The
5 ECO-FRIENDLY PEOPLE OF INTEREST
ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTIVIST
BY JANIE GOULD
PHOTO BY BOB DOBENS
Nathaniel P. Reed has been
52
a passionate defender of
Florida’s environment for
more than half a century and
has had notable success, including
helping to stop the Miami Jetport,
which was rising in the middle of the Big
Cypress Swamp 80 miles from Miami. A
high-speed train linking the remote site
with cities would have cut right through
the Everglades.
The project, which was pushed by
Miami political and business leaders,
seemed to be a done deal. In fact, one $9
million runway had already been built
when President Nixon pulled the plug on
the project in 1969. That came at the urging
of Reed and others. At the time, Reed
was the environmental adviser to Gov.
Claude Kirk, Florida’s first Republican
chief executive since Reconstruction.
But Reed, 75, who served 14 years on
the South Florida Water Management
board, says he’d rather enumerate his
failures, the most noteworthy being the
pollution of Lake Okeechobee. “It’s a
national disgrace,” he says.
Reed was born in 1933, the year his
parents built their expansive winter home
on Jupiter Island for the family of five
children. “I claim Florida as my ancestral
home,” he says. “I fell in love with the
fishing and I fell in love with the backwoods.”
He graduated from Trinity College in
Connecticut in 1955 and then served in
Air Force military intelligence. When he
retired, “I knew I wanted to make my life
in Florida.”
Reed was running the family-owned
Hobe Sound Co. and Jupiter Island Club.
When the club closed for the season
May 1, he’d explore Florida. The Sunshine
State was in the midst of unbridled
growth, unimpeded by any environmental
LIVING GREEN