State and Federal action on Everglades Restoration is an effort Floridians should truly be proud of. When one of the largest pieces of the puzzle, the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, is finished, it will be the largest above-ground reservoir in the world. At 23 feet deep and 10,500 acres, plus an additional 6,500 acres for stormwater treatment, this reservoir system will be larger than Manhattan and deliver up to 470 billion gallons of clean water each year to the Everglades and Florida Bay.

But clearly Gov. Ron DeSantis’ $4 billion crown jewel of Everglades restoration isn’t great enough for the activists at Friends of the Everglades (FoE). Its chief scientist, Thomas Van Lent – who went to jail for allegedly stealing and destroying more than a decade’s worth of research at the Everglades Foundation and then lying about it in court – recently published a “science-based” report arguing that a much larger reservoir in the Everglades Agricultural Area must be built.

Van Lent proposes a massive reservoir more than five times the size – and likely five times the cost – of DeSantis’ current $4 billion project, which is already the largest of its kind. This proposed reservoir would be 77,000 acres large at six feet deep, plus take up an additional 25,700 acres of stormwater treatment area to pass the flows from this reservoir.

This report is the perfect example of activist organizations using bad science to get what they want. In this case, that’s the........

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