Balderdash. Lake Okeechobee supplies most of South Florida’s drinking water. There’s no need to keep the Everglades in protected status. It is a useless swamp that should be drained and developed into prime real estate.
In case you hadn’t noticed:
And there are dozens more references for other South FL water systems.
Lake Okeechobee is only a link in the system: Mostly water from it filters through the Everglades and other swampy areas (or at least it used to) into the aquifers, where it is then picked up by the wells. Essentially, the Everglades is part of a huge natural treatment system, the treatment supplemented a little by humans at the water districts’ treatment facilities. Diversion of water from Lake Okeechobee to the ocean, primarily in wet periods, results in (among other things) long term shortages of fresh water to the aquifers, with the sea only too glad to make up the difference. In dry periods, sometimes the lake nearly dries up — it is exceptionally shallow for a lake its size. Also note that at times, Lake Okeechobee’s water is not just unsafe to drink, it is seriously toxic.
I suppose you will volunteer to drink the seawater? Or pay for massive desalinization projects? Or pay for an even more massive project to seriously increase Lake O’s capacity, treat its water directly (including in toxic periods), and then pipe it to the water districts. Righto....