Space Age Destruction of Everglades Ecology
I saw a rocket the other night. How exciting! But at what cost? Read about Aerojet, an abandoned rocket facility which wreaked havoc on the Everglades in the 1960s and beyond...
Little is said about the connection between The Space Race and the mutilation of Florida’s ecology, though J.G. Ballard might have had some idea. In his 1968 short story The Dead Astronaut, Ballard speculated how the ruins of Florida’s Kennedy space center might have appeared in the future. Ballard wrote, “Cape Kennedy has gone now, its gantries rising from the deserted dunes. Sand has come in across the Banana River, filling the creeks and turning the old space complex into a wilderness of swamps and broken concrete.” In his vision, the ruins of the space industrial complex intermingled with a dusty, broken-down shell of an environment. Reading his depiction, it’d be hard to imagine that the setting of The Dead Astronaut—along the Banana River near Cape Canaveral—was once a verdant coastal mangrove wetland.
Outside of the world of speculative fiction, we can, in fact, draw a literal line between The Space Race and ecological destruction in South Florida too: it’s called the Aerojet Canal. In 1962, the canal’s eponymous company purchased 74,000 acres of swampland east of Everglades National Park’s Royal Palm Visitor’s Center and set about engineering a facility for the construction (primarily) of the SL-260, an experimental solid rocket motor which would be the largest in the world. These rockets would send astronauts to the moon.
Big whoop.
The only thing bright about Aerojet’s future in the Everglades would be the test firings. There were three of them throughout the 1960s. The firings were so explosive, folks throughout the City of Miami reported seeing them. The firings propelled toxic fuels into the air, not only toxifying the surrounding swamp but also ruining the paint jobs on a couple of area cars.
After three test firings, and no success in getting a NASA contract, Aerojet suddenly abandoned the facility.
The remains of this Space Age dream include:
The Aerojet Canal. A nine-miles long, fifteen feet deep, and in some places two hundred feet wide waterway snaking from near Everglades National Park all the way out to Manatee Bay and Biscayne Bay beyond.
The ruins of the research and production facility, which include a 100+ feet deep silo for rocket and fuel storage. Until around 2011, you could climb down into the silo and even grab a couple of solid fuel cells. Either the SFWMD or FWC got wise though, realizing the danger of having one of the deepest holes of Florida in such a remote location, and plugged it up.
The canal, also known as the C-111, has been terrible for the environment. Since it’s construction, it’s simultaneously diverted much needed fresh water from the River of Grass and inundated surrounded agricultural concerns. When the SFWMD unplugs the now-damed canal, the amount of fresh water entering the bay disrupts salinity levels, leading to seagrass kills, fish kills, and thus manatee death… in Manatee Bay no less.
The canal, in its abandonment and bad energy, has also been a go-to spot for folks looking to kill somebody or get rid of a body.
Today, the facility is an urban explorer’s fantasyland. Accessible by bike or foot from Aerojet Road the Ingraham Highway, in a landscaped which has captured the imaginations of so many for so long, it invites visitors to think about Miami’s place in the destructive and strange burgeoning capitalism of the 1960s.
Videos like this one can be found by the dozens on YouTube.
Elon Musk will tell us that we need space travel so that we are always striving towards something bigger than ourselves but the scars left by Aerojet’s forays into the sensitive ecosystems of South Florida tell another story — that perhaps the thing that is bigger than us is that which is already so close and inviting.
I saw a rocket the other night on my way out of O, Miami’s Bermuda Triangle Party. Everybody there, already in a supernatural mindset, was first confused by the streaking object in the sky. Could it have been visitor’s from another world? Immediately recognizing the object as a SpaceX rocket, I told them, and the disappointment was palpable.
Big whoop.