The deal for US Sugar ... by gimleteye

The Governing Board of the South Florida Water Management District should vote today to put in public ownership 186,000 acres of land owned by US Sugar. When you hear the Miami Dade delegation raising objections to the US Sugar deal, beware. The subtext has nothing to do with words on the page or the radio: the real story is the political struggle pitting Governor Charlie Crist against revanchists in his own party.

The deal includes a seven year lease at favorable terms and a buyout price per acre established before the depth of the current depression in real estate pricing became clear. Under normal circumstances, those deal terms would be renegotiated. The problem: nothing to do with sugar production in Florida vaguely resembles "normal". Everything related to the public discussion around the industry and its relation to the Everglades and the local economy is distorted by sugar subsidies, maintained by Congress as though sugar was as important as national security itself.

The black hats in the US Sugar deal are Fanjul corporate interests. What is their goal? To extract the maximum profit for their own lands, which are not only contiguous to US Sugar but necessary to the long-term goal of providing connectivity between Lake Okeechobee (polluted, as it is) and the remnant Everglades. Give Governor Crist full credit for taking on Florida Crystals, when he decided to move forward with the bold plan to acquire US Sugar.

The cries of state legislators, like those of Miami Dade county politicians, of concern for the economies of Glades and Hendry, for Clewiston and surrounding communities ring hollow: watch their campaign finance reports for the reasons why. It is not that I don't have empathy for the bankers and small business owners and high school students bused into the District headquarters and to public hearings: it is just that I know the economics of sugar have never been fairly offered to the public.

An independent consultant, hired by US Sugar more than a decade ago, told me first-hand how sugar cooked the books on employment numbers attributable to the industry.

The mainstream media has brought up other objections to the deal; that all the land is not necessary for restoration purposes, and that the total costs, including operations, are not affordable in a time of economic crisis. What would have been more helpful, would have been to include the long-term costs of more rock mines and development in the EAA (like suburbs and its wild "inland port" concept). The fact is that restoring the Everglades, good for the economy and necessary for the future of South Florida's drinking water supply, requires maximum spatial extent; to fix the landscape you need as many acres as can be assembled to map out the best chance for success. The more limited the acreage, the less chance for success.

The State of Florida should move decisively to stop permitting rock mines in the Everglades Agricultural Area and any discussion about "the inland port" being sought by the Fanjul interests.

Finally, I give Governor Charlie Crist full credit for pushing forward. But the governor has been reticent to explain why this is exactly the time to fix the balance sheet that includes the Everglades and the economy. Crist is the first governor of Florida in a very long time who did not win office through contributions from the sugar industry. Just about everything his predecessors did for the Everglades, including Jeb Bush, was a work-around of sugar's profit motives.

Crist is the first governor who stood up and said what many environmentalists have said for decades: the main impediment to restoring the Everglades is sugar production in the Everglades Agricultural Area. By the time we spend tens of billions on all the half-measures that don't add up to a restored Everglades, Florida's taxpayers would be better off buying out Florida Crystals, too.