Whether this morning's announcement for the Everglades--the purchase by the state of vast lands owned by US Sugar--will offset the bad news last week of the governor's support for offshore drilling remains to be seen.
Is buying up sugar lands better than relying on expensive, risk and wrong-headed wells to store rainfall to supply the Everglades? Yes, yes, and yes.
Up to this moment, Everglades restoration still relies on an engineering scheme that most environmentalists believed was folly from the mid-1990's: using 333 aquifer storage and recovery wells to make up water that the Everglades needs to survive. More than a decade has been lost chasing this Alice In Wonderland vision down a rabbit hole.
In the meantime, Florida Bay has turned into a cesspool and the reef tract in the Keys is gone. Excessive phosphorous-- mainly from sugar farming and Lake Okeechobee basin farmers-- is polluting half the remnant Everglades (that is according to a recent EPA report).
The way to clean up the Everglades is to provide more cleansing marshes and provide an engineered assist for water to spread into public lands the way that nature provided before we screwed up the system.
But there have been problems in the past, with state and federal acquisition of large tracts of land: the Frog Pond and the Holey Tract come to mind. In both these cases, government agencies bent over backwards and, in some cases, were steamrollered by Big Ag attorneys and lobbyists who were paid to extract the last ounce of blood from regulators (who they mostly dislike, anyway). Years and years have been lost.
Then, big land speculators like the Fanjuls are pushing vast rock mines in the historic Everglades/EAA and, of course, local county commissions have been willing accomplices.
Finally, there is the question of the exact location of the US Sugar lands in respect to a logical, cost-effective and practical plan to re-flow fresh water toward the Everglades. Perhaps Crist will answer these questions, this morning.
So, is this a big moment or not for the Everglades? Yes, maybe. With the acquisition of lands owned by US Sugar, the State of Florida is finally on the same side as environmentalists: we have to give the restoration of the Everglades the one ingredient that has been missing. Common sense.
8 comments:
I have unbelievably conflicted emotions over this news...
1. this is our 1.7billion dollars going into the pockets of US Sugar, a company who has trashed the everglades - happy or sad?
2. land purchase for the "restoration" of the Everglades includes allowing US Sugar to continue farming for several more years
- happy or sad?
3. is this a Crist play for support where he actions restoring the Everglads while at the same time actions destroying our offshore waters with oil drilling?
4. Why in the heck doesn't the state of Florida just seize the land away from US Sugar under eminent domain?
5. If ever there was a deal with the devil, this seems to be it.
I although I do share the first poster's concern about what exactly we are paying for, I think the idea of buying back lands from business is much better than simply trying to regulate them. At least everyone is better off this way.
1st Poster:
Why don't they just take your house through "Eminent Domain"?
There has to be a demonstrable economic developement benifit to the community to even have a snowballs' chance in hell of prevailing in an eminent domain case. It would be teid up in court for more years than we leasing the land back to US Sugar, and in the end, they would probably win. Let's see...US Sugar would hire the best lawyers money can buy and the state would be represented by who, in house councel? Good luck with that.
Let's hope, for the environment's sake, that this is a straight up effort on the part of the Governor (the best Democrat in 30 years) ha ha, and maybe even a trend.
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To the above comment” Why in the heck doesn't the state of Florida just seize the land away from US Sugar under eminent domain?” Although some people call some areas of Florida a banana republic, in the United States you don’t seize land from someone. You still must provide just compensation for it. No wonder there are property rights advocacy groups like the farm bureau. When you take away value from some ones land the correct thing to do is justly compensate them. That includes changing the usage rights that cause a decrease in value.
The issue here isn't about compensation--the issue is whether the compensation is fair. US Sugar obtained farmland through the efforts of government (Corps), sent the costs to the public (pollution/run off), made money via tariffs (protectionism), and now that the costs of farming are greater than the return, is willing to sell otherwise valueless land in the glades for 9k/acre to the state. Can anyone seriously contend that this is anything other than paying a bribe to US Sugar to get out of the business?
Unbelievable. The US is a joke when it comes to capitalism: what we have is state-subsidized corporatism.
Who said sugar is getting out of the business? Did I miss the memo?
The first and fourth post sounds like the same person. Angry at the US and corporate America. Maybe you should consider relocating to Canada, maybe Venezuela, maybe Cuba.
OK, I am defending the "first" and/or "fourth" blogger, who is admittedly angry or, at best, frustrated --
Payne and Jefferson were frustrated too. Thanks to them and other progressive thinkers, we're not an English Colony any more. (You gotta love progress.)
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