Eminent Domain And Big Sugar: Time to Get Started ... by gimleteye

Back in March, I wrote about eminent domain for Huffington Post: "Oligarchs In Florida: How An “Arab Spring” Could Make Big Sugar Even Wealthier But Save The State". The case for eminent domain in the Everglades Agricultural Area is on the table in Florida, thanks to Florida Senator Bill Nelson who recently endorsed action by federal agencies to initiate eminent domain proceedings, starting with a rigorous analysis to identify the most suitably located lands in sugarcane production to convert to water storage and treatment marshes for the critical public purpose of relieving Florida's estuaries and bays from their role as Big Sugar's sacrifice zones.

The EAA plus surrounding public lands including Everglades National Park comprise a total of about 2 million acres — historically, natural wetlands — but Big Sugar’s hammerlock on water management infrastructure and flood control practices ensure that the entire state dances to its tune.

Big Sugar gets what it wants, when it wants it. This turns into a problem during times of drought and flood; more the norm than the exception in a rapidly changing world where the state’s population growth collides with the impacts of climate change.

The chorus is rising: buy Big Sugar lands, send clean, fresh water south. What this means is taking about 100,000 acres out of sugarcane production to the purpose of storage and cleansing marshes so that Lake Okeechobee stormwater runoff doesn’t destroy property values, tourism-dependent businesses, and natural resources around the southern rim of the state.

The refusals from Big Sugar (“We are just ordinary people and good citizens who care” and “we’ve already done our fair share”) cannot stand up to fact and science.

For Huffington Post, Jane Kleeb takes up the eminent domain theme: "Keystone XL and Eminent Domain Embody the Republicans' Crisis of Identity."

The Republican Party is facing a serious crisis of identity. On the one hand, they stand up for property rights in their Platform, which would be music to the ears of rural voters and urban folks on the front line of pipeline fights if the GOP were not also Keystone XL’s biggest cheerleader. Not only do they praise the foreign pipeline in their Platform, but also using it as a proxy for their energy policy: drill anywhere and everywhere, no matter the risk.

The Republicans’ stance on ending eminent domain abuse while supporting the Keystone XL pipeline is the perfect case study of how the GOP can’t seem to find its identity.

The Republican Platform says, “The Framers of our government knew, from history and experience, that when private property is not secure, freedom is at risk.” Then, later in the Platform document, they go on to say that they support the Keystone XL pipeline and the only reason the pipeline was rejected was President Obama caving to “environmental extremists” clealry ignoring the threat the pipeline posed to landowners’ property rights along its route.

There is no question environmentalists helped stop the pipeline, but it was the unlikely alliance of climate advocates, farmers, ranchers, and Native communities who were on the front lines of the fight. Landowners went to court battling eminent domain, which ultimately was a huge factor in stopping the risky pipeline.

In fact, eminent domain has a routine, not an exceptional, place in U.S. legislative and judicial systems. When utilities need right of ways or local governments need roadway expansions, eminent domain is a powerful tool. It is a tool that also gives private property owners a means to be equitably compensated for loss of land.

The central question about eminent domain is whether it serves an important public purpose. For the fossil fuel industries, driving the Keystone pipeline through eminent domain, was a very important purpose. But it was a narrow purpose for industrial (and polluting) profits. On the other side of the ledger, it is very clear that using eminent domain to perpetuate the risks of climate change made the Keystone XL a very damaging project to the public interest.

Using eminent domain to negotiate conversion of Big Sugar lands into storage and cleansing marshes promotes another public choice. The domination of this polluting industry (involving a crop that benefits from the most egregious form of corporate welfare and subsidies) is already, in situ, a bad decision. Algae blooms now surrounding the southern half of the Florida peninsula demonstrate what a poor decision it has been to turn over water management to users like Big Sugar.

Eminent domain in South Florida, unlike Keystone XL, advances and does not subtract from the public choice do support clean water, coastal real estate values, and a vibrant tourism-based economy.

Time For Eminent Domain In Big Sugar Lands ... by gimleteye

After reading the Everglades Trust letter dated July 6 to Gov. Rick Scott calling for eminent domain in the Everglades Agricultural Area, I was curious how many years I've written on the issue; a legal taking in the Everglades Agricultural Area in order to provide enough storage capacity to prevent Florida's estuaries from being bombed with toxic puke from Lake Okeechobee and eventually, to be able to send clean, fresh water south.

Many years. Here is one from December 2013:

The Palm Beach Post editorial board published the best Everglades related editorial of the year and it warrants wide circulation. The editorial is a little fuzzy on the lawsuit settlement that resulted in an agreement to invest nearly $900 million in Everglades treatment marshes. The lawsuit that triggered the settlement was initiated by the group where I serve as volunteer board president, Friends of the Everglades.

At any rate, the point is clear: Big Sugar's domination of political processes only strengthened under the disastrous term of Gov. Rick Scott and an extremist GOP legislature willing to do the industry's bidding at every single turn. The Democrats, for their part, are far from blameless. Gov. Charlie Crist and his predecessor, Jeb Bush, paid lip service to environmental and growth management policies that could have buffered the industry's influence. Never happened. (Gov. Scott's most egregious action was to authorize the elimination of the science capacity of the South Florida Water Management District: in other words, to ensure that the disastrous results of his Everglades policies could not be measured meaningfully.)

