History > 2007 > USA > Nature, Wildlife, Climate, Weather (VII)

Hurricane Intensity Scale Creator Dies

November 23, 2007
Filed at 11:27 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

MIAMI (AP) -- Herbert Saffir, an engineer who created the five-category system used to describe hurricane strength and warn millions of an approaching storm's danger, has died. He was 90.

Saffir died Wednesday from complications of surgery, said his son, Richard Saffir.

A structural engineer, Saffir created his scale in 1969 -- laying out for the first time what kind of damage could be expected from an approaching hurricane. It has since become the definitive way to describe intensity for storms that form in the Atlantic and parts of the Pacific. Before the scale, hurricanes were simply described as major or minor.

Saffir's innovation was ranking storm destruction by type, from Category 1 -- where trees and unanchored mobile homes receive the primary damage -- to Category 5 -- the complete failure of roofs and some structures. The five descriptions of destruction were then matched with the sustained wind speeds producing the corresponding damage.

Saffir's scale was expanded by former National Hurricane Center director Robert H. Simpson and became known as the Saffir-Simpson scale in the 1970s. The scale is now so well known that many coastal residents toss off shorthand like ''Cat. 1'' and few need to be told that it refers to Saffir and Simpson's creation.

Simpson said the system helped him communicate the power of an approaching storm.

''We had a lot of requests before the scale: how many resources of what kind would be needed to deal with the storm,'' Simpson said during a phone interview earlier this year. ''I couldn't tell the Salvation Army, for example, how much and what materials they should be shipping. The scale gave them a much better handle on that.''

Simpson added possible storm surge heights for each category, and the hurricane center staff made a small adjustment to the scale's wind speeds. Simpson, 95, now lives in Washington, D.C.

Saffir was born in New York in 1917. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in civil engineering in 1940 and then served in World War II, later moving to South Florida to become a county engineer.

Because of the area's vulnerability to hurricanes, Saffir quickly became an expert in how hurricane-force winds affect buildings. He helped write and unify building codes in South Florida.

Saffir began working on an intensity scale in 1969 as part of a United Nations project. He had been asked how the U.N. could lessen hurricane damage to low-cost buildings worldwide. To help officials understand the full range of hurricane damage, Saffir proposed rating storms from one through five. Scales for rating earthquake damage were already well known, and Saffir believed hurricanes needed their own system of ranking.

He presented his system to Simpson, who began to use the rankings internally and later for a weather report meant largely for emergency agencies. The scale was so useful, however, others quickly adopted it.

It was later used for public hurricane forecasts, making the pair's names synonymous with the Atlantic hurricane season.

For storms that originate in the Pacific Ocean, called typhoons, a five-point scale is also used, but it is based on wind gusts, not sustained winds.

While Saffir became known for the scale, he continued to work as a structural engineer at his Coral Gables office past his 90th birthday. He also traveled to inspect storm damage, even producing reports on the performance of structures during 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

Despite devoting much of his life to thinking about and preparing buildings for hurricanes, Saffir acknowledged earlier this year that his own home was not completely protected from a storm with hurricane shutters. He had done studies on the glass in the windows and found it was relatively shatterproof, he said. At the same time, he told The Associated Press, ''I confess I only have partial shutters.''

Saffir's wife, Sarah, preceded him in death. Besides his son, he is survived by daughter Barbara Saffir.

Hurricane Intensity Scale Creator Dies, NYT, 23.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Obit-Saffir.html

Water runs dry in rural Tennessee town

Thu Nov 22, 2007
3:13am EST
Reuters
By Matthew Bigg

ORME, Tennessee (Reuters) - A small town tucked away in the mountains of southern Tennessee is getting by on just a few hours of water a day because its spring has run dry in the drought sweeping the U.S. Southeast.

The worst drought to hit the region in decades prompted Georgia to impose water-use restrictions including a ban on outdoor residential watering.

It has also sparked a political battle between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over how to share water from north Georgia's Lake Lanier, which serves cities such as Atlanta as well as industries and a nuclear power plant.

But rural Orme with its population of just 140 people has become a symbol of the drought because few other places appear to have been so directly hit.

