State: Law to pump millions into Everglades

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday signed a law providing critical funding to restore the Everglades, but he didn't travel to the River of Grass for a photo opportunity, the way governors usually do.

Instead, he delivered the news late Wednesday via e-mail, tucked at the end of a long list of other signed bills.

The below-the-radar approach shows how politically dicey the Everglades bill has become at a time when the governor is running for a second term. Attorney General Bob Butterworth and thousands of environmentalists asked the governor to veto the bill because of a controversial provision they say makes it more difficult for citizens to challenge development.

Bush disputed that argument in a letter he wrote explaining his action. He said the provision will have "minimal impact" on citizen rights, an assertion development attorneys agree with, and many environmental attorneys do not.

Bush's letter said the bill "once again demonstrates the commitment of the State of Florida and her citizens to protect and restore the Everglades ecological system."

The new law will have an enormous impact on a giant public works project to restore Florida's most famous marsh. It will create a bonding program worth $100-million a year, money that will be matched by federal dollars. The money will help buy land and pay for studies, earth-moving equipment and hardware to undo a decades-old flood control project that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed when America thought the Everglades should be drained.

Bush's letter noted that he had the support of many of the state's most prominent environmental groups: Florida Audubon, 1000 Friends of Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, the Everglades Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund.

Some of the leaders of those groups said privately that they hated the new law on citizen legal standing, but publicly supported it because the Everglades project needs the funding.

Some 100 other grass-roots groups opposed the bill. They included the Sierra Club, Republicans for the Environment, the League of Conservation Voters and the Save the Manatee Club.

The Everglades Coalition, an umbrella group of about 40 organizations, was split nearly down the middle, said co-chairman Frank Jackalone. Half of the groups urged the governor to sign it for the good of the Everglades; the other half urged him to veto it and call the Legislature into special session to pass a clean version of the bill.

Butterworth, a Democrat, sent Bush a letter on Wednesday urging a veto because the bill "would silence the people's voice in the arena of environmental protection."

The law allows only people who can prove they are personally affected by a project to file a challenge. Similar legislation on citizen standing failed during the past three years.

"The Everglades restoration funding bill was so important, it was necessary for the governor to sign it," said state Rep. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland. "I would have preferred for the two issues to be separated, but they weren't."

"I think it's a real shame," said Joe Browder, a board member of Friends of the Everglades, the organization founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of The Everglades: River of Grass.

Browder's group has criticized the way the Everglades restoration work is being carried out by state and federal officials, suggesting that its true purpose is providing water for further development in overcrowded South Florida.

"The idea that citizens would have to trade away their right to influence development in their own community to save the Everglades is bad enough," Browder said. "When we're not even sure how the money is going to be spent, that's even worse."

Florida Audubon president Stuart Strahl applauded Bush's action, saying it will provide "an efficient and reliable source of money to buy land and restore the water and wetlands so essential to the health of the Everglades."

Bush argued that most challenges to permits are made under a separate section of law that requires only that citizens prove their "substantial interests" will be affected by the agency's decision.

Only four of 298 challenges filed since 1991 have used the method being eliminated by the bill, according to the governor's office.

The governor directed the state Department of Environmental Protection to study the new law for a year and report back.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk