More land to no purpose, more government waste in Florida. Thursday’s South Florida Water Management District vote was all that and so much more.

The unanimous vote of the governing board turned the ailing Florida Everglades – a natural masterpiece without equal – into little more than a gold chip in a game of greed and ambition.

And frankly, it made me sick.

Back on April 1, when I wrote about Judge Federico Moreno ordering construction to resume on the 16,700-acre A-1 reservoir, I believed – just as former Gov. Jeb Bush, former executive director of the Water Management District Henry Dean, and many others – that the Everglades had a chance again.

Finally, I thought, we’re going to build restoration projects, just as we were doing before we got sidetracked on Gov. Charlie Crist’s U.S. Sugar deal.

But I should have known better.

It took a newspaper from New York City to show Floridians that U.S. Sugar was taking them for a ride. And even then, they wouldn’t believe it. Land is the thing. Gotta have land. And so, with the governor’s encouragement, the U.S. Sugar deal continued through two downsizings.

Well, I spent a lot of years as an editor and columnist in Stuart writing about the folly of land purchased for something that turned into nothing – the millions of dollars spent on the Inlet State Park that never became one, the property for a public golf course that lapsed into a preserve, the rights of way purchased for roundabouts that were engineered and then canceled on a commission’s whim.

But I’ve never seen anything to match the sheer dimwitted absurdity of handing over $197 million, the sum total of all your cash – as the Water Management District did Thursday – to a seller holding a gun to your head.

On Aug. 4 the seller, U.S. Sugar, gave the district one day to agree to the deal, and a week to get the board to Thursday’s “decision meeting.” It’s that or nothing, U.S. Sugar said. And if you agree to the $197 million for 26,800 acres but have to back out of the deal later, you owe us $10 million – no excuses, no “out” clause. (The district says, yes, there is an “out” if the deal is blocked in court; attorneys say, no, there is no exception.)

And for $197 million, you get to let U.S. Sugar use 17,900 acres of dead citrus land for free, for as long as 20 years; and 8,900 acres of the sugar land for $150 an acre. Bottom line, you empty your pockets, U.S. Sugar fills theirs, you come to a dead stop, they keep on truckin’.

You’ve created one happy seller because now you can’t afford to develop any part of the Everglades restoration project. You’re broke, they’re flush, and unless you raise some taxes -- with, say, the help of a supportive, friendly governor – then you aren’t going to phase in too much restoration.

Interestingly, most defenders of the U.S. Sugar deal Thursday were establishment people – government workers and members of A-list environmental organizations.

My personal favorite speaker was Drew Martin from the Sierra Club. He somehow found a way to compare the Sugar deal with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. I guess in Martin’s mind, board Chairman Eric Buermann is Thomas Jefferson and U.S. Sugar is France.

Before Thursday’s vote was taken, the smart folks asked the Water Management District to wait. Wait to see if the three Indian burial mounds on the property can be moved. Wait to see what’s involved in cleaning up the two polluted parcels. Wait to see if the federal judge is going to grant the Miccosukee Tribe’s request to halt the sale. The Miccosukees have a point, after all. If the sale goes through, where’s the money going to come from to build a reservoir?

Here’s where I came unglued:

Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation said, “We can’t afford to wait any longer. You can’t build [restoration] projects without land.”