reservoir south of the lake, the most significant restoration project of our time.

The EAA reservoir.

- I feel like being a brand new grad for my first time.

It's been a little bit of time.

Good job, you got it.

- [Chloe] Eva Velez is originally from Puerto Rico and leads conservation efforts for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

She explains why this project may bring new hope to Everglades restoration.

- The EAA reservoir is the largest project that the Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville district will build or is constructing next to the Herbert Hoover Dike around Laker Okeechobee.

(machinery beeping) (gentle music) These are wetland systems that are designed and constructed to make water cleaner.

The purpose is that you put water through it and it moves in a way that makes the water let the nutrients settle.

It's called residence time.

Every drop of water that comes from the north that goes to the Everglades has to be cleaned.

There's no exception to that.

And this reservoir, and this STA is the essential reconnection that helps us achieve comprehensive Everglades restoration plan goals for redelivering, reconnecting, what we call new water to the Everglades.

- [Chloe] By the late 1920s, two hurricanes would devastate South Florida and Congress would enact the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1930.

This was followed by another hurricane in 1947 that resulted in the full completion of the Herbert Hoover Dike.

- The Harbor Hoover Dike was built in pieces.

And so in the 1920s, when there were a series of very large hurricanes where a lot of people died, the Corps of Engineers was asked and there was portions of the dike around the southern rim and along the northern rim that were constructed.

So there's two of us that are building and designing, designing and building things.

So that's the Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District known as our non-federal sponsor.

And so from 1948 through about the 1970s, the Corps built a system of levees and pumps and structures that move water.

We were not always thinking about the environment and the ecosystems that we were building those things in.

People came and said, "Our ecosystems are are out of balance."

And so they went to the congress and the Congress authorized this yellow book in 2000, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

- How close will we get to restoring the Everglades to it's once natural form?

- This is the most important question.

Protecting and preserving the Everglades turns out to be the thing we have to do.

So even though when we wrote this yellow book, we didn't fully understand sea level rise and climate change at that time.

And so we won't ever be the same as the pre-drainage Everglades, but we will have the essence of them in each of the different habitats.

(gentle music) - Dr. Theresa Thornton is a hydro geochemist who lives along the St. Lucie River, and explains how years of controlled management has led to this present day crisis.

So recently I took a trip to the Kissimmee River.

So could you tell us about the Kissimmee River Watershed?

- Sure, the Kissimmee River starts, Lake Kissimmee up around Orlando, and originally it was a very winding river that came all the way down to Lake Okeechobee and with every bend it would drop off nutrients, and it would then filter in through the groundwater and then flood south.

When it made it to Lake Okeechobee, it would like a full bathtub just sort of come over the edge and go down into the Everglades.

At some point they connected and dredged the Caloosahatchee and the St. Lucie so that you could go from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico in shipping without having to go all the way around the bottom of Florida.

Rivers, as they turn, drop off nutrients.

And that would go into the floodplain.

When they straightened the river, it did not allow for the nutrients to go out into the floodplain, and all those nutrients went straight into Lake Okeechobee.

Now we are primarily calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate.

That's what our bedrock is.

People call it limestone, but it really is old coral, and the bones of old fish.

So that phosphorus, that phosphate, is what they also use in fertilizer.

Algae grows with phosphorus and algae grows with nitrogen.

When you have phosphorus and nitrogen together, it grows exponentially.

So what we ended up having was this excess of phosphorus that was no longer getting dropped off with the turn of each of the Kissimmee River plus the legacy phosphorus that is in the lake.

The phosphorus levels in Lake O are 220 parts per billion.

The Everglades needs eight to 12, with an average of 10, you'll hear 10 a lot, but it's the average of eight to 12.

If that water were to go untreated, it would kill all of the sawgrass and you would end up with cattails.

We would essentially lose the Everglades.

So South Florida Water Management District has done a fantastic job trying to remove the phosphorus.

They have water treatment areas and water catchment areas, but they've only been able to bring it down to 20.

So as you can see, they went from 200 and something to 20.

That's amazing, but it's still too high.

So when you have the nitrates from the cattle and the septic and the phosphorus, which is natural, we end up getting these algal blooms that were massive.

So they've been flooding that water out to the Caloosahatchee and to the St. Lucie River.

When that water comes out of Lake Okeechobee through the St. Lucie River, it's in excess of fresh water, which dilutes the salinity levels, killing oysters and seagrasses.

That's why our manatee are starving to death.

- And how do you think each sector of Floridians like the north and the south, how do you think they can work together to sort of combat that issue of too much bio amplification?

- It's going to take regulation of fertilizers and nutrient overloads.

It's gonna take more infiltration areas rather than the impervious surface, which pushes everything around.

Awareness, education, and personalize it.

Personalize it so that you have buy-in from all stakeholders, even a tourist as a stakeholder.

Everyone is a stakeholder in our water, everyone.

(train rumbling) Put your aquifer right there.

Fill that sand and gravel in that train.

Put your aquifer right there.

Ship it out for development.

(train rumbling) - While some have contested the consequences of nitrogen runoff from cattle ranches, today's ranches rarely use fertilizer.

And most of the phosphorus here is a natural part of Florida's sandy soil.

Scientists are now finding innovative ways to filter this legacy phosphorus through cattle ranching.

Dr. Betsy Boughton is an agroecologist at Buck Island Ranch, part of the Archbold Biological Station in Venus, Florida.

So how does Buck Island Ranch create a sustainable environment?

- So we're here in the Northern Everglades and this is a huge watershed.

It's 2.6 million acres.

It flows from Orlando to the Lake Okeechobee and ranches are one third of that area.

So the things that we do on ranches in terms of water and wildlife, that really affects Florida as a whole.

And we have very unique soils in Florida.

They're sandy, they're very acidic, so they don't hold onto phosphorus very tightly.

And when the groundwater comes up, as it happens in the wet season in Florida, it allows this release of phosphorus and then it goes slowly downstream to Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades.

And it's kind of like when you put sugar in your coffee, you can't get that sugar out again.

Another thing that we're doing in part of our research is understanding the spatial variability of soil phosphorus.

So what we did was we collected 1,400 soil samples across our whole ranch, and then we worked with the University of Florida to create a map of our soil phosphorus and where potential areas that are prone to losing phosphorus into the water.

I talked about our water retention projects.

Those are installed mostly on our improved pastures because those are the pastures that have the most phosphorus coming off them.

They were fertilized in the past, but not since 1986.

So we've installed what we call water control structures in a lot of our ditches that hold water back and stopped the flow of water leaving the ranch.

In those high phosphorus areas, we're implementing what we're calling a vegetation harvest strip where we're planting species that take up phosphorus really well and then we harvest it for forage.

So we're moving the phosphorus from the soil, to the vegetation and into the cow.

And the cows are a huge export of phosphorus off the ranch.

By getting it out of the soil that reduces that leaching that happens when the ground water comes up.

The water connects us all.

So the water from here flows there.

So what's happening upstream really it plays a huge role in what's going on downstream - [Chloe] Further north of Lake Kissimmee, I find myself in another series of waterways and lakes, this one being Lake Tohopekeliga.

It's obvious that nitrogen pollution continues to present a problem well north of the Kissimmee River Basin with the evidence of large amounts of hydrilla that continue to choke these waterways.

(water trickling) (wings rustling) Lake Toho is in turn fed by Shingle Creek, known as the headwaters of the Everglades.

And as I make my way up the creek, I can't help but notice how quiet it is up here.

I wonder if those ladies of the original garden clubs could imagine that the oasis they found in Paradise Key would actually start in such an unassuming way.

Shingle Creek becomes even smaller and I continue on foot underneath a highway that disappears into the forest, just beyond the theme parks and timeshares of the I-4 Corridor.

It's remarkable to think that the millions of acres of water we know as the Everglades could be born of such a humble beginning.

(gentle music) This stream is fed by various runoff canals and as I continue west, I come upon a small pond next to the highway.

Only, I cannot simply accept that the beautiful river of grass could start just outside an outlet mall.

So I continue to investigate as another canal leads me to the northern most limit of Orlando, where I find a small lake called Venus, named after the goddess of love and beauty, born of the sea, only to see there is no water to be found as the lake is currently being dredged to a deeper level.

With Venus as my guide, I find myself in the same dilemma as Ponce de Len, realizing there is no fountain of youth in some hidden forests.

And while Ponce de Len may not have found his own fountain of youth, the birthplace of the river of grass could actually begin right here.

Some historians mentioned that the original waters probably started in the green swamp further north.

It becomes evident that the true modern day source of the Everglades headwaters begins with the runoff from the lawns and canal systems of the ever-growing Orlando suburbs.

- [Narrator] Since 1850, people have been trying to dream the Glades.

They're still at it.

And at age 97, Marjory was still fighting them.

Here she was talking to the Orlando Sentinel, objecting strongly to proposed agriculture around the Glades.

- 80% of our rain comes from the wet Everglades.

And if you do things like farming and things where there's wetlands, so I'm very, very much against it.

- Marjory continued to fight for the Everglades well into her nineties.

She understood that the source of these problems inevitably started at the top of the watershed.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas not only connected us with the water, she connected people and was at the forefront of a movement that would inspire generations who have dedicated their lives to save these Everglades.

This journey is only now just beginning, and mother nature will only give us what we give her as ultimately we are the watershed.

- I don't believe in compromise.

You'll only compromise for weakness.

If you're winning you don't have to compromise and people who are losing are the ones who compromise.

(gentle music) (wings rustling) - [Chloe] Major funding for this program is provided in part by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.