I've tried to wade through the settlement agreement. It appears Disney agreed to drop the lawsuit and public records request and the District agreed to not challenge the ownership of the "mitigation credits" that the District/Disney has received over the years.
In short, Disney set aside about 1/3 of their own land back in the early days for preservation. In order to develop on some of that acreage (or have rights to future development) they had to, in essence, pay for projects elsewhere that could then serve as a credit for the acreage they were destroying to build additional theme parks, hotels, etc. The Disney Wilderness Preserve is a 11,500 acre wilderness preserve (south of WDW) that contains 3,500 acres of restored wetlands. They got to develop X acres of WDW property in exchange for X acres of restored nature areas elsewhere.
I assume the District was challenging that IT owned the mitigation credits, and not Disney. That would have been a pretty big hurdle to future development of WDW.
"You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world...but it requires people to make the dreams a reality." -Walt Disney
You must be logged in to post