At 11:37 AM 4/14/03 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:

Some people say that the draining of the marshes has messed up the water table in the south (like the ecological disasters in old Soviet Central Asia, though on a much smaller scale - no doubt similar boo-boos were made in the US, also on a much smaller scale,

Ask a Floridian about the Everglades some time. A few thou died in a hurricane early last century, so the Army Corps of Engineers channelized the marshes. Cut the glades down to about a quarter. It was just swamp then, not a natural treasure. Not quite the toxic dust bowl that the Russkies made, but it did happen here.