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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBiden's Chance to Save the Everglades
With passage of the Covid-19 relief bill behind it, the Biden administration will soon offer its encore, one or more big proposals reflecting President Bidens multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better, which will enlarge governments role in the American economy. Together, these budget requests will be bigger in dollar terms than the relief bill, will address daunting problems like infrastructure and climate change and, inevitably, will revive the partisan divide that plagues Washington.
There is, however, one environmentally important project that boasts remarkable bipartisan agreement and has important climate implications. It may be the most ambitious ecosystem recovery project ever, not just in the United States but anywhere, and it has the added virtue of being an act of atonement for past government failures.
scheme aimed at replicating as nearly as possible the historical flows of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee flows that a pioneer advocate named Marjory Stoneman Douglas called the River of Grass that once made South Florida a biological wonderland. These flows slowed to trickle starting in the late 1940s when Congress ordered up a massive flood control project to protect Floridas booming cities, which looked like a smart idea at the time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/opinion/biden-environment-everglades-florida.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
XanaDUer2
(10,632 posts)grew up in Miami o
bahboo
(16,334 posts)crickets
(25,959 posts)Submariner
(12,502 posts)then just as the projects like the one I was to work on were to be mobilized, Jeb Bush gave the $618 million of ACOE Everglades Restoration Program money to his brother for spending on Shock and Awe among other Iraq adventures.
Due to neglect of the Glades, there are now that many more thousands of pythons and their egg nests today, as they hatch and gobble up the mammal and bird populations.
This is too little too late to save much of what has been damaged, but the work is worthy of the effort, and may get Floridians to appreciate their home turf a lot more than they have in the past like the people who have been electing the anti-environment Bush and red tide Ricky Scott as governors.
XanaDUer2
(10,632 posts)Jeb Bush gave the $618 million of ACOE Everglades Restoration Program money to his brother for spending on Shock and Awe among other Iraq adventures.>>>
This should have been shouted from the rooftops in Florida. I'm disgusted