End of the Barge Canal

President Nixon surprised and delighted conservationists last week by halting construction of the controversial Cross-Florida Barge Canal. About a third of the 107-mile-long waterway has already been built across northern Florida by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Cost to date: $50 million, a great deal of money to go down the drain. But stopping the project. Nixon said, "will prevent a past mistake from causing permanent damage."

Conservationists never saw the canal as anything but a huge environmental blunder (TIME, April 13). By connecting the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, the 9-ft.-deep waterway would have saved shippers a 600-mile journey around Florida. But, as Nixon's Council on Environmental Quality noted, its construction would have inundated the Oklawaha River basin, a unique and beautiful area abounding in wildlife. Critics also charged that the canal would pollute nearby ground-water supplies and they insisted that the locks would be too small to permit profitable traffic loads.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Barrington Parker suspended work on the project by granting a preliminary injunction brought by the lawyers of the Environmental Defense Fund. The judge rejected the corps's defense that it was merely acting as the agent of Congress, which cannot be sued unless it waives "sovereign immunity." He ruled that the corps had in fact not complied with the National Environmental Policy Act. Now that Nixon has stopped the project entirely, the next step will be for government bodies and environmentalists to work out what to do with both the completed parts of the waterway and the condemned land along its route.

President Nixon's action demonstrated that ecology is playing a bigger and bigger role in politics, a point Nixon emphasized in his State of the Union message (see THE NATION). Moreover, the order encouraged conservationists who hope that the Corps of Engineers will shift its focus from building ecologically questionable canals and dams to more desperately needed projects. Among the top priorities: new sewage systems and water-treatment plants.

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