Restoring the Florida Kissimmee River

For every one acre of wetlands destroyed, two must be created.

In recent years, wetlands issues have moved to the forefront. The mitigation ratio is 2 to 1 — for every acre of wetlands destroyed, two acres must be restored or created. Reports show that greater than 50 percent of the nation's wetlands have been lost since the 1950s.

The Kissimmee River basin covers 3,000 square miles and stretches from Orlando southward to Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida. Historically, the Kissimmee River meandered approximately 103 miles within a 1 to 2-mile-wide floodplain. The historic floodplain was covered by approximately 35,000 acres of wetlands.

Ellicott Mud Cat™ MC-2000 operating in the
Kissimmee River Basin

Land use within the basin consisted primarily of farming and cattle ranching. The area was extensively damaged when a severe hurricane occurred in 1947. Flooding caused public pressure for a measure—to reduce the threat of flood. The state of Florida responded with a request to the federal government to design a flood control plan for central and southern Florida.

In 1948, congress authorized the flood control and protection project for Central and Southern Florida. subsequently between 1962 and 1971, the Kissimmee River was channelized and transformed into a series of impounded reservoirs, converting the 103-mile-long, meandering river into a 56-mile-long, 300-feet-wide, 30-feet-deep canal. The channelization and degradation of the floodplain led to severe impacts on the ecosystem and impacted biological components in the area.

In March of 1999, The IT Group was awarded a contract to restore a 7.5-mile stretch of the Kissimmee River basin. The scope of work includes degrading the spoil mounds located along the channelized canal, backfilling the canal, excavating new section of two oxbow channels in the flood plain and demolishing the S65-B Flood Control Structure and Boat Lock. The project requires moving 12 million cubic yards of fill material. Currently, the project is averaging as much as 40,000 cubic yards of fill material placement per day. The project has successfully overcome a number of challenges, including the need to manage water flows through the system while backfilling the canal, provide earth moving sequences to control turbidity and flood control during rainy seasons or hurricanes.

Ellicott Mud Cat™ MC-2000 operating in the
Kissimmee River Basin

Another challenge is the preservation of indigenous species. We also provided biologists to locate, identify and relocate all protected or endangered species from harms way to sites permitted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Agency.

With the reestablishment of the natural river regimen, the water will flow through the oxbows in the dry season and overflow into floodplain during the wet season. The restored river will re-hydrate the historic floodplain and restore the wetlands of the Kissimmee River basin that were once and will again be home to more than 300 species of wildlife.

Restoration of the Kissimmee River is just the beginning of work to be performed in the coming years in wetlands mitigation, including the restoration of the Florida Everglades. The IT Group will be at the forefront.

Source:  The IT Group Web Page