By the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
December 29, 2016
Sun Sentinel
If the Legislature doesn’t update the Everglades Forever Act, it will take forever to save what remains of the Everglades.
The Sun Sentinel’s Andy Reid reported recently that between 2011 and 2015, two Palm Beach County sugar farms totaling 1,200 acres discharged runoff that far exceeded limits for protecting the Everglades from pollution. The farms’ landlord is the state.
The Everglades Forever Act, which the Legislature passed in 1994, is supposed to make runoff from farms south of Lake Okeechobee clean enough that it doesn’t damage the “River of Grass.” A major source of pollution is phosphorous, the main ingredient in fertilizer. The state supposedly monitors compliance with the law.
Unfortunately, the law sets only a system-wide target for water quality. The state cannot single out individual farms for enforcement unless the system fails to meet the goal. So the farmers can meet that collective target while the goal of preserving the Everglades remains unmet.
Apparently, the state is fine with that. The South Florida Water Management District, which owns one of the high-polluting parcels, defends the current system and has not suggested that the Legislature strengthen the Everglades Forever Act. Nor has Gov. Rick Scott, whose “Restoration Strategies” became the state’s latest version of Everglades policy in 2013.
“The way the law is written,” said Audubon Florida Executive Director Eric Draper, “the state doesn’t hold people accountable. The (annual) target is so easy to hit that it’s like a basketball player just dropping the ball into the basket.”
Indeed, the water management district and the sugar farmers annually celebrate continued success in meeting the goal. Since 2003, however, the state twice has pushed back the deadline for meeting the final, toughest standard that would protect the roughly 50 percent of the Everglades that remains. Imagine the Everglades as a patient who gets better every year, but never will get well.
As Reid’s article explained, those annual water-quality decreases look good in large part just by comparison. The target is based on pollution levels between 1978 and 1988, which were very high because the state had no serious program to make farmers clean their runoff.
In 1988, U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen sued the South Florida Water Management District, alleging that the state was allowing polluted water to threaten Everglades National Park and the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. In 1991, newly elected Gov. Lawton Chiles went to the federal courthouse in Miami and told a judge: “We want to surrender. We want to plead that the water is dirty.”
Out of that “surrender” came a settlement agreement and the Everglades Forever Act, which has governed Everglades restoration for the last 22 years. It imposes taxes, through the water management district, on farmers and all other property owners within the 16-county district to create a system of marshes that hold and treat runoff before it reaches the Everglades. It also requires farmers to implement so-called Best Management Practices to reduce pollution on their own.
As Draper noted, however, the law amounted to “an unhappy compromise” with the sugar industry. For all the state’s pledges on behalf of the Everglades, the state has made restoration work around the needs of the industry, to the detriment of the Everglades.
For example, Draper said, the state can’t control how much fertilizer farmers use. The more fertilizer, the bigger the cane. The state doesn’t know how well those Best Management Practices are working. Tougher rules could force farmers to take more land out of production, which also would cut their revenue.
The two farms at issue produce sugar for Florida Crystals and U.S. Sugar Corp. Responding to Reid’s article, U.S. Sugar’s Judy Sanchez correctly stated that Audubon Florida lost a lawsuit in which the group asked for added Best Management Practices. An appeals court ruled that the focus instead should be on improving and adding those filter marshes.
The public, though, pays for those marshes — the overall restoration tab is $3.2 billion and counting — thus subsidizing sugar farmers. Recent legislation did extend the cleanup tax on farmers, but fixed the tax at a comparatively low rate. The public subsidy of pollution continues.
For its time, the Everglades Forever Act represented progress. Without an update to give the state more authority, the sugar farmers can continue to claim victory as they run out the clock on the Everglades.
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