Cross-Florida Barge Canal

The subject of long and acrimonious debate, this attempt to build a canal across the Florida peninsula began in the 1930s and finally expired in 1990. Although it receives little attention today, the Cross-Florida Barge Canal stands as a landmark because it was one of the early cases in which the Army Corps of Engineers , whose primary mission has traditionally been to re-design and alter natural waterways, yielded to environmental pressure. The canal's stated purpose, aside from bringing public works funding to the state, was to shorten the shipping distances from the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico by bypassing the long water route around the tip of Florida. Rerouting barge traffic would also bring commerce into Florida, directing trade and transshipment operations through Floridian hands. An additional supporting argument that persisted into the 1980s was that the existing sea route brought American commerce dangerously close to threatening Cuban naval forces.

Construction on the canal began in 1964, on a route running from the St. Johns River near Jacksonville west to the Gulf of Mexico at Yankeetown, Florida. Canal project plans included three dams , five locks, and 110 mi (177 km) of channel 150 ft (46 m) wide and 12 ft (3. 6 m) deep. Twenty-five miles (40 km) of this waterway, along with three locks and three dams, were complete by 1971 when President Richard Nixon, citing economic inefficiency and unacceptable environmental risks, stopped the project by executive order.

From start to finish, the canal's proponents defended the project on economic grounds. The Cross-Florida Canal was proposed as a depression-era job development program. After completion, commerce and recreational fishing would boost the state economy. The Army Corps, well-funded and actively remodelling nature in the 1950s and 1960s, took on the project, vastly overestimating economic benefits and essentially dismissing environmental liabilities with the argument that even modest economic gain justified any habitat or water loss. After work had begun, further studies concluded that most of the canal's minimal benefits would go to non-Floridian agencies and that environmental dangers were greater than first anticipated. Outcry over environmental costs eventually led to a reappraisal of economic benefits, and the state government rallied behind efforts to halt the canal.

Environmental risks were grave. Although Florida has more wetlands than any other state except Alaska, many of the peninsula's natural wetland and riparian habitats had already been lost to development, drainage , and channelization. Along the canal route these habitats sheltered a rich community of migratory and resident birds, crustaceans, fish, and mammals. Fifteen endangered species , including the red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis ) and the Florida manatee, stood to loose habitat to channelized rivers and barge traffic. Specialized spring-dwelling mussels and shrimp that depend on reliable and pure water supplies in this porous limestone country were also threatened.

Most serious of all dangers was that to the Floridan aquifer , located in northern Florida but delivering water to cities and wetlands far to the south. Like most of Florida, the reach between Jacksonville and Yankeetown consists of extremely porous limestone full of sinkholes , springs, and underground channels. The local water table is high, often within a few feet of the ground surface, and currents within the aquifer can carry water hundreds of meters or more in a single day. Because the canal route was to cut through 28 mi (45 km) of the Floridan aquifer's recharge zone , the area in which water enters the aquifer, any pollutants escaping from barges would disperse through the aquifer with alarming speed. Even a small fuel leak could contaminate millions of gallons of drinking-quality water. In addition, a canal would expose the aquifer to extensive urban and agricultural pollution from the surrounding region.

Water loss presented another serious worry. A channel sliced through the aquifer would allow water to drain out into the sea, instead of remaining underground. Evaporation losses from impounded lakes were expected to reach or exceed 40 million gallons of fresh water every day. With water losses at such a rate, water tables would fall, and salt water intrusions into the fresh water aquifer would be highly probable. In 1985, 95% of all Floridians depended on groundwater for home and industrial use. The state could ill afford the losses associated with the canal.

Florida water management districts joined environmentalists in opposing the canal. By the mid-1980s the state government, eager to reclaim idle land easements for development, sale, and extension of the Ocala National Forest , put its weight against the Corps and a few local development agencies that had been resisting deauthorization for almost 20 years. In 1990 the United States Congress voted to divide and sell the land, effectively eliminating all possibility of completing the canal.

[Mary Ann Cunningham Ph.D. ]

RESOURCES

PERIODICALS

Hogner, R. H. "Environmentalists Lock Up Canal Development." Business and Society Review (Fall 1990): 74-77.

OTHER

Deauthorization Hearings: The Cross-Florida Barge Canal. United States House of Representatives Committee on Public Works 1978. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1978.

Hearing on the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. United States House of Representatives Committee on Public Works June 10, 1985. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1985.