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Florida Moves to Restore Wetlands
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jun 25, 2008 09:16am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Wednesday, June 25, 2008 03:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Sugar Corp. Purchase Would Aid Everglades
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; Page A01
In an ambitious maneuver to help restore the Everglades, the state of Florida has struck a tentative deal to buy U.S. Sugar Corp. for $1.75 billion and turn many of its 187,000 acres of farmland into reservoirs.
The plan, described by Gov. Charlie Crist as the largest conservation purchase in Florida's history, envisions restoring some of the natural flow of water to the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee.
Crist, who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, made the announcement Tuesday after months of secret negotiations with the sugar company. He called the purchase "as monumental" as the founding of Yellowstone National Park. The patchwork of farmland totals 292 square miles, about equal to the land area of New York City's five boroughs.
The surprise effort is aimed at halting the degradation of the Everglades, which at 1.5 million acres is the third-largest national park in the lower 48 states, behind Death Valley and Yellowstone. Over the years, water from areas north of the massive marsh has been diverted to the fast-growing cities of South Florida and for agriculture, and pollutants from sewage and farming have flowed in.
Restoration has been a state and federal priority for years and is the goal of a troubled $11 billion program that, until now, had envisioned the construction of hundreds of high-tech wells and huge aquifers in an elaborate re-engineering of South Florida's hydrology. Critics have called the plan impractical and say it has little relationship to the pre-development ecosystem. The project has fallen behind schedule since it was approved eight years ago. |
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