By Jim Turner
From: The News Service of Florida
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, May 14, 2015-The state officially lost its appetite Thursday for buying a large chunk of sugar land to help restore the Everglades.
The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board voted unanimously to terminate an option that had been signed by former Gov. Charlie Crist to purchase 46,800 acres in the Everglades from U.S. Sugar Corp.
“This U.S. Sugar contract was a boondoggle from the day it was signed, in my opinion,” said board member James Moran, a Wellington attorney appointed by Gov. Rick Scott. “The initial purchase that was exercised in 2010 was for almost $200 million — most of which we took from our reserves here — and we ended up with land which we couldn’t even use for the purpose for which it was purchased.”
The action left South Florida residents and environmentalists holding out hope that money — as much as $500 million from the voter-approved Amendment 1 — will be set aside in the upcoming special legislative session to quickly craft a “Plan B” that can also move water south from Lake Okeechobee.
“If it’s not this deal, which clearly it’s not based upon today’s decision, then what is the alternative plan?” Everglades Foundation Chief Executive Officer Eric Eikenberg said after the meeting.
Board members said “propaganda” efforts made it appear the U.S. Sugar land was the only solution to cleaning South Florida waters and contend they already have a “Plan B,” which is to complete previously approved Everglades restoration projects that haven’t been moving “as fast as we like.”
Board member Melanie Peterson said the state needs to follow a University of Florida Water Institute study released in March that highlighted the need to complete needed reservoirs east and west of Lake Okeechobee. The study also recommended building additional water storage and treatment north and south of the lake, creating deep wells to reduce the flow of polluted water from the lake and readjusting scheduled releases from the lake to the estuaries east and west.
“Now we’ve got to get our federal partners on board,” said Peterson, a Wellington Realtor and Scott appointee. “When you go back to the back of the UF study, the number one conclusion that they came up with was to accelerate funding and completion of existing or approved projects.”
U.S. Sugar issued a release after the meeting declaring an intention to keep working on Everglades restoration efforts with the state and federal governments as outlined in Scott’s re-election campaign proposal to spend $5 billion for Everglades projects over the next 20 years.
Eikenberg said the state needs to be able to move more than a single project at a time and that most of the projects that have already been put on the table are located around the periphery of the Everglades and near the coast.
“The heart of the matter is Lake Okeechobee and the need to send that water south into the Everglades,” he said. “That is ground zero when it comes to restoring the Everglades. We’ve already begun bridging Tamiami Trail. That’s great. But you can’t just build bridges, you have to have water flowing under the bridges.”
The state had until Oct. 12 to declare an intention to complete the option on the U.S. Sugar land.
In explaining why they didn’t want to complete the purchase, district officials pointed to the costs in buying and improving the land. Other issues included that only 10,000 acres of the land would be available before 2020 to construct the desired Everglades Agricultural Area reservoir; that U.S. Sugar would get to continue using most of the land until 2030; and that the state would need to relocate railroad tracks, a couple of Florida Power & Light transmission lines and a county road.
Proponents envision the reservoir helping efforts to redirect polluted water now being released from Lake Okeechobee into estuaries to the east and west.
However, a key factor against the purchase was the lack of political will for the sugar land in Tallahassee.
The House and Senate are coming back to Tallahassee in June to hammer out a budget and are required to carry out the voter-approved Amendment 1, which requires setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars a year for land and water projects. But before this spring’s regular session came to an abrupt end, the House and Senate had not advanced funding packages that would have completed the U.S. Sugar deal.
A handful of lawmakers attempted to designate money to pay for the U.S. Sugar land. But key lawmakers with a tighter grasp on the purse strings of the Amendment 1 funding have frequently noted they weren’t interested, as U.S. Sugar now opposes the deal.
Manley Fuller, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation, said the purchase of land for water storage south of the lake should proceed, as Amendment 1 was approved by 75 percent of voters.
“Our organization and many citizens worked for several years to pass Amendment 1, and one of the reasons we did that was to be able to fund critical projects like storage south of Lake Okeechobee and Everglades restoration,” Fuller said. “The state Constitution specifically recognizes, as an approved purpose of Amendment 1, acquisition of land in the Everglades Agricultural Area.”
Former Martin County Commissioner Maggy Hurchalla implored the board members to ask state lawmakers to support a proposal from Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, to put $500 million into land acquisition for the Everglades and to identify a better alternative to the U.S. Sugar land for the reservoir.
“We don’t want our estuary and the Everglades to die and we’re not going to go away until the state has acquired the land for the storage necessary to send the water south,” said Hurchalla, who is the sister of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. “Our frustration comes from the fact that you do not have a Plan B. You keep telling us what we can’t do. You haven’t told us what we can do.”