By Amy Green
NPR
It sounds almost superhuman to try straighten a river and then recarve the curves.
That's
what federal and state officials did to the Kissimmee River in Central
Florida. They straightened the river in the 1960s into a canal to drain
swampland and make way for the state's explosive growth. It worked — and
it created an ecological disaster. So officials decided to restore the
river's slow-flowing, meandering path.
That billion-dollar
restoration — the world's largest — is a few years from completion. And
so far, it's bringing signs of new life, especially on a man-made canal
that was dug through the heart of the river. Listen here.
