Everglades advocates gathering in Florida this week for their annual meeting are hoping to rekindle enthusiasm for the ambitious environmental restoration effort that has floundered in the face of growing federal budget deficits during the Bush administration.

The Everglades Coalition has its eye on the 2008 presidential election -- and on the Florida primaries later this month.

"Maybe we're dreaming, but we're not giving up on this," said Nathaniel Pryor Reed, a former assistant Interior secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford and one of the most ardent champions of Everglades restoration.

"A lot depends a lot on the national team and who the president is," Reed added. "So when these campaigns come to Florida, we'll be bombarding them about the national, even international, significance of the Everglades."

The coalition meeting at Captiva Island will draw several hundred people from advocacy groups and government agencies. Their mood figures to vacillate between frustration that the prized wetland is continuing to deteriorate and guarded optimism that the next president will invest the political and financial capital to see the restoration through.

It has been seven years since Congress authorized the $7.8 billion restoration -- the largest environmental program in the nation's history, known as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP. The effort -- comprising roughly 60 projects to be completed over 30 years -- is aimed at reversing a century of ecological decline wrought by intensive agriculture, massive water diversions to control flooding, and the continuing onslaught of commercial and residential construction to support Florida's burgeoning population.

While the coalition, comprising 45 nonprofit groups, has not endorsed a presidential candidate, leading Florida environmentalists said this week the next three years will be a critical test of the federal government's promise to save the Everglades. Federal and state governments have committed to splitting the restoration's costs.

The bombardment could begin as soon as next week as the candidates turn to South Carolina and then Florida, where both major parties will hold primaries Jan. 29.

Everglades as an issue

Yet despite Florida's large and attractive voter base, few candidates have staked out a position on the Everglades. Republicans are particularly susceptible to a Florida backlash over the Everglades given the national party's broad push for increased oil and gas exploration from domestic fields.

But Democrats are not immune from the wrath of angry South Florida voters, as former Vice President Gore learned in 2000 when he stopped short of condemning a proposed second airport for Miami-Dade County that would sit only 10 miles from Everglades National Park and two miles from Biscayne National Park on the site of a former Air Force base.

Environmentalists claim Gore lost 10,000 Florida votes by going soft on the airport proposal, enough to cost him both the state and the presidency.

More recently, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson (R) drew ire for suggesting he would not rule out drilling for oil under the Everglades, a position he rejected a month later after the comments drew a cool reception from Gov. Charlie Crist, a fellow Republican.

"It's a national treasure, and it's not to be messed with, and I can't imagine anybody doing so," Thompson told the Associated Press during a subsequent trip to Florida in October.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who holds a slim lead in recent polls among Florida Republicans, was credited this week by a Broward County GOP chairman for having a "special sensitivity" to the concerns of South Florida voters.

"You'll never catch him saying he would drill for oil in the Everglades," the official told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

Regardless of which candidates emerge from this month's primaries, Everglades advocates say their top priority is electing a president who will give strong, sustained direction to the federal agencies working to implement restoration goals.

Key appointments

Some of that can be achieved through the appointment of committed leaders at the Interior Department and Army Corps of Engineers, the two federal agencies with primary responsibility for Everglades restoration. But also by loosening the federal purse strings on key restoration projects that promise only to get more expensive as the years pass.

"Everglades is a long-term process. It's going to cost a lot of money, and there will always be other projects that people want to get done," said John Adornato, director of the Sun Coast regional office of the National Parks Conservation Association. "But we already have broad support across both political parties and both chambers of Congress. So whoever gets elected, we'll see it as another opportunity to impress upon them the importance of saving this ecosystem."

Government officials and nonprofit leaders alike concede that much of the core restoration work has stalled in the wake of competing federal priorities -- including the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nation's most destructive hurricanes on record, and an economy that remains weakened by a housing crisis and anemic job growth.

But in several areas, including the Kissimmee River Basin that supplies much of the Everglades freshwater through Lake Okeechobee, the combined federal-state effort has shown measurable results. Paul Grosskruger, the Army Corps' Jacksonville District commander, wrote in a recent op-ed that the Kissimmee work proves that restoration goals are being met.

Bush legacy

President Bush, while consistent in his verbal support for Everglades restoration, has not proposed budgets that are robust enough to move the projects forward, critics say. And they point to the president's veto of last year's Water Resources Development Act bill, a measure that included roughly $2 billion in spending authorizations for Everglades projects.

The WRDA bill became law on a congressional override vote, securing a place for three projects that officials say will help restore public confidence in the restoration program. But until Congress appropriates funds to get the projects moving, progress remains stalled.

Last summer, the Government Accountability Office estimated federal Everglades restoration spending at $2.3 billion between fiscal 1999 and 2006, but the core CERP projects remained underfunded by roughly $1.2 billion of what Congress initially projected.

Terrence "Rock" Salt, the Interior Department's top policy adviser in South Florida, acknowledged this week that key parts of the restoration have been hamstrung by federal budget shortfalls in the face of escalating costs.

But, he added, "It's not like the feds have taken their ball and gone home. It's still one of the most robustly funded [Corps of Engineers] programs and probably the strongest restoration program in the country -- maybe the world."

Others have accused the president of "passing off" federal responsibility to Florida, particularly when his brother, Jeb Bush, was governor. As a result, Florida has outspent its federal partners on restoration projects by a significant margin.

State commitment

Crist, who took office a year ago, has remained committed to Everglades restoration even as the state's economy has been battered by soaring property insurance costs and thousands of home foreclosures due to the sub-prime lending crisis.

"Governor Crist shows great interest in trying to solve our problems," Reed said. "If the new president and our governor have good chemistry, we could see some positive momentum in 2009."

The Bush administration also enraged Everglades advocates last year by pushing the United Nations to drop Everglades National Park from its list of endangered World Heritage sites, a designation it had held since 1992 after Hurricane Andrew caused widespread damage to the park.

Todd Willens, a senior Interior Department official, defended the delisting, saying it reflected the United Nations' confidence in the federal government's Everglades restoration program. But critics were not assuaged.

Florida's senior senator, Bill Nelson (D), called for Willens' resignation, citing his "highly anti-environmental credentials." Prior to joining the Interior Department, Willens was a policy adviser to former House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), one of Congress' most strident critics of federal environmental policies before he lost his re-election bid in 2006.

Nelson will be among other Florida lawmakers addressing the Everglades Coalition meeting this week, along with Crist, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D), Rep. Connie Mack (R), former governor and senator Bob Graham (D) and former Rep. Porter Goss (R). Other high-ranking officials expected to participate are Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett and John Paul Woodley, assistant secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers and chief of the corps' civil works division.