Florida closes on scaled-back Everglades purchase

The South Florida Water Management District on Tuesday closed on the purchase of nearly 27,000 acres of U.S. Sugar Corp. land in a scaled-down version of the once-massive Everglades restoration project.Gov. Charlie Crist in 2008 first proposed the purchase of 187,000 acres, which the district agreed to buy for $1.3 billion. But the economic downturn caused the state to twice scale back the