Everglades Restoration Today: Repairing One Connected System

By Everglades Godfather · October 11, 2026 · 5 min read

Everglades restoration is the long-running effort to repair how water moves through South Florida, so that more clean fresh water flows south through the marshes the way it once did. It is one of the largest ecosystem restoration efforts in the world, led jointly by the federal government and the State of Florida with tribes, local governments, scientists and conservation groups.

One connected system, from the Kissimmee to Florida Bay

The Everglades is not a single park or swamp. Historically, it was the lower end of a watershed that began in central Florida, in the chain of lakes south of Orlando. Water drained into the Kissimmee River, which meandered south for about 103 miles to Lake Okeechobee. In wet years, the lake spilled over its southern shore, and that water spread across a vast, gently sloping marsh of sawgrass and sloughs, drifting slowly south for roughly 100 miles to Florida Bay and the Gulf.

Over the last century and more, that flow was cut apart. Canals drained land for farms and cities. After severe hurricane flooding in 1947 and 1948, the Central and Southern Florida Project built levees, canals and pumps that protected communities and supplied water, but also split the Everglades into compartments. The Kissimmee River was straightened into a canal, the land south of the lake became the Everglades Agricultural Area, and roads and levees blocked the sheetflow. Today the Everglades is roughly half its original size.

The result was too much water in some places, too little in others, and often at the wrong time. Florida Bay grew saltier, tree islands drowned or burned, wading bird numbers fell, and harmful discharges from Lake Okeechobee were sent east and west to coastal estuaries instead of south.

Clean water: the phosphorus problem

Restoration is not only about how much water flows, but how clean it is. The natural Everglades was extremely low in nutrients, especially phosphorus. Sawgrass and the algae mats that feed the food web are adapted to that lean diet. When phosphorus-rich runoff from farms and developed land entered the marsh, dense cattail stands spread across areas that had been sawgrass and open sloughs, changing the habitat for fish and birds.

To fix that, Florida set a strict standard of 10 parts per billion of phosphorus for the Everglades and built about 57,000 acres of stormwater treatment areas: constructed wetlands that let plants pull phosphorus out of water before it moves south. Combined with better farming practices, these efforts have removed thousands of metric tons of phosphorus, and the South Florida Water Management District reports that water entering Everglades National Park now meets the standard.

The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan

In 2000, Congress approved the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, known as CERP, as part of the Water Resources Development Act. It is a framework of dozens of projects meant to capture fresh water that was being lost to tide, store it, clean it and send it where the ecosystem and people need it. The federal government and the state share the costs roughly equally. CERP was first expected to take about 30 years, and estimates have since stretched longer and grown more expensive.

Kissimmee River restoration

One of the clearest successes is upstream. Starting in the 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District backfilled about 22 miles of the C-38 canal and restored about 44 miles of the historic river channel, reconnecting more than 40 square miles of floodplain. Construction finished in 2021. Wetland plants, invertebrates and wading birds have returned to areas that were dry pasture for decades.

The EAA Reservoir

South of Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir is designed to store about 240,000 acre-feet of water, paired with a stormwater treatment area of about 6,500 acres to clean it. The goal is to reduce damaging discharges to the coastal estuaries and send more clean water south. As of 2026, construction is under way, with state and federal officials pointing to the end of the decade for the reservoir to come online.

Bridging the Tamiami Trail

For nearly a century, the Tamiami Trail, U.S. 41 between Miami and Naples, acted like a low dam across the Everglades. A one-mile bridge opened in 2013, and about 2.3 more miles of bridging was completed in 2019, letting water pass beneath the road into Northeast Shark River Slough and Everglades National Park. Work to raise more of the roadway has followed.

Why it all has to work together

Each of these projects only works as part of the whole. Cleaner water in the north does little good if it cannot flow south, and more flow does little good if it carries too much phosphorus. Scientists, tribes and conservationists have long made the same point: there is only one Everglades, and it has to be repaired as one system. The stakes include more than wildlife. The Everglades helps recharge the aquifer that supplies drinking water to millions of South Floridians and supports fishing, tourism and coastal economies.

Simple things you can do

• Use less water. Every gallon saved at home is less pressure on the same system the Everglades depends on.
• Go easy on fertilizer. Follow local rules, skip fertilizing before heavy rain, and keep clippings out of storm drains.
• Never release pets or plants into the wild. Pythons, exotic fish and invasive plants cause lasting harm. Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission runs amnesty programs for unwanted exotic pets.
• Visit responsibly. Stay on trails, keep your distance from wildlife and never feed alligators, which is illegal in Florida.
• Stay informed. Public meetings and comment periods on restoration projects are open to everyone, and informed voices matter.

Restoration is slow, like the water it is meant to free. But the river is flowing in the Kissimmee again, water is passing under the Tamiami Trail, and the work continues.