Each evening, residents wait for Mayor Tony Reames to make the short drive from his home where he keeps chickens up to a water tower on a wooded hill above the town to open a valve.

When the water is flowing families can fill buckets and water jars, do laundry, take showers and wash dishes before the faucets run dry and they wait for the next evening.

Resident Julie Hoover described Orme as a "hideaway" and a "piece of heaven" because it was safe and everyone knew each other but she said the water shortage had created serious problems.

"People don't like change and they don't like losing their water," said Hoover, who started filling up buckets with water draining from an air-conditioner to get water to flush toilets when the spring ran dry in August.

Hoover and her sisters have also taken to cooking one big family meal for all their children to save water, something she said had proved a blessing.

HELP AT HAND

Sporadic water supply is the norm for much of the world's population but for Orme, near the border of Alabama and Georgia, help is at hand. Local businesses and churches donate bottled water, bringing it to the town's one-room fire house for residents to collect.

Orme received a $377,590 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture plus a further grant of $229,000 to build a water pipe from Bridgeport, Alabama, to the town's water tower, Reames said.

Workmen laying down sections of the bright blue pipe beneath the side of a road leading to the town move closer each day.

A century ago, Orme was a bustling coal mining town with a railroad running down the main street but when the coal industry left, the town declined. Many residents are now elderly and average per capita income is around $15,000, according to government figures.

Reames, 48, said he had spent his whole life in the town, which has two small churches, no school, no shops and no cell phone service.

In the past, a creek and a waterfall fed the town but the creek dried up years ago and the waterfall slowed to a trickle in August, exposing a fissure in the rock that leads down to a big network of caves, residents said.

"Back then you could ride ponies and horses up on the mountains and you didn't need to go half a mile (km) and you would find a stream," Reames said, adding: "A person don't know what they have got till it's gone."

Orme votes mainly Democratic, but the town's water problems had made the 2008 presidential election and other national issues seem less important, according to Reames.

"This (drought) ain't nothing more than a disaster. I ain't saying he (U.S. President George W. Bush) shouldn't be giving money to other countries but he has a problem right here."

(Editing by Eddie Evans)

    Water runs dry in rural Tennessee town, R, 22.11.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0934565720071122

U.N. Chief Seeks

More Climate Change Leadership

November 18, 2007
The New York Times
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

VALENCIA, Spain, Nov. 17 — Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, describing climate change as “the defining challenge of our age,” released the final report of a United Nations panel on climate change here on Saturday and called on the United States and China to play “a more constructive role.”

His challenge to the world’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters came just two weeks before the world’s energy ministers meet in Bali, Indonesia, to begin talks on creating a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The United States and China are signatories to Kyoto, but Washington has not ratified the treaty, and China, along with other developing countries, is not bound by its mandatory emissions caps.

“Today the world’s scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice,” Mr. Ban said of the report, the Synthesis Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “In Bali, I expect the world’s policymakers to do the same.”

He added, “The breakthrough needed in Bali is for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace.”

Although Mr. Ban has no power to enforce members of the United Nations to act, his statements on Saturday increased the pressure on the United States and China, participants here said.

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster, which could leave island nations submerged and abandoned, reduce African crop yields by 50 percent, and cause a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

The panel’s fourth and final report summarized and integrated the most significant findings of three sections of a climate-science review that were released between January and April. Because the data had not previously been reviewed as a whole, scientists said the synthesized report was more explicit, creating new emphasis and alarm.

The first section of the review had covered climate trends; the second, the world’s ability to adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon emissions. With their mission concluded, the hundreds of IPCC scientists spoke more freely than they had previously.

“The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new and striking,” said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was co-chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report. “I’ve come out of this process more pessimistic about the possibilities than I thought I would.”

The panel, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, said the world would have to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to prevent serious climate disruptions.

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late,” said Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and economist who heads the IPCC. “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

He said that since the IPCC began its work five years ago, scientists had recorded “much stronger trends in climate change,” like a recent melting of Arctic ice that had not been predicted. “That means you better start with intervention much earlier.”

