The Key West Citizen

Atty. General Continues Fight In Park Matter
(Special to The Citizen)

TALLAHASSEE, July 19.-

The federal government's sudden interest in a part of the original Everglades National Park in South Florida, seems to be primarily for the purpose of obtaining control over vast potential oil rights, just as it has gone to great lengths to obtain such control over the off-shore oil sections of California, according to a statement made by Attorney General J. Tom Watson, before a subcommittee of the House in Washington.

The attorney general said he was not opposing creation of a national park in South Florida, but sought to preserve the state's oil rights in several hundred thousand acres of state lands which other members of the state board of trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund were deeding to the federal government.

A radical departure from original park plans was questioned by Watson, as indicating a plan on the part of the federal government to take control over valuable oil lands recently discovered in South Florida.

The attorney general questioned the state's release to the federal government valuable state oil rights on 442,000 acres of Everglades land, of which 170,000 acres are not included in the park at all. He also questioned the departure from the original plan of vesting the powers of eminent domain in the federal government to condemn and take land included in the park area, when such was not originally planned. He branded as false the statement from a special attorney for the trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund that the state
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ATTY. GENERAL
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would recover ninety per cent of oil proceeds on the lands so conveyed.

"I am endeavoring to compel the return of the state's oil rights already transferred to the federal government," the attorney general concluded, "and the relinquishment by the Secretary of the Interior of any requirement for their conveyance from the state to the federal government."