This story is set in a fictional world, a counterfactual reality imagined through a detailed study of Florida’s landscape and culture. It began in the 1980s when the buyout of lands from the sugar industry marked the start of efforts to clean the waters contaminated by agricultural runoff. In this alternate history, the ambitious “Sheet Flow Canal” project is successfully approved—a wetland restoration initiative designed to reconnect Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. While this long-desired project promises ecological benefits, it also brings significant changes and challenges to the people living on these lands and the landscape itself.
Writing and storyboarding: Keith Scheideler, Gunay Mammadova
Graphic artists: Gunay Mammadova (Chapter 1) Keith Scheideler (Chapter 2)
Design Studio Instructor: Sean Burkholder
Chapter 1:
The Pond apple returns to the sweetest town in America
Water management District office
The sheet flow canal project has been approved. We have a 10-year deadline to finish the new levies and demolish the lip.
US Sugar company Head office
We have 100s guest workers living in South Bay. What should we do about them?
Enviromentalist Lobby
The water quality concern had to be addressed. We should celebrate this with an event!
We failed to project. We the town of
Cancel their them go. We end here anyways..
How is next Friday?
lobby against the have to abandon South Bay.
contracts and let We are at the losing anyways..
Sheet Flow Restoration Plan: In 1994 Army Corp of Engineers’ plan to restore Everglade’s natural sheet flow was approved.
sheet flow buy out zone
the lip
sugar cane
Friday?
In the 1940s as sugar grew in Florida, the industry began looking for cheaper labor to cut the sugar cane in the Caribbean. The attention of thousands of guest workers as recruiters came to collect workers who wanted to seek better lives in the USA.
However, the living conditions did not match their expectations. Work was hard, pay was too low and the housing was in grim condition. The terms of their contracts did not allow them to work in any other place but the sugar company in the US.
Water was let down and the fields were flooded with abundant waters of Lake Okeechobee. The landscape was still and quiet despite all the changes, flowing at its own speed.
Some of the guest workers stuck around in the sheet flow zone, looking for ways to make a living in the abundant wetland.
South Bay
Sugar fields kept growing along the edge of the new levy.
Something interesting happened after the release of the water.
The sediment that had been accumulating at the bottom of the Lake got started to appear at the lip.
The lip was covered with sediment (muck). As water moved the sediment moved.
As muck got built up, the water slowed down. The abandoned South Bay became the muck town.
This occurrence was not a surprise for people who knew about the pond apple forest that used to be there at the lip before the construction of the ‘sweet’ towns. An elongated mound of Pond apple trees along the south edge of the lake did the same, slowing down the water flow.
In no time the muck became a currency. The material had its own value.
The guest workers found out that the muck had nutritional value for agriculture. They started to make a living by harvesting and selling this material.
The environmentalists were unhappy about the muck being removed and deployed the ‘Pond Apple Restoration’ project at the lip to protect the muck and slow the sheet flow.
The project caused two fronts with an ongoing friction grew between South Bay workers and Restoration efforts.
Chapter 2:
Reep What Has Been Sown
It happened again, Some vandals came in and destroyed our restoration site, theres holes and tire tracks everywhere...
The only living thing here is some Moon Flower Vines, they must’ve brought them in from whatever dump they came from
Who would willingly destroy a restoration project?
Do they take delight destroying our work?
My name is Parker
All I want to do is bring back the Pond Apple Forest
Okeechobee has suffered enough environmental degradation. I just want to help keep it healthy
I heard some of the former workers were coming in here
We need to slow the water leaving Okeechobee
Per our grant we need to keep water at 16 feet of Elevation, Okeechobee needs more water
The Pond Apple can form the a natural ridge
We can bring back species and stop phosphorus from entering the Everglades
More water means no more dry season shortages
Which means farming can co-exist with the environment
My name is Maetra
Ever since it’s completetion my Dad and I have been living in The South Okeechobee Sheet Flow Canal
We used to live in South Bay, but when the construction began we lost everything. Although I was born here he was reliant on an H2-A Visa. With sugar work going away living here is our best option
We live by the muck now...
After a storm a group of us goes to clear the waterways
to one of sugar’s old factories
If the water isn’t flowing it gets too dry for us to move around down-flow
We take the muck for ourselves after, for both farming and selling
Then we load up what we need and head home
The Sugar Industry wanted to preserve this factory for future tours......but after the Recession the work never continued
We have food. We have Shelter
Since the factory was forgotten, we moved in...A lot of our family back in the Caribbean had built our own homes before
We get anything else we need by selling our muck
Collecting the Muck keeps the water flowing down
It’s easy for us to move around in water
It’s much harder for everyone else to find us in this slough
We store the muck in compost lines in the water to prevent it from over-drying
We found a good market in Miami’s organic farmers, since Phosphorus rich Okeechobee Muck technically passes an organic fertilizer certification
...So the State of Florida finally passed the Historic Designation on our Factory? Finally! now those snobby city politicians will finally know that sugar built this Great State. I want this project done ASAP, I don’t care what druggy artists have done to that building I want them gone and I want my museum.
Don’t these people know we can’t just break the law! Vandalism is a crime! destroying the environment is a crime! I made sure the officer’s knew how dangerous these aliens are!
