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mhm? Uh huh. Mhm. Oh, yeah. Mhm. Mhm two. Yeah, yeah! Mhm. Hi, I'm Senator Lawton Child's, and I'd like to welcome you to the Lawton Child's update. Today we're going to look at a major Florida waterway, the semi river, and we'll see how the rivers changed in the last 20 years after an experiment the experts call channel ization.

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But I first I want to talk to you about a dilemma facing America. The plight of the homeless. The country has been through eight years of a Great Depression when Franklin Roosevelt was sworn into office for the second time on January 20th, 1937. In his address, Roosevelt said, I see one third of a nation ill housed, ill clad and ill nourished.

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Unemployment was at record levels. People have lost their savings. Many had lost their homes. That was 50 years ago. But today, even with all of our wealth, many Americans are homeless again. The United States Conference of Mayors reports that even though the number of shelters is increasing, it isn't enough to keep up with the demand.

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Yes, it's clear there are more and more homeless people, but while we can't be sure about the actual number. We began to find out more and more about the people themselves. In the city's, about 40% of the homeless or single women and one third are families with Children.

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Incredibly, in New York City, 76% of the homeless or families with Children there is no easy answer as to why there are so many homeless, a lot of mentally ill. Many are on the streets because of the lack of affordable housing. Most are broke, others just don't have enough to get by.

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And some of the victims of domestic violence a sizable number, have serious fiscal problems, like pneumonia and tuberculosis. For many years, the homeless have been helped by private charitable groups like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and churches. Well, can you have defending? At the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen in Washington, D.

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C. More than 200 people get a meal each day. Salvation Army officials say this represents only the needy people living within a 10 block radius of the soup kitchen. Lieutenant Morgan Leister works at the center. He said the need is growing. Probably the most frustrating thing is the constant need that we see the need that never goes away, and it's constantly growing, and it's a need that we just can't seem to find a way two combat.

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It's a need that no matter what we're doing, whether we're feeding 203 104 100 people a day, were just touching the tip of the iceberg, so to speak were a stopgap measure. There are people that are still out on the streets that are hungry, and we can't do any more.

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Funding, of course, is one of the problems that we face on a day to day basis. Our Christmas kettles are a big part of our funding United Way money as part of our funding public funds that we get from donations. These are all part of it, and it's a frustrating thing when we see the need is so great and sometimes our resources are so limited.

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Lieutenant Leister wants to make more people aware of the homeless problem. One of the things we've always said is that if people got more involved, if they saw some program firsthand, that they would have a better knowledge of what's going on across the country, one of the things we would encourage to be for people to get involved in a soup kitchen program somewhere to get involved in a shelter program somewhere two get out and get involved in some program is helping the homeless, so they have a real idea what it's all about, What, what is going on out on the street?

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And I think once the public has a real knowledge of what and how big the problem is, how massive it is growing on a day to day basis, I think the public will be more willing to help us to alleviate it. And in some small manner, many private organizations have been overwhelmed.

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Citizen counties are now stepping up their efforts to help out with shelter and financial aid. The federal government, for the most part, wasn't involved in the solution until last year, when $50 million already appropriated for disaster relief was set aside to help the homeless. Congress also approved $327 million to expand emergency shelter and housing program.

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Still, more funds will be earmarked to help the mentally and physically ill and to establish alcohol and drug abuse programs. Some will say Washington's added again spending money without knowing the full scope of the problem we'll face with an issue too large for local governments and private charities to handle.

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Washington had to act. We've had to help. And it's not just people sleeping on grates and sub zero weather we're talking about. When we return. We look at the homeless situation in Florida. Yes. Mhm. Okay. Hello? Yeah. Where? On Union Street. Okay. Soon as I can.

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Right. And on my way. David. Yeah. The voice calls up to you on a call and only night. Where's Daddy? Going with confidence. Everything's gonna be Yeah. Bye. Take care of mhm when you're in the dark Mm me When the struggle gets too hot let me find your fire You through what I do But yeah, yeah, but I want to be very, very here.

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I need a rescue 15 right away Give me that chop around the devil America Let me dry your tears A man Stop your feet. I'm hold your hand. I understand. Mhm. Thank you. That's what I do. I'm here for you. Mhm. Yeah. Thank you. I'll pull you through every day.

