Does Everglades paralysis bode ill for Great Lakes Restoration?

Picture: Palm Beach County, Florida, New York Times

A four-decade, $8 billion project to restore the Everglades has virtually ground to a halt, and thousands of acres of land in the targeted restoration area have succumbed to development.

Originally passed before the 2000 presidential election, the plan has been buried under an avalanche of other national concerns, like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the war in Iraq. And President Bush is expected to veto a bill for long-delayed federal funding for water infrastructure projects in the area.

For environmentalists in the Great Lakes area, the federal government's willingness and dollars to restore the Everglades has been an encouraging sign that a similar project could succeed to restore the Great Lakes. But with no federal leadership from the Bush administration, it seems that these large-scale restoration projects play second fiddle to a much more expensive war in Iraq.

Just think--the price tag of being in Iraq for just a couple weeks could do much to reverse some of the ecological damages in the Great Lakes that are reaching the point of no return.

Click here to read the full article in New York Times.