Potential Economic Cost of Ecosystem Restoration in EAA

Other · Fri Dec 07 04:00:00 EST 2012

OSTI ID:1337519

Ouellette, Kayla ^[1]; Zhong, Jing; Capece, John; Alsherif, Kamal; Hanlon, Edward

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1. Intelligentsia International,Inc.

Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) has been converted from its natural state to intensively managed agriculture and is one of the most productive agricultural regions in US, with sugarcane being the dominant crop. However, under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), pumping is limited and some major drainage canals will be removed for retaining more water under the surface as part of the ecosystem restoration program. Thus, the sugarcane farmers might face higher water tables and longer flood durations, which would lead to a sugarcane production reduction. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the potential net return loss of sugarcane production due to the increasing water storage for EAA ecosystem restoration. Two scenarios of water table managements are studied and compared. In scenario one, the depth of water table is decreasing with the soil subsidence as the water table is kept fixed. In 30 years, the DWT is halved and also the annual sugar yield will be decreased from 37.92 tons/acre to 29.91 tons/acre. At the same time, the annual net return for the farmer is sharply decreased from $290.09 per acre of production to $93.75 per acre of production, and the present value of net return decreased from $290.09/acre to $51.76/acre. However, the water storage will be kept at an annual rate of 0.23 per acre-foot. In scenario two, the annual sugarcane yield is kept constant across 30 years as the depth of water table will be monitored to be the same for each year. Therefore, the net return for the farmer is not changing across the 30 years and it will only be discounted by the interest rate in order to get its present value. However, with the subsidence of soil, the water table is becoming lower and lower (as the DWT is constant). There is less and less space for water storage and the rate of water retention has declined from 0.23 foot-acre to 0.04 foot-acre.

• Research Organization: Hendry County, Florida
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Bioenergy Technologies Office (EE-3B)
• Contributing Organization: Hendry County, Florida
• DOE Contract Number: EE0000303
• OSTI ID: 1337519
• Report Number(s): DOE-HENDRYFLA-00303-315
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
DWT
Everglades Agricultural Area
economic cost
ecosystem restoration
soil subsidence
sugarcane production
water retention
water storage