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[ Home > Page 7: Restoring the Fountain of Youth, Part 2 ]
Page 7: Restoring the Fountain of Youth, Part 2![Page 7: Restoring the Fountain of Youth, Part 2]()
Since I share your appreciation for the unique beauty and ecological importance of this landscape, and since I share the passion of Floridians for the future of this great state, I believe the right decisions will be made. But it is not inevitable. Your leadership, and our mutual commitment to press the case for comprehensive restoration, are crucial to Florida's future. Before I speak about that future, and the debates that will surely come with it, look back with me at the tricky passes we have crossed together over the last decade: In 1992 the Everglades itself was bogged down in the muck of litigation over phosphorous; the manmade runoff that polluted and ate away at the fields of sawgrass in the timeless flow of the River of Grass. With Governor Chiles and the Florida Legislature, we broke the impasse, settled the litigation and enacted the Everglades Forever Act. Even as I speak, out there to the northeast, the storm water treatment areas created below the Everglades Agricultural Area, are functioning effectively, absorbing phosphorous like a set of giant, landscape kidneys. When we began, the watery landscape of South Florida was a collection of disjointed, dysfunctional parts, severed from one another by decades of ill conceived attempts at flood control and inappropriate development. But bit by bit, over the past seven years, we have worked with the State and the South Florida Water Management District to acquire half a million acres of land -- including Talisman and other sugar holdings in the Everglades Agricultural Area -- in order to store water, integrate private inholdings in the East Everglades, create buffer zones and protect sensitive lands like the Florida Panther and Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuges. Notably, we have secured all the funds to complete acquisitions within Everglades National Park.
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