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Someone needs us and we need you, David. You really are a good guy. The Red Cross volunteer. Florida has a sizable homeless population. On any given night, as many as 10,000 people sleep on our streets. Many of these people are families. Some are mothers with Children.

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A lot of them have moved to Florida from the north searching for jobs only to come up short. In Orlando, for example, hundreds of people spend their nights on the street. The First United Methodist Church of Orlando, located in the downtown area, has been providing an overnight shelter for many of them.

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Charles Stopford is the church administrator. It all started back in winter of 1985 when we began to notice a increase in homeless people around our church grounds, and they were sleeping in our courtyard. As many as 100 people were sleeping in the courtyard, and that began us on a long study of this problem of homelessness in Orlando, and through the process of study, we began to learn who these people were, what some of their problems were.

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Then we began to address it as a church. What should we do as a church? Should we get them off our grounds. Tell them to go away. Should we try to provide some services to them or what have you? And over a long process of study and trying to come to grips with this as an aspect of our responsibility to the community, we decided that what we needed to do was to open the shelter.

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Nobody else was doing it. There were people out in the cold, and we had a building that was not used at night. Let's bring them in, and that's what we did. First. Methodist invited other churches in the area to get involved. Philip Stopford committee oversaw the creation of the shelter.

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We sent letters, I think, around 300 churches and ask for their support of their prayers and encourage them also to do the same. We had a good response, and we churches begin signing up to help us as volunteer teams to help provide food and other things that we needed.

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We now have, I think, somewhere around 30 churches and groups that participate, uh, the Congregation of Liberal Judaism, several Protestant Catholic churches. We also have an ecumenical group that comes and we also have a secular uh office group that works General Telephone United Telephone Works With us.

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They all, uh, provide the food. Uh, usually they prepare it at their own church facility. They have a group of workers there that do that, and then the volunteers that work with the program bring that food over sandwiches, soup, fruit. Uh, usually it's what they bring.

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Andrea Bruno is the shelter coordinator, she said. There's no typical homeless person in Orlando. Well, expands the age ran of elderly who don't have families to take care of them and whose Social Security is insufficient for them to live on their own. To young mothers, single mothers with young Children whose assistance or whose lack of ability to get a job and afford childcare at the same time have caused them to be evicted.

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There is a single woman and single young men who lack real good job skills and who are just kind of surviving day to day. And then there's the middle aged folk who at some time had a very stable life, have been long term residents of Orlando, and something in their life had gone wrong, whether divorce or some other traumatic experience, and they just haven't gotten on their feet and have gotten into severe depressions and into a day to day cycle as well.

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Andrea described an average night at the shelter. First Methodist opens its doors at 9 p.m. At night for 50 people to be sheltered through the night till six in the morning. People come as early as five and line up here. Across the street, women and Children are given priority and fathers of the family.

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And then after that, single men are admitted. For however, many slots are left until there are 50 um, a different group. Their civic organizations. Churches. Um, okay, individuals who come each night and commit to a night a month and bring food and volunteers. We serve dinner inside, and then we have a very kind of quick, just social eating time.

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A smoke break and the lights are out of 10. People are very, very anxious to sleep, since Wake up is at five and everyone's out at six. Volunteers prepare both dinner and breakfast. They also helped sort donated clothes that are offered to the needy. Charles Stopford believes that what's being done at the church is just the beginning he's seen a dramatic change in the way people view the homeless problem.

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At first there was a tendency to identify this as a as a church program. That was not our intent. Our intent was something greater. We had a We had a specific goal in mind when we started this not just to care for the needs of the homeless, although that was quite important.

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But we felt that there was a need in the city, in the community for a shelter. There was a need to bring the consciousness of this community up to where it belonged to look at homelessness as a problem in the midst, something it wasn't going to go away.

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And at the very beginning, we've got a tremendous amount of resistance in this program, from from the city from officials. But over the span of time that we've been working on this program, what we have seen happen has been a complete turnaround in this city towards this problem of homelessness, not only a turnaround, but what has occurred is that the city has now come to us and said, We have property.

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We know that there's a need for a shelter we want to provide the property on which that shelter can be built. This church was played an integral part in the establishing of a city wide coalition of secular as well as, uh, interfaith groups. And that coalition has taken off, if you will, and it has worked with the city.

