Everglades Sugar Plantation to Be Sold to Government
12/6/97
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Headline: Everglades Sugar Plantation to Be Sold to Government
Source: Reuters
Date: 12/6/97
Copyright 1997 by Reuters
MIAMI (Reuters) - St. Joe Corp, Florida's largest landowner,
said Saturday it had agreed in principle to sell its Talisman
Sugar Plantation to the federal government so the 50,000-acre
tract could be returned to the Everglades.
St. Joe said in a statement that a price of $133.5 million
in cash had been agreed on for the land, which the company would
be allowed to farm for five more crop years.
At the end of that time, St. Joe would donate about 3,000
additional acres to various nongovernmental organizations, it
said.
A definitive agreement must still be drafted and obtain
governmental and corporate approval, the company said.
``We announced some time ago that sugar was not a strategic
business for us and that we would sell Talisman for a fair
price,'' chairman and chief executive officer Peter Rummell said
in the statement.
``We are proud to demonstrate it's possible to do what's in
our shareholders' interest and in the public interest. And we
are proud to play a role, however small, in the restoration of
the Everglades,'' he said.
St. Joe, which also has interests in real estate, timber and
railroads, received 13 percent of its operating revenues from
sugar in 1996.
U.S. Vice President Al Gore spoke Saturday at ceremonies to
mark the 50th anniversary of Everglades National Park, the
protected center of vast southern Florida wetlands that are home
to more than a dozen endangered species of wildlife.
The 1.5 million-acre park is being squeezed by sugar
plantations to the north and suburbia at its flanks,
environmentalists say. They blame fertilizer-rich runoff from
the sugar plantations for promoting the growth of weeds over
ecologically critical native vegetation.