Hurricane Milton, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, left a path of destruction across Florida, tearing apart homes, blocking roads, and toppling buildings. After making landfall near Siesta Key on Oct. 9, it swept across St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay, and Orlando before exiting to the Atlantic on Oct. 10, still a Category 1. Milton claimed 24 lives, while Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4, just east of the Panhandle on Sept. 26, had killed over 20 Floridians. Yet, media coverage prefers to attribute these disasters solely to “global warming,” overlooking the critical issue of Florida’s decaying infrastructure.
Florida, a coastal peninsula, requires strong defenses against storms, including seawalls, levees, and coastal flood-control systems. The 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report rated Florida’s coastal infrastructure at C−, saying that 62% of its sandy shoreline shows erosion, with over half deemed “critically eroded.” Addressing it would require $6.5 billion, but only $50 million had been allocated at the time of the report. The ASCE also rated the state’s 996 dams—including 98 High Hazard Dams—at a grade of D−, warning of structural vulnerabilities, particularly in the face of extremely adverse weather.
But overlaying this, and reflecting the characteristic feature of United States and Florida state policy on infrastructure, is what is occurring in Florida’s Everglades, in which infrastructure is torn apart to turn the state back into a primitive Pleistocene Age swamp, undoing civilization. The Everglades are a large tropical wetland and swamp in southern Florida that once spanned 4,000 square miles (10,000 sq. km), taking up one-third of the Florida peninsula. This vast wetland was prone to seasonal flooding.
As man settled Florida, he saw the possibilities of taming the Everglades. In 1971, the C-38 canal was built, to replace a meandering 90-mile stretch of a river with a 52-mile canal. It replaced approximately 45,000 acres (180 sq. km) with retention ponds, dams, and vegetation. Other structures of a similar useful nature were constructed.
