After two days of public hearings and debate, the South Florida Water Management District’s governing board still hesitated to approve an agreement to purchase 180,000 acres of land in the Everglades Agricultural Area from the United States Sugar Corp. for $1.34 billion. As it stood, the board feared, the agreement could expose the district to penalties for conditions over which it had no control. Finally, the board approved a modified agreement with a 4-3 vote, knowing that the Clewiston, Fla., agribusiness might refuse to accept the amendment. But late on Dec. 16, after the water district’s vote, U.S. Sugar issued a statement saying the amendment “was a non-material modification within the authorized scope” of the sale agreement that the company already had approved. And with that, the parties began looking ahead.
The agreement was the culmination of a process that broke into the news June 24, when Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) announced that U.S. Sugar and the state had reached an agreement in principle for the sugar-cane grower to sell the state all its land and assets in the Everglades and go out of business after seven years. The terms subsequently were modified to include only a land transaction, reducing the proposed sale price from $1.75 billion to $1.34 billion. By Nov. 12, when negotiations were concluded, the condition of the economy had substantially changed and many stakeholders were voicing doubts about the proposal’s wisdom and viability.