Sierra Club Florida

(February, 2009) - - Update on US Sugar Lands Purchase

The first thing you should know about the state of Florida’s pending purchase of U.S. Sugar lands (a.k.a “the sugar deal”) is that everyone’s trying to kill it. No, not just a few people. We’ve got an Indian Tribe, a pair of sugar barons, entire towns, high schools, editorial boards, the Florida Legislature, and yes, even an environmental group.

The next thing you should know is that this $1 billion plus sale must go through or the Everglades has no chance of survival. As environmentalists, we understand the problem: Lake Okeechobee is separated from the remaining Everglades by more than a half million acres of sugar farms. These sugar farms have been pumping out phosphorus for decades and altering water levels to the detriment of the Everglades. In order to clean, store and move enough water for the Everglades to survive, we have to buy land. If we don’t, the Everglades will continue to be taken over by a cancer of phosphorus-loving cattails in the north, and dried into dust in the south. /p

There are a myriad of arguments made against the deal. Here are a few: the Miccosukee Tribe says it opposes the deal because it will strip funds from other restoration projects. That would be a valid point if it wasn’t also true that few other projects work unless you have the land to clean the water. Florida Crystals, which has launched two lawsuits and is lobbying to kill the deal, objects to a $50 an acre seven-year leaseback to U.S. Sugar. We, too, would have preferred the state to use all the land now, but the lease terms were set by the parties, not us. Seven years is a long time to wait, but in year eight, time is on our side.

The underprivileged communities around Lake Okeechobee, like Clewiston and Belle Glade, are opposed because these are company towns and the sale comes during an ever-deepening recession. While one cannot underestimate the personal suffering that will most likely take place, we can see a brighter, stronger future there. After the purchase, the Lakeside communities will have seven years to transition to a new economy – one that is economically empowering and environmentally sustainable.

By this summer, if all goes well, the state of Florida will be holding the deed to one third of the state’s sugar lands. It means we won’t have to spend tens of billions of dollars in the future. It means that we can clean up phosphorus before it heads south. It means an end to fish kills in the Caloosahatchee basin and Indian River Lagoon. It means fires won’t ravage Shark River Slough and erode the organic peat that keeps the Everglades out of the sea. It means everything is possible.

Help the Sierra Club Everglades Committee now at this important time. Help us to reach out to non-environmental organizations and activate our friends. Help us explain that despite the pitfalls and uncertainties, Governor Crist’s sugar deal is a once in a lifetime opportunity to restore the Everglades. To get involved, call (305) 860-9888 or email: jonathan.ullman@sierraclub.org

Sierra Club Statement in Support of the U.S. Sugar Land Purchase

(June 30, 2008) - The Sierra Club strongly supports the purchase of 187,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar to restore the flow of clean, fresh water at the right time each year to the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.

Governor Charlie Crist deserves our thanks for his leadership on this point: yes, there are risks and costs, but long ago we agreed that the destruction of the Everglades exposes taxpayers and future generations to unlimited risk.

The purchase has the potential to provide several major benefits:

• It would help fill in a missing link in the connection of Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.
• It would provide adequate spatial extent—if the lands are in the right location—to restore wetlands and wildlife in the northern Everglades.
• It would take one-third of sugar lands in the Everglades Agricultural Area out of production, thereby reducing nutrient pollution of the entire Everglades system down to Florida Bay.
• It would restore the northern Everglades as a major tourist attraction and reinvigorate commerce from the shore communities of Lake Okeechobee to the fishing communities of Florida Bay.
• It would allow much improved management of Lake Okeechobee water levels. Excessive fresh water in Lake Okeechobee would be released south into the Everglades, thus protecting the St. Lucie Canal and Caloosahatchee River from harmful releases following tropical storms and other periods of heavy rainfall.
• It would serve as a large, natural water storage area and would eliminate the ill-conceived plan to construct 333 aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wells as the centerpiece of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

The Sierra Club realizes that there are many details that need to be worked out to complete the purchase of the U.S. Sugar cane fields and to create a contiguous corridor from Lake Okeechobee to the Water Conservation Areas south of the Everglades Agricultural Area. In the process, the State of Florida must remain faithful to the overarching goal of restoring the natural flow of water as well as the vast expanse of marshes and sawgrass that once stretched southward from Lake Okeechobee more than a hundred miles to Florida Bay. Such restoration should use the best science available to minimize the use of artificial structures and maximize replication of historic flows.

Governor Crist should move quickly to lay out common sense rules for this acquisition: initiate land swaps to provide contiguous tracts as soon as possible; require that U.S. Sugar parcels swapped to other landowners carry permanent conservation easements and be used for environmentally-friendly purposes; and prohibit land uses incompatible with restoration (e.g. rock mining, power plants and urban development).

We see this purchase as a very important step towards the restoration of the Everglades, which exist nowhere else in the world, as so eloquently described by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in the River of Grass.