Among the few organizations that publicly opposed the plan from the beginning is the one that has been most closely associated with the region over the past few decades: Friends of the Everglades, founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of The Everglades: River of Grass, which was published in 1947, the year the park opened. Her classic book helped change public opinion of the Everglades from an "alligator and snake swamp" (as opponents of the park's creation called it), to a national treasure that, in the words of the Everglades Restoration Plan itself, "epitomizes the region's sense of definition and place, both substantially and spiritually."

"Among many other reasons, we are opposed to the plan because it totally ignores the major cause of trouble in the Everglades, which is the Everglades Agricultural Area," Juanita Greene, former president of Friends of the Everglades, told me. "The EAA causes the most pollution, the greatest waste of water to the sea, and the greatest problem of connectivity for the River of Grass. And when all the soil is gone, the area will be developed unless the government buys it and puts water back on it."

For its part, the South Florida sugar industry, which is totally dependent on the Everglades Agricultural Area, publicly endorsed the plan. "This is a win for all of us—a win for Florida, a win for the Everglades. We are all for it," Pepe Fanjul, president of Florida Crystals, was reported as saying. Yet during the formulation of the plan, sugarcane companies like Fanjul's publicly criticized a report by the plan's chief of engineers. The report, in the words of Malcolm S. ("Bubba") Wade, Jr., of the U.S. Sugar Corporation, "unequivocally subordinates the claims of economic uses in time of drought to those of restoration without any evaluation of the economic or the environmental impacts of such a decision." In other words, sugar wasn't always entirely happy with the plan, either.

Everglades National Park's official position was explained to me by its superintendent, Maureen Finnerty, and by its public affairs officer, Rick Cook: The plan isn't perfect, but it's a far better solution than doing nothing but debating while the Everglades dies.

Cook, who reminded me of Tommy lee Jones in a Smokey Bear hat, said, "We didn't get everything we wanted, but we don't believe anybody got everything they wanted. So there is a kind of balance here, one that recognizes the technological and political realities. The encouraging thing is, Congress has been very clear that the purpose of the plan is to restore the natural environment of South Florida."

Among the things the park did not get, Cook said, were about 245,000 acre feet per year of water (equal to one-foot-deep coverage of the area and enough to reach ninety percent of pre-drainage flows and levels) and the assurance that the quality of the water coming into the park will be as high as it needs to be.