http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/us/08everglades.html?hp

When Gov.
Charlie Crist announced Florida’s $1.75 billion plan to save the
Everglades by buying out a major landowner, United States Sugar, he declared
that the deal would be remembered as a public acquisition “as monumental as the
creation of the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.”

Standing amid the marshes at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in June
2008, Mr. Crist said, “I can envision no better gift to the Everglades, the
people of Florida and the people of America — as well as our planet — than to
place in public ownership this missing link that represents the key to true
restoration.”

Nearly two years later, the governor’s ambitious plan to reclaim the river of
grass, as the famed wetlands are known, is instead on track to rescue the
fortunes of United States Sugar.

The proposal was downsized only five months after it was announced. By April
2009, amid the deepening recession, the state said it could afford to purchase
only 72,800 acres of United States Sugar’s land, for $536 million. The company
would stay in business and the state would retain the option of buying the
remaining 107,000 acres at a future date.

United States Sugar dictated many of the terms of the deal as state officials
repeatedly made decisions against the immediate needs of the Everglades and the
interests of taxpayers, an examination of thousands of state e-mail messages and
records and more than 60 interviews showed.