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The land has been acquired. We have an architect, the building is being designed, and within a couple of years we'll have a 300 bed shelter, and I believe that the reason we'll have that shelter is because the community sees the need that's here. We helped, I think, to focus in on that need and and if we've done nothing else, we're pleased that that that's been successful, that the community has come together.

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And that's a rare thing. I think, in the American scene, to see a community come together. It really has been a dramatic thing. In Orlando. The new shelter will be operated by coalition dedicated to helping the homeless. Uh, it will be, uh, as I said, 300 beds.

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It will be not operated by the city not funded by the city, but it will be operated by this coalition this interfaith, secular, religious community coalition of people who are interested in meeting this need. There's already been some significant contributions. The building itself, as I understand it, will be somewhere around $3 million.

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And I think there's been about 600 to $700,000 already donated without even asking for it, as well as a number of contractors who are very anxious to be part of the in kind giving and and it's it's kind of dramatic to see all that come together.

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The people of the First Methodist Church in the city of Orlando are doing great things. They prove that concerned citizens can work with local governments to solve a problem. This month, the church will move its shelter in the old Trailways bus terminal. This building is centrally located and will provide more bed space and services.

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A 300 bed shelter is also on the drawing board. Land for this new facility was donated by the city of Orlando and will be located near Interstate four. You can help at the center by contacting the first United Methodist Church of Orlando or the mayor's office.

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When we return, we'll take a look at the Kissimmee River. Okay, Okay. Yeah. Clint Eastwood is a little upset. Seems some misguided individuals out there are abusing our public lands. And I don't like it. And I don't think you do either. Vandalising parks and robbing historic sites are overrunning wild areas.

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Those are ours, and we have to save them. As I see it, these clowns gonna either clean up their act or get out of town. Right? Take pride in America Post Office box 1339 Jessup, Maryland two Oh, 794 I saw that there was an image behind drinking with people that drank that they looked older and sophisticated.

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I was 11. I lost my virginity. So the guy was 17 and I was drunk. Sometimes I sleep in the woods. If I didn't sleep in the woods, I slept on the corner. If I didn't sleep on the corner, I slept. Someone task so I don't even know.

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Your alcohol is a drug, and you can get hooked on it. And the younger you start, the more damage you can do. If you want to be somebody, have a family, have a future. Just say no. Say no and say yes to your life. Welcome back.

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The chain of lakes connected by the Kissimmee River is host to some of the best bass fishing in the world. It's also a key element in Florida's flood control program. Back in 1954 Congress authorized the channel ization, or the straightening of the river. It reduced the consent Me River from a meandering 99 mile long waterway 2 50 miles.

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The idea was to provide flood control, stabilize water levels and expand recreation. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the new channel in 1961 and completed the project 10 years later. Many experts now believe channel ization severely damaged the ecology of the Kissimmee River and its surrounding areas.

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The wetland habitat was reduced by 75%. The marshlands declined from more than 40,000 acres to only 8000 acres. The ball eagles so it's nesting area, dropped by nearly 75% and waterfowl populations have been significantly reduced downstream and Lake Okeechobee things are getting worse. Every year. The Qasimi dumps thousands of tons of nitrogen and phosphorus into the lake.

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These chemicals accelerate the aging process and endanger the lakes oxygen content. That's why in 1984 of the South Florida Water Management District took preliminary steps to restore a portion of the Old River run. Kendall often is the assistant director of the district's water resources division. There was a series of extensive flooding from hurricanes all through the twenties and thirties and forties, which led to a big flood control movement in South Florida.

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Uh, that movement was initiated in the late forties and all through the fifties. The Kissimmee River Channel Ization project was initiated and study in the mid fifties. They began construction in the early sixties, finished the construction in 1971. The movement to restore the Kissimmee River was more grassroots movement that elevated itself to, uh, state recognition.

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In the mid seventies, there were several, uh, commissions or study committees that looked at the different options to restore the river and what the problems were. There has been a Corps of Engineers restudy that took place between 1978 1985 to evaluate what could be done in the Qasemi River Valley to restore some of the lost environmental values and still maintain some of the flood control that was originally installed with the project.

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A series of six dams divide up the river. Each dam is manned by lock tender who opens and closes the gates to river traffic. This is, uh, structure s 65 A. It's one of the six spillway and lock structures on the canal. The lock tenders live on site.

