A Miccosukee-led plan could finally end new oil drilling efforts in the Everglades
Miles below Big Cypress National Preserve, land of elegant cypress trees festooned with air plants, there is oil.
Not a ton of it, but enough to spark a small domestic drilling industry that continues today, decades after the land became the nation’s first national preserve and the federal government bought it all up.
The environmental effects of the drilling, ranging from thousands of gallons of spilled oil to threats to the local water supply, have long prompted buyout offers from the state and federal government. But a new plan, hatched by the Miccosukee tribe and a nonprofit, might mean the end of future prospecting and drilling on hundreds of thousands of acres of land within Big Cypress, a crucial part of Florida’s Everglades.