Word: sugar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Beach - ballooned into the nation's seventh largest metro, while southwest Florida - Naples, Cape Coral, Fort Myers - became the fastest-growing metro. Last year 82.4 million visitors found their way to this lost paradise. And last month Governor Charlie Crist unveiled a $1.75 billion deal to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp. and its 187,000 acres of farmland, a move that would help restore the Everglades. It's the state's best eco-news in decades...
That's why Democrats, Republicans, the sugar industry and environmentalists came together in 2000 to support a $12 billion plan to revive the Everglades, the largest ecosystem-restoration project in history. But the project has stumbled and stalled, which is why Crist's sugar deal is so exciting. It will essentially take Everglades restoration back to the drawing board, reviving hope for a free-flowing River of Grass and a stable water supply...
...Everglades is already the focus of the largest ecosystem restoration ever, but that effort has stumbled and stalled. What Crist's deal can do is change the political ecosystem. Sugar fields pollute the Everglades, dump water on it when it's flooded and suck water out of it when it's dry; Big Sugar, opponents say, has used its political dominance in Florida to block efforts to restore the flow of the River of Grass. By essentially bribing U.S. Sugar out of business, Crist not only frees up its land but also eliminates an implacable obstacle to restoration...
...Still, even environmentalists who sang paeans to Crist on Tuesday when he unveiled the U.S. Sugar deal say they believe presidential politics is driving his openness to drilling. "For a man who's made himself the Everglades governor to consider offshore drilling I find more than a little surprising," says Mark Kraus, vice president of the Everglades Foundation, "especially when the experts say it would take at least 10 years before it had any effect on gas prices." Crist supporters cringed on Thursday when California governor and Crist pal Arnold Schwarzenegger - during his keynote speech at Crist's eco-summit...
...trying to stifle any doubts about his enviromental street cred, though you would think he shouldn't have to worry right now. It's a day after America's tree-huggers virtually canonized Crist for his stunning announcement that Florida would pay some $1.7 billion to buy out U.S. Sugar, and the company's 187,000 acres of cane fields, to revive the imperiled restoration of one of the nation's eco-treasures, the Everglades. With characteristic ebullience, Crist describes the move like the post-ideological Republican he's become famous for since succeeding the more conservative and partisan...