Today $194,234,087.08 will be electronically transferred from
the South Florida Water Management District to the U.S. Sugar
Corporation. And that push of a button will begin the actual
restoration of the Everglades. Today marks the beginning of the
transfer of the critical Everglades headwaters known as the
Everglades Agricultural Area from private to public ownership.
Before the passage of the now estimated $15 billion
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Act of 2000, Sierra Club
and its allies advised government officials to buy sugar land
instead of pouring billions of dollars into unsafe underground
water storage wells and giant lined mining pits. The way to heal
the Everglades, we wrote to the Clinton Administration in 1999,
was not to be found in more mechanical, heavily-manipulated
water schemes that little resembled anything nature could
devise. Indeed, the only way to put the once mighty Everglades
back together was to dismantle many of the canal, pumps and
water control structures which had torn it