Peter Schorsch
As the Amendment 1 Is For Everyone campaign of the H2O Coalition and AIF rolls out in response to the Everglades Trust’s push to have the state spend the bulk of Amendment 1 money buying more land south of Lake Okeechobee, one might wonder whether this is about a lot more — and a lot less — than Everglades restoration. After all, the state committed another $880 million just two years ago to finish Everglades restoration, and those projects have barely begun. So what is really going on?
The answer might lay in the fact that no advocacy group survives success. If there is no problem, it has a problem.
This may be why the Everglades groups are trying to co-opt the issue of Lake O discharges and are proposing an Everglades-centric solution — spending up to half a billion dollars of Amendment 1 money to buy more land south of Lake O, land the responsible government agencies say isn’t needed and for which there is no project planned and no money to build if one was planned.
It just doesn’t seem to make any sense — until you look at it from the limited perspective of the Everglades advocacy groups. Hitching a ride on Lake O discharges and tying them to land purchases south of Lake O may be the only way for them to get out of Everglades restoration alive.
