Traveler’s View | Altering Science And History In The National Park System

NAPLES, Florida — When the state of Florida and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem embarked on a farcical scheme to create “Alligator Alcatraz” in Big Cypress National Preserve last summer, they headed down a path of easily disprovable lies and “alternative facts” the Trump administration continues to run with.

The detention center, Gov. Ron DeSantis confoundingly said, would have “zero effect” on the surrounding national preserve, the Everglades, or the more than $20 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) in the works for 25 years with a goal of restoring the “river of grass” in the world’s greatest environmental restoration endeavor.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Magna Carta of U.S. environmental laws that requires environmental assessments and public input on projects that could impact the environment, did not come into play because this was a state project, not a federal project, claimed Florida Attorney General James Uthemeir last June when he announced construction of the detention center.

The area was “uninhabited,” continued the claims.

History tells us, though, that the Alligator Alcatraz facility was trucked onto what was proposed in the late 1960s to be  the world’s largest jetport. That jetport, though, was abandoned when U.S. Geological Survey teams concluded it would produce copious quantities of sewage and industrial waste every day, not to mention thousands of tons of air pollution.

Their report — the very first environmental impact statement performed under NEPA, which Congress overwhelmingly passed in 1969, and President Richard Nixon signed into law on January 1, 1970 — predicted that the jetport would doom to extinction the already dwindling population of the Florida panther and be so great as to "inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park."

The matter also prompted President Gerald Ford to approve the government’s  purchase of the Big Cypress Swamp from Florida for $150 million and turn it into the nation’s first nature preserve under the National Park Service.

DeSantis’ “zero effect” claims were challenged by witnesses whose testimony last summer convinced a federal judge that the facility posed an environmental threat to wetlands and endangered species and could produce pollution from wastewater discharge.

The detention center also was adversely impact night skies with its artificial lighting and deprive tribal members of access into the national preserve for hunting and other activities, U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams held.

As to whether the project was a state or federal project, Noem in July posted on her social media network that "Alligator Alcatraz will be funded largely by FEMA's Shelter and Services Program." 

Further revealing the prison’s federal nexis was a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Florida National Guard to have guard personnel "perform certain functions of an immigration officer under the direction and supervision of ICE..."
And last fall it arose that FEMA had awarded Florida $608 million for costs related to Alligator Alcatraz.

The federal money trail and federal agency involvement, under NEPA rules, would clearly trigger the law’s requirements for a full environmental analysis.  

"Defendants cannot put the cart before the horse—they cannot construct a facility and, then only in response to litigation such as the instant case, decide to fulfill their legal [NEPA] obligations," the judge wrote in her 82-page ruling.

After Judge Williams agreed NEPA should have been followed and ordered the facility to close, the state and federal government appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has paused the matter until oral arguments can be delivered the week of April 7. A majority of the appellate court's judges were appointed by Trump during his first term.

April 7 is the birthdate of the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who rose to the fight against the jetport so many decades ago and whose name is attached to the largest official Wilderness Area east of the Rockies, located in Everglades National Park.

As for the area surrounding the abandoned jetport being uninhabited, there are 10 Miccosukee Tribal villages within three miles of the site, including one within 1,000 feet, an attorney for EarthJustice told the 41st Everglades Coalition Conference on Thursday. 

“This is not uninhabited. This is our home. This is a beautiful, wonderful place,” Curtis Osceola, executive policy advisory to the tribe, added. “It’s fundamental to our survival.”

The landscape also is critical and prime habitat for threatened and endangered species, including the Florida panther, Eastern Indigo snake, and Florida bonneted bat.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration lately has looked elsewhere in the National Park System to erase inconvenient facts regarding enslaved, Native Americans whom white people forced out of places such as the Grand Canyon, as well as science about climate-change impacts that are melting glaciers at Glacier National Park and raising sea levels at coastal park sites, such as Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park.

Which begs the question: Whose history or inconvenient scientific fact will the administration erase next?