Posted on August 10, 2021
A roadmap for completing vital Everglades restoration projects is undergoing its annual readjustment and Palm Beach County officials want Lake Worth Lagoon repair back in the spotlight.
The tediously named Integrated Delivery Schedule outlines when and how the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP, will be completed and is tweaked each fall to take into account the previous year’s progress toward finishing the blueprint approved by Congress in 2000.
To date, Florida has invested $1.6 billion in CERP with an additional $1.4 billion coming from federal coffers, according to information presented at a Thursday meeting to discuss the next steps in the delivery schedule.
But as many as seven projects that would have helped restore the embattled Lake Worth Lagoon have yet to be considered even though they were written into the original plan, said the county’s water resources manager Jeremy McBryan.
“I’m trying to understand what stakeholders can do to elevate the lagoon back into the CERP recover umbrella because it’s no longer in the program as far as I understand it,” McBryan said during the Thursday meeting hosted by the Army Corps. “I think Palm Beach County stakeholders are very interested in trying to achieve those benefits envisioned in 1999.”
Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss, whose district includes a portion of the 20-mile lagoon, called the decision-making process on restoration a “mystery.”
“Over the years, certain projects get prioritized over others and other projects languish in the planning phase or even more concerning have never made it to the planning stage,” Weiss said Thursday. “Unfortunately for us in Palm Beach County, this has been the fate of our CERP projects that were identified over 22 years ago.”
![Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss? asks questions during the COVID-19 update to the commission in West Palm Beach Tuesday, July 28, 2020. [LANNIS WATERS/palmbeachpost.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/11/20/NPPP/31b77e8c-f3e7-436c-80c6-1caf50bb61c4-072920-coronavirus_tue3.JPG?resize=499%2C354&ssl=1)
