Part 42 (2/2)

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 cla.s.sic 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 sc.u.m 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.

The mood was sober because the situation is dire. Half the original Everglades has been lost to drainage and development. Fish and mammals are dying from mercury poisoning. The number of nesting wading birds is down to 7,000 annually (in 1931 it was 100,000). Brazilian pepper trees have devoured 100,000 acres of native vegetation.

Everyone agrees the Everglades is dying from pollution, droughts and urbanization. The worst predictions are coming true at the worst possible time. Just when Tallaha.s.see awakens to the crisis, the state finds itself broke and panicky.

Without heroes in the Legislature, there will be no money to clean up the Everglades. No money to find out where the lethal mercury is coining from. No money to purchase endangered wetlands. ”It's kind of scary,” said Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay. ”The economics of growth may now be coinciding with the politics of decline.”

That's an amazing admission from a Florida politician, and maybe MacKay wouldn't have said it at a convention of home builders. But he's absolutely right.

For 40 years the natural marsh was diked, dammed and diverted to benefit farmers and developers. Today 4 million people in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties rely on the Everglades system for their drinking water. Nature's plumbing can't handle it.

Big Sugar can be blamed for stubborn avarice, but the industry makes one irrefutable point: Overdevelopment has done more to destroy the Everglades than all the cane and dairy farmers put together.

Cleaning agricultural runoff isn't hard, it's just expensive. The people problem is not so easy to clean up. MacKay wonders what happens when South Florida's 4 million becomes 6 million, and the 6 million becomes 8 million. Where will they get their water?

They probably won't. The plight of the Everglades has transcended images of panthers and bald eagles. Now it means something even the most thickheaded legislator can understand: no water. Suddenly growth management is more than a slogan, it's an imperative.

In his speech, MacKay compared Florida to a big gangly teenager. ”We don't have the foggiest notion of what we want to be when we grow up.”

Unless other politicians start listening, the one thing we'll definitely be is thirsty.

Big Sugar's sly cleanup plan is dirty pool April 12, 1992 The Florida Sugar Cane League, not famous for its environmental conscience, suddenly has unveiled a plan to clean up the Everglades.

A late April Fool's joke? Nope. Big Sugar says it's serious.

The huge corporations that grow cane finally admit they shouldn't dump so much sc.u.mmy fertilizer into South Florida's drinking-water supply.

To prove their deep concern for the public welfare, they've offered to reduce by 151 tons the amount of phosphorus being pumped off the farmlands into the Everglades. The only catch: Big Sugar, not the state, would be in charge of the anti-pollution efforts.

How considerate of the cane growers, not wis.h.i.+ng to trouble government with the task of enforcing its own laws. Instead, we all should just relax and rely on the sugar barons to make the water clean and safe. That's about as likely as Lake Okeechobee freezing over.

Big Sugar's newfound commitment to the environment is explained in one word: fear. First, the U.S. attorney sued Florida for allowing the Everglades to be polluted. After a lengthy legal battle, both sides settled on a $400 million cleanup program that requires cane growers to pump dirty farm runoff into large nitration ponds.

Sugar companies say the plan will tie up valuable land and cost agriculture 20,000 jobs. Led by U.S. Sugar and Flo-Sun Inc., the industry has fought back with a hail of lawsuits. Big Sugar has steadfastly resisted all previous attempts to make it pay for its own putrid practices. A Greek chorus of expensive PR men and lobbyists have insisted the phosphorus in farm runoff is as harmless as rain.

That nonsense won't wash anymore, and Big Sugar knows it. By offering their own cleanup plan-”an olive branch,” in the words of one sugar executive-the industry is making a last-ditch effort to appear reasonable and to keep control of its own drainage pumps.

Says Joe Podgor, of Friends of the Everglades: ”It's like a traffic cop has pulled you over, and now you're trying to sweet-talk your way out of it.”

Fittingly, the latest stall tactic came in the same week that the Everglades was named one of the 10 most endangered rivers in North America. A national conservation group, American Rivers, blames agricultural pollution and urbanization as the major threats to the vast shallows that provide fresh water for about four million South Floridians.

Some respected conservation groups aren't wild about the state's plan or Big Sugar's self-serving alternative. Friends of the Everglades, for instance, favors a complete scientific remapping of South Florida's plumbing, combined with ”hard-core enforcement” of existing pollution laws.

Profitable habits are hard to break, and the sugar industry has long enjoyed a sweet deal: cheap water, migrant labor, government-inflated price supports-and the Everglades as its backyard cesspool.

The arrangement is cemented each election year by generous contributions to pliant politicians. According to the Center for Public Integrity, 17 sugar PACS gave $2.6 million to congressional campaigns between 1985 and 1990. Money doesn't just talk, it shouts: Of 29 U.S. senators who got $15,000 or more from Big Sugar interests, 85 percent voted to keep the price subsidies.

It's no wonder that cane growers, coddled for years, were stunned by the federal lawsuit over pollution. And with little experience at (or need for) compromise, it's no wonder that Big Sugar's counteroffer is so weak.

Backs to the wall, cane growers miraculously discover a way to keep 151 tons of phosphorus out of the Everglades!

Incredible. When these guys aren't flus.h.i.+ng fertilizer, they're shoveling it.

Future of keys rests in the fate of Florida Bay February 21, 1993 If you went to the Keys this weekend, you probably noticed that the once-clear waters of Florida Bay have turned the color of bile.

A vast and destructive algae bloom has floated out of the backcountry and settled in near Islamorada. Looking northwest from the Overseas Highway, you saw a milky green-brown soup surrounding the mangroves, a perverse parody of Christo's decorated islands. Crossing the tall arch to Long Key, you noticed a foul-looking stain stretching gulfward to the horizon.

What you saw is Florida Bay dying.

It started with the turtle gra.s.s, essential cover for shrimp, baby lobsters and small fish. In 1987, the gra.s.s turned brown and began falling out in clumps, then strips, then acres. The dead gra.s.s rotted in the warm water, releasing nutrients that fostered algae. Meanwhile, where the lush gra.s.s once grew, the bay bottom turned muddy and barren.

Today the die-off is so huge that between 300 and 400 square miles of Florida Bay is called the Dead Zone. Scientists say its effects are spreading, and the prospects are dire: The collapse of a uniquely bountiful estuary, and the potential crippling of a multimillion-dollar tourist and fis.h.i.+ng economy.

There's no quick answer. Gra.s.s beds are sensitive and slow-growing; replenishment takes a long time. Part of the problem lies miles away, in the Everglades.

For centuries the southward flow of fresh water emptied purely into Florida Bay. Then the geniuses who manage our ca.n.a.l systems began diverting water to benefit developers and farmers. That folly was implemented under the guise of ”flood control.”

With its flow of fresh water disrupted, Florida Bay got saltier each season. The hypersalinity, combined with drought, caused drastic changes. Some biologists believe additional harm came from fertilizers and pesticides which flushed through the Everglades into the bay.

What you now see out your car window is unlike anything that's happened before. From an airplane, the sight is even more dramatic and dismaying.

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