Sugar firms look to build on Glades land

It's an idea bigger than Palm Beach County as we know it: building house after house after house on the vast green farmland of the county's sugar-growing region.

The region at stake is roughly twice the size of the county's already developed eastern portion. And after years of rumblings, some think sprawl could spread to the sugar fields sooner than anybody expected.

The county's sugar growers say they are facing increased threats from international competition and shrinking demand. Already, some are pushing new uses for their land.

Florida Crystals Corp., one of the state's two biggest sugar growers, this summer proposed developing