Great piece of writing.  I'd like to read more.  

Sadly, perhaps, we may be stuck with the mess we've created in south FL in a world that is going into extreme economic decline coupled with painful fuel shortages.  To undo our 100+ years of wrath down there, we'd have to invoke those same heroic Army Corps large scale energy sucking projects, and we may be too bankrupt to do it.  Interestingly, south FL may have its destructive human sprawl cease and water return, but more likely as the result of rising sea levels due to climate change than anything else.  

Lets focus our resources on areas that do have more of a future (not New Orleans, s. FL, etc.), while we still have the chance.  

Promote US passenger rail service.  Resources and time are limited.  

What are the flaws in the project, what are the problems that are stalling it, and how do we move forward?

the Audobon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in W. Florida.  The Sanctuary has a great boardwalk path, about 2 miles long, which is supposedly allowing you access to a swampland filled with wood storks and alligators.  We were dismayed at how dry it was, rendering the boardwalk pointless, and the kids were really disappointed that we weren't going to see the swamp animals we came to see.  

Turns out we did get to see a handfull of storks and alligators....all packed together the last teensy wet area left.  It was a sad and disturbing sight.  What a shame.  The same story seems to repeat itself over and over again.

I'd also like to know more about how we could help, or at least have our voices heard.

While Mr. Grunwald's indictment of South Florida's water management is more than likely warranted, his derision towards fire in the Everglades is misplaced. The namesake "glades" are a fire-dependent ecosystem. One could hypothesize that mismanagement of water has in this case led to unusually severe fire effects. But rather than take a careful data-driven look at real on-the-ground fire effects, Grunwald would rather use hyperbole and arm-waving before the embers have even cooled. But apparently sober assessments make for less exciting articles...

It was a major happy turning-point in the history of ecological studies, when wetlands were at last recognized as valuable networks of ecosystems, fully deserving to be preserved.

In fairness to all those who have entertained a prejudice against wetlands ("swamps," "morasses," "marshes," "sloughs"), they often tend to be homes for critters, big, small and in-between, who are hard to live around, or positively dangerous.  It is mostly on account of malaria, in an effort to get rid of both the mosquito vectors and the Plasmodium itself, that wetlands were regularly and unrepentantly drained, in Italy first in antiquity, then in other parts of the world.

Also, they mess up transportation, because you can neither walk across them, nor sail across in a boat.

So it is a major philosophical victory, a victory of reason, that at least some of us now realize that wetlands are good things.

I liked the story alot, I have visited Lake O and the Everglades often.
Seems as though residents in S Florida believe that weather decides the levels of Lake O.
Meteorologist claim so everyday on the News.
This is not the case, Army Corp and South Florida Water Managers decide the levels of Lake O.
And now that the Ag and Energy Bill has passed, Florida will contribute even more $$ and water to Sugar for Ethanol, Federal Tax Money.
I would just like to know 'who pulls the lever' and allows all of the Ag and Industrial wastewater to enter our aquifer and eventually dump massive amounts of 'Dead, Degraded' water into the Atlantic Ocean.
This person or people are terrorists to the envirnoment and the animals that live in this fragile habitat.