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They operate the spillways and also the navigation locks. They operate a hydraulic system that opens the gates on command by voters, and the head difference is 6 ft. That's the elevation or the distance. The boat will drop as we lock through. When the boat arrives to the lock will signal the lock tender through, pulling a cord that sounds a whistle lock tender, maybe at his house or at the spillway.

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And then he'll either bike over or walk over to the lock facility, where he can actually open and close the gates. When the gates are closed on the lock chamber, the lower gate will be opened slightly, which will start releasing the water in the lock chamber, and the water level here will fall about 6 ft.

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It's a good thing not to tie the boat to these ropes when you're in the lock chamber because suddenly, as the water level drops, rope will get tight and cause a lot of problems for the boater. The water management district began a demonstration project to divert the flow of water into the original river bends or ox bows and the floodplain marshes.

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The experiment uses weirs or small dams and beams and culverts to direct the flow of water. Lotof is an environmental biologist with the water management District. He explained. The use of the sheet pile were this sheet pile were is intended to divert water back into the Old River channel.

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Um, the purpose of that is for us to determine what affects the diversion of water will have on the Biota of the old River run. Our our main intention, I guess, is to to see if we can be successful in restoring some of the ecological integrity to to the riverine ecosystem.

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One key component of that is the restoration of flow through the River channel. By forcing the water flow into the old river, biologists were able to monitor the changes in the bottom of the original bed. They hope the current would flush out the organic muck that had built up on the bottom and would clear up the oxbow.

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Liu explained what they've learned so far in the demonstration. Prior to any restoration of flow, the old River channel was choked with floating vegetation. The bottom consisted of large accumulations of organic matter. Um, the invertebrate and fish communities were typical of degraded habitat conditions and also typical of conditions with low dissolved oxygen levels.

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And with the restoration of flow, we have been successful in flushing out those large accumulations of organic material on the bottom surface. We've also kept the the river runs free of floating vegetation and thereby improving navigation through the runs. Biologically, we have seen shifts in the invertebrate, the bottom invertebrate community, to a community that is representative of a natural sand bottom substrate.

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From a fisheries perspective, we have seen improvements and game fish populations. However, these seem to be large. These improvements seem to be largely tied into the maintenance of continuous flow through the old river runs. During extended periods of no flow, the fish tend to migrate out of the old river runs and back into the canal itself.

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So I think what that has told us is that a real key component of our future restoration strategy needs to be to maintain at least some semblance of a continuous base flow through the old river runs. There's a lot to be gained from restoring the Qasimi.

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The river swamps and marshes play a key role in recharging the aquifer, the main source of fresh water for Florida. Wetland areas filter out pollutants from the slow moving water. These lands also provides storage areas where flood water and run off can be diverted. The demonstration project will re establish some of the wetlands and give us more information on the role they play in the ecology of the area.

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Luke pointed out the differences between the Old River Oxbow and a restored one. This what you're looking at now is typical of Old River runs the Old River Qasimi, old Kissimmee River prior to any of our restoration activities. Basically, you see the encroachment by aquatic vegetation and the bottom substrate in in this particular stretch would have large accumulations of organic material that results from the continuous dieback of aquatic vegetation.

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This is a section of the Old River which has received restored flow since about 1984 the end of 1984. The conditions here are very much in contrast to the conditions and the old section of river, which we just passed, and that you see the the channel is virtually clear of any encroachment of aquatic vegetation.

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There still is, however, a very well developed littoral zone. The bottom has been flushed out, have dissolved oxygen conditions are generally favorable for the development of a natural invertebrate and fish community. At least during periods when we have flow through here, the district is conducted a high water test of its own.

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Gates were open to flood the area at levels seen during major storms. The four day test was successful. The river floodplain areas were able to handle the water and the were submerged by the high water held their ground. The Water management district is now proceeding to phase two of the rivers restoration.

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The plan calls for restoring full flow to another 15 miles of the original river. The district is working hard to improve the entire environmental value of the Qasemi River Valley when both its projects are complete. 27 miles of the old Qasemi River will be restored to their original bed.

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Well, that's all we have time for today. I hope you'll join me for another edition of the Lawton Child's update. What? Uh huh. Mhm. Yeah. Mm. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Do you do? Yeah. Mm. Two. You? Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Mhm. The Lawton Child's update takes a look at a growing dilemma facing America, the problem of the homeless.

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And we'll also see how Channel ization has offered the floor of the semi river. I'm Lauren Child's. I hope you'll join me.