Saturday’s synthesis report was reviewed and approved by delegates from 130 nations gathered here this week. But unlike the earlier reviews, in which governments had insisted on changes that diluted the reports’ impact, this time scientists and environmental groups said there had been no major dilution of the data.

For example, this report’s summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperatures could result in a substantive sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia.

“Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a catastrophe” so rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University who contributed to the IPCC.

“It’s extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of inaction will be huge compared to the cost of action,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “We can’t afford to wait for some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We can’t afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start acting now.”

He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where they agree, for example, on public financing for new technologies like capturing emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and pumping it underground. He said energy ministers should start a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which releases greenhouse gases and reduces the uptake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.

United Nations officials pointed out that strong policies were needed, like increasing the energy efficiency of cars and setting up carbon markets, a system that essentially forces companies and countries to pay for the cost of the greenhouse gases they emit.

The European Union already has such a carbon trading system in place for many industries, and is fighting to bring airlines into the plan.

“Stabilization of emissions can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that exist or are already under development,” said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program.

But he noted that developed countries would have to help poorer ones adapt to climate shifts and adopt cleaner energy choices, which are often expensive.

Mr. Steiner emphasized that the report sent a message to individuals as well as world leaders: “What we need is a new ethic in which every person changes lifestyle, attitude and behavior.”

Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s reaction to the report was muted. At a news conference Friday night after the report was approved, James L. Connaughton, the chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, said President Bush had agreed with leaders of the other major industrialized nations that “the issue warrants urgent action, and we need to bring forward in a more accelerated way the technologies that will make a lasting solution possible.”

He declined to say how much warming the administration considered acceptable, saying, “We don’t have a view on that.”

Mr. Connaughton acknowledged that the United States, like other nations, had tried to make some changes to the draft. Dr. Sharon L. Hays, the leader of the American delegation here, said the goal was not political but “to make sure the final report matches the science.” She noted that the United States had invested $12 billion in climate research since 2001.

Stephanie Tunmore, a member of Greenpeace International who had observer status as the countries debated the text, questioned that explanation.

She said, for example, that the United States had tried to remove a section of the report titled “Reasons for Concern,” which listed consequences of climate change that are either likely or possible. One was the melting of ice sheets, which the panel said could take place more rapidly than previously thought.

The Americans argued that there was no reason to include the section, because all of it was contained somewhere in the previous IPCC technical documents, she said. But the section remained in the report.

Andrew C. Revkin contributed reporting from New York.

    U.N. Chief Seeks More Climate Change Leadership, NYT, 18.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/science/earth/18climatenew.html?hp

Environmentalists:

Protect Sea Turtles

November 15, 2007
Filed at 12:04 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two environmental groups are asking the Interior Department to declare loggerhead sea turtles that inhabit the Atlantic coast officially endangered, maintain that tens of thousands of the turtles are killed annually by commercial fishing and because of coastal development.

The loggerhead sea turtle already is classified as ''threatened'' under the federal Endangered Species Act, but environmentalists say a higher level of protection is needed for the turtles that nest primarily along the southern Atlantic coast and to some extent off the Gulf coast of Florida.

Oceana, a sea life advocacy group, and the Center for Biological Diversity will file a petition with the Interior Department and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Thursday asking that the Western Atlantic Sea Turtle be declared a sub-specie and officially endangered.

The designation would provide the turtle and its habitat increased protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Loggerhead sea turtles in the western Atlantic are in grave peril ... their numbers have plummeted to historic lows,'' says the petition, a copy of which was provided to the Associated Press.

Elizabeth Griffin, a marine wildlife scientist at Oceana, said the biggest threat to the turtle comes from commercial and sport fishing as turtles often are caught in nets, fishing lines and other devices. The petition says turtles also are killed by ingesting refuse from plastic items to balloons.

Griffin said the turtles nest primarily along the Atlantic coast from Florida to the Carolinas but they migrate as far north as New England. It's uncertain how many turtles there are, but a recent government report said tens of thousands of them are killed every year when caught in fishery nets and lines.

