Unless other politicians start listening, the one thing we'll definitely be is thirsty.
Big Sugar's sly cleanup plan is dirty pool
April 12, 1992
The Florida Sugar Cane League, not famous for its environmental conscience, suddenly has unveiled a plan to clean up the Everglades.
A late April Fool's joke? Nope. Big Sugar says it's serious.
The huge corporations that grow cane finally admit they shouldn't dump so much scummy fertilizer into South Florida's drinking-water supply.
To prove their deep concern for the public welfare, they've offered to reduce by 151 tons the amount of phosphorus being pumped off the farmlands into the Everglades. The only catch: Big Sugar, not the state, would be in charge of the anti-pollution efforts.
How considerate of the cane growers, not wishing to trouble government with the task of enforcing its own laws. Instead, we all should just relax and rely on the sugar barons to make the water clean and safe. That's about as likely as Lake Okeechobee freezing over.
Big Sugar's newfound commitment to the environment is explained in one word: fear. First, the U.S. attorney sued Florida for allowing the Everglades to be polluted. After a lengthy legal battle, both sides settled on a $400 million cleanup program that requires cane growers to pump dirty farm runoff into large nitration ponds.
Sugar companies say the plan will tie up valuable land and cost agriculture 20,000 jobs. Led by U.S. Sugar and Flo-Sun Inc., the industry has fought back with a hail of lawsuits. Big Sugar has steadfastly resisted all previous attempts to make it pay for its own putrid practices. A Greek chorus of expensive PR men and lobbyists have insisted the phosphorus in farm runoff is as harmless as rain.
That nonsense won't wash anymore, and Big Sugar knows it. By offering their own cleanup plan—"an olive branch," in the words of one sugar executive—the industry is making a last-ditch effort to appear reasonable and to keep control of its own drainage pumps.
Says Joe Podgor, of Friends of the Everglades: "It's like a traffic cop has pulled you over, and now you're trying to sweet-talk your way out of it."
Fittingly, the latest stall tactic came in the same week that the Everglades was named one of the 10 most endangered rivers in North America. A national conservation group, American Rivers, blames agricultural pollution and urbanization as the major threats to the vast shallows that provide fresh water for about four million South Floridians.
Some respected conservation groups aren't wild about the state's plan or Big Sugar's self-serving alternative. Friends of the Everglades, for instance, favors a complete scientific remapping of South Florida's plumbing, combined with "hard-core enforcement" of existing pollution laws.
Profitable habits are hard to break, and the sugar industry has long enjoyed a sweet deal: cheap water, migrant labor, government-inflated price supports—and the Everglades as its backyard cesspool.
The arrangement is cemented each election year by generous contributions to pliant politicians. According to the Center for Public Integrity, 17 sugar PACS gave $2.6 million to congressional campaigns between 1985 and 1990. Money doesn't just talk, it shouts: Of 29 U.S. senators who got $15,000 or more from Big Sugar interests, 85 percent voted to keep the price subsidies.
It's no wonder that cane growers, coddled for years, were stunned by the federal lawsuit over pollution. And with little experience at (or need for) compromise, it's no wonder that Big Sugar's counteroffer is so weak.
Backs to the wall, cane growers miraculously discover a way to keep 151 tons of phosphorus out of the Everglades!
Incredible. When these guys aren't flushing fertilizer, they're shoveling it.
Future of keys rests in the fate of Florida Bay
February 21, 1993
If you went to the Keys this weekend, you probably noticed that the once-clear waters of Florida Bay have turned the color of bile.
A vast and destructive algae bloom has floated out of the backcountry and settled in near Islamorada. Looking northwest from the Overseas Highway, you saw a milky green-brown soup surrounding the mangroves, a perverse parody of Christo's decorated islands. Crossing the tall arch to Long Key, you noticed a foul-looking stain stretching gulfward to the horizon.
What you saw is Florida Bay dying.
It started with the turtle grass, essential cover for shrimp, baby lobsters and small fish. In 1987, the grass turned brown and began falling out in clumps, then strips, then acres. The dead grass rotted in the warm water, releasing nutrients that fostered algae. Meanwhile, where the lush grass once grew, the bay bottom turned muddy and barren.
Today the die-off is so huge that between 300 and 400 square miles of Florida Bay is called the Dead Zone. Scientists say its effects are spreading, and the prospects are dire: The collapse of a uniquely bountiful estuary, and the potential crippling of a multimillion-dollar tourist and fishing economy.
There's no quick answer. Grass beds are sensitive and slow-growing; replenishment takes a long time. Part of the problem lies miles away, in the Everglades.
For centuries the southward flow of fresh water emptied purely into Florida Bay. Then the geniuses who manage our canal systems began diverting water to benefit developers and farmers. That folly was implemented under the guise of "flood control."
With its flow of fresh water disrupted, Florida Bay got saltier each season. The hypersalinity, combined with drought, caused drastic changes. Some biologists believe additional harm came from fertilizers and pesticides which flushed through the Everglades into the bay.
What you now see out your car window is unlike anything that's happened before. From an airplane, the sight is even more dramatic and dismaying.
In past years the blooms were smaller, localized. They came and went in a couple months. This one was born in October, and continues to spread like an 50-square-mile amoeba.
Chilly weather hasn't killed it, only moved it from the remote middle part of the bay—Everglades National Park—toward the populated islands. Each night at the fishing docks, backcountry guides grimly exchange information on the movement of the algae; on some days it's a challenge to find clear water.
The cloudy bloom not only looks like sewage, it blocks out vital sunlight, causing marine life to flee or perish. Sponges are dying by thousands—clots of them can be found bobbing in the algae. That's bad news for future lobster harvests; the juvenile crustaceans require healthy sponges for food and protection.
Even more alarming is that strong winter winds have pushed broad streaks of the algae out of the bay through the Keys bridges, into the Atlantic. The offshore reefs, already imperiled, could suffocate if the microbic crud thickens.
Imagine what would happen to the boating, diving and fishing—in other words, the entire Keys economy. Disaster is the only word for it, like an oil spill that won't go away.
This weekend the nation's top environmental groups are gathered in Tallahassee for the annual Everglades Coalition. The task is to devise a way to remap South Florida's plumbing to repair the Everglades.
Incredibly, it's the first time that the agenda includes a serious scientific discussion of the fate of Florida Bay. Pray that it's not too late.