Grist Weekly - TOP STORY

Pass the Sugar, Sugar

Florida will buy out sugar company to restore Everglades - the immediate beneficiaries are a sugar family of immigrants that escaped Cuba when Fidel Castro took the reigns.

Nearly 300 square miles of sugar plantation in the Everglades will once again become marsh, as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced last week that the state will buy the land from U.S. Sugar Corp. If all goes to plan, the $1.75 billion deal may be the largest environmental restoration in the history of the United States. Environmentalists have long lamented the sugar industry’s role in diverting and polluting the Everglades’ water supply; the River of Grass is only half the 11,000 square miles it was in the early 20th century. U.S. Sugar, which has farmed the Everglades for nearly 80 years, plans to go out of business within six years. The deal is, says Kirk Fordham of the Everglades Foundation, “an achievement of breathtaking significance and priceless value.” Sweet.

sources: Los Angeles Times, Herald-Tribune, Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, Associated Press
see also, in Grist: McCain says he hearts Everglades, despite opposing bill with restoration funding
see also, in Muckraker: Was Florida guv’s big Everglades deal an attempt to keep him in the running for VP?

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