Free Republic

NAPLES, Fla. - A homesteader leaving his Everglades land after years of fighting the state's claim on it is moving to a bigger, nicer house, but he mourns what he's lost. "I will never see the turkeys run up and down the road again," said Jesse Hardy, 70. "I will never see my deer feed in my yard again. ... I will never be able to freely do what I wanted to do." Hardy's land was the last of 19,000 parcels purchased by the state over the past two decades to help return the Everglades to its natural state. Most...

WEST PALM BEACH - A man who fought for years to keep his swampy home and rock mine business in the rural Everglades settled for $4.95 million with the state, which plans to restore the former wetlands area. The deal, approved Wednesday by a Collier County circuit judge, gives Jesse Hardy until Nov. 30 to get off the 160 acres. The former Navy SEAL lives in a clapboard house he built, hidden down a maze of dusty dirt roads about 40 miles east of Naples. The property has no electricity or other utilities, but Hardy dug a 60-foot well for...

EAST OF NAPLES, TURN LEFT AT THE BUCKET - Once, the land under Jesse Hardy's feet was an underwater reef, and nobody owned it and nobody wanted it. Then it became more or less solid, part of South Florida. To the east, the Everglades grew drier and drier. To the west, a town called Naples crept closer and closer. In the 1970s, developers peddling paradise dug canals, built roads and carved the swamp into squares of empty promises. Too remote to be developed, it stayed pretty much abandoned, except for Hardy. Looking for an escape from Miami, he bought a...

TALLAHASSEE — The state's environmental secretary got approval from Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet Tuesday to move forward with the seizure of 160 acres owned by a man who refuses to sell it for Everglades restoration. Secretary Colleen Castille of the Department of Environmental Protection told Bush and the Cabinet that her agency is still trying to work out a settlement with Jesse Hardy, a Collier County man who has refused to sell his fish-farm property the state says it needs for a massive restoration of the Everglades. If the agency can't work out a deal with him by...

Hardy says he didn't OK any deal with state By MICHAEL PELTIER, mpeltier1234@comcast.net May 27, 2004 TALLAHASSEE — An outraged Jesse Hardy said Wednesday he hasn't agreed to any proposal that would allow state officials to condemn his land by the end of August if he doesn't reach a deal in his standoff over Everglades restoration. A day after Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Cabinet members signed off on an agreement they were told had Hardy's blessing, the 68-year-old Southern Golden Gate Estates resident said that isn't the case. Hardy said what he thought he had approved was a letter...

State, Hardy reach tentative agreement on land buy By MICHAEL PELTIER, mpeltier1234@comcast.net May 26, 2004 TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Jeb Bush and his Cabinet offered landowner Jesse Hardy a carrot Tuesday while wielding a stick in continuing efforts to uproot him from 160 acres that stand in the middle of local Everglades restoration plans. After months of negotiations and deferrals, the Cabinet voted on a plan agreed to by Hardy's attorneys that would give him until Aug. 31 to give up his parcel in exchange for an acceptable tract north of his current Southern Golden Gate Estates homestead. If an agreement...