Stay Tranquilo - Inside the Everglades: Dr. Steve Davis on Conservation, Lake Okeechobee & Florida’s Water Supply

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

In this Stay Tranquilo episode, we sit down in the Florida Everglades with Dr. Steve Davis, Chief Science Officer of The Everglades Foundation, to talk about Everglades restoration, Lake Okeechobee water flow, wildlife conservation, and why the Everglades are critical to South Florida’s water supply. Subscribe for more Stay Tranquilo conversations on South Florida culture, environment, sports, and community. 🌿 #evergladesnationalpark #everglades #wildlife #watersupply Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can be in Miami where there's traffic, where there's ambulances and loud motorcycles, and you can just get away to this place and all of that just sort of washes up. All right, good morning. We are here from the beautiful Everglades here with Dr. Steve Davis. How are you doing today this morning? I'm doing great. So good to be out here. I think you said it best. You can't find the more tranquil place probably anywhere in the area in South Florida. Not at all. The only sounds out here is like you mentioned,

the breeze in the grass, the sun shining, it is truly beautiful out here. So what is it that makes the Everglades such a unique place? Obviously, National Park is one of the global wonders of the world, right? Not the seven wonders, but at the end of the day, it is a place where people from all over the world come to. Well, first of all, the scale of this ecosystem is just astonishing. Millions of acres of South Florida, sub-tropical wetlands, and it's half its original size. So when you put that into context,

it's even a little more just startling. But Everglades National Park is really the bottom of this ecosystem that remains a million and a half acres, federally protected wilderness. It's a subtropical wetland, and it supports species from the tropics, obviously subtropical species that like this South Florida climate. And then we also find plants and animals,

animals from up north, as far north as Chicago and even migratory species that come down from Canada. So it's really kind of a melting pot when you think about it from that perspective. Yeah, it is truly such an important part, right, of Florida and just everything. You see how much water obviously is here, right? And we know the importance of water, you know, to our everyday lives. But there's been a lot of, I guess, controversy, to say the least, right, with just the restoration of the Everglades and the importance of Everglades, Miami specifically is such a growing city, right? And there's been a lot of overdevelopment, right? Construction and it feels like we're getting more and more west down here in

South Florida. Talk to us a little bit about not only what the Everglades means to us as humans, right, down here in Florida, but kind of what the evolution of the restoration of this project has looked like. Well, the evolution of the restoration, I'll start there. It really, came about as a recognized need because Florida's economy has changed pretty dramatically over the last 50 to 75 years. We were really an agricultural economy as populations started growing, you know, you think the early 1900s. It was really about growing food year-round. And for those of us who come from, you know, up north, having a year-round growing growing season is just incredible to think about having fresh produce year round. And so there was really an

effort early on to drain wetlands like this that we're sitting in for agriculture because that was so valuable to our economy at the time. And so those early efforts to drain the Everglades, it wasn't done to kill the environment or to build condos. It was really to support an economic need for that time and also to provide food for northern states. And of course, over time, Florida's changed. The Florida that we know today is based on tourism. It's based on water-based recreation, actually getting out into the environment, whether it's in the Everglades or around our coast.

And so as we realized that sort of transition, we understood very clearly that the way we modified the Everglades, the way we drained it, the way we compartmentalized it, the way we cut it off from Lake Okeechobee, its headwater supply, that that needed to change to support our present-day economy. We needed to ensure that we had clean water. We needed to ensure that we were conserving water when it was available. And I think, you know, something that more people should recognize is that in South Florida, we get our water from this ecosystem. Right, right. Our water plow wells from Miami-Dade County are just to the east of here outside of the park. And having water in this place right now ensures that we have water to meet our daily needs.

Absolutely. I think you bring up a variety of interesting points here. But before we get into conservation, right, and kind of how the process of the water flows out, like you talked about, drinking water, showering water, right, our everyday needs. I want to go back to Okachobi, right? You talked about how that's kind of like the heart of Florida and the water flow here. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that process works, right? When people hear about these droughts and everything going on, Okentjobe always kind of comes up as like the focal point. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So 60 miles north of here is the southern edge of Lake Okachobee. And that's a 700 square mile freshwater lake. It's really incredible to go up there and look out. on the lake because you swear you're staring at the ocean. It's just so large. But it's really not a deep lake. It's quite shallow, average depth of maybe 10 feet.

Oh, wow. So from that perspective, it's really like a giant shallow water body that when you consider we get five feet of rainfall every year in South Florida. Imagine five feet across the landscape. Of course, it's spread out over 12 months. but much of that comes during our wet season, that water would fill into the lake from as far north as Orlando, another 100 miles north of Lake of Cachobi.

