Back in 1996, Florida voters approved a “polluter pays” amendment that environmentalists hoped would force the agricultural industry — particularly sugar growers — to bankroll the hefty expense of stemming the damaging flow of nutrients into the Everglades.
It hasn’t worked out quite that way.
According to a study released Monday by the Everglades Foundation, the agricultural industry produces three-quarters of Glades pollution but pays only a quarter of the costs of cleaning it up. The public, the study found, pays the rest of an annual $106 million treatment tab through property taxes, utility bills and state and federal taxes.
“I’m quite certain that most Floridians would find it rather outrageous that they are picking up the bill for giant agricultural operations,’’ said Kirk Fordham, chief executive officer of the foundation, a group that championed the 16-year-old amendment that the Legislature has never enacted.
Fordham said he hoped the study would persuade state and federal negotiators trying to resolve decades of lawsuits over Florida’s oft-delayed clean plans to shift the burden — and bills that could run hundreds of millions of dollars or more — to farmers, ranchers and nurseries responsible for the bulk of nutrient pollution that has poisoned vast swathes of the Glades, killing off and crowding out native plants.
South Florida’s sugar farmers immediately bashed the study, which the foundation commissioned for $185,000 from researchers at North Carolina-based RTI International.
In a joint statement, the U.S. Sugar Corp., Florida Crystals Corp. and Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida defended their efforts and their record of reducing phosphorus use, saying the study was based on “grossly flawed assumptions, resulting in hocus pocus economic conclusions.’’
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a statement claiming “significant progress’’ in reducing nutrients but acknowledging “that there is more to be done.’’ The statement also sent an upbeat signal about settling long-running federal lawsuits over the slow pace of clean-up, adding that “because of the leadership of Gov. (Rick) Scott, Florida is on the verge of a momentous step forward in Everglades restoration.’’
The state, which first agreed to reduce the flow of phosphorus into the Everglades to settle a federal lawsuit in 1988, has been under mounting pressure from federal judges frustrated by the decades of delay. Florida has spent more than $1.3 billion to construct a 45,000-acre network of artificial marshes to scrub phosphorus flowing from farms into the Glades but it hasn’t been enough to meet the super-low standards required to protect the sensitive marsh.
Phosphorous, a common fertilizer ingredient that drains off farms and yards with every rain storm, can trigger fish-killing algae blooms in lakes and coastal waters. But its impact can be catastrophic even at minute concentrations in the Everglades, said foundation senior scientist Tom Van Lent. As concentrations rise, it can kill off an important algae at the base of the Everglades food chain and fuel the spread of cat tails, a plant that a scientist once dubbed “the grave markers of the Everglades.’’
via miamiherald.com