Press Advisory                                      

Information: Joette Lorion (305) 279-1166
Miami/September 12, 2002

        FEDERAL JUDGE TO HEAR  MICCOSUKEE TRIBE'S CONCERNS
    ABOUT POLLUTION OF THEIR EVERGLADES HOMELAND ON MONDAY

    Judge William Hoeveler will hold an evidentiary hearing on Everglades
water quality issues in Federal District Court on Monday, September 16, 2002,
at 11 am in Courtroom 9, at 301 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida, in Case
No. 88-1886-CIV-HOEVELER. The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, who
have called the Everglades home for centuries, will raise concerns that the
state programs that are supposed to cleanup the Everglades are behind
schedule, and that no method of achieving final water quality standards by
the 2006 deadline has been selected.

    The state entities responsible for the cleanup, the South Florida Water
Management District and Department of Environmental Protection, were the
Defendants in this lawsuit that was filed in 1988 by then U.S. Attorney
Dexter Lehtinen against the state of Florida for not enforcing water quality
standards in the Florida Everglades. It was settled in 1991 and a Consent
Decree in the case was entered in 1992.  Dexter Lehtinen, now the General
Counsel for the Miccosukee Tribe, will represent them in Court on Monday. The
Tribe has a Memorandum of Agreement with the government that enables them to
ask the Court to enforce deadlines in this case. The Tribe has been pushing
the state to meet clean-up deadlines in Court since 1995.

    Outside the Court room, the Tribe, which is treated as a state under the
Clean Water Act, has set its own water quality standards that are more strict
than the state's to protect Tribal Everglades from pollution.  In 1999, the
EPA approved the Tribe's standards, including a 10 ppb numeric criterion for
phosphorous, as being scientifically defensible and protective of the
Everglades. The state of Florida has not yet adopted a numeric criterion for
phosphorous, which pollutes the Everglades and causes invasive cattails to
replace sawgrass above natural levels.

Note: The Miccosukee Tribe will also raise Everglades water quality concerns,
as well as the problem that government agencies are presently moving further
away from the goal of more natural water levels for the Everglades, before
the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in Washington this
Friday. This small Tribe, which has 500 members and acts as a guardian for
its Everglades homeland, won three important federal court victories against
government agencies in 2002 on various Everglades related issues.