Everglades Restoration in 2026

Everglades restoration in Florida is a federal and state program, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), to restore, protect and preserve water resources in central and southern Florida, including the Everglades (USACE).

Congress authorized the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, known as CERP, in 2000. With that authorization the federal government and the state of Florida entered a programmatic 50/50 partnership; the Corps is the lead federal agency and SFWMD is the lead state agency (USACE Jacksonville District). The Corps says the work will ultimately improve 2.4 million acres of the south Florida ecosystem, including Everglades National Park, cut high-volume discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the estuaries and improve water deliveries to Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay (USACE).

The Everglades National Park page of the National Park Service describes CERP as the largest hydrologic restoration project ever undertaken in the United States and says a Federal and State partnership guides the interagency plan, with the park's South Florida Natural Resources Center having a critical role in that partnership (NPS Everglades National Park). Not every Everglades project belongs to CERP: the Kissimmee River restoration, for example, was authorized separately in 1992, and the stormwater treatment areas south of Lake Okeechobee are operated by the State of Florida (SFWMD; SFWMD).

The EAA Reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee is targeted for construction completion by 2029, five years earlier than the 2034 date that applied before the July 2025 federal and state agreement (USACE, April 13, 2026; SFWMD).

SFWMD says the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir is considered the crown jewel of Everglades restoration. Once complete it will store over 78 billion gallons of water and deliver up to 470 billion gallons of clean water a year to the Everglades and Florida Bay, and it is meant to reduce harmful discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries (SFWMD EAA Reservoir page). The project has two parts: a 6,500-acre stormwater treatment area that SFWMD built, and a reservoir component the Corps is building on 10,500 acres that will hold 240,000 acre-feet (SFWMD).

The Corps splits the reservoir into three construction contracts. Contract 10A, covering the inflow, outflow and seepage canals, is complete. Contract 11A, the reservoir foundation, is scheduled for completion by March 2028, and Contract 11B, the embankment and water control structures, has a required completion date of December 2029 (USACE). The reservoir is one of four phases of the Central Everglades Planning Project (USACE).

The 2025 and 2026 agreements shifted pieces of Everglades construction from the Corps to the State of Florida so the Corps could focus on the main reservoir basin (SFWMD 2025 Landmark Agreement page).

The 2025 agreement also moved the reservoir completion date from 2034 to 2029 (SFWMD). On July 18, 2025, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that Florida and the U.S. Department of the Army had reached an agreement that authorizes Florida to build the EAA inflow pump station, lets Florida take on the Blue Shanty Flow Way to move clean water south across the Tamiami Trail into Florida Bay, and allows Florida to manage future CERP projects through expedited permitting (SFWMD). The agreement was signed as a Memorandum of Agreement between the State of Florida and the Department of the Army, implemented through a Memorandum of Understanding among the Corps, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and SFWMD (SFWMD).

On April 13, 2026, at Belle Glade, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle announced that construction is targeted for completion by 2029, with select project actions delegated to the State of Florida (USACE). SFWMD adds that all federally funded contracts for the reservoir have been executed. In July 2026 SFWMD and the Corps signed a Project Partnership Agreement so that federal funding goes to Florida for the final reservoir component, a seepage management pump station, and for the Blue Shanty Flow Way (SFWMD).

A major finished Everglades restoration project is the Kissimmee River Restoration Project, whose construction completion SFWMD and the Corps celebrated in July 2021 after work that began in 1999 (SFWMD).

In the 1960s the Kissimmee River, in the basin that forms the headwaters of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, was channelized by dredging a 30-foot-deep straightaway, the C-38 canal. The restoration backfilled 22 miles of C-38 between Lake Kissimmee and Lake Okeechobee, removed two water control structures and acquired more than 100,000 acres; it restores more than 40 square miles of floodplain, 20,000 acres of wetlands and 44 miles of historic river channel, as a 50-50 partnership of the Corps and SFWMD (SFWMD Kissimmee River page).

