ABSTRACT
The controversy over the plans of the Dade County Port Authority to build a south Florida regional jetport first arose in late 1968. Now, as I write more than five years later, the question of where to put this facility still has not been satisfactorily resolved, although most of the parties to the controversy believe that it has, albeit with varying degrees of conviction. Initially, the jetport problem developed partly because many people still were not sufficiently aware of either the value or the fragility of the Everglades and Big Cypress, and this despite the fact that water management had been an issue in the region for more than half a century. Another major cause of the controversy, and the one that I shall emphasize here, was the fact that the Port Authority was allowed the initiative of deciding where to put a large facility affecting Everglades National Park, the Flood Control District, and other interests that it could not conceivably represent. In a later phase of the jetport problem, after the Port Authority finally agreed to abandon the first site chosen, the U.S. Departments of Interior and Transportation and the governor of Florida would join in a pact with the authority to find a replacement site. But, again, by no means all of the interests at stake would be represented in the new process of site selection. The essence, therefore, of the story that follows is a mismatch between action and political responsibility,