Commercial fishing is the single greatest human threat to the turtles but they also have been harmed by coastal development, which has deprived them of beach habitat and disturbed their nesting, the petition says.

Among the disturbing trends cited by the environmental groups is that loggerhead's nesting in South Florida has declined by 39.5 percent since 1998.

The loggerhead sea turtle can grow to as big as 3.5 feet in length and weigh 400 pounds and live 30 years or more. Its population has been in decline for decades. The turtle was declared ''threatened'' under the Endangered Species Act in 1978.

While its population has been declining, Griffin said the actual number of turtles along the Atlantic coast is unclear. ''That's a huge problem,'' she said in an interview, adding that if the government doesn't know how many there are it can't set a number that it considers acceptable to be killed.

The environmental groups argue in their petition that climate change may put the loggerhead in yet more peril. If sea levels rise along coasts where there is development, beaches the turtles use for nesting may disappear and even a 1 degree temperature increase could significantly affect their reproduction, said Griffin.

''We need to ensure that there are robust and resilient populations of sea turtles that will be able to withstand the new and potentially deadly challenges of climate change,'' she said.

Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service both have jurisdiction over the Endangered Species Act. Action on the turtle involves both agencies.

------

On the Net:

Oceana: http://www.oceana.org

Center for Biological Diversity: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/

    Environmentalists: Protect Sea Turtles, NYT, 15.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Threatened-Turtle.html

In Farm Belt,

Ethanol Plants Hit Resistance

November 13, 2007
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

SPARTA, Wis. — When plans were announced for a new ethanol distillery on the outskirts of this city of 9,000, residents complained that it would mar the view from the municipal golf course. They worried that its emissions would taint the milk-based products made at nearby Century Foods International, one of the community’s biggest employers. They even argued over whether the plant would reek like burned molasses or blackened popcorn or fermenting beer.

The T-shirts opponents printed up told the story: “Good idea. Bad location.”

For years, the arrival of an ethanol distillery in agricultural America was greeted mainly with delight, a ticket to the future in places plagued by economic uncertainty. But in the nation’s middle, the engine of ethanol country, the glow is dimming.

In Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and even Iowa, the nation’s largest corn and ethanol producer, this next-generation fuel finds itself facing the oldest of hurdles: opposition from residents who love the idea of an ethanol distillery so long as it is someplace else.

“What they are trying to sell we aren’t buying,” said Deb Moore, who owns a sandwich shop and soda fountain here.

The disputes have left some proposed plants waiting, mired in lawsuits; a few have given up.

“There is a campaign of sorts that is seeking to slow and preferably to stop the growth of the ethanol industry,” said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group based in Washington. “We have to get through a barrage of mud pies to get our message out.”

These are not the better-known philosophical opponents to ethanol, those who question the efficiency of corn-based ethanol as an energy source, blame ethanol for rising food prices, or disagree with the federal subsidies that have long held up the industry.

These people are farmers. Or they know a farmer. Or their grandfather was a farmer and, as in so many farm families, ethanol has meant new hope for the fading towns built on corn fields. The biggest complaints are cousins of the gripes brought about by proposed paper mills, landfills, prisons and the like: an increase in noise, traffic, odor, emissions and demand on the water system.

“No, no, no, we’re not against ethanol production whatsoever,” said Lonnie Nation, who lives near New Castle, Ind., where he and others have posted signs, filed a lawsuit and were going door to door this month to stop a new plant. “But if you put it where they want to, you’re going to be squeezing all our homes between an ethanol plant and a prison. What will that do to home values?”

Some experts say the local protests reflect a new anti-ethanol mood spurred by a slow but steady drumbeat of negative attention on the industry. Across the Midwest, questions about ethanol have been raised by environmental advocates, livestock owners have complained about soaring prices for corn feed and farmers have fretted about how expensive some farmland has become.

“That wonderful aura that the ethanol plants had may be wearing off a little,” said Wallace E. Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

Industry advocates play down the size of the opposition and suggest the increase in objections to new plants is simply a factor of math; 131 plants are now operating and more than 70 others are under construction, and the vast bulk of them are in the Midwest.

