The proposed land for the restoration of the natural watershed (swamp) is ~242 sq. miles.
The total land for farming (EAA) is 1,158 sq. miles.
The proposed land represents only 21% of the total EAA land.
This 21% could be offset by land outside the restoration area.
Do you think moving 21% of the EAA is worth clean water?
Lake Okeechobee is approx. 730 sq. miles or 488,000 acres.
When Lake Okeechobee is at 13 feet it contains approximately 1 trillion gallons of water. (1,000,000,000,000 gallons)
The restoration land needs to be approx. 12 inches below sea-level.
This 12 inches of soil could be relocated to the offset land for the EAA.
This 242 sq. miles of swamp 1 foot deep would require 50 billion gallons of water just to fill.
The average flow rate of the water traveling south in the Everglades is 3.28 feet per hour or 78.7 feet per day.
The restoration land is approx. 25 miles from the north end to the south end.
At the avg. flow rate it will take 4.7 years for a drop of water traveling south reach the Everglades.
The SFWMD is currently targeting 4,800 cfs of discharge or 3.1 billion gallons per day.
At a rate of 3.1 billion gallons per day it would take over 16 days to fill the restoration land.
3.1 billion gallons per day for 60 days is about 186 billion gallons annually.
However if it was discharged year round it would be about 510,000 gallons per day year round (365 days).
At a rate of 510,000 gallons a day it would take almost 27 years to fill the restored land.
This 510,000 gallons represents about 1% of the total volume of the restoration land (swamp).
There are no municipalities, cities, towns, houses or shops on the proposed restoration area, only farmland.