Fifteen years after an agreement by Florida and federal officials to revive the Everglades, “billions of dollars have been spent but not much marsh has recovered,” says the Miami Herald. “But a review of the key decision points by Florida policymakers over the last two decades shows that one key player in the fate of the Everglades has grown healthier and stronger: Big Sugar.”
From 1994 to this year, “the sugar industry led by U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals has steered a whopping $57.8 million in direct and in-kind contributions to state and local campaigns,” according to a review of state records by the Herald and Tampa Bay Times. “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 head of the Everglades Foundation, a conservation group, says “the industry is involved in every decision this legislature makes.” State Rep. Matt Caldwell says “it’s all a matter of perspective,” and has argued that homeowners settling along the edges of the Everglades are as much to blame for phosphorus runoff as the sugar industry. During this year’s session, Caldwell helped pass a bill that eased restrictions on water polluters.
Voters approved a “polluter pays” amendment to the state constitution in 1996. It was years before the legislature implemented the amendment “but found a way to neuter it,” says the Herald, in discussing four victories by the sugar industry. In the end, the industry paid 24 percent of its share of clean-up costs while creating 76 percent of the phosphorus entering the Everglade Agricultural Area, according to a study by the Everglades Foundation in 2012.