| WASHINGTON -- After weeks of debate, a $7.8 billion project
to restore the Everglades sailed through the House on Friday and will be
sent to President Clinton for his signature.
The bill containing the Everglades plan, the Water Resources
Development Act, was approved 312-2. The only dissenters were Reps. Helen
Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, and Marshall Sanford Jr., R-S.C.
"Finally, America's Everglades are getting the much-needed
attention they deserve," said Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale.
"Skeptics have still been at our heels in recent weeks, saying, `You
won't get it done.' Well, we did."
"This project will pump the lifeblood back into America's
Everglades, saving or bringing back the thousands of forms of life that
call this unique place their home," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.
The bill provides a $1.4 billion down payment on 14 of the 68 projects
in the 36-year plan. Called the largest environmental project in history,
the plan seeks to reverse elaborate federal irrigation and flood control
projects that dried up more than half of the Everglades ecosystem over the
past 50 years.
"I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it historic,"
said Shannon Estenoz, co-chairwoman of the Everglades Coalition and South
Florida director of the World Wildlife Fund.
Some said the real work is just beginning: more than three decades of
keeping the restoration on track, including keeping the pressure on
Congress and the state to provide the money they've promised.
"Today we decided to build a house," said Charles Lee, senior
vice president of Audubon of Florida. "Now we have to go build
it."
One of the biggest fights looming is the fate of 62,000 acres of Palm
Beach County sugar cane land that water managers and the federal
government bought last year in a $152 million deal with Talisman Sugar Co.
and other sugar growers.
The land is supposed to be used for the restoration plan, but Lee and
other environmentalists fear the other sugar companies, who are leasing
the land from the government, plan to hold onto it, an allegation that the
growers deny.
In the weeks before passage, the Everglades measure rode a political
roller coaster.
As Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, put it, there was "a lot of
table-pounding and foot-stomping" to get the bill passed.
The House and Senate approved different versions of the water resources
act in September and October. Controversial water projects added to the
House version by Rep. Bud Shuster, the powerful chairman of the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, kept it lingering in a
conference committee for the past two weeks.
The committee agreed Tuesday to strip the controversial projects and
sent the compromise back to the House and Senate. The Senate approved it
by unanimous consent the same day.
But as late as Thursday, some House members were concerned that Shuster
could block the bill if the nearly $400 million in unrelated water
projects he supported did not find an alternate route to congressional
passage.
Now, lawmakers and environmentalists will be waiting eagerly for
Clinton's signature, expected next week.
"The Everglades have suffered too long. It's time to restore the
River of Grass," said Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. "I hope
that what begins in Florida will take root and spread all across
America." |