On behalf of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, I wish to join the other Floridians participating in this hearing in providing a warm welcome to our federal legislators from the north. I hope you enjoy the warm breezes of our Florida winter.
I am Jim Shore, General Counsel of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I am honored to represent our Chairman, James Billie, who was unable to join us today, and the almost 3000 members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
The Seminoles have been active participants in the multi-faceted efforts to restore the South Florida Ecosystem and to provide a healthy future for people of Florida, as well as for the natural environment, including the Everglades, that draws so many more people to visit and move here. We appreciate being invited to share our views with Senators Smith, Voinovich, and Graham on the Restudy presented to Congress last July. The Tribe supports the Restudy.
In this testimony, I will discuss, briefly, who we, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, are; our general philosophy regarding ecosystem restoration in South Florida; the Tribe's contribution to the restoration; and specific comments on the Restudy. I will be happy to entertain your questions at the conclusion of my remarks.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida
The Seminole Tribe lives in the South Florida ecosystem. The Big Cypress Reservation is located in the Everglades about 60 miles east of here, directly north of the Big Cypress Preserve. The Immokalee Reservation is approximately 30 miles northeast of here, near the Big Cypress Preserve. The Brighton Reservation is located on the northwestern shores of Lake Okeechobee. Tribal headquarters in located on the Hollywood Reservation on the east coast. The Tribe relies on all aspects of a healthy ecosystem, including the Everglades which provide many of our tribal members with their livelihood. Our traditional Seminole cultural, religious, and recreational activities, as well as commercial endeavors, are dependent on a healthy South Florida ecosystem. In fact, the Tribe's identity is so closely linked to the land that Tribal members believe that if the land dies, so will the Tribe.
Die ring the Seminole Wars of the lath (century, our Tribe found protection in the hostile Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. But for this harsh environment filled with sawgrass and alligators, the Seminole Tribe of Florida would not exist today. Once in the Everglades and Big Cypress, we learned how to use the natural system for support without doing harm to the environment that sustained us. For example, our native dwelling, the chickee, is made of cypress logs and palmetto fronds. It protects its inhabitants from sun and rain, while allowing maximum circulation for cooling. When a chickee has outlived its useful life, the cypress and palmetto return to the earth to nourish the soil.
In response to social challenges within the Tribe, we looked to our Tribal elders for guidance. Our elders taught us to look to the land, for when the land was ill, the Tribe would soon be ill as well. When we looked at the land, we saw the Everglades and supporting ecosystem in decline. We recognized that we had to help mitigate the impacts of man on this natural system. At the same time, we acknowledged that this land must sustain our people, and thereby our culture. The clear message we heard from our elders and the land was that we must design a way of life to preserve the land and the Tribe. Tribal members must be able to work and sustain themselves. We need to protect our Tribal farmers and ranchers.
Seminole Everglades Restoration Projects
Recognizing the needs of our land and our people, the Tribe has developed a plan to mitigate the harm to the land and water systems within our Reservations while ensuring a sustainable future for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The Big Cypress Reservation is the first of our Reservations for which this plan has been implemented. The Tribe is in the early stages of developing a plan with similar goals on the Brighton Reservation.
On Big Cypress, the restoration plan will allow Tribal members to continue ongoing farming and ranching activities while improving water quality and restoring natural hydroperiod to large portions of the native lands on the Reservation and ultimately, positively affecting the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. Construction activities on the western side of the Reservation have been identified as a "Critical Project" under section 528 of WRDA '96. The Tribe is working closely with the NRCS to identify appropriate programs to complete construction of the project on the eastern side of the reservation. Two Wetland Reserve Projects are currently underway.
The Seminole Tribe is committed to improving water quality and flows on Big Cypress and has expressed that commitment by dedicating significant financial resources to our environmental programs and projects, as well as estimates of 9,000 acres of land to support the projects on Big Cypress alone.
General Comments on Everglades Restoration
The Seminole Tribe participates in the task forces, working groups, commissions, and committees too numerous to list. In these various fore, stratified levels of detail are debated and discussed. Throughout our involvement, the Tribe has applied the following guidelines to the many proposals and plans that have been produced and vetted. Our resources limit our specific comments to portions of the plans that will directly affect our lands. Our "philosophy," so to speak. however, can be applied to all of the plans.
Shared adversity. No one place or group of people should be required to shoulder more than their proportional cost of the fix to the problem caused by the federal project created to help all Floridians.
If you messed it up, you clean it up. While all should share in the corrections to the built system to provide for sustainability, if an entity has created a specific problem, that entity is responsible for correcting the problem. For example, the Big Cypress projects are designed to improve the quality of the water that the Tribe discharges.
-- Get the science right. The Tribe recognizes the complexity of the Everglades ecosystem. Understanding these complexities and the developing the applied scientific principles is critical to saving the ecosystem.
Adaptive management. While, in the perfect world, the scientists would have all the answers to provide the design engineers building the projects needed to improve water quality, quantity, flows, and levels, in the real world, some projects need to proceed on the best available information. Best professional judgment must be executed in the design and implementation projects for which there is an absence of all needed data points. However, it is crucial that monitoring and data analysis continues for such projects and required adjustments to the design and/or operation of the projects be undertaken in a timely way. In this way, adaptive management allows important restoration projects to proceed.
Specific Comments on the Restudy
The Seminole Tribe supports the Restudy and its goals of addressing environmental restoration and adequate flood protection and water supply. The Tribe reviewed and commented on all drafts of the Restudy. Rather than provide extensive comments here, I will highlight our four most significant concerns:
Ecological models and monitoring. While computer-generated models are useful and necessary analytical tools, the information they provide is not reality. It is important to recognize their limitations -- limited to current knowledge, contain assumptions, and subject to computational constraints -- and to deal with project planning accordingly. In addition, the Restudy computer models were designed so that many of the Tribe's lands are outside or at the edges of the models. This situation has forced the Tribe to infer the likely effects of the selected alternative on its lands. Because the predicted behavior of the model may not be accurate, the Tribe urges that project authorization include ongoing data gathering and monitoring.
Adaptive management. The Tribe strongly supports the Restudy's incorporation of the adaptive management concept. The Tribe urges Congress to incorporate in the authorization of the initial projects the flexibility needed to allow for the application of adaptive management.
-- Federal funding for water quality improvements. The Tribe believes that the federal government shares the responsibility for improving water quality. WRDA 2000 should incorporate the WRDA '96 provision requiring 50/50 federal/local cost share for water quality projects.
-- Critical projects and programmatic authority. Should any of the projects identified as "critical projects" under WRDA '96 section 528 fail to be implemented due to lack of federal appropriations, programmatic authority under WRDA 2000 should renew authorization for the projects.
Conclusion
Thank you for the opportunity to share the views of the Seminole Tribe of Florida with you. While the Tribe is a strong supporter of the Restudy, we will continue to be vigilant in our review of its implementation. We look forward to a continued partnership on a government-to-government basis in the challenging effort to save our Everglades.