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The Florida Everglades are home to alligators, dozens of bird species, beautiful flowers and exotic plants. It's easy to see what attracts people to these places. But Florida's population growth, coupled with farms that require a never-ending supply of pesticides and fertilizers, has put an enormous strain on the Everglades ecosystem. So a restoration plan is underway tostabilize the Everglades and preserve the animals that live there. But the plan has proved to be controversial.

Craig Quirolo runs a nongovernmental organization called Reef Relief in Key West, Florida.

And that’s what really scares me about the Everglades Restoration Plan is that we will be continuallyinundated, drought or no drought, with a lot of water. And I think if this water were clean, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. But we have a lot of nutrients in that water, a lot of pesticides. And I think there's a lot of stuff that we don't even know within that water. And that's sort of what scares a lot of people who are down there.

This is a sugarcane country. Pesticides and fertilizers from farms in Central Florida flow right through the Everglades and on to the Reef. And according to some critics, they are the principal reason the Everglades Restoration Plan won't work.

Juanita Green is the spokesperson for Friends of the Everglades.

“This is the biggest problem in the Everglades: the Everglades Agricultural Area. It's the major source of water pollution. It's the, it’s the big... a big dam between Lake Okeechobee and the rest of the natural Everglades.”

The Everglades Agricultural Area, or EAA, covers some 700,000 acres, 90% of it planted in sugarcane. Lake Okeechobee's waters irrigate farm fields here, then flow south through the Everglades and into the Keys.

Stuart Stein is a fourth-generation Florida farmer. And he vehemently rejects the idea that his farming methods damage the Everglades and the Reef.

“We will do everything that we can to help, restore and preserve the Everglades, you know. I enjoy going to the Everglades and I hope my kids have it. They’re gonna enjoy it too, along with agriculture.”

Bill Causey of the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary helped draft the plan to restore the Everglades. He agrees that the Reef is in trouble, but says no one factor can explain its decline.

“It won't do any good if we spend 7 or 8 hundred million dollars here in Florida Keys to improve our water quality, if in fact the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan has been put on the shelf because the waters coming down are still going to be polluted, and then they will enter our cleaner Florida Keys waters and then make the way to the Reef.”

Some environmental groups believe that the government could save the Everglades and the Coral Reef by buying the farms in Belle Glade, shutting them down and donating the land to the park. But federal officials say that's not going to happen.

What we can't do is go back within time. We have to get the water right back into the system through the Comprehensive Restoration Plan.

For the millions of people each year who flock to the Keys to enjoy the Reef and the millions of fish that call the Reef home, for the farmers who've grown sugarcanes in central Florida for generations, and for the people who move to the state each day. That's exactly what this critical balancing act is all about: getting the water right.