Politics

Bush Vows To Protect Everglades

June 4, 2001 / 10:35 AM EDT / AP

President Bush toured the sawgrass prairies of this celebrated wetland Monday, renewing his pledge to help restore its wounded ecosystems and seeking to build a conservationist image.

Mr. Bush made his third Florida trip since becoming president to announce a new National Park Service director, Fran Mainella, the longtime head of parks in this state.

In the lush and muggy "slice of heaven," as he called it, Mr. Bush reminded listeners that his proposed 2002 budget includes $219 million for Everglades restoration. That is $58 million more than this year, White House officials said.

"Their beauty is beyond our power to improve," the president told more than 100 park service employees, environment and business leaders, and elected officials. Standing alongside him before a historic canal were his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Mainella.

"This area needs our protection, and I'm here to join with your governor in the cause of preserving and protecting the Florida Everglades," said Mr. Bush, wearing an open olive shirt and no tie.

He called it the only place on Earth where crocodiles and alligators coexist. "I'm kind of hoping that's the way it gets to be in the United States Congress," he quipped.

Mr. Bush walked the Anhinga Trail to survey a prairie shrouding a slow-moving body of water known as a slough. Park officials are slowly transforming the open space from farmland back to its original state, and they report that Florida panthers and deer have begun to return to the area.

But even as he touted a "new environmentalism for the 21st century," there were reminders of the fierce opposition some of the president's policies have provoked among environmentalists: Several dozen protesters, some dressed as oil barrels, greeted him at the park entrance.

"This is a big photo opportunity. It's designed to make Bush look like an environmentalist, when all he's shown is a propensity to harm America's wetlands," said Jonathan Ullman, spokesman for the Sierra Club of South Florida.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., generally praised Mr. Bush's efforts, but warned: "The Everglades restoration is like open-heart surgery: You'd better be sure you can pay for the whole job before you start."

Everglades National Park, sprawling across the southern tip of Florida, is undergoing a 40-year, $7.8 billion restoration project aimed at improving water quality, storage and flow into the region.

The administration could be wading back into a bitter Everglades debate — the future of Homestead Air Force Base, which is within 10 miles of the park and within two miles of Biscayne National Park.

The Air Force decided Jan. 16 against allowing Miami-Dade County to convert the hurricane-battered base into a commercial airport. Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton's interior secretary, said such an airport would "surely degrade both national parks."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last month he had decided to "review that decision foconsistency with established policy," apparently reopening the question of whether the base will be developed for commercial flights.

"If I determine there was a deviation from that policy, I will advise you in the matter and take appropriate action," Rumsfeld wrote in a May 10 memo to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who represent the Miami-Dade area in the House, had asked Mr. Bush to reconsider the prohibition on commercial uses.

Mr. Clinton signed a law in December authorizing the federal government to pay half the cost of the restoration project, and Mr. Bush's budget proposal represents his commitment to that. The state of Florida is to pay for the other half.

The costly undertaking comes more than four decades after the Army Corps of Engineers began siphoning water out of the Everglades – 300 miles of swampland, sawgrass marshes, cypress trees and mangrove estuaries that stretch from central Florida and the Kissimmee River north of Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay and the Keys.

The corps, at the behest of Congress, built canals and waterways to develop farm lands and divert water from South Florida's coastal areas to prevent flooding and increase agricultural and urban development.

Over the years, altering the flow of the water has meant the disappearance of half of the original Everglades and the loss of indigenous plants, birds, fish and animals such as the panther. Daily, 1.7 billion gallons of water drain from the Everglades into the sea.

Mr. Bush also has alarmed Florida environmentalists by opening the possibility of drilling off that state's coast. In March, Interior Secretary Gale Norton notified Florida Gov. Bush that she planned to proceed with a proposal to auction oil and gas development leases in a large tract in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Some of it comes within 30 miles of the western tip of the Florida Panhandle.

Governor Bush opposes the move.