THE BIG SUGAR ROPE-A-DOPE Team Everglades- When it comes to Everglades Restoration, we know the details can be complicated, and made even more so by misinformation pushed out by the Boys of Sugar and their team of pay-to-play and phony online “news outlets,” complicit or ignorant politicians, consultants and lobbyists across the state of Florida.  But at its core, restoration is simple. Return to what Mother Nature gave us to the best of our ability: a natural flow from the Kissimmee River into Lake Okeechobee, that continues south to the Everglades. We all know that the answer to saving our Everglades is to send clean water south. So why are we hearing new arguments to “slow the flow” into Lake O, or to install expensive water storage north of the lake in the form of Aquifer Storage & Recovery (ASR) wells? You guessed it – Big Sugar is at it again, pushing a $2 billion project for water supply north of Lake Okeechobee, where they are now growing sugarcane. Yep, more free water for sugar barons, sticking the taxpayers with the bill under the guise of mitigating Lake O discharges.  And right now, they have a Florida Senate all too happy to oblige them. ASR wells are used all over the world, including Florida. But they function as water storage and recovery under normal conditions. There are none, zero, anywhere in the world, being used for flood control. Here’s why: ASR wells can absorb roughly seven cubic feet of water per second (7 cfs). They are proposing eighty wells. Doing the math, that’s a combined 560 cfs operating at maximum capacity. Currently, polluted water is being unnaturally discharged out of Lake Okeechobee to both coasts of Florida at a rate of 6,000-10,000 cfs. Math matters.  Here comes the rope-a-dope.

For decades, scientists, water managers and politicians of both political parties have known about the Everglades water woes: an oversupply in the wet season that gives rise to toxic blue-green algae and forces unnatural discharges to both coasts of Florida, followed by severe shortages in the dry season that cause deadly droughts and jeopardize the drinking water supply for 9 million Floridians. It is that southward flow of freshwater through the Everglades that feeds and refreshes the Biscayne Aquifer, the underground water storage for everyone in South Florida and tens of millions of visitors each year. It is that flow of freshwater the Everglades need to survive. For 30+ years, we have worked hard to get the most critical projects moving forward. And for 30+ years, the sugar industry has delayed progress, using politicians and bureaucrats at both the state and federal levels to manipulate and slow down the inevitable. Two federally-subsidized sugar corporations – US Sugar and Florida Crystals – fund an entire cottage industry that makes a fortune keeping things broken. They spend tens of millions of dollars each year protecting the death grip they hold over the public’s water. They dole it out as political contributions to politicians and lavish monthly retainers on hundreds of lobbyists and consultants.