In the last five years, DeSantis said, there has been a “huge, huge” increase in the flow of water south from Lake Okeechobee south through the Everglades to Biscayne Bay.

Eikenberg said the infusion of state cash in recent years has gone to “massive infrastructure projects that are now coming online.”

Drew Bartlett, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, said reservoirs east and west of Lake Okeechobee would be completed and online next year, which would help protect the St. Lucie Estuary and the Caloosahatchee Estuary.

Eikenberg praised DeSantis for supporting large increases in Everglades restoration funding since he became governor in 2019.

He said he went to Tallahassee in 2011 to ask then-Gov. Rick Scott to support doubling Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan funding from $35 million to $70 million. Now, he said, the state in the coming fiscal year would devote more than $600 million to the effort.

“What a magnificent journey,” Eikenberg said, describing efforts that began more than 40 years ago when then Gov. Bob Graham outlined the Save Our Everglades Initiative were advanced 20 years later when then-Gov. Jeb Bush unveiled the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

State. Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, R-Highland Beach, who attended the event in West Palm Beach, said water “is our identity and our economy.”

“People aren’t going to want to live here, move here, work here … if we don’t have this filtration system that the Everglades provides.”

Securing funding is an obstacle to complete restoration, she said, but it’s essential to push for to avoid irreversible damage.

Ron Bergeron, the Everglades advocate, developer and DeSantis appointee to the board that runs the South Florida Water Management District, took DeSantis on an airboat tour of the Everglades before he was elected.

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