Everglades Litigation Collection

1
Introduction

• Everglades Litigation Collection
• 1994 - Donated by USAO to University of Miami
  School of Law
• Location - Law Library Special Collections and
  Archives
• Internet url - www.law.miami.edu/everglades

2
Contents

• 1 million pages of litigation and scientific
  documents
• 50 cases from federal and state fora
• 1 million frames of microfilm
• 250 mb bibliographic database
• Hundreds of deposition and hearing transcripts
• Voluminous productions of scientific data and
  reports

3
Legal overview

• Parties
• Plaintiff
• Defendant
• Pleadings, documents
• Complaint
• Answer
• Deposition
• Orders
• Decision

• Civil vs. Criminal
• Statutes
• Caselaw
• Jurisdiction
• Federal
• State
• Administrative

4
Legal overview

• Trial Levels (ascending)
• Trial level court
• Intermediate appellate level
• Higher appellate level
• Highest appellate level

5
Legal overview

• Anatomy of Pleadings
• Jurisdiction
• Case Number
• Style
• Plaintiff
• Defendant
• Type
• Complaint
• Answer
• Motion Summary Judgment
• Appeal
• Order

6
Background

• 1821 - U.S. buys Florida from Spain
• 1845 - Florida becomes a state
• 1850 - Congress passes Swamp Lands
• Act. Gives ownership of overflowed lands in the
  Everglades to Florida on the condition that lands
  might be drained and settled, or used for
  agriculture. State sells vast tracts of land at
  low cost to railroads. During Civil War railroads
  went bankrupt.
• 1905 - Napoleon Bonaparte Broward
• elected governor
• Drain the Everglades!
• 1906 - 1929 - Everglades Drainage
• District.
• Went bankrupt
• 1941 - Publication of The Everglades
• River of Grass

7
Background

• 1947 - Everglades National Park
• created by Congress
• 1947 - 2 hurricanes hit south Florida,
• flooding
• 1948 - CS Florida Project for Flood
• Control and Other Purposes
• CSFP - Prime Purpose - Flood Control
• USAO built 1,400 miles of levees and canals so
  that flood waters pass around farms and cities,
  carried swiftly into the Everglades or the sea
• Kissimmee River Channel
• Lake Okeechobee dike expansion
• Eastern perimeter leve
• State lands made into conservation areas
• CSFP - EAA
• 700,000 acres drained, leeved.
• Irrigation pumps

8
Background

• CSFP - Loxahatchee N.W.R.
• To make up for harm project would do to wildlife
  habitat, northernmost WCA leased to Department of
  Interior
• CSFP - completed on 1962
• Put an end to river of grass
• cut off the flow of water from the north
• water allowed to flow through canals and
  structures only
• USACOE regulations determined timing and quantity
  of water flow
• natural hydroperiod replaced by ACOE regime
• CSFP - Local sponsor - CSFFCD
• Florida passed legislation creating Central and
  Southern Florida Flood Control District
• CSFFCD - Assembled land, operated pumps and
  canals
• under ACOE guidelines
• Board of directors appointed by govenor
• Authority to levy small tax over many counties in
  south Florida

9
Background

• Emergence of the Florida sugar industry
• 1959 - Revolution in Cuba.
• U.S. embargo on Cuban sugar exports
• U.S. quotas on sugar imports from other countries
• Rapid expansion of farming in the EAA
• 1960 - 1975 - Sugar acreage increased sixfold
• 421,000 acres planted, sugar now primary crop in
  EAA

10
Background

• The Intensification of Environmentalism in
  Florida
• Roots in creation of ENP
• Some environmental values in CSFP
• Fight against jetport
• 1960S - changes to CSFP in response to concern
  about environment
• 1967 - ACOE and CSFFCD built new canal to bring
  water arround levee on north boundary and into
  center of park
• 1972 - congress passed legislation guaranteeing
  min flows of water from projects canals and
  structures into ENP
• 1978 - Florida proposed that Kissimmee River
  ditch filled, and old riverbed restored
• 1972 - Flood Control District was given the
  responsibility for regulating water quality and
  administering new state laws re wetland drainage
• 1976 - Flood Control district rebaptized as SFWMD

11
Background

• Phosphorus problem
• Water quality became an issue in the 1970s.
  focused on Lake Okeechobee algal blooms
• SFWMD scientists believed the largest cause was
  nutrients from dairy farms along Kissimmee
• Water entering the lake from EAA contributed 14
  phosphorus
• 30 of water pumped from EAA went into lake, the
  rest pumped south
• 1979 - district, state, ACOE stop pumping into
  lake, but increased pumping south into WCAs
• 1974 - district scientists first warned about
  cattail infestation in WCAs as result of
  phosphorus loading would eventually reach the
  park and alter natural
• Nothing was done due to powerful influence of
  sugar industry

