Florida had insisted it would come up with a comprehensive plan to save the Everglades, if only the feds would back off. Given the sorry history of water management, it was difficult to be bubbly with optimism.
Sure enough, the district's new Surface Water Improvement and Management plan was greeted by environmentalists with resounding derision. SWIM would give Big Sugar until the year 2002 to clean up its act, using 40,000 acres of public wetlands as filtering pools.
Water managers said they didn't know what SWIM would cost, or how much of the expense would be borne by agriculture. Big Sugar's response: We'll be happy to help clean up our slop if Uncle Sam pays every penny of the cost.
What a deal. It's like emptying a septic tank into your neighbor's bathtub, then demanding money before you'll mop it up—and finishing the job 12 years later.
The sugar growers' arrogance is well-founded. Thanks to the state, they get all the fresh water they want. Thanks to the feds, they can sell their crop at artificially inflated prices.
It isn't farming, it's glorified welfare. Naturally Big Sugar wants the public to pay for its pollution remedies—we've been paying, one way or another, for everything else.
State agencies always had the power to halt the polluting, but never had the political spine to do it. The staffs of the water districts are handcuffed because board members are political appointees who know more about irrigating campaign treasuries than vegetable fields.
The great thing about the U.S. attorney's lawsuit is that it forces the issue: Why should the Okeechobee growers be allowed to do what no other private industry can?
Knowing what we now do about the slow death of the Everglades, it's appalling that the sugar debate has lasted so long. The ultimate price of such cowardly politics could be a future of rationed, tainted drinking water for our kids.
We owe the Big Sugar companies zero; they owe us. They should filter the runoff on their own land, at their own expense, starting now.
But they won't do it, and the state won't make them. That's why Lehtinen sued.
It certainly got everyone's attention, and not a moment too soon.
New wetlands plan rooted in bad policy
May 20, 1991
In a political retreat that could mean disaster for parts of South Florida, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new rules that would allow massive development of once-protected swamps and marshlands.
Under pressure from developers and farmers, the EPA recently redefined "wetlands" in a way that excludes up to 10 million acres nationwide. If the new definition is adopted, it could abolish federal protection for large sections of the East Everglades, and for thousands of acres of marshes bordering the conservation areas in southwest Broward.
Developers have been drooling lasciviously over these unspoiled tracts, and now they'll be gassing up the bulldozers. The EPA says the definition of "wetlands" should be narrowed to meet three guidelines:
• The land's soils must be composed of muck or peat;
• The surface must be flooded by tides, or saturated by rains for more than 14 consecutive days during the growing season;
• More than half of the plants growing in the area must be among the 7,000 species commonly found in wetlands.
Unfortunately, those criteria can no longer be applied fairly in South Florida. Here, pristine wetlands have been invaded by melaleuca, Brazilian pepper trees and other water-guzzling exotics. Areas once rich in peat and soggy underfoot are now parched.
Paving is no solution; replenishing is a better idea.
The necessity of saving wetlands is so obvious that George Bush made it a campaign issue, and pledged there would be "no net loss" of marshes and swamps during his administration. It's distressing, then, to see the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the Army Corps of Engineers all cave in.
The political pressure is overwhelming. In many places, the feds are the only serious obstacle for run-amok developers. Look at Broward. To describe the county's land-use policy as spineless would be kind; even calling it a "policy" stretches the definition. Anything developers want, they usually get. The Sawgrass Expressway is a shining example.
When the government announced tough wetland rules two years ago, powerful people were upset. It screwed up their plans to turn the marshes and wet prairies of southwest Broward into a vast panorama of cheesy condos, strip malls and high-density housing developments. The holy mission to make Broward uglier and more crowded than Dade was temporarily put on hold.
Now the feds have gone soft. Bowing to complaints that the current definition of "wetlands" includes land that isn't very wet, EPA chief William Reilly last week said: "We're only interested in saving genuine wetlands. There was a backlash over the previous policy because of what appeared to be overreaching … "
Needless to say, the "backlash" didn't come from the masses. It came from folks with connections.
Before the weaker definition of wetlands takes effect, the White House must approve it. Significantly, the Interior Department refuses to endorse the EPA's recommendation.
In South Florida, the dynamics are simple. Developers are running out of land, and they will fight for every acre. Land-use attorney Don McCloskey beautifully articulates his clients' selfless philosophy: "Government cannot use my private property to save the world."
So much for the Everglades, and for the underground aquifer that gives us water.
The EPA's logic is politically convenient: Marshes that already are damaged don't deserve protection.To be deemed valuable, wetlands had better be wet, and free from foreign vegetation.
The irony is classic Florida. Melaleucas originally were imported in a grandiose scheme to suck the Everglades dry. Though that plan was thwarted, it looks as if the stubborn exotics finally will get their revenge. The trees won't have to drink a drop, they'll just have to stand there.
Developers gleefully will be counting them, one by one, to prove that their land isn't worth saving.
Glades need a hero before options dry up
January 12, 1992
Big Sugar might help save the Everglades, in spite of itself.
The longer that cane growers refuse to clean up their waste and the more unfiltered scum they pump into the watershed, the greater the public backlash. No cause has so enlarged and galvanized the conservation movement.
Cheers went up when acting U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen sued Florida for letting growers pollute Everglades National Park. More cheers went up when Gov. Lawton Chiles recently settled the case.
The agreement called for a modest cleanup that gives Big Sugar years to comply. The industry's arrogant response: 18 lawsuits against the Department of Environmental Regulation and state water managers.
People got mad—even people who didn't fish or hunt, who didn't care much about alligator nests or the sight of wild flamingos at sunrise. People who simply knew a scandal when they saw one.
Big Sugar gets all the water it wants for practically nothing, dirties it with tons of phosphates, then spits it back at nature. That's not the only reason the Everglades is in trouble, but what's wrong can't be fixed until the cane growers get on board.
"What we're talking about," said DER chief Carol Browner, "is a significant replumbing of South Florida."
When the Everglades Coalition met this weekend in Key Largo, the conference drew nationally known conservationists, biologists, planners, lobbyists and water experts. There were lawyers, too—mean, tough, hungry lawyers. That's what it takes these days to battle the special interests.