A former Friend of the Everglades' staffer, Joe Podgor, coined the following: "The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we get to keep the planet." What Podgor meant was that restoring the Everglades is not only achievable; all the players, the pieces of the puzzle, are visible and measurable in South Florida. If we can't fix the Everglades, what can we fix?

Apparently, nothing.

That's why on this blog, I embrace the mantra: Big Sugar poisons people, poisons Democracy, and poisons the Everglades.

Voters should demand a "no sugar money" pledge from elected officials, with the same force as other pledges like Grover Norquist's because if sugar's domination of Tallahassee and Washington doesn't represent taxation without representation, I don't know what does.

Editorial: Deal for sugar land bad for public, but still in the public interest
Updated: 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013 | Posted: 7:18 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013

By Randy Schultz - Editorial Writer

We see again that however important Everglades restoration is to Florida, it will happen on the sugar industry’s terms.

In mid-2012, Gov. Rick Scott sold the Obama administration on a new state plan for saving what remains of the Everglades. Gov. Scott had no environmental credentials, but he wanted out from the 1988 lawsuit that forced the state to start cleaning water that runs from sugar cane fields into the Everglades. A special tax on the 16 counties of the South Florida Water Management District and on the farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area finances projects to store and treat such runoff.

For Gov. Scott to please the White House and the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit, the state needs more land for those projects. A key piece is roughly 4,600 acres owned by Florida Crystals and Gladeview Holdings. It would double the size of a treatment area for water that goes into the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge in Palm Beach County. Florida Crystals and Gladeview would trade that land for 8,600 acres the state owns.

Knowing how much the state needed the land, however, Florida Crystals also demanded a 30-year lease to keep farming about 8,000 acres of state land. The 1994 Everglades Forever Act limits such leases to 20 years, so the land can be available sooner for restoration work. But the sugar industry has far more power in Tallahassee than environmental groups, and in January Gov. Scott and the Florida Cabinet approved the longer lease. That action prompted a lawsuit by the Florida Wildlife Federation.

Two weeks ago, The Post’s Christine Stapleton reported that the water management district missed the Sept. 30 deadline to close on the deal acquiring the Florida Crystals/Gladeview land. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the five water management districts, blamed the federation’s lawsuit and extended the deadline to Jan. 30.

That blame is misplaced. Last spring, as part of what disingenuously labeled environmental regulation bill, the Legislature codified those 30-year leases by blocking any lawsuits to overturn them. More likely, Florida Crystals and Gladeview are holding out for even more favors, though Ms. Stapleton showed how the deal already is a lopsided one, with the public getting the short end by about $25 million.

When the companies demanded the longer leases, the state could have started eminent domain proceedings to take the land, with an arbitrator determining the price. But though the sugar industry has caused much of the pollution in the Everglades, the industry’s campaign donations in Florida and Washington insulate it from such challenges — even as The Washington Post reports that the federal program to support sugar prices costs the government $300 million each year and raises prices for consumers.

Still, the water management district should meet the new deadline, with no more favors for the industry. The land is vital to Everglades restoration, and Everglades restoration is vital to Florida.

Randy Schultz
for The Post Editorial Board

One of the great outrages of our era in Florida is the failure of Florida's governing majority to heed the call of so many, including 207 scientists in 2015 pleading with the Rick Scott administration to initiate large-scale land purchases in the EAA through exercising its option to buy U.S. Sugar Corporation lands.

Here is the text of the Everglades Trust letter to Gov. Scott:

July 6, 2016

The Honorable Rick Scott, Governor
State of Florida
PL 05 The Capitol
Tallahassee, FL 32399

Dear Governor Scott:

As Florida’s chief executive officer, you hold the power to initiate the solution to the ongoing collapse of vital areas of South Florida, as well as the Everglades eco-system, due to continual discharges of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee to the east coast and west coast and a woefully inadequate supply of clean freshwater to the Everglades and Florida Bay in the Florida Keys.

The time is now to prepare for the reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee, in the EAA. It has been 16 years since the State of Florida agreed to this project. You, alone, possess the authority to make it a reality.

As you are aware, a storage reservoir in the EAA has been an integral part of CERP since its inception. More than 200 independent scientists have determined it is the only way to reduce the harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges, hydrate the central Everglades wetlands and stabilize the salinity levels within Florida Bay, while ensuring the safety of the source of water supply for 8 million Floridians.

We respectfully request you begin a 30-day process of personal meetings with the four or five major landowners south of Lake Okeechobee to determine their willingness to donate, sell or convey the 60,000 acres necessary to implement the EAA reservoir solution. Of course, you still have the right to exercise the current option to purchase US Sugar’s land, which expires in 2020.

However, if after 30 days you are unable to find a willing seller or sellers, please immediately begin the process of eminent domain, recognizing that this necessary tool of government will provide compensation to the affected landowners. The circumstances are as dire as that statement suggests.

Thank you for your careful consideration of our request and your prompt response.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Mitchell
Executive Director