The environmentalists are coming for Big Sugar, again.
Unslaked by the billions of dollars of public and private money poured into Everglades restoration, billionaire environmentalist Paul Tudor Jones wants to wring more cash out of Florida's sugar growers.
At an Everglades Foundation forum in Tallahassee last month, Jones darkly compared pollution leaching from Everglades Agricultural Area to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sugar producers resent the analogy, and flatly reject it.
"The Foundation can spew all the rhetoric they want," said Gaston Cantens, vice president for corporate relations at Florida Crystals. "They're obsessed with sugar."
Gang green gives little or no credit to the industry for its cleanup efforts, or the sizable tax bills it pays to fund them.
Nor do the environmentalists, in their crusade against "Big Sugar," talk much about larger, nonagricultural pollution sources.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, also speaking at the Tallahassee forum, said drainage of wetlands and increased water runoff from exurban development pose bigger threats to the Everglades.
Putnam said farmers, including sugar producers, have cut nutrient pollution loads by half, more than twice the legally mandated reduction.
But that's not enough for Tudor Jones & Co. Despite an ongoing stream of multibillion-dollar outlays by the federal and state government -- Gov. Rick Scott pledged an additional $40 million for the Everglades this year -- environmentalists worry that the funding commitments are shaky.
Everglades Foundation CEO Kirk Fordham said the Florida Senate's rebuff of Scott's $40 million package last week illustrated the tenuousness of the cash flow.
Under the "polluter pays" principle, environmentalists contend that Big Sugar has a constitutional responsibility to bear more of the cleanup costs. They call for higher fees, steeper penalties and curtailed "subsidies" to the agricultural industry.
Meantime, the Everglades Foundation and like-minded groups continue to push for more taxpayer purchases of private lands, similar to the deal then-Gov. Charlie Crist engineered with U.S. Sugar Corp.
Initially intended to buy out 187,000 acres of U.S. Sugar holdings, the $1.75 billion price tag was eventually slashed to $197 million, purchasing 27,000 acres, on $1-a-year lease-back terms to the corporation.
Putnam calls such buyouts unrealistic and unsustainable.
"There isn't enough money, there will not be enough money, and it is not good public policy to eradicate [EAA agriculture]," Putnam said. "Do you really think you're going to have enough money to buy up all the land south of Lake Okeechobee?"
Cantens says environmental groups put politics ahead of facts.
"They're actually lobbying against the sugar program in Washington, D.C.," said Cantens, who ironically notes that, contrary to environmentalists' claims, "It's the only no-cost agricultural program in the USDA. There are no sugar subsidies."
Also contrary to the green mantra, sugar growers and the rest of the agricultural industry have nothing to do with the pollution that pours into Lake Okeechobee.
"The water going into the lake doesn't come from sugar farms, it's from development. That's the problem, and very little is being done about it," Cantens told Sunshine State News.
While sugar producers have reduced their phosphorous runoff by 55 percent, they have pumped more than $200 million into stormwater management projects in the South Florida Water Management District over the past 15 years.
In addition, Florida Crystals pays $10 million in annual property taxes to Palm Beach County.
As a whole, Florida's sugar industry employs 5,000 workers -- all of them unionized.
"We support Everglades restoration in order for everyone to leave us alone. We support funding, and pay additional taxes willingly," Cantens said.
But, somehow, the environmentalists' never-ending quest for money ends up in a mirage.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to engineers and planning, and very little to actual projects. Twelve year later, not one project has been completed," Cantens observed.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 802-5341.