12
Background

• SWIM Act
• 1987 - state legislature passes SWIM Act,
  requires water management districts to prepare
  plans to avoid and reverse degradation of states
  waters.
• Set targets for how much phosphorus might enter
  Lake Okeechobee
• Required district to prepare a plan for the lake
• Set up technical advisory council to study
  effects of phosphorus in WCAs, and other areas
  south of the lake
• Included a provision which addressed issue of
  phosphorus in the park
• water management districts shall not divert
  waters to the park in such a way that state water
  quality standards are violated or that the
  nutrient in such waters adversely affect
  indigenous vegetative communities or wildlife.

13
Federal water quality case

• United States v. South Florida Water Management
  District, 88-1886-CIV-Hoeveler
• In its 1988 complaint the federal government
  sought enforcement of state water quality laws
  protecting Everglades National Park, "the largest
  and most important subtropical wilderness" in the
  United States, and the Arthur R. Marshall
  Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
• The United States alleged that ENP and LNWR were
  losing native plant and animal habitat
  communities due to increased nutrient loading
  from agricultural runoff.
• Settlement Agreement
• In 1991, the United States and the State of
  Florida reached a settlement agreement that
  recognized the severe harm the ENP and LNWR had
  suffered and would continue to suffer if remedial
  steps were not taken.
• The 1991 Settlement Agreement, entered as Consent
  Decree by Judge Hoeveler in 1992, 847 F. Supp
  1567 (S.D. Fla 1992) sets out in detail the steps
  the State of Florida would take over the next ten
  years to restore and preserve water quality in
  the Everglades.
• In order to secure federal court approval, the
  Settlement Agreement preserved the rights under
  state law of the agricultural interests to
  participate in and challenge the final
  development and implementation of the
  settlement's remedial program through the state
  administrative process.  See also, Florida Sugar
  Cane League v. Department of Environmental
  Regulation, 617 So.2d 1065 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993).

14
SWIM Challenges

• Cooperative v. SFWMD, DOAH 92-3038-40
• Nonsignatories to the federal case settlement
  agreement had the opportunity to pursue state
  administrative remedies under Fla. Stat. Ch. 120
  if their substantial interests were affected by
  implementation of the Settlement Agreement's
  remedial program, i.e., the final SWIM (-Surface
  Water Improvement Management) Plan by the SFWMD
  and DEP.  Several agricultural interests filed
  challenges to the final SWIM Plan in 1992 in
  addition to filing several in state and federal
  fora.
• The federal case settlement agreement was founded
  on the recently passed Marjory Stoneman Douglas
  Everglades Protection Act (Douglas Act), Ch.
  91-80, Laws of Florida, developed with the
  involvement and consent of sugar interests
• 1993 Statement of Principles
• Result of settlement negotiations.
• 1994 Everglades Forever Act
• The passage of the Everglades Forever Act in 1994
  Fla. Stat. ch. 373.4592, removed the underlying
  cause of action of the administrative challenges
  and all related lawsuits were closed by August of
  1994 with the exception of the original lawsuit
  (United States v. South Florida Water Management
  District).
• Reconciliation
• In August 1994, the United States Court of
  Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the
  1992 Consent Decree and remanded the case to
  district court for further consideration in light
  of the Everglades Forever Act (28 F.3d 1563 (11th
  Cir. 1994), cert denied 115 S.C. 1956)).

15
Restoration forever?

• Current developments
• SFWMD
• March 2003 The district is working to achieve
  the long-term water quality and water quantity
  goals for the Everglades through its Final
  Conceptual Plan for Achieving Long-term Water
  Quality Goals . The long-term goal of the
  Everglades Program restoration effort is to
  combine point source, basin-level and regional
  solutions in a system-wide approach to ensure
  that all waters discharged into the Everglades
  Protection Area are in compliance with all state
  water quality standards by December 31, 2006.
• Florida
• May 2003 Florida amends the 1994 Everglades
  Forever Act. SB626 essentially pushes water
  quality goals back by as much as 10 years (from
  2006 to 2016).
• Federal water quality case
• June 2003 - U.S. district court holds hearings
  regarding effect of new state law on federal
  settlement agreement. Florida's two biggest sugar
  companies challenged Hoeveler's role after he put
  the Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush on notice that
  their amendments to the 1994 Everglades Forever
  Act would violate his court-approved settlement.
  

16
More info

• Email amontero_at_law.miami.edu
• IN 375 everglades litigation class url
  http//exchange.law.miami.edu/everglades/education
  /um/in375/umin375.html