Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard
By Sarah Heard
January 8, 2016
Palm Beach Post
Last summer, Florida’s incoming Senate President Joe Negron stepped into a controversy over Everglades restoration with an offer that no one should have been able to refuse.
The whole idea of fixing the South Florida water management system and restoring the Everglades was about to fall apart. The sugar industry didn’t want to sell land for a key component that would move clean water south from Lake Okeechobee to Everglades National Park. Advocates for implementing the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) were becoming convinced that the only hope for South Florida was to get rid of sugar altogether.
It is a fact that more water flows into Lake O from the north than the lake can store. That’s why there is an Everglades south of the lake – a broad river of grass to carry the excess lake water south.
It is a fact that Florida Bay and the Everglades need that flow to survive. Miami-Dade County needs it to protect its water supply against salt water intrusion. The coastal estuaries need it so they won’t be the only outlet for destructive discharges when the lake gets too full.
If it was rare weather events that made our water management system not work, then not working would be a rare event. Instead, it’s become the norm.
Two years ago there was a 30,000-acre fire in Big Cypress, Miami had salt intrusion problems and Everglades National Park was starving for water, and Lake Okeechobee was full. But we couldn’t send it south because the stormwater treatment areas were full to capacity with runoff from farm fields. Instead, the coastal estuaries were destroyed, again.
Buying land south of the Lake is not about building a big reservoir to dump Lake Okeechobee water into when the current system has forced us into an emergency. The purpose is to build an interconnected system of store, treat, and move water that keeps us from continuously ending up in an emergency situation.
Negron asked us to back off while he quietly negotiated a land purchase that would make it possible to send clean water south and at the same time was fair to both the big sugar companies and taxpayers and allowed sugar growing to continue south of the Lake.
The answer from sugar has been to double down on attacks on Negron and to insist that Everglades National Park and the southern end of Florida – where all that water used to go – doesn’t need it and doesn’t want it.
The essence of problem solving is to try to understand the other side. Negron is in a position to do that. He has been listening to all sides. After the 2013 disaster he commissioned the University of Florida Water Institute to answer the question as to whether more water needed to go south. They concluded that it did.
The essence of problem solving is being willing to negotiate. Negron is in a position to do that. Why don’t we let him instead of trying to discredit him?
Does the sugar industry really want to abandon the CERP and the federal funding that goes with it, and have the state agencies devise a plan that sugar is willing to accept and the taxpayers are willing to pay for?
Those of us who are concerned about the present system’s impact on the environment and the people who live in South Florida are afraid that by the time that happens, for the Everglades and our estuary, it will be too late.
SARAH HEARD, STUART
Editor’s note: Sarah Heard is a Martin County commissioner.