With efforts to reduce pollution flowing into the Everglades still falling short, regional water managers today will propose building a bigger, better cleaning system.

The South Florida Water Management District will consider expanding a 41,000-acre system of treatment marshes by nearly 50 percent, an increase engineers hope will cut levels of farm and urban pollution to a super-low state standard that takes effect in December 2006.

Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe, which have engaged in a long-running legal battle with the state and district over pollution they say is creeping across the Everglades, hailed the proposal as a major step forward. They had been urging it for years.

"It would be great for the Everglades if they actually do it," said Joette Lorion, a spokeswoman for the tribe, which has argued the state is falling behind on meeting court-ordered cleanup deadlines.

`REMEDY HEARING'

Last month, U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno ordered a "remedy hearing" for December after listening to tribe allegations that the state was allowing polluted water to enter the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.

Nicolás Gutiérrez, chairman of the water district's governing board, said Tuesday that the expansion talk was in the works long before the judge's ruling.

"We've always contemplated a phase two," he said. "This is not something that is done in response to this new pressure."

The proposal, if approved by the district's governing board, would not formally approve construction, Gutiérrez said. But it would make more marshes a formal part of the district's cleanup plan.

The current schedule, which the district admits is "optimistic," calls for one new 4,500-acre marsh built by December 2006 and another 13,800 acres at some later point -- most of them on state-owned land recently vacated by the sugar industry. The estimated construction cost: $200 million, adding to a state cleanup bill already projected to top $1 billion.

The district's treatment marshes are designed to filter the nutrient phosphorus, a fertilizer ingredient that can kill off the natural plant life of the Everglades at anything above barely measurable levels. As the water slowly flows through the marsh, plants and algae absorb the pollution, knocking concentration levels down.

DEFENDS EFFORTS

The district, with help from the sugar industry cutting its use of phosphorus, has defended its efforts and made considerable strides in reducing pollution levels over the past decade. But none of the marshes have consistently reached the state's legal standard of 10 parts per billion, with the best hovering at 12 to 16 ppb.

Environmentalists have long backed bigger treatment areas, saying pollution threatened to undermine the $8 billion state-federal effort to restore the Everglades.

Charles Lee, a vice president of Audubon of Florida, said that while expansion talk was brewing before Moreno's ruling, the judge's call for another hearing certainly "added to the mix."

While the new marshes would go online after the state deadline, the long-term benefits are still considerable, Lee said.

"It's a big step in the right direction," he said. "We plan to commend the district pretty strongly."