Farther south, Everglades National Park celebrated the C-111 Spreader Canal Western Project at a January 11 dedication, reported in a park news release dated February 5, 2013. Its pump stations and canals raise groundwater just outside the park eastern boundary, creating a hydraulic barrier between the park and urban Miami-Dade County, and the project is meant to restore freshwater flows via Taylor Slough to Florida Bay (NPS). On Tamiami Trail, a one-mile eastern bridge and road improvements were complete by early 2013, though a photo caption on the same NPS page dates the one-mile section to 2014 (NPS Tamiami Trail page).

For Water Year 2025, more than 98 percent of the Everglades Protection Area met the Florida phosphorus standard of 10 parts per billion or less, which SFWMD calls one of the best results on record (SFWMD).

The cleaning happens in stormwater treatment areas, constructed wetlands that remove and store nutrients and that the State of Florida operates. In Water Year 2025, which ran from May 1, 2024 to April 30, 2025, the Everglades STAs treated over 1.2 million acre-feet of water and retained 188 metric tons of total phosphorus, an 81 percent load reduction, with an outflow flow-weighted mean of 29 micrograms per liter; over a quarter of the inflow, 344,600 acre-feet, came from Lake Okeechobee (SFWMD STA page).

Over 31 years, the Everglades STAs have treated nearly 29 million acre-feet of water, about 9.4 trillion gallons, and retained 3,700 metric tons of total phosphorus, a 78 percent load reduction (SFWMD). The cells range from STA-1 East at 5,000 acres to STA-3/4 at 16,300 acres in western Palm Beach County, which SFWMD calls the largest constructed wetland in the world (SFWMD). SFWMD posts a quarterly performance update; the latest on its page are for June 2026 and September 2026 (SFWMD).

No single current price tag exists: the National Park Service states CERP costs more than $10.5 billion over a 35+ year timeline, while SFWMD and the Corps publish spending and contract figures from different years (NPS).

The park figure comes from a page last updated May 19, 2022, so it predates the 2025 and 2026 acceleration (NPS Everglades National Park). SFWMD reports that through June 2018 the State of Florida and SFWMD had invested more than $2.3 billion in CERP-related design, engineering, construction and land acquisition, and that federal funding had fallen behind by nearly $1 billion (SFWMD CERP implementation page). The same page notes the 2016 Legacy Florida Act, which commits $200 million in annual state funding over 20 years for Everglades restoration projects (SFWMD).

On the federal side, the Corps says the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invested $1.1 billion in the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration program; one contract it funded, the C-11 Impoundment land clearing for the Broward County Water Preserve Areas, went to Omega Foundation Services, Inc. for $10,154,701 on Sept. 24, 2024 (USACE, Oct. 2, 2024). The park service lists a preliminary 2010 estimate of $240 million for Tamiami Trail Next Steps Phase 2 (NPS).

A practical reading tip for Floridians: the SFWMD funding page still compares state and federal spending only through June 2018, and its statement that no major CERP component had been completed dates from that period, so the newer milestones on the SFWMD reservoir page and the Corps April 2026 release are the better guide to where Florida stands now (SFWMD; SFWMD).

The Corps Jacksonville District posts the Final 2026 Integrated Delivery Schedule, the roadmap that sequences planning, design, construction and operations of federal and state Everglades restoration projects (USACE).

SFWMD keeps a running list of EAA Reservoir milestones and the 2025 agreement documents on its own pages, and says to check back frequently for updates (SFWMD). Water quality results appear in the STA quarterly performance updates and in the Executive Director presentation to the SFWMD Governing Board, the most recent posted being August 2026 (SFWMD). For park conditions, Everglades National Park lists its mailing address as 40001 State Road 9336, Homestead, and its phone as 305-242-7700 (NPS).

Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District, South Florida Water Management District and National Park Service websites.