OUR OPINION: Stop the assault in Tallahassee on rivers, lakes

By The Miami Herald Editorial

HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

This land is your land, this land is my land — or so the old folk song goes. In Tallahassee, though, public lands and lakes, rivers, streams and beaches seem to be under assault from various quarters that want to privatize what has been public domain since Florida became a state in 1845.

This latest assault seeks to “clarify” what constitutes the “ordinary high water line” for submerged land along lakes, rivers and streams. Odd such a clarification would be needed as court after court has ruled for more than a century that lakes, rivers and streams (along with beaches) belong to the public, period — and that the public part starts at the high-water mark based on the rainy season.

TAMPA, Fla. -- The Republican presidential race waded, at least for one night, into the grainy details of U.S. policy toward sugar.

Newt Gingrich's answer to a question about it during a GOP debate Monday night stood out in part for its wonkiness and downright oddity.

"I found out one of the fascinating things about America, which was that cane sugar hides behind beet sugar," the former college professor said, launching into a lecture of sorts on the U.S. industry when asked about subsidies for the sweet ingredient. "And there are just too many beet sugar districts in the United States. It's an amazing side story about how interest groups operate. In an ideal world, you would have an open market."

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, followed up by saying "we ought to get rid of subsidies and let markets work properly." The other two candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, weren't given a chance to reply.

Blogs and Twitter feeds lit up with the exchange, with some observers using it to highlight similarities between Gingrich and beet farmer Dwight Schrute on "The Office." Gingrich, in his younger years, has been compared to the sitcom character.

Pop culture aside, the exchange shed light on a largely unknown facet of American policy: Congress' role in sugar dates to the birth of the country.

Import tariffs were imposed on sugar beginning in 1789 to give incentive to American-grown product. An added layer of complexity came in 1934, when controls on domestic sugar production were put in place.

In short, current sugar policies favor beet sugar growers in the Great Plains and Upper Midwest and cane sugar growers in Florida and Louisiana, keeping the prices of U.S.-grown sugar artificially high and limiting the amount of foreign sugar that can be imported.

"It's a Soviet system what we have for sugar," said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "It's not a market system."

The Government Accountability Office last looked into the issue in 2000 and found that U.S. sugar prices, at times, were three times the world market price. Critics say that fact hurts much larger industries such as cereal companies, bakers and candy companies, who rely on sugar for their products.

Those industries cheered at the mere mention of existing policy during the debate.

"I think it's time has come and gone," said Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the National Confectioners Association, which represents candy, gum and chocolate makers and opposes current policy. "Sometime, 80 years ago, there might have been a reason. But now, not only does it hurt companies who have sugar as an ingredient but there's also a huge consumer cost."

The GAO estimated U.S. sugar policy cost consumers $1.9 billion in 1998 and resulted in $900 million in net losses to the U.S. economy. Nearly all the benefits, the report argued, went to the wealthy owners of U.S. sugar companies.

Both Republicans and Democrats have squandered chances to change the policy. An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group, shows the sugar industry has given about $2.1 million in campaign contributions in the 2012 election cycle.

"It's very much a bipartisan racket," Edwards said.

Judy Sanchez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sugar Corp., the nation's largest cane sugar grower, said the policies in place keep American companies from going out of business. She said sugar policy has "zero cost" to taxpayers.

"Face it: Sugar is given away for free in restaurants, where they charge you for water, they charge you for an extra slice of cheese on your hamburger," Sanchez said. "The sugar is so affordable that it's given away for free. That's because American sugar policy works."

Delicate operation

OUR OPINION: Safety is of the utmost importance in sewage-pipeline replacement

By The Miami Herald Editorial

HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

There is only one chance to get this right. Miami-Dade County and cities along the shore are facing a plumbing job so delicate — and so imperative — that, if botched, could mean economic and environmental disaster. A deteriorating pipeline in Government Cut that carries 25 million gallons of raw sewage a day has deteriorated so much in three places that it could rupture just from continued normal use.

This is the bad news from an inspector’s study commissioned last August. The good news is that the county commissioned the study in the first place. Too bad that it wasn’t done earlier, however — much earlier. The pipe carries waste from Miami Beach, Surfside and Bal Harbour to a treatment plant on Virginia Key. It’s about to be replaced with a pipeline laid much deeper. Now the conduit stands in the path of a massive Port of Miami dredging project to deepen the port so that it can accommodate supersized cargo ships coming from the Panama Canal.

U.S. cracks down on python sales

By CURTIS MORGAN

MIAMI -- The federal government branded the Burmese python, infamous for swallowing a smorgasbord of Everglades critters from rabbits to gators, a serpent non grata on Tuesday.

The action, which will ban the import and interstate sale of the python and three other giant exotic constrictors, was hailed by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson as a milestone for Everglades protection.

"It does us no good to put in these billions of dollars in investments in the Everglades only to have these giant snakes come and undo all the good we are doing," said Salazar, who announced the decision during a news conference along Tamiami Trial near an on-going $80 million bridge project that is key to restoring natural water flow in the Everglades.

After five years of debate and hearings in Washington, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce the Burmese python will soon be illegal to import.

With a 17-foot skin from a python killed in the Everglades, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson urges a Senate panel to help ban the import of Burmese python into the U.S.

U.S. Senate Staff

• Photo

By CURTIS MORGAN

Cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

The United States is poised to formally and finally ban that slithering scourge of the Everglades, the Burmese python.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has championed the ban, is expected to make the announcement Tuesday morning during a press conference at a flood control pumping station off Tamiami Trail in the Everglades — a spot that is pretty much ground zero for a giant exotic constrictor that has become one of the nation’s most notorious invasive species.

 By Rob Hotakainen

McClatchy News Service

WASHINGTON -- As one of Congress’ top experts on spending issues, Washington state Rep. Norm Dicks keeps an eye on the public purse, and he says that Burmese pythons just cost taxpayers way too much money.

As the snakes multiply and spread, Dicks says, the federal government must spend millions of dollars each year to try to control them. Moreover, he says, the giant, fast-growing snakes jeopardize public safety and threaten the government’s huge investment in restoring Florida’s Everglades.

 

Judge offers qualified praise for state Glades efforts

Though encouraged by a new pollution clean-up plan touted by Gov. Rick Scott, a Miami federal judge presses state and federal agencies to commit to paying for work that could cost $1 billion or more.

 

By CURTIS MORGAN

Cmorgan@Miamiherald.com

 

A Miami federal judge on Thursday commended Gov. Rick Scott for stepping in with a proposal to bust open a legal logjam that for two decades has hampered efforts to stem the flow of pollution into the Everglades.

 

But the praise from U.S. District Judge Alan Gold was delivered in a cautious tone and included a message that might be summed up by that familiar line from Jerry Maguire: Show me the money.

 

Gold, who has issued a series of rulings blasting the “glacial delay’’ in the federally mandated clean-up, urged state and federal environmental managers negotiating a new Everglades clean-up strategy to come back with a firm plan for both protecting the marsh and — just as important — paying for projects that could easily approach $1 billion or more.

 

While he said he was encouraged by ongoing talks to resolve two long-running federal lawsuits over farm, ranch and yard pollution poisoning the River of Grass, he cautioned that without a firm financial commitment from water managers and the state, “what we’re doing is going around in circles, again.’’