Monday, federal officials broke ground on a $10.2 million, two-year project to create a lake the size of Lake Washington in this hinterland.

The Three Forks Marsh Conservation area is the capstone to one of the largest environmental restorations in the world -- the $250 million St. Johns River's Upper Basin project. The aim is to restore the headwaters of the St. Johns River as close as possible to the way they were before farmers began draining them in the early 1900s.

"I'm told it will be the best bass fishing in the United States," U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Indialantic, told about 40 people at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Three Forks Marsh Conservation Area.

"No guarantees. . ." he added.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for draining the area decades ago for crops to feed World War II troops, is paying to restore the waters.

Officials promise that the nearly 22-square-mile marsh restoration will help to absorb hurricane flooding in Palm Bay, act as a kidney to store and cleanse drinking water supplies for Melbourne, Cocoa and several other cities to the north, and keep farm fertilizers and excess fresh water from Indian River Lagoon.

The corps hired Herve Cody Contractor of Robbinsville, N.C., to complete the system of new canals and levees that will bring water to the long-awaited Thomas
O. Lawton Recreation Area.

The federal government had initially planned to finish the project by 1998. Dignitaries gathered under a pavilion there that year to honor Thomas Lawton, naming the site after him. The Indialantic man had helped raise awareness about drainage activities destroying the St. Johns.

But when more farmland became available to expand the restoration, the corps had to redesign the project and further study environmental impacts. Then came federal funding shortages because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as hurricane disaster response, which led to more delays.

In the 1930s and 1940s, farmers drained the river's 2,000-square-mile upper basin, channeling much of it into the Indian River Lagoon.

But one consequence was a freshwater influx that diluted the lagoon's salt content, killing seagrass and triggering excess algae and more frequent fish kills. So in 1988, the district began work on the Upper Basin project, building levees and plugging canals to mimic the river's pre-farm flow and steer the fresh water west.

Engineers and conservationist alike consider the work a success and a model for the much larger Everglades restoration.

"The project definitely shows that it's feasible to restore wetlands on a large scale," said Ed Lowe, director of the district's Division of Environmental Sciences.

The reflooding of the marsh could release phosphorus, nitrogen and pesticides that have been locked in the soils over decades of farming, officials said. But in the long run, the project will help to filter out such nutrients before they can reach downstream drinking water supplies to the north.

"The pesticide concentrations were not very high," Lowe said of samples the district has analyzed.

The last installment to the upper basin project marks a major victory for local river advocates, bass fishermen and duck hunters.

"We know this will always be preserved," said Leroy Wright, a bass fisherman from Cocoa, motioning to the dry marshes behind him. Wright, president of SAVE St. Johns River Inc., pushed government officials for years to finish the project.

Hunters initially had mixed feelings because the corps planned to create Thomas O. Lawton Lake by temporarily draining a nearby marsh known as Mary A.

Hunters worried that would destroy the marsh. They've watched other areas left drained too long clog with willows and cattails, forcing ducks out. After hunters dogged the corps, however, the federal agency agreed to spare the marsh and any ducks along the project's fringes.

Government officials and river advocates say the restoration project is meeting its goal of mimicking the St. Johns' natural flow. Although, they concede, the river can never quite be what it once was.

Maurice Sterling, the water management district's long-time leader on the Upper Basin project, likened the St. Johns to a shattered mirror.

"You can piece the pieces back but you can still see the cracks," he said.

Contact Waymer at 242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com.