That is a marked increase from less than three years ago, when Congress enacted an energy law that included a national mandate for the increased use of renewable fuel in gasoline, setting off the ethanol rush. In January 2005, more than a quarter century after the commercial ethanol industry got started, just 81 plants were functioning.

“The fights are rare, and sometimes it’s just 11 people in a town of 5,000 or 6,000,” said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group. In Iowa, which has more ethanol distilleries than any other state, residents near Grinnell filed a lawsuit to try to stop a company from building an ethanol plant. “There are some people who would rather see their town dry up and blow away than change the status quo,” Mr. Shaw said.

The local strife coincides with what is already a moment of tumult for the ethanol industry. In recent months, an enormous supply of ethanol has glutted the market, sinking its price and sending a chill through the ethanol boom.

At least three proposed plants have halted construction recently, industry officials said, including one in Reynolds, Ind. Only two years ago, Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor, had held up the town as a symbol of the shift to renewable energy sources and nicknamed it BioTown U.S.A.

In October, the owners of at least one long-running plant — one that opened in 1983 in Grafton, N.D., and made 10.5 million gallons a year — announced it would shut down for now, thanks to market forces.

Experts debate whether the current ethanol glut is the start of the end to the rush to corn-based ethanol or merely a temporary correction as transportation lines are developed from the Midwest to bigger markets on the coasts. Either way, residents’ complaints about proposed plants have only added to the cascade of bad news for ethanol.

“It’s like the dot-com industry,” said Anne Yoder, who is pressing to stop plans for an ethanol plant outside Topeka, Kan., and describes herself “not at all” as an activist but as “an ordinary soccer mom.”

“When ethanol first came along there was so much promise,” she said. “Maybe that’s starting to trickle off.”

This spring, when Ms. Yoder first began going door to door to her neighbors to describe her worries about a proposed facility, she expected to be dismissed by the many farmers in her rural county, who presumably would benefit from having a plant nearby to sell their corn.

“But I was shocked by what I heard,” she said. “They don’t want it here either. Farmers have been in the business for hundreds of years and what they told me is that they don’t have a limitless supply of water to produce more corn anyway. This isn’t as pretty a picture as everyone wants to make it out to be.”

Ms. Yoder, who said she now spent several hours a day on this battle and has helped to gather more than 500 names on a petition, has exchanged e-mail messages with the organizers of communities in other states fighting ethanol plants.

A loose network of opponents is growing. In June, officials from Portsmouth, Va., toured three ethanol plants in Wisconsin, meeting with neighbors and noting observations about odors (“like beer but with a metal smell mixed in,” for instance, residents in Wisconsin cautioned the Virginia officials).

“We just swap information and talk about what tactics they took that worked,” Ms. Yoder said.

Still uncertain is how much these protests will affect the industry.

In Sparta, city officials were the ones who initially sought out Coulee Area Renewable Energy to consider moving here, said Michael B. Van Sicklen, a lawyer for the ethanol makers. The plans were sailing along through annexation and zoning proceedings for months, he said.

Then complaints emerged from leaders at Century Foods International, which sits not far from the proposed plant. Residents signed petitions. They demanded meetings. They filed lawsuits.

In October, the ethanol makers and Century Foods International announced they had reached a deal — one so tentative, confidential and in flux that representatives on both sides declined to talk to about it. No one on either side would say where an ethanol plant might go now, only that it would not be here, in view of the golf course.

    In Farm Belt, Ethanol Plants Hit Resistance, NYT, 13.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/us/13nimby.html?hp

Oil Spill Fouls Shores

in San Francisco Area

November 9, 2007
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 — A South Korean container ship hit one of the stanchions of the Bay Bridge in a dense fog on Wednesday, spilling 58,000 gallons of bunker oil.

Strong tides have since swept the slick through the mouth of San Francisco Bay, fouling beaches up to 20 miles north of the city and girdling Alcatraz Island with a belt of goo.

While every change of tide sent the oil to a different shore, the largest concentrations were “one-and-a-half to two miles offshore, west of the Golden Gate bridge,” said Lt. Rob Roberts of the California Department of Fish and Game. Several beaches were closed by the spill.

