If you’ve been to Disney World in Orlando, you’ve been to the Northern Everglades. Much of the water within the famous “river of grass” originates in Central Florida and flows south via the Kissimmee River—one of the more important and lesser-known waterways nationwide.        ___26___ Besides, its floodplains were home to seasonal wetlands rich with life. But in the 1940s, in response to flooding and hurricanes, the state asked the federal government to help build a sprawling network of canals and waterways to drain the land.        The Army Corps of Engineers complied and, beginning in the 1960s, turned the meandering Kissimmee into a 30-foot-deep, channelized canal. Within a few years, populations of waterfowl dropped by 90 percent, bald eagle numbers by 70 percent, and some fish, bird, and mammal species vanished. ___27___ While that helped prevent some flooding in the short term, it robbed the stream of oxygen, which decimated the fish community and gave nutrient pollution no time to settle and be absorbed by the wetlands.        The disrupted hydrology and ecological problems were so glaring that, beginning in the 1990s, the Army Corps and a variety of state, federal, and local partners cooperated to undo the damage. ___28___ Forty square miles of wetlands have been reestablished and rehydrated.        Already the biological impact of the project has become clear. ___29___ “That response was immediate and pretty impressive,” says Lawrence Glenn, director of water resources with the South Florida Water Management District.        In all, nearly half of the river has been restored to its original state. The project involved filling in 22 miles of the canal, re-carving sections of the old river, and restoring 44 miles of the waterway’s natural meandering paths, according to the Army Corps.        ___30___ Locals had been against it from the beginning, explains Monrad Chandler, a longtime resident of the area, because “a lot of people used to make a living on the river.”        But now, those birds are coming back—and the restored section looks essentially the way it used to, Chandler says, fondly recalling hunting and fishing on the river as a youngster.
【題組】26.(AB)More than 20 years later, at a cost of over $1 billion, the physical restoration of the river is now complete.(AC) The designation entails special protections and future funding for conservation work.(AD) Sixty years ago, the Kissimmee meandered for more than 100 miles from the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes to Lake Okeechobee.(AE)As the wetlands have come back, so have the birds.(BC) When the channelization was completed in the 1970s, everybody realized it was a mistake.(BD) The channel acted like a pipe, moving water quickly off the landscape to Lake Okeechobee, and then to the ocean.