Obama proposes $263 million for Everglades

By at 1 February, 2010, 11:28 am

Everglades restoration work would get $263 million next fiscal year under President Obama’s proposed budget released on Monday. The budget request reflects on-going support by the administration, which has overseen the first federal construction projects as part of a comprehensive restoration plan approved by Congress in 2000. Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, like their predecessors, have seized upon the Everglades as a high-profile example of environmental restoration. The $263 million proposed for fiscal 2011, which starts in October, would pay for work by the Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers to restore South Florida’s ecosystem, nearly all of it tied to the Everglades. (A White House summary lists $255 million, but another $8 million

in Interior’s budget request for implementing restoration brings the total to $263 million.) This would pay for continued construction at Picayune Strand in Collier County, the Site One Impoundment near Hillsboro Canal, the Indian River Lagoon along the Treasure Coast, the Kissimmee River in Central Florida and the C-111 canal in southern Miami-Dade County. Preliminary projects and state spending on restoration have been going on for many years, but federal construction funds did not begin flowing until last year. Congress has generally fulfilled requests for the Everglades, but competition for money may be especially intense this year because of attempts to rein in deficit spending.

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Obama proposes $263 million for Everglades

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