A patch of the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz once had a very different future.
Back in the 1960s, it almost became the world’s largest airport, a six-runway behemoth, many times the size of Kennedy International Airport in New York, for supersonic passenger jets.
That didn’t happen. The project was halted after a single airstrip was built, which later became a little-used training area. But the fight back then to block the futuristic airport changed environmental history. It helped bring about a bedrock law requiring the United States government to consider environmental effects of large federal projects — airports, pipelines, bridges, prisons — before they are built.
This year, President Trump took an unusually aggressive step to weaken that law, the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. And the Everglades detention center, located on the site of the never-built supersonic jetport, has emerged as an early example of the administration’s efforts to diminish environmental reviews required by law.
Built by the state of Florida in just eight days on the all-but-unused runway, the detention center was created to house federal immigration detainees. It has undergone no public review of its environmental effects, despite the ecological sensitivity of the Everglades, which supports a rich array of plant and animal life, including threatened and endangered species.
The Trump administration has argued that federal environmental rules don’t apply, since Florida is building the detention center. They also note that Gov. DeSantis, a Republican, has declared that state rules can be suspended during an immigration emergency.
As of three weeks ago, the facility housed about 900 detainees, according to state lawmakers and members of Congress. State officials have said they want increase capacity to 4,000 detainees by the end of the month.
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