Three Sisters Springs, located in Crystal River, Citrus County, Florida, feeds into Kings Bay and provides a winter home to the gentle manatee. For years, many of the conservationists in Citrus County have been attempting to purchase the property and combine it with the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, but in 2005 a developer from Tampa, Hal Flowers, purchased the property for 10.5 million dollars for a place to build his housing project. This project would include 300 upscale homes on 60 acres of land that encompass Three Sisters Springs!
Flowers was given a moment of enlightenment during a baby manatee rescue, earlier in the year of 2008. Flowers stated that he realized, on that day, that there were more important issues at hand other than turning a profit on this pristine land in Citrus County. Flowers claims that he is now in support of the government purchasing the land for conservation as long as his investors are willing to do the same.
However, the budget crisis in Florida is causing a consideration of a halt to the Forever Florida program, if that should happen, the 6.3 million dollar grant that Crystal River was approved for in September of 2008, will become in question and the development of Three Sisters could continue. Forever Florida is the world's biggest conservation land buying program and has protected over 535,000 acres of land within the state of Florida through December of 2006.
Officials are hopeful that this will not be case and that it may only cause a temporary delay in the transaction. I'm hopeful that they are right, as losing Three Sisters Springs will be a terrible loss to the environment in exchange for 300 more homes in need of an owner!
