Audubon of Florida's Everglades Policy Associate Jane Graham submits this account of her visit to the Rafter T Ranch to tour their innovative water management system. Enjoy:

On the mossy banks of Arbuckle Creek in Highlands County, the Wohl family ranch is pioneering a new way to store water on their land to benefit the environment. The Rafter T Ranch, one of the eight sites used in the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) stores water and slows the runoff of nutrients into Arbuckle Creek, which flows south to Lake Okeechobee.

Last week, my colleagues Charles Lee and Paul Gray, incoming Audubon of Florida Board member Jud Laird and I had the pleasure of visiting Rafter T Ranch and learned how this innovative project works.

The project design’s elegance is in its simplicity. The “water management alternative” (WMA) areas capture rain water during the wet season in low lying floodplain pastures. When the water rises to a certain level, it flows over flashboard risers down to other WMA areas. Some water also flows into Arbuckle Creek.

The water in the WMA areas is eventually pumped into the Wetland Rehydration Area at the downstream end of the project. As a result, water with high nutrient levels does not surge through the system with each rain event but rather is contained on the land and is taken up by algae or and pasture grasses or absorbed by the soil. This is especially beneficial during the early part of the wet season in June because it controls the “first flush” of nutrients from flowing downstream.

We saw a plethora of wildlife, including Wood Storks, Anhingas, a Red-shouldered Hawk, White Ibises, Glossy Ibises, a Great Blue Heron, and a deer, among others. The Rafter T Ranch has gorgeous scrub habitat as well.

Audubon strongly supports public/private partnerships for water storage and is extremely supportive of the Wohl family’s projects, as well as the South Florida Water Management District’s Dispersed Water Management program that aims to create similar cost saving projects throughout the Northern Everglades watershed. During a time of severe budget cutbacks, it is promising that funds are being invested in this efficient program.