U.S. Department of the Interior
US Geological Survey
WRI 77-61

The Faka Union Canal System, constructed in the western Big Cypress Swamp in the early 1970's, lies about 3.5 miles west of the centerline of the Fakahatchee Strand, a forested water course which the State of Florida has designated as an Area of Critical State Concern in order to conserve natural resources. Between 1970 and 1975 the canal system annually discharged to the Gulf of Mexico from 143,200 to 275,600 acre-feet of freshwater. Discharge lowered ground-water levels as much as 4 feet near the eastern canal and created a water-level gradient that indicates water flowed from the Fakahatchee Strand west toward the canal during most of the year. In June 1975, water from early summer rains was impounded in the eastern canal upstream of the control structure at Janes Scenic Drive, and, as water levels rose in this reach, water flowed from the canal into the aquifer and around the control structure.

The annual low-water level in the center of the Fakahatchee Strand declined from nearly 3 feet above mean sea level in 1972 to 1 foot above mean sea level in 1974.

(The entire report is available below)

Information about on-line reading and printing of historic documents

These reports and documents have been scanned from the original hard-copy materials and are made available on the internet in both HTML and PDF formats. Because these are scanned documents, we are unable to provide fully-accessible versions of these reports. If you cannot fully access the information in these documents, please contact Heather S. Henkel at hhenkel@usgs.gov.

The HTML versions of these documents have been created to provide the information in a format that is quickly and easily readable over the Internet. Selective pages and images can be printed from this HTML version by placing the cursor inside the right-hand frame and selecting the print option from the browser. The PDF version of the reports are also provided, and are the recommended format to use for the best printer format and resolution.

Please note - some PDF files are very large (over 2 MB) and may take some time to download, depending on your system.

View the HTML version of the report (downloads faster for on-line reading)

View the PDF version of this report (885 kb) (best for printing)