Lieutenant Roberts said that of the 26 oil-covered shorebirds that had been found, six were dead.

The spill, though just one two-hundredth the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into Prince William Sound in Alaska, still hit a nerve in a region whose self-image and international reputation is closely tied to its bridges, cold blue waters, beaches and rocky bluffs — many of them now touched by the oil.

The Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Game extended yellow booms to keep the bunker fuel, one of the crudest and least-distilled petroleum products, from various shorelines, including the entrances to wildlife-rich estuaries north of San Francisco.

Wil Bruhns, a division chief with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said that the outward bound ebb tide carried the slick “up the coast, where we’re getting reports of oil sheens and bad smell and oiled birds.”

The ship, the Cosco Busan, owned by the Hanjin Shipping company of South Korea, struck a pier on the bridge’s western side. The glancing blow sheared off most of the protective fender of woodlike plastic, which was nearly 3 feet thick and 10 feet wide, said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the state transportation department.

Jessica Castelli, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit environmental group Save the Bay, said worried residents had flooded her group with offers to clean injured birds and oiled beaches.

Mr. Bruhns said that while he could not prejudge the investigation being conducted by the Coast Guard, earlier accidents had led to prosecutions.

“Lots of ships go around the bay,” he said, “and it’s really rare the bridges get hit, even in fog. There is radar.”

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting.

Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area, NYT, 9.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09spill.html

Effort to Save Everglades

Falters as Funds Drop

November 2, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Oct. 31 — The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering.

Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry.

The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.

Supporters say the effort would get sorely needed momentum from a long-delayed federal bill authorizing $23 billion in water infrastructure projects, including almost $2 billion for the Everglades.

But President Bush is expected to veto the bill, possibly on Friday. And even if Congress overrides the veto, which is likely, grave uncertainties will remain.

The product of a striking bipartisan agreement just before the 2000 presidential election, the plan aims to restore the gentle, shallow flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, in south-central Florida, into the Everglades, a vast subtropical marshland at the state’s southern tip.

That constant, slow coursing nurtured myriad species of birds, fish and other animals across the low-lying Everglades, half of which have been lost to agriculture and development over the last century.

The plan calls for new reservoirs and other storage systems to capture excess water during South Florida’s rainy seasons, guaranteeing an adequate water supply for cities and farms as well as the Everglades. That provision helped win the support of the powerful sugar industry, whose farms have long encroached on and polluted the Everglades, and of Jeb Bush, then the governor.

Mr. Bush is the younger brother of President Bush, and supporters of the restoration hoped his close ties with the White House would guarantee its early success. But while Jeb Bush invested heavily in the project, federal enthusiasm seemed to fade after its champions in Congress, including Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack of Florida, left office and the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and other crises emerged.

A changing economy, too, hurt the plan. It passed in a year with a record budget surplus, but the climate changed sharply after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Some state officials say the plan, which involves dozens of complex engineering projects, also got bogged down in federal bureaucracy, a victim of “analysis paralysis.”

Some environmentalists believe that having Jeb Bush in Tallahassee even hurt the restoration because the White House effectively handed it off to him. As a result, pressing state priorities — enough drinking water and flood control to accommodate rapid population growth in South Florida — took precedence over restoring a clean flow of water to Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem.

Nathaniel P. Reed, a conservationist who was an assistant interior secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said that Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political strategist, supported the restoration because he thought it was good politics — “the Bush brothers saving a dying ecosystem,” Mr. Reed said. With Mr. Rove gone and the clock running down on the president’s tenure, he said, the Everglades are more vulnerable than ever.

“Everything now depends on 2008,” Mr. Reed said. “Everglades restoration depends on electing a president who can reignite the national consciousness that this great program should not fail.”

So far, though, most presidential candidates have yet to utter the word “Everglades.” In the only mention that has made news, Fred D. Thompson, a Republican, suggested he might allow oil drilling there.

