Florida Revises Deal With U.S. Sugar to Save Everglades

MIAMI -- The state of Florida has agreed to pay the nation's biggest producer of sugar cane $1.34 billion, instead of the $1.75 billion originally proposed, under a revised deal to buy up vast tracts of farm land to restore the Everglades, the company said in statements Tuesday.
The state will acquire nearly the same number of acres it would have from U.S. Sugar in a deal announced last June, but it no longer has plans to buy up the company's high-tech mill, railroad lines or citrus processing plant.
Environmentalists praised the new deal, saying it's simpler and less expensive. The state is purchasing the land around Lake Okeechobee as part of an ambitious plan to save the Everglades after decades of farming and development nearby.

"The financial and real estate world has changed since the transaction was announced on June 24," leading to the change in terms, U.S. Sugar said in a statement.
Environmentalists had already lauded the original proposal because it would convert farm land into conservation land, allowing water managers to create a system to clean and store water before sending it south into the Everglades.
Now, "In a turbulent credit market it simplifies the deal," said the CEO of the nonprofit Everglades Foundation Kirk Fordham.
David Guest, an attorney for the ecological law firm Earthjustice, likened the deal to getting a hot dog without relish and mustard.
"It's cheaper and what you really wanted in the first place," said Mr. Guest, who has spent decades fighting for Everglades restoration.
According to the statement from U.S. Sugar, the deal includes the following terms:
-The state takes over approximately 181,000 acres as opposed to 187,000.
-U.S. Sugar is allowed to lease back the land at $50 an acre, per year for seven crop cycles or six years. After that, U.S. Sugar will still own the processing facilities and could continue to operate them even without farmland. The mill could simply refine raw sugar produced elsewhere or be converted for the production of alternative energy. The company didn't say what it planned.
Gov. Charlie Crist had been scheduled to announce the deal at the former Miami home of Marjory Stoneman Douglass, one of the state's most revered environmentalists and the author of the influential 1947 book "The Everglades: River of Grass."
But Gov. Crist's plane had mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing Tuesday. Officials said the governor would make his remarks at the home Wednesday morning.
The new proposal still requires the approval of the boards of U.S. Sugar and the South Florida Water Management District, a government agency responsible for water quality and environmental restoration. That deal could be signed as early as December according to the statement from U.S. Sugar.
Still unclear, however, is how much of the land will go to conservation and how much will stay as farmland, according to the Everglades Foundation's Fordham.
Regardless of this deal, some 300,000 acres in the Everglades, or about 500 square miles, will remain in agriculture production by other companies.
Farming in the region has long been considered a hindrance to restoring natural water flow to the Everglades, blocking flow patterns and contributing pollutants and fertilizers to the ecosystem.