Crist's Daring Everglades Rescue
Hailed as a «Nixon went to China» moment, Florida's Governor Charlie Crist stood up to Big Sugar and didn't blink.
The idea offered an end to a three-decade war over the future of the Florida Everglades, a dispute that had seen environmentalists and four governors and regulators frustrated at every turn by the company they called Big Sugar.
And last week, after seven months of top-secret huddles between the state and company officials, Crist's idea became a formal proposal: $1.75 billion to buy U.S. Sugar «lock, stock and barrel.»
If finalized by November, the state will take over U.S. Sugar's 187,000 acres of land, its sugar mill, railroad and citrus-processing facilities. Within six years, Big Sugar will be gone.
And the rich, black muck farmland that has grown cane since the 1930s will be used to re-create natural water flows between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.
The Economist also highlights Crist's coup as an example for Kenya, which is just starting down the road Florida is ending now.
The wetlands that Florida plans to preserve will not only provide a natural buffer against hurricanes, they will also help provide fresh water to Florida's growing population. It will also act as a natural filtering system, eliminating the need to pump contaminated agricultural runoff into the Everglades' Lake Okeechobee.
Today, the South Florida Water Management District approved the plan, but not without some concern for local employment.
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