4 - Wednesday, February’ 7, 1990 - Narth Shure News ORLANDO, Florida — Water levels in the Everglades are two feet lower than usual, prompting worried frowns on the faces of wildlife officers. The alligators, ibis and herons are crowded together uneasily in the remaining wet pockets of the state’s vast ‘‘river of grass.’? To make matters worse, the arca’s 40 to 50 remaining panthers have contracted an AIDS-like virus. At the same time, Florida’s cit- rus growers are in a state of shock, casting wary eyes on wildly- oscillating thermometers after suf- fering through six unprecedented freezes in 10 seasons, culminating in a devastating Christmas weekend chill that caused the loss of $300 million worth of fruit, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of usuafly-lush farmlands and orchards brown and lifeless. Landscape gardeners are work- ing overtime trimming back devas- tated palms and replenishing ruin- ed flowerbeds at motels along the state’s endless ribbons of billboard-flanked highways with their ubiquitous shopping malls, trailer courts and goif courses. These, in turn, are causing en- vironmental problems of their own. Struggling to stay one real estate deal ahead of the developers, legislators admit they are losing natural areas to the bulldozers at an appalling rate. Central Florida alone is expected to lose 61,541 more acres of land to subdivisions, shopping centres and office parks already on the drawing boards. Along the splendid Florida Keys, oil companies are pressing hard to open up the continental shelf to 1990 4 RUNNER 4X4 4 DOOR SR5 Vé FROM UNDER drilling rigs, a lobbying effort which has galvanized local fish- ermen, sportsmen, resort operators and waterfrontage owners to form a united anti-drilling front, despite the obvious contradictions — namely that Floridians and the tourists (many of them Canadian “‘snowbirds’”’), whose dollars pro- vide some 600,000 local jobs, con- sume 25 times as much petroleum as the state produces. Some 35 million visitors pour in- to Florida every year, either driv- ing their own cars or arriving on one of the 1,400 Nights recorded daily at Orlando and Miami air- ports. (A full Boeing 737 fying from Toronto to Miami consumes 5,000 gallons of fuel, and of course its tanks have to be topped up before it can depart.) Florida’s dependence on tourism was underscored during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s, when Walt Disney World had to slash its workforce by half because of the decline in out-of-state visitors. Nowadays, the problems caused by climatic changes and overdevelopment generate headlines on an almost daily basis throughout the state. Less well-reported, perhaps for fear of harming the lucrative tourist trade, are the realities that a traveller discovers along the way — such as widespread water ra- tioning and contamination of drinking supplies by such giants as Grumman Aerospace Corporation, which has been found guilty of allowing toxic solvents like trichlorethane to seep into the 1990 COROLLA WAGON 4 WD 5M FROM UNDER $18,000 Beats Our Prices!!! DOWNTOWN TOYOTA| VANCOGVIRS #3 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION DEALERSEP S 1290 BURRARD NEAR DAVIE 682-8881 Collect groundwater. Just about everywhere along the eastern seaboard from Cape Canaveral to Key West, lumps of congealed oil can be found bobb- ing in the tide. Resorts are careful to clean the beaches on a regular basis, but the early-rising visitor has no trouble finding tar-like lumps the size of one’s fist amid the plastic beer- rings, pulsating Man-O-War sacs and phosphate-generated foam washed up on the shore. Rarely is anyone ever convicted in connection with the steady trickle of oi! on to the beaches, ei- ther pumped from bilges or caused by unreported spills in the Atlan- te. And of course no one is ever prosecuted for contribution to the dramatic changes in climate which are now undeniably affecting the state’s citrus fruit industry. Highly sensitive to water short- ages and temperature variations alike, Floridians are therefore wat- ching the one-step-forward-two- steps-back approach of President George Bush to the global warm- ing crisis with impatience and con- cern, knowing that the White House is listening to economic conservatives rather than en- vironmentalists. Amid the litany of Florida's ecological woes, however, a unique, precedent-setting initiative is in the works: the Kissimmee River is about to be restored to its original condition. The significance of this? Well, Pacitic Centre Robson St. Lansdowne Park Richmond Metrotown the Kissimmee stands to be the first of possibly as many as 430 similar river restoration projects in the U.S. In this case, a 100-mile-long stretch of a river which supplies fresh water to Lake Okeechobee, which in turn nourishes the mighty Everglades, has been turned into a biologically-dead canal, thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Between 1952 and 197}, the engineers spent $32 million scoop- ing 40 million cubic yards of dirt out of the ground to build a straight-as-an-arrow, 30-foot-deep, 30-foot-wide ditch cutting across the meandering Kissimmee, which had a tendency to flood. The flooding has been controll- ed, all right. But in the process nearly 42,000 wintering waterfowl have disappeared from the sur- rounding wetlands, along with nearly all the wading birds — glossy ibis, white ibis, blue heron and little blue heron. About five billion small forage fish were wiped out, plus some six billion fresh-water shrimp. Now, at a cost of $276 million, Florida plans to fill in the man- made canal and start all over again as Mother Nature originally in- tended, retaining a few locks to control flooding. An expensive business, correc- ting major ecological blunders. Nice that they’re doing it, though. And there is a lesson here for us all, hm? @ Yacht club lease approved THE DEEP Cove Yacht Club received recent North Vancouver District approval for a new five- year property lease. By PAMELA LANG Contributing Writer The lease, which begins Jan. 15, is for the district-owned lands upon which the yacht club has its clubhouse. The organization will also have an option to extend the lease for an additional seven years. Approval was also given to a 12-year renewal of the waterlot lease between the district and the Vancouver Port Corporation. The waterlot will be subleased to the club for that period. A major concern raised in coun- cil discussions was that pollution from on-board vessel toilets might contaminate Deep Cove, and that regulations to eliminate that prob- Iem should be strictly enforced. But a Jan. 14 letter from club commodore Nick Ratel assured council that pollution control is being addressed by the club, and that on-board toilets are not being used by members or visitors while in the cove. He explained that the majority of their members live east of the Seymour River and are equally concerned about pollution in Deep Cove. In addition, he said, members and visitors are made aware of the problem, and visiting vessels will be inspected and tagged with the non-use rule. In speaking to council at the meeting, Ratel added that the number of visiting boats is minimal, 10 to 15 per year, and controlling toilet use has never been a problem. /" To FEB 25" 669-2923 662-3424 278-5665 278-0778 437-6151 Park Royal South Guitdtord Coquitlam Kerrisdale Surrey Place Head Office 873-6551 =e oo 926-5624 $88-2144 464-8621 261-8713 583-3229 2 ee ee ee Se ee eee eee ee =p.