The Kissimmee River once wound its way for about 103 miles through the middle of the state, until it was straightened into a flood-control canal in the 1960s. Phase I of the project, finished in 2001, filled about 7.5 miles of the canal and restored flow to about 15 miles of the old river channel, according to a 2007 paper by Bousquin and colleagues. Rivers are meant to bend. For decades, one in Florida couldn’t. Then Florida undertook an unusual restoration project to repair the damage. That’s how the plan came together and what scientists have found since.
The canal reduced flooding, but it came with a cost that no one planned for. It cut the river off from its floodplain, destroying wetlands and damaging the ecosystem along the river. Birds, fish, and other wildlife dependent on those wetlands began to decline. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to share the cost equally. The concept is simple. Crews fill sections of the canal with dirt. This pushes water back into the old meanders of the river, and the water spreads out over the floodplain again. The job is a lot harder than it sounds. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District marked the end of construction with a ribbon-cutting. Even so, finishing construction was not the end. Scientists are still watching the river to see how it responds.
The concept of restoring the river first arose in 1976. Congress authorized the project in the Water Resources Development Act of 1992. Then, in 1994, the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. The aim was to fill in 22 miles of the C-38 canal and reconnect 44 miles of river channel so water could flow more as it did in the past. Work started in 1999 with the first stretch of backfill and has continued in stages for more than two decades. In July 2021, the U.S. Crews backfilled the full 22 miles of canal, according to the South Florida Water Management District. The project restored 44 miles of the historic river channel and more than 40 square miles of river-floodplain ecosystem, which includes about 20,000 acres of drained floodplain turned back into wetlands.
