General Perspective:

I don't see any more hope for the world in the continuous expansion of nuclear weaponry; or hope for our people in the continuous pursuit of growth in America's cities than I have seen in the continuing technological invasions of Florida's Everglades - which can now be described as violently raped.

They are all part of the same destructive philosophies which are tearing the earth and its people apart.

1. Repeated periods of critical water shortages for all water users in south Florida - its agriculturalists; the people of its cities; its fish and wildlife resources; the Everglades National Park.

2. Repeated massive shocks to the estuaries of the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers.

3. Abandonment of the one substantial step politicians alone can take to lessen the sever (sic) water quality plight of Lake Okeechobee.

4. Removal of all opportunity to effectively increase the storage capacity of Lake Okeechobee in the only place where it can be done - the Kissimmee River Basin.

5. Total elimination of the peat soils of the Everglades agricultural area; of the Conservation Areas and of Everglades National Park.

6. Abandonment of any hope for restoring the Everglades hydrological system which produced the peat soils of the Everglades in its agricultural and wilderness areas in the first place.

7. Giving up all hope for reducing the invasion of salt water into the Biscayne Aquifer which supplies millions of south Floridians their only naturally available potable fresh water.

8. Insuring the continuous degradation of the entire Everglades system and all of its natural resources - esthetic and economic.

9. Running the continuous risk of converting south Florida into a desert through further disruption of its hydrologic cycle - now referred popularly as the 'rain machine.'

   Even politicians are smart enough to risk running this gamut of choices.

   I hope.

10. Assuring repeated massive mortalities of the Everglades deer which have occurred 10 times in the last 35 years.