While the Bush administration says it remains committed to the restoration, critics say its actions suggest otherwise. Although the cost of the effort was to be split evenly between Florida and Washington, the state so far has spent about $2 billion and the federal government only $358 million, though it has also helped finance some projects planned before the 2000 legislation.

Moreover, earlier this year, the Department of the Interior asked the United Nations to remove Everglades National Park from its list of endangered World Heritage sites. While largely symbolic, the removal sends the message that the Everglades no longer need help, said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida.

“I have to deal in a world of perception and symbols,” Mr. Nelson said, “and when I’m begging each year for appropriations for Everglades restoration and suddenly the perception is, ‘Well, the Everglades is making a lot of progress,’ it’s tying my hands behind my back in trying to get the federal share.”

Florida, too, has done things to jeopardize the effort, said former Senator Graham, a Democrat who started the movement to save the Everglades in the 1980s. In 2003, the Legislature, under pressure from the sugar industry, postponed enforcement of strict pollution limits in the Everglades until 2016.

“It’s so important to avoid doing anything to send the signal that there’s less than full commitment in the state where the Everglades is located,” Mr. Graham said. “Frankly, there are people in Washington looking for any sign of lack of commitment in Florida.”

Florida has another perception problem, Mr. Graham said, in that it continues to permit development in environmentally sensitive areas — sometimes even in the restoration footprint. Although the state has bought 55 percent of the land needed for the restoration, crucial land remains private.

Meanwhile, the South Florida Water Management District revealed in September that farmers had missed a phosphorus reduction target for the first time in 11 years, despite the recent construction of 45,000 acres of filter marshes to reduce contaminants in agricultural runoff.

“That is a very loud warning bell that some additional work is needed,” said Charles S. Lee, advocacy director for Audubon of Florida.

State officials say that despite financing challenges, they have made significant progress acquiring land, building filter marshes south of Lake Okeechobee and restoring a more natural water flow to the Kissimmee River, south of Orlando, which is the headwater of the Everglades ecosystem. The state has also broken ground on a reservoir it calls the largest public works project in the world.

Supporters of the restoration have praised Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointees to the water management district’s board and to the state agency that regulates development. But Mr. Crist, a Republican who took office in January, is facing a budget crisis due to the real estate slump. “Florida remains committed,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “But we do have to face facts. We do have some economic challenges.”

Like many others, Mr. Crist is pinning his hopes on the federal bill that provides $23 billion for water projects, including wetlands restoration in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and beach replenishment around the country. The bill finances several projects that are crucial to restoring a clean flow of water through the Everglades.

It went to President Bush last week, and he has pledged to veto it because, he says, it is stuffed with political pork. Other critics agree, and say the bill does not ensure that the most crucial projects, including those in Florida and Louisiana, would get the highest priority.

They also say the bill should have included major changes to the Army Corps of Engineers, which executes the projects but has been accused of misjudgments in engineering, design and the degree of potential harm to the environment.

Corps officials have said the long delay in passing the water bill has hurt their ability to function well, but the critics say the problems are deeper than that.

“This is just a recipe to keep the corps as dysfunctional as ever,” said Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent at Time magazine who wrote “The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), the most exhaustive recent book on the subject.

Echoing the criticism of many scientists, Mr. Grunwald also said the plan does not go far enough to restore a natural water flow to the Everglades and depends on dubious technology for storing billions of gallons of water.

“Until they fix the plan, until they fix the corps and until we get a handle on growth management in South Florida,” he said, “it’s going to be hard to make a lot of progress in the Everglades.”

So, too, will progress be difficult without support from lawmakers outside Florida. Rising land and construction costs have pushed the total estimated price to more than $10 billion.

Mr. Nelson took Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the committee in charge of the water bill, on a tour of the Everglades in September. He has also been known to carry jars of polluted Everglades muck around the Capitol to draw the attention of his colleagues.

Mr. Grunwald said focusing on Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem, not providing water to farms and suburbs, is crucial to reviving national interest in the overall plan.

“It’s the Everglades that’s the national treasure,” he said. “That’s why the guys from Iowa and Montana are going to support this thing.”

Effort to Save Everglades Falters as Funds Drop, NYT, 2.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/us/02everglades.html