Now that the news has had a chance to settle in, and we’ve had editorials from all the area’s newspapers (Palm Beach Post, Sun-Sentinel), the Saint Petersburg Times, the New York Times, and more, here are my thoughts about Governor Crist’s proposal for a buyout of U.S. Sugar’s land around Lake Okeechobee.

In the first place, buy-out had better not mean bail-out. Are we sure that we’re getting fair value for our money? (I think we can offset some of the costs by considering the benefits of not having to do the really bleeding-edge restoration work like ASR wells and other science fiction engineering projects)

What is the state going to do with a sugar mill?

Will the Fanjuls agree to the necessary land swaps to make this really work?

In a larger sense, this land purchase only makes sense if it kick-starts the long-promised and never-received federal participation in Everglades restoration. With a price tag near $2 billion, I can’t imagine a budget for anything else that the SFWMD would want to do. The Army Corps and other federal agencies will have to step up if we are to continue with the comprehensive Everglades restoration plan (CERP). And CERP itself will have to implement one of its “softer” strategies–adaptive management–to accommodate this previously unimagined opportunity.

With a six-year timeline and many hurdles to overcome (clean-up, engineering, financing, land swaps, “imagineering”) we can be cautiously optimistic about the future, but we will have to understand the details before we can celebrate. If this is nothing more than a bailout for Mr. Coker and company, with environmental benefits to be killed by litigation and infighting, where will we look next?