Last year's failed effort to give away thousands of miles of public riverbanks and lakeshores was such a public relations disaster for the Florida Legislature that its Republican leadership is in no hurry to try again. The Great Land Grab hasn't reappeared on the agenda for 2001, and the word in Tallahassee is that the leadership wants to keep it off.

That should be the end of the story, but there's a Democrat who isn't willing to let the sleeping pit bull lie. Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell of Fort Lauderdale, whose support for last year's bill put him at odds with Attorney General Bob Butterworth and most other Democratic leaders, is talking of legislation under which the state would survey its lakes and rivers to determine precisely how much wetland would be in dispute.

"I want to find out what we're talking about -- 100,000 acres, 500,000 acres or what," says Campbell. "If it's true that it's 500,000 acres, it's something we shouldn't be talking about."

How's that? If it totals anything less than 781 square miles -- an area more than twice as large as Pinellas County -- it would be okay to let developers and agribusiness have it?

Surely Campbell can't be thinking that. More likely, he simply can't let go.

Trouble is, no one knows what the study might cost or what environmental budget might be tapped to pay for it. Worse, the bill would open doors -- as to something like last year's legislation -- that ought to stay closed. With a Democrat fronting for the land-grabbers, GOP leaders would be hard-pressed to hold the line on their own rank-and-file.

In any case, previous state calculations have already established the immense dimensions -- at least 500,000 acres -- of the precious resources at stake. Whether it's something less or something more is irrelevant to the only point that matters: Land under navigable water belongs to the public forever. Let no one even think of giving it away.

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