Senate updated on Glades progress

The restoration project is on schedule, officials say. But there's concern about a lag in land buying.

©Associated Press
September 14, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Although some projects are on hold because of lawsuits, Bush administration officials said Friday the $7.8-billion Florida Everglades restoration program is moving forward as expected with a final implementation plan expected by year's end.

"We remain committed to moving forward," Les Brownlee, chief of the Army's civil works programs, told a Senate hearing. "To wait will only exacerbate the degradation of the Everglades and make restoration more difficult."

But environmentalists urged that land purchases, which are key to restoring the natural water flows to the Everglades, be speeded up.

The joint federal-state 30-year restoration effort is essentially a replumbing of the Everglades to restore its natural water flows, halt its degradation and ensure that enough water goes to agricultural and urban needs. Congress provided a general outline two years ago.

Last December, the administration issued a draft implementation plan that was criticized by environmentalists as failing to provide a clear timetable and deadlines.

Brownlee, testifying Friday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the draft plan strikes a balance between competing interests: the ecosystem's restoration and agricultural and urban water users.

David Struhs, head of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, said the plan "provides water first for nature and then for people. . . . There will be plenty of water for both wildlife and people."

But Brownlee acknowledged several significant restoration projects were put on hold because of a longstanding property rights dispute over land bought in an 8.5-square-mile area by Everglades National Park.

A federal court sided with residents of the area who don't want to sell their land. Congress is considering a plan by Florida Sen. Bob Graham to let a third of the land be purchased and two-thirds stay in private hands, protected by levees.

Struhs said the state already has acquired 75 percent of the land needed to build the projects authorized so far under the program.

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