So that water would gradually make its way down the Kissimmee Valley. It would fill up that shallow lake, and it can only hold so much, it would swell and spill over to the south. And that flow would just fan out. We're very flat, low-sloping landscape here, in South Florida. Generally, for every mile you move south of the lake,

you drop about two inches in elevation. So flat and low sloping meant that that water that would spill out of the lake would just spread out like a sheet across the landscape and gradually flow south to where Tamimi Trail is today and then through what is now Everglades National Park to the coast. So that's how the system worked.

And when you realize how much water that is, It's just, again, staggering. Yeah. Of course, we disconnected the lake from the Everglades. You know, I've referred to it as decapitation, really, because that's the headwater. Yes, exactly. And so in doing that, that water that would fill up the lake every single year had to go somewhere. It couldn't go south because those lands were drained for agriculture, 700,000 acres in that agricultural area.

So the connection to the Klusahatchi on the West Coast and the St. Lucie on the East Coast was really done for water management purposes to provide optimal conditions for agriculture in that area. Again, it was not to kill the environment. It was done to suit the needs of that time. And so what would happen nearly every other year, the Everglades would catch fire, it would dry out. the soils would oxidize. We would see species, you know, population declines. And it was recognized that, yes, you cut off the headwater supply for this ecosystem. It's going to suffer in some years. During average to wet years, things were okay. There was enough rainfall. But in years like this one, where we're in a drought, we see clearly the impacts of cutting off that headwater supply, that subsidy of fresh. water coming from the north and that's really what restoration is about. It's about reconnecting Lake Okeechobee back to the south, reducing and ideally eliminating those unwanted discharges to the east and west coast, bringing that water south. But you can't just do it in the wet season.

You can't just, you know, provide that flow. You have to store that water because we get a lot of rainfall all at once. And so building large reservoirs to store water and send it south is really the fundamental goal because then you can provide water to the ecosystem when it's not available. Right. Yeah. So essentially it's prepping for this situation, right? Where you haven't gotten in a lot of rainfall for a while, right?

This is historically a drier part of the year in Florida, right? Summer obviously is the wet season, but it's preparing for this, right? It's preparing for these situations. And right now, because of the way the system has been built over, you know, the last couple years and like you mentioned, the economy, right, it was all really geared towards more of an operation more than anything. Yeah. But now here we are and we're sitting here saying, hey, you know, there's not a lot of water

flow out here, right? There's, we saw a video, you know, before we recorded, right? And there's a lot of dry spots out here, right? Airboat businesses right now have to shut down earlier than they usually do. So there's clearly an issue, you know, with water flow down. here. How do you see this transition now? How do we fix this problem? And I think you bring a lot of clarity, right? Because I think there's almost like the stigma out there, right? That it was like, oh, they don't care about the Everglades, right? And maybe there's a small piece of truth to that.

But at the end of the day, right, there's priorities, right? There's things that they had to take care of over the course of the years. But now here we are seeing kind of the results of that and the consequences of that. So how do we fix this? Well, it really starts with the projects that are laid out in the comprehensive Everglades restoration plan. This plan, we call it SERP, was passed in the law in 2000, December of 2000. So we're over 25 years beyond that. But that really set things in motion. And it took us really 10 years to just get moving and get up to speed to where over the last 15 years we've made enormous strides.

And it's interesting that we are. are in Northeast Shark River Slew of Everglades National Park. We are in a severe to extreme drought and we're sitting on water. This, for me, my own history out here is just astonishing and it's the most obvious sign that restoration is working because you're right. There are airboat operations that are shut down right now north of Tamami Trail. There are airboats that cannot get out into in the marsh right now because it's simply too dry. That part of the system is always, has always been wetter than where we are right now in this era of water management.

So the reason why we see water, the reason why we're able to get around here is because those bridges along Tamimi Trail, the infrastructure that's allowed us to put water into this part of the park and maintain this, it means restoration is working. We've got a long way to go, But the critical piece is the reservoir that's being constructed right now south of Lake Okeechobee.

That's what allows us to reconnect that heart that you described earlier, Lake Okeechobee, back to the body, back to this part of the ecosystem so that we can ensure a continuum of flows throughout the year. But I know that restoration is working. We see the vital signs improving in pockets around the system where we have projects, in place where we're able to operate those projects, but we still see the impacts of drought like right now. And that speaks to the need to get that storage completed so that we can continue to hydrate these areas and meet our water supply needs and also that of the coast.

Right. And it's not only the needs of us, right, but it's the wildlife as well, right? What's the impact been on the wildlife? Wow. This year in particular is going to be rough. because I flew over the water conservation areas to the north the other day, two days ago, and saw just the extreme drydown in some of those marshes. And right now they need to have water because it's the water that provides for all these small fish

that we see around us hitting the surface. That is critical food supply for waiting birds that are in their nesting period right now. They not only need to fend for themselves, but they've got to take food back to the nest for those chicks. And most of the areas are dry, and obviously fish don't survive in those areas. So it's that process that allows the nesting, the hatching, and the fledgling of those chicks to where they can contribute to the population and fend for themselves. So it's really a dire situation that we're seeing right now where, you know, over the next month or two, we're going to see large-scale nest abandonment, tens of thousands likely of chicks that will die in the nest, and that sort of resets that system back to zero next year where hopefully we'll get some rains and we'll see more average conditions.

But the biology of the Everglades is really affected by this drought and by, by not having that connection to Lake Okeechobee. Right. And is this something, right? Obviously, we're having very little rainfall this time of the year, right? But what happens if this repeats, right? Is this just a weather pattern that's going on right now? We had a very strange winter down here in South Florida.

I think the whole East Coast, you know, had a very different winter than usual. So what happens with these different weather patterns that come through? And how do you prepare for some of that? Well, that's a great question because when we think of weather, we think of just the local conditions, but that is driven by global processes and circulation patterns. And you may have heard of El Nino. Yes, exactly. There's the opposite of El Nino, La Nina. And actually, we seem to be coming out of a La Nino, which makes our winters a little bit drier than average.

And so drier than average conditions in the dry season exacerbate these drought conditions that were in. And we actually saw this playing out this time last year. We were in a severe drought. Yes, I remember. In February and March of last year. And we didn't get enough rainfall through the wet season to compensate for that to build up those reserves once again. So then we transition into this drier than average dry season. And here we are with this severe to extreme drought.

But now they're calling for this summer being more of an El Nino phase. And these are things that happen in the Southern Pacific. So those processes out there ultimately affect the circulation patterns across the planet. They affect the jet stream. That affects our weather patterns over long periods of time. And so it's really those teleconnections that we pay attention to to understand what the long-term outlook is. But we are moving into El Nino.

and that brings generally warmer summers. It seems to correlate with reduced hurricane frequencies, so there's a little bit of talk about that, but it has yet to play out so we don't know what the severity is. But South Florida weather is generally, and my history of South Florida since the mid-90s, is that in the wet season we get those large convective systems, and it's driven in part by the Everglades.

it sort of feeds off itself where the landscape heats up, water evaporates, you get those clouds that blow up to 50, 60,000 feet. They're just, they're the mountains of South Florida, majestic things. And that's what drives our rainfall patterns, and it also what brings in those cool breezes from the coast. And that's what we get each wet season, but that seems to be changing as conditions warm up, as these global circulation patterns change. So we're kind of in an uncertain situation as to what our future climate patterns will be. Rainfall, temperature. We know it's getting warmer, but we don't exactly know how rainfall is going to change. Interesting.

Yeah, because you would think you would be able to use that at least to inform some of the decisions as far as planning, right, the reservoir. This whole system is managed and the projects are planned with the assumption that we're going to get that same seasonal pattern of rainfall. And there are many that many scientists that feel that may not be the case. Yeah. It's interesting. What would you recommend or what would be kind of your message to people in South Florida or people visiting South Florida? How can we support the Everglades?

How can we be an advocate for the betterment of the environment? I think one of the first things. We did some polling at the Everglades Foundation a few years back. and we found that 95% of residents in Miami do not know where their water comes from. Wow, 95%. 95%. It comes from here.

And I think the more people understand, obviously, about those fundamental resources, like where does your water come from? They're going to be more likely to want to learn more and want to protect those places. This is a critical recharge zone. It really drives our weather patterns. It supports an incredible amount of biodiversity.

So I think the more people understand about this place, the more they're going to want to protect it and voice their support for continued restoration efforts because it really is the foundation of our future resilience in a changing climate as sea levels continue to rise. This is a place that we need to ensure. sure is healthy and is able to be resilient with a changing suite of conditions. Absolutely. I think also more people just need to come out here and visit, right?

It's right here in our backyard, you know, instead of... That would be ideal. You know, visiting Coconut Grove or visiting Brickle, you know, go spend some time in nature, right? I mean, I love the Florida Keys. The Florida Keys is probably one of my favorite places in the world. It's just there's something about it that I just love. love being down there. And every time I go down there, it's just kind of like a refresh, right? And it's something that people from all over the world come to, and it's 40 minutes, you know, away in your car, right? Same thing with the Everglades, right? I mean, we're sitting out here

and it puts things into perspective of like, wow, we really do have this, you know, 30 minutes away from us. And yet people don't choose to make that decision to come out here. So I really want to advocate for people to actually come and see it for themselves. I live in Edgewater right next to this game. Right. My commute here was 23 miles. I mean, that's shorter than most people's regular commute in South Florida. Of course, I don't get to commute this every single day.

I got to go to the office too. But the point is, yeah, you can get out here in a relatively short period of time. You can really get a good dose of this, you know, nature. And as you learn more, you see more. It's kind of like the matrix, you know, at some point you can read the code. You can understand how this system works, what it needs, how it's stressed. And it's just such a beautiful thing that you can be in Miami where there's traffic, where there's ambulances and loud motorcycles, and you can just get away to this place.

And all of that just sort of washes off. Absolutely. No, it is truly a special place. And I'm glad we were able to come here and do this. and provide some perspective of the importance of the glades. And I have some other questions for you, but I am not too sure if I can ask them on camera, like sugar cane situation.

Is that something that we could talk about? Sure. Is that okay? Okay, so my brother, right, as I was mentioning to you before we were recording, is somebody that visits the Everglades very frequently. He's out here every weekend. He fishes, he hikes, he camps. He uses the Everglades, you know, as a passion, right?

But one of the things that he's mentioned to me, right, is the sugarcane factories in Florida, right? And how, you know, pesticides and things like that have gone into water, right? You hear things like Red Tide and just kind of these, I guess, residue that kind of gets into the waters. Can you talk about how much of an impact that has towards the Everglades as well? Well, that. I know you talked about agriculture, too, and, you know, there's an importance to that. They, they, the sugar industry, farms much of the land south of Lake Okeechobee. So that agricultural area, when it was originally drained, it was not for sugar.

Sugar came later on. There's about maybe, we'll say, around 500,000 acres that are farmed today. Wow. Over 90% of that is sugar cane. And, you know, there's a whole backstory to that industry about subsidy. and the benefits that they enjoy that others may not. You know, I come from a farming background in Ohio, and we didn't get free water all the time.

You know, when it didn't rain, we kind of suffered. We didn't get our pollution cleaned up at the expense of taxpayers. You know, that's a situation. And then, of course, the price supports as well. And I'm not an expert in all of that, but it's certainly worth noting. But they have a legacy of control within the water management system.

And they get, you know, we're in the drought. They've been getting billions of gallons of water from Lake Okeechobee to irrigate their fields. Very little of that is going to the Everglades, this ecosystem that the masses, millions of us, depend upon. So there are certainly disparities there that are worth exploring and understanding. But to the point about residues and pollution, we know that Lake Okeechobee is polluted. It's unfortunately a polluted, impaired water body. That is really a history of pollution that's taken place within that shallow lake from the north. Again, mostly an agricultural watershed.

We know we've done some of the modeling to show where that pollution comes from. It's largely agricultural. We know where the sugar fields south of Lake Okeechobee were allowed to pump their polluted runoff back into the lake. So that has also contributed to that legacy of pollution within the lake. So the lake is polluted. When that dumping, East and West, occurs, not only are they getting these massive volumes of freshwater, but it's also polluting their estuaries, contributing to red tide, blue-green algae blooms.

And of course, our goal is to send that water south. Lake water and the runoff from those sugar fields that we get, but it's highly polluted. And the sugar industry is contributing more pollution as that water goes south. So we have to clean it. And we've got large engineered wetlands, engineered wetlands, we call them stormwater treatment areas that the South Florida Water Management

District has built. They operate them. It's really an incredible body of science just behind these wetlands and how they're able to cleanse that water to a level that's protective of the Everglades. We still have a little bit of work to do there, but those wetlands, roughly 60,000 acres of engineered wetlands are doing a hell of a job cleaning up that water that goes, south. But again, you know, there's the inequities of, you know, who's paying for that, and it's largely taxpayer-funded. But the fact is, we know the water has to be clean before we put it in the Everglades because this ecosystem is incredibly sensitive to things like phosphorus pollution. Just a slight amount of phosphorus added to this area will completely transform the vegetation we

see around us. That's how sensitive it is. Because it's rainfall-driven. Of course, yeah, yeah. It's used to getting fertilizer from the atmosphere. So anything above that, and you start to see dramatic change. Absolutely. One last question for you. What excites you most about the next five years of this restoration project?

Well, this experience right here, and of course, part of it is chatting with you, but being out here right now, knowing how severe this drought is, and actually being in water in Everglades National. Park. This just gives me so much confidence that restoration works and that we need to finish the job. And our economic studies at the foundation also show very clearly that it's in our best interest. It's worth it and it's working and that excites me. Absolutely. Well, appreciate you've taken the time today. It's a beautiful day to be out here and we're excited to see the continued progress through this initiative. Thank you for being out here. Absolutely.