By Maggy Hurchalla, palmbeachpost.com 
Posted: 4:20 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016
In the 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was asked to save the Everglades. They put up a banner in the Jacksonville office: “It’s the Everglades, stupid!”
The Corps and the state of Florida became partners in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). But CERP hit a brick wall in 2015, when, at every level — from the Legislature to the South Florida Water Management District — the state objected to sending Lake Okeechobee water south to the Everglades. They made it clear that we would not buy the land necessary to send the water south.
Then, the week before the 2016 Everglades Coalition Conference, it was announced that the Everglades had been saved by the introduction of a bill in the House that would assign $200 million a year of Amendment 1 revenues to Everglades restoration. Optimists cheered.
Skeptics pointed out that all the money in the world won’t save the Everglades if we don’t send water south from Lake Okeechobee. If it all got spent on reservoirs and farming, north and east and west of the lake, agriculture and urban development would benefit, but the Everglades and the coastal estuaries would still die.
Everglades restoration is supposed to be about the Everglades. “Legacy Florida,” introduced by Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, will not save the Everglades or the St. Lucie River estuary. But it is a start. Some of the money that an overwhelming number of Floridians voted to go into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund would go where it was intended.
To make it mean something, four other things have to happen.
1. It has to be a bill with no crippling amendments.
2. Floridians need to insist that $300 million of the Amendment 1 money goes into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for land acquisition statewide. Last year, the Legislature’s response was to say we already had too much land. They spent the money on vehicles and agency salaries.
3. The bad “Water Bill” has to be fixed. The Legislature passed it in the first week. It doesn’t help Florida’s waters and does help special interests. It’s about privatizing the waters that belong to the people of Florida through 50-year permits. It’s about weakening cleanup standards and leaving us with dirty waterways. Only Gov. Rick Scott can stop it now.
4. The Army Corps of Engineers and the SFWMD need to jump-start a process now to identify how to send the water south. The fight over the U.S. Sugar option is over. Let’s go forward.
It’s an election year. If your representative won’t support those four things, find someone else to vote for who will.
MAGGY HURCHALLA, STUART
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/news/opinion/point-of-view/np7rN/#modal-8596195