Posted on Fri, Jul. 31, 2009

After eight years of bickering, the state and the federal government have finally shaken hands on how to split the massive bill to restore the Everglades.

The dispute was more than a mere bureaucratic snit. It shut the spigot on something the struggling River of Grass needs almost as much as water: federal funds to start building stalled projects.

The agreement, confirmed in letters the South Florida Water Management District received Friday from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, means nearly a half-billion dollars pledged by the Obama administration over the next two years can begin to flow -- starting with a $41 million shot to begin turning a failed Southwest Florida subdivision back into wetlands.

It also should ease friction between the district and the Corps of Engineers, two agencies charged with managing and splitting the cost of replumbing the Everglades, an ambitious but so-far sluggish undertaking now projected to run at least $22.5 billion.

`MAJOR ADVANCE'

Both sides called ``the master agreement'' -- a contract spelling out how each side will calculate costs and share duties in dozens of projects -- crucial to finally turning dirt in the Everglades.

``This approval represents a major advance,'' said Stu Appelbaum, the Corps' district deputy for Everglades restoration.

Environmentalists agreed.

``This is a pretty huge breakthrough,'' said Kirk Fordham, chief executive of the Everglades Foundation.

``For me, that is great news,'' said Jacquie Weisblum, Everglades coordinator for Audubon of Florida. ``But I want to see it signed.''

That is now expected to happen when the district's governing board meets Aug. 13 -- though it seemed unlikely last month when years of squabbling boiled over.

The board fired off take-it-or-leave-it letters to the Obama administration, and some members publicly vented frustrations about Corps red tape, repeated revisions to the agreement and ``faceless bureaucrats'' in the White House's Office of Management and Budget holding up stimulus money for the Picayune Strand project in Southwest Florida.

That sparked a flurry of high-level negotiations that resolved the most serious dispute -- calculating the value of land. The stakes were high, potentially passing hundreds of millions in costs to one side of the ledger or the other.

When Congress approved the joint restoration with the state in 2000, the water district was supposed to cover most of its costs by buying land for some 60 projects.

The Corps' normal national policy in cost-sharing agreements is to value land a state contributes at market prices. But for the Everglades effort, the state informally agreed to value land at the original, and often much cheaper, purchase price. That was in part because the federal government already had contributed tens of millions of dollars to some of the older, larger and much less expensive land buys.

But in August 2007, water managers -- already outspending the federal government six-to-one in the Glades -- began pressing to change the terms. Land prices were soaring, the Corps had ruled out paying for any water-quality work and delays were radically increasing construction cost estimates.

The Corps, after long negotiations, agreed to give water managers the same deal it gives everyone else: market value on all but three projects already approved by Congress.

But the president's budget monitors balked at the new provision in the master agreement, concerned the change would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the federal government's share.

MONEY BLOCKED

The Office of Management and Budget blocked stimulus money designated for the first in a line of restoration projects -- reclamation of 55,000 acres in the Picayune Strand, site of a Southwest Florida development that flopped decades ago.

Because the paperwork has to be signed before the projects can start, the cost-sharing dispute effectively held up federal funds for every other project as well.

In two letters he sent Thursday to the district, Terrence ``Rock'' Salt, an acting assistant secretary of the Army who oversees the Corps, said the issues had been resolved.

In a nod to mending rifts between the agencies, he thanked the district's chair, Eric Buermann, and executive director, Carol Wehle, for ``patience'' and ``strong support.'' He also pledged the Corps would ``help ensure that this national treasure is alive and well for future generations.''

Fordham likened the long cost-sharing negotiations to a courtship between two partners who weren't always sure they wanted to live together.

``They've had a lot of fairly tumultuous breakups,'' he said. Now, he said, the hope was for ``a long and harmonious marriage.''