On the edges of the sugar fields that lie between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, state and federal officials have spent decades and billions of taxpayer dollars to build canals, pumps, water filtration systems and reservoirs designed to restore the River of Grass.
A Tennessee-based contractor called Phillips Heavy says it wants to build the people of Florida an extra water reservoir on land owned by U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals. But first, those companies want to mine several million tons of rock from the site to sell as road and building material over the next 34 years. They call their proposal the Southland Water Resource Project, and they say it will help restore the Everglades.
Neither the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nor the South Florida Water Management District asked for the Southland reservoir. It’s not part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. In fact, state and federal officials publicly worry that blasting, pumping and mining at the site would threaten the neighboring, $4 billion Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, dubbed the “crown jewel of Everglades restoration.”…