Red Tide - Big Sugar Dig >>3067296
Sugar’s decades-long hold over Everglades came with a price
Fifteen years after Jeb Bush and Bill Clinton reached a landmark accord to revive the Everglades, billions of dollars have been spent but not much marsh has been restored, and the River of Grass continues to cycle through the same familiar struggles. Disastrous algae blooms foul coastal estuaries. Seagrass die-offs plague Florida Bay. High water threatens the Lake Okeechobee dike. Everglades marshes drown under too much water or wither under too little. All the ecological crises of this summer are just déjà vu, all over again. The industry, one of the largest producers of phosphorus-laden pollutants in the Glades, has rung up a string of political successes while recording bumper harvests in recent years. That influence has not come cheaply.
Between 1994 and 2016, a review of state Division of Elections records by The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee bureau shows, the sugar industry — led by United States Sugar and Florida Crystals — has steered a whopping $57.8 million in direct and in-kind contributions to state and local political campaigns. (The total does not include federal contributions.)
It appears to be money well spent. On issue after issue, regulators, legislators and governors have erred on the side of softening the impact of adverse rules and regulations on cane growers and other powerful and polluting agriculture interests, including cattle operations north of Lake Okeechobee. The sugar industry beat back a voter-approved amendment that would have forced it to pay for cleaning up its own nutrient-rich runoff into the Everglades, instead shifting much of the cost to taxpayers.It won repeated delays of strict water quality standards. It has fended off calls for buyouts— even after one of the largest companies, U.S. Sugar, offered to sell itself to the state. And it has undermined attempts to use a second constitutional amendment, Amendment 1, to be used to buy farmland for Everglades cleanup. “I can tell you, first hand, that the industry is directly involved with every decision this Legislature makes,” said Eric Eikenberg, CEO of the Everglades Foundation which for decades has fought the sugar industry over the causes and solutions of the Everglades and was a chief of staff to former Gov. Charlie Crist. Florida’s decision makers “always err on the side of agriculture,” Eikenberg said.
But for the legislators who defend sugar and other farmers, “it’s all a matter of perspective,” said Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres. The 35-year-old three-term lawmaker was in middle school when the Everglades Florida Act was passed in 1994, but he has made his mark as a champion for agricultural interests. He helped pass a sweeping water policy bill in the first week of the 2016 legislative session that eased restrictions on polluters, and he said that residential development is as much to blame for the phosphorus-laden run-off into the Everglades as the sugar industry.“Since 1947, the farmland has been urbanized, and 3 million people live west of I-95 on what used to be sawgrass,” he said. “If all sawgrass is equal, the homeowner in Hialeah should have as much chance of his land being condemned for Everglades clean-up as the farmer does. But the farmer lives under the fear that will only happen to him.”Caldwell was among the many well-positioned state leaders, from legislators to Gov. Rick Scott and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who have been the guest of U.S. Sugar at the company property on King Ranch in Texas, one of North America’s premier hunting grounds. He doesn’t dispute the sugar industry’s clout but says it is justified.“The sugar industry has been involved in stakeholder politics, but it’s equally true their opponents have been myopically focused on the industry’s demise,” he said. Indeed, the Everglades Trust, the West Palm Beach non-profit aimed at protecting the Everglades, has called for an end to government subsidies to the sugar industry.
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