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Everglades holdout gives in
Jesse Hardy will accept $4.95-million for a shack and 160 swampy acres.
Associated Press
Published April 14, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH - Jesse Hardy fought for years to keep his home in the swampy Everglades. But he has finally agreed to sell it for $4.95-million to the state, which plans to restore the wetlands area.
The deal, approved Wednesday by a Collier County circuit judge, allows Hardy to remain on his 160 acres until Nov. 30.
The former Navy SEAL lives in a clapboard home he built, off dirt roads about 40 miles east of downtown Naples. He dug a 60-foot well for fresh water. With no electricity, he uses propane tanks for power.
He scraped up $60,000 to buy the land in 1976. For years he rejected state offers for it, saying he wanted to pass on the rural lifestyle to Tommy Hilton, a 9-year-old he has raised with the boy's mother, Tara Hilton.
"He tried, he tried his hardest to keep that land. I guess they just wore him down," said Pat Humphries, a longtime friend. "He doesn't care about the money."
After two years of failed negotiations, state officials went to court six months ago to take Hardy's land by eminent domain, a law that lets governments force people to sell their land for a public purpose.
Officials say Hardy's land sits in the way of the nation's most ambitious environmental project, the $8.4-billion Everglades restoration. The project aims to restore the natural water flow to the Everglades, a slow-moving river that once stretched uninterrupted from a chain of lakes near Orlando south to Florida Bay.
Crews will start work in 2006, said Ernie Barnett, the state Department of Environmental Protection's ecosystem projects director.
Hardy started a fish farm on the property and contracted with a company to mine lime rock buried there for use in construction. The first home he built was ravaged by fire, so he built a second one - a simple wood-frame home with a corrugated metal roof and large porch with screens that flap in the breeze.
"I am fighting the battle of my life. ... This land is my home and my heritage," Hardy wrote to the Naples Daily News last month. He did not return phone calls on Wednesday.
Hardy hopes to move nearby so Tommy can stay at the same school, Humphries said.
[Last modified April 15, 2005, 19:33:47]
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