Audubon's Julie Hill, Everglades Policy Associate, wrote the editor to set the story straight with the Washington Time's "Bridge to Nowhere Ok'd for Everglades." Her response:

"The article 'Bridge to nowhere' OK'd for Everglades' (Page 1, Tuesday) fails to adequately address the importance of Tamiami Trail bridging to reviving America's Everglades. The bridge will finally allow water-flows into Everglades National Park, where the famed river of grass has been dammed since the Everglades were drained and ditched to allow urban development.

The National Academy of Sciences in its 2008 report specifically identified the need to increase flows under Tamiami Trail as a critical objective and proclaimed that "to do nothing, is in fact, to do harm," because the Everglades ecosystem continues to deteriorate. Audubon scientists documented the lowest nesting of roseate spoonbills last year in Florida Bay since the 1960s and preliminary counts this year are worse.

The 1-mile bridge is urgently needed to increase flows into Everglades National Park. This and the other components of the Modified Water Deliveries Project that have been on the books since 1989 will allow us to prevent deterioration, be good stewards of the Earth, and finally achieve desperately needed benefits for the Everglades and the wildlife that calls it home. That will get us far beyond nowhere. "