GROSS: Florida Beaches’ Road To Hell Is Paved With Sugar


January 18th, 2016: The Florida Legislature, largely propelled by Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putman and Brevard County Representative and Speaker of the Florida House Steve Crissafulli, passed a bill that essentially removed all meaningful restrictions on polluting Florida beaches and waterways. Why would they do that? Well of course, both Adam Putman and Steve Crissafulli (not to mention Florida Governor Rick Scott and dozens of other lawmakers in Florida and everywhere else) are profoundly indebted to the sugar industry, which is far and away the biggest polluter in Florida.

That bill has yet to take effect — but it’s safe to assume that the consequences will be dramatically more dire than what’s already happening. And what’s already happening is pretty damn close to Hell on Earth.

See, not quite 2 weeks later, the sugar farmers that grow cane just south of Lake Okeechobee demanded that the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) allow them to ‘back-drain’ excess water from their fields into the lake. This is normally a verboten activity, but occasionally when there’s too much rain and the sugar crops are threatened, the SFWMD allows them to back-drain. (This is because the SFWMD, too, is profoundly compromised by Big Sugar.)

After just four days (and 9 billion gallons) of backdraining from the farms into the lake (under the current pollution law, which is meaningfully stronger than the one the Florida legislature just passed!), this is what Lake Okeechobee looked like:

To be fair, Lake Okeechobee has been fairly disgusting for decades, mostly due to farming runoff from the north side, which naturally drains into the lake and is high in phosphorous, fecal matter, and other nutrients that pollute and corrupt the water. But the back-draining from the southern sugar fields also brings in nitrogen in levels high enough to cause algae blooms — a situation dire enough that the SFWMD had completely banned back-draining until Governor Scott appointed a new head in 2010, at which point (surprise!) Big Sugar won (again).

Today, that same filthy water can be seen spreading like a corrupted curtain across both coastal Florida beaches:

According to one eyewitness I personally spoke with, “When we crossed the bridge into Ft. Myers Beach…we could see the “black wall” just like in the pictures. And by the time we got to the Gulf beach, the water was a disgusting color and a huge number of dying shells, starfish, etc. were being brought up onto the shore with the tides.”

Why is this lethal sludge making its way to the coastline?  Because the same rain that endangered the sugar plantations also caused Lake Okeechobee to flood, and the dike that surrounds the lake is only rated to hold in a certain amount of water. Whenever the water levels in the lake exceed 15.5 feet, the Army Corps of Engineers is called in to open the dike’s gates and release enough water to keep the dike secure. They are obligated to do this regardless of the quality of the water, because the other option is to endanger the dike, and thus the tens of thousands of people living immediately outside of it. While the Corps is aware of water quality issues, it is the State of Florida’s responsibility to maintain the water quality in Lake Okeechobee — not the Corps.

By, Of, and For the Big Businesses
That responsibility is being completely ignored, of course, because the sugar industry pays millions of dollars to get the State to ignore it — and the politicians taking the money are directly ignoring the will of the People to get at those funds.

For example, last year more than 70% of Florida voters supported Amendment One, a bill that would have the State of Florida purchase vast swaths of land between Lake Okeechobee and the ‘River of Grass,’ a part of the Everglades that has historically accepted most of the overflow from Lake Okeechobee and that acts as a kind of natural water filter. The interim land would, according to the Amendment, be converted into an additional reservoir that could hold emergency runoff and slowly release it into the Everglades, where it would filter through and eventually come out into Florida Bay as clean water, skipping the existing east/west flows to  the tourist-laden Florida beaches.

Florida’s legislature instead voted to take $282.6 million out of the $300 million that Amendment One was budgeted, and fraudulently spend it on paying government salaries and existing bills, leaving a meager $17.4 million — not quite 6% — of the money to go toward the given purpose of the bill. Obviously, that amount won’t even begin to accomplish the goal.

Needless to say, multiple groups are suing the Legislature for failing to perform their duty.

In the meantime, naturally, Florida’s governor has turned to begging the Federal government for money while simultaneously deciding that (of course) somehow Obama is to blame for everything, because the Army Corps of Engineers’ repair of the Okeechobee dike is slow-moving and has been fraught with budget setbacks. (The fact that it is Congress, not the President, that is responsible for the Corps’ budget seems to have bypassed him completely.)

Businesses up and down both coasts of Florida depend on the February/March tourist season for a good part of their annual income, and have been utterly devastated by the pollution. For them, however, it’s nothing new — the same thing (albeit to a much lesser degree) happened to Florida beaches in 2013, referred to by local tourist-reliant businessowners as “the Lost Spring.”

Who’s To Blame?
Some people will look at this situation and blame the government for failing to stand up to Big Sugar. But the history of money in politics holds a striking and clear lesson for any observer: since the very dawn of our country, politicians have been held in a continual tug-of-war between the will of We The People and the extraordinary influence of money over elections. The politicians are not either of the teams pulling the rope — they are the rope. It’s up to us to use our will and our voices — this is to say, our votes — to drag the politicians back to the side of the People.

It’s not about liberal or conservative; among the general populace both sides have equal contempt for the unholy hybrid of business and government that is ruining our country. It’s about actually speaking out and showing the politicians that We The People are serious about voting out anyone who sells out our businesses, our children, and our land in the name of winning one more election.

Until we can do that, this is what we will get:

 

(Featured Image courtesy of eutrophication&hypoxia via Flickr, shared using a Creative Commons 2.0 license.)