Word: cristed
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June 24 may have been the day we stopped flunking that test. Governor Charlie Crist announced a stunning deal for Florida to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp., including 187,000 acres of farmland in the northern Everglades that will be used for restoration. Activists who have battled Florida's powerful sugar industry for decades were giddy. Engineers who have struggled to revive the Everglades without disrupting Big Sugar were flabbergasted. "I'm flabbergasted, too," Crist told TIME. He called the $1.75 billion deal as "monumental" as the creation of Yellowstone, and he may be right...
...news conference Tuesday morning near the imperiled "River of Grass," Governor Crist announced a $1.75 billion deal to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp., including 187,000 acres (75,677 hectares) of farmland that once sat in the northern Everglades. If the deal goes through, it will extinguish a powerful 77-year-old company with 1,700 employees and deep roots in South Florida's coal-black organic soil. It will also resurrect and reconfigure a moribund eight-year-old Everglades replumbing effort that is supposed to be the most ambitious ecosystem restoration project in the history of the planet...
...Crist has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Senator John McCain, and they both took a lot of flak in Florida last week when they dropped their opposition to offshore drilling. But Crist has been true to his pledge to be "the Everglades governor," replacing many of Jeb Bush's industry-friendly aides with eco-friendly appointees, blocking the legislature's efforts to eliminate funding for restoration and stopping the sugar industry from pumping polluted runoff into the lake. In a recent interview with TIME, Crist hinted that he was planning some "breathtaking changes" for the Everglades. "Putting...
...held. "The biggest obstacle has always been the EAA. Now we can try to salvage restoration." There are still plenty of details to be worked out, like how the state will raise cash during a fiscal crisis, and the sugar industry has a troublesome history in Florida. The Crist administration will have to negotiate land swaps with Florida Crystals, and it will have to figure out what to do with a mill, a refinery and a railroad that are now property of the state. And there's no doubt that the new opportunities for water storage in the agricultural area...
...than a century, in part because it doesn't look the way people expect environmental treasures to look. "To put it crudely," wrote Everglades National Park's first superintendent, Daniel Beard, "there is nothing in the Everglades that would make Mr. Johnnie Q. Public suck in his breath." If Crist can reverse the flow of history and help the Everglades flow again, that really would be a breathtaking change...