By Kailey Aiken, FloridaBulldog.org
While billions of dollars have been spent restoring the Everglades, one critical piece remains unfinished. Friends of the Everglades, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Everglades, is calling on the state to acquire additional land south of Lake Okeechobee to store and clean water before it flows through the Everglades.
Friends of the Everglades launched the “Rescue the River of Grass” campaign in January 2025 to encourage the state to buy the land, which it already has the funds to do, through a voter-approved land-acquisition trust fund.
The “River of Grass” refers to the 50 to 60-mile-wide, shallow sheet of water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Historically, when the lake overflowed it went over the southern brim, sending slow flowing water through the Everglades.
“We know we’re not going to go back to that,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades said, “but we can take a step back in that direction and create man‑made treatment marshes.”
When the water level of the lake gets too high, it no longer flows only over the Southern brim –the phosphorus-polluted water blasts northern estuaries on the east and west coasts, damaging fragile ecosystems in its path. By buying and converting agricultural land south of the lake into reservoirs and treatment marshes, more clean water can flow south through the River of Grass rather than sprawling across Florida.
“There needs to be more water kept on the land, moving ever so slowly south to remove phosphorus, so having those agricultural areas converted into wetlands for water treatment would be a huge step,” said John Kominoski, an ecosystem ecologist and lead of Florida International University’s Florida Coastal Everglades Program.
THE TOXIC ALGAE WAKE-UP CALL
In the toxic-algae years of 2016 and 2018, both coasts of Florida took up the chant, “Buy the Land.” The blooms devastated ecosystems across Florida, and a lack of effective Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) sent nutrient-rich, polluted waters in all directions.
“The water looked like guacamole in places,” Samples said. During the blooms, Stuart in Martin County became “ground zero” for a toxic algae crisis that Samples described as both a public‑health emergency and an economic problem.
In some areas, toxin levels reached several times higher than the World Health Organization’s threshold for safe recreation, and researchers found that those toxins could be aerosolized and carried through the air, turning it into a community‑wide exposure risk. Water‑dependent businesses in tourism and fishing industries suffered as the blooms dragged on, and the Gulf Coast had a devastating red tide, Samples explained.
Samples warned that without more land for water storage and treatment south of Lake Okeechobee, a similar disaster could be only one rainy season away.
In 2014, 75% of Florida voters approved Amendment 1, dedicating one-third of documentary stamp tax revenues to the state’s Land Acquisition Trust Fund for conservation and restoration purposes.
“In terms of accountability, the legislature really owes it to Floridians to spend that money for land acquisition,” Samples said.
Since it took effect in 2015, lawmakers have used Amendment 1’s trust fund for the management and restoration of existing conservation lands and debt service. Although environmental groups challenged the state’s broader use of the fund, a state appeals court ruled in 2019 that the amendment allows funding to be used for conservation purposes outside of the land acquired after 2015.
Friends of the Everglades has been in conversation with local politicians regarding its land acquisition campaign, Samples said, and some have formally and publicly backed it. In May of 2025, the city of Stuart passed a resolution in support of Rescue the River of Grass.
“We’re seeing hopeful responses, and we are eager to work with the state legislature and whomever the next governor may be to advance this important initiative,” Samples said.
On the state government level, the campaign has yet to receive the same level of support that local leaders have given. Samples said there’s a misconception that Florida has already made enough progress on Everglades restoration.
“There’s been a lot of cheerleading from Governor DeSantis and others, and the fact is that we are not at the finish line, and we have significant work to do,” she said.
The campaign has taken on added urgency this year as the first court-ordered phosphorus pollution deadlines take effect. Friends of the Everglades argues the existing treatment system still cannot consistently produce water clean enough to protect the Everglades, reinforcing its call for additional land acquisition.
“The solution is the same. It’s about acquiring land in the Everglades Agricultural Area for water storage and treatment, cleaning the water so that enough water can finally move south.”
SUGAR STANDS IN THE WAY
The Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) south of Lake Okeechobee, consists of about 700,000 acres. Well over half, 400,000 acres, are sugarcane fields that are mostly owned by conglomerate sugar producers, U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals, neither of which have publicly indicated a willingness to sell.
Additional storage and treatment would need to be built in the EEA to restore part of the natural, historic path before reaching the Everglades. But to acquire the 100,000 acres of land Friends of the Everglades predict would be necessary for restoration of water flow, the state needs to buy land from the sugar companies.
The sugarcane farms remain a blockade, both physically and politically, to the restoration of the natural flow of healthy water through the River of Grass. The industry has a strong hold on water management and environmental policy in Florida, often to the detriment of the Everglades, Samples said.
“We have not heard from the [sugar] industry on their appetite for this,” said Samples. The South Florida Water Management District, Florida Crystals and U.S. Sugar did not respond to requests for comment.
If the State does not purchase the land and convert it to water storage and treatment areas, Kominoski said, “A myriad of problems will persist, but it’s written into law that we have to do this, so it has to be done.”
Lake Okeechobee doesn’t have enough water storage capacity at present, Kominoski explained. When it overflows, water is released into the Caloosahatchee and the St. Lucie River, resulting in harmful algal blooms, fish kills, manatee deaths and red tide.
While Rescue the River of Grass has not yet achieved concrete policy wins public support continues to grow. The petition to urge policymakers to prioritize land acquisition in the Everglades Agricultural Area has received over 30,000 signatures to date.
By renewing the conversation around the importance of securing the land tied to Amendment 1 funding, and producing science-based proposals for the acquisition, Friends of the Everglades hopes to convince local and state leaders to act now.
“We need the state to finish the job,” Samples said.
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