SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — This is a story about a future president who tried to drain a swamp, and government workers who are making it wet again.

By returning the habitat to its natural state, they just might keep the Great Dismal Swamp from heating up the planet.

It was a young George Washington, working as a surveyor 254 years ago, who saw profits in the wetlands straddling the Virginia-North Carolina border.

The seemingly impenetrable swamp had been dismissed as a deadly morass where explorers vanished and runaway slaves escaped. Today, scientists have discovered that the swamp's peat soil is a...