Christopher
Researcher Questions Everglades Plan Focus
By Bob King, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Inside a 1907 clapboard house fitted with solar panels, where a stationary bike powers a black-and-white television and the coffee is ground by hand, dwells the author of an unfinished book almost nobody has read.
Yet this book's contents are creating a scientific stir.
Has Chris McVoy -- Lake Worth resident, folk dancer, peace activist, part-time yoga instructor and speaker of six languages -- uncovered fatal flaws in the $8.4 billion plan to restore the Everglades?
Some environmentalists think he has.
He's also caught the ear of certain federal scientists, who say the plan is sound but that McVoy has found ways they can improve it.
The book painstakingly describes the wet, wild, flowing Everglades that existed before the 1880s, when early drainage projects began its slow death.
That picture differs from the scientific thinking behind the restoration plan -- either a little or a lot, depending on whom you ask.
Here's the awkward part: McVoy is a wetlands scientist at the South Florida Water Management District, one of the prime forces behind the $8.4 billion plan.
Some district managers say they're still eager to publish the book he's been working on since 1995, originally as an employee of the Environmental Defense Fund. But McVoy has landed in hot water with bosses who have accused him of publicly promoting ideas that hadn't received scientific scrutiny.
"I think there are some people who would be quite happy if I fell off the face of the earth," said McVoy, a thin 44-year-old with a birdlike nose and quiet, Dutch-influenced voice. "But I think there are also people who think there might be something worth looking at."
'A wake-up call'
His supporters are already convinced McVoy has uncovered something important: evidence that the Everglades originally thrived because its water flowed.