Ken Ammon ’75 and Tommy Strowd ’76 oversee implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (known as CERP), an $8 billion program authorized by Congress in 2000. As executives at the South Florida Water Management District, the lead Florida agency in the state-federal CERP partnership, Ammon, a deputy executive director, and Strowd, assistant deputy, direct the work of more than 400 engineers, hydrologists, land use planners and biologists—as well as dozens of contracted firms—in this monumental restoration effort.

And monumental it is. Everglades wetlands once covered most of South Florida, with seasonal rains flooding thousands of square miles with barely a foot of water. Then less than a century ago, regional drainage canals turned what was viewed as “useless swampland” into usable real estate. Add to that the improved access by railroad and highway, the invention of air conditioning and affordable automobiles plus a thirst for economic growth, and you soon have 8 million people living and working in what was once a virtually uninhabited part of the United States. continued