Current Affairs

The Caloosahatchee River has a new keeper. His name is Phil Flood, and he’s easygoing enough to smile when somebody raises an eyebrow for the hundredth time after he recites his name.
"I don’t mind. I get it a lot," says Flood, a director for the South Florida Water Management District.

Flood’s charge is Southwest Florida, and his job is to help prevent flooding and restore the Caloosahatchee River basin by bringing together local governments, private groups, the district and anyone else involved in the future of the estuaries and water systems in this end of the state. He has to apply money and carefully tailored planning to a variety of problems and projects.
"I consider the Caloosahatchee mine, now. I’m passionate about it," Flood says. "I’m going to do my damnedest to clean it up. All my neighbors are going to be expecting me to do the right thing, so I will."

At 49, Flood has spent most of his 25-year career building beaches in Florida for the state Department of Environmental Protection’s division of beaches and shores. He started as an outdoor parks planner for the Division of Recreation and Parks, helping write the state’s comprehensive plan before concentrating on beaches, the incalculably valuable resource Florida has in such abundance. Visiting many of the state’s waterfront treasures on foot allowed him to get into the field, he recalls.

Beaches aren’t river systems, but restoration is restoration, he says. "It requires getting a lot of community support, and [doing] outreach. Convincing the community they have a problem [erosion in the case of beaches, failing water quality and flow-management problems in the case of the Caloosahatchee], helping them find a way to address it, finding funding and managing large-scale public works projects can take three to 10 to 15 years, depending on whether they have the feds involved."

Please enter e-mail address.

Please enter some message text.