Both proponents and opponents of the move to have the state of Florida buy up 46,800 land acres from U.S. Sugar Corporation in order to “allow a “natural” southward flow of water into the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee, and not east and west to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers,” have stepped up their online efforts to bring attention to their respective agendas.
The Everglades Trust and Everglades Foundation have been blanketing the web with ads supporting the land purchase, easily outspending the likes of Big Sugar supporters, who believe that the “initial fully-funded Everglades Clean Up agreement” that was hammered out by the federal and state governments with Big Sugar, is on budget and working successfully.Now the Sugar farmer-supporting group, Florida Citizens Against Waste, have propped up their new “Stop the Land Grab” website, which features a petition that is being circulating around the state in an effort to bring awareness to what the group says is nothing more than a “land grab” by environment special interest groups.
Florida taxpayers, farmers, and businesses have spent more than $10B to restore and protect the Everglades, and another $1B worth of projects are under construction today. Tests show restoration is in its final stage.
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Now, environmental special interests want to disrupt that project and spend $500M just to buy more land, even though doing so will do little or nothing to restore or protect the Everglades. There is NO science to support this land grab, and wasting $500M will divert money that could be better spent on real Restoration. We urge you to oppose this land grab and finish the real work of protecting and restoring the Everglades.
It is that simple.
The special interests who want to buy this land have no real plan for it. They just want it. It’s not suitable for a reservoir. It’s in the wrong location and would require as much as $2B to build a safe reservoir that would only store 100,000-200,000 acre feet of water. The estuary problem we are trying to solve is on the order of 4.5 MILLION acre feet. Buying the US Sugar option lands does not solve any significant problems and would consume HUGE financial resources.-Stop the Land Grab website-PETITION hereThe website also claims that because of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), the water in the Everglades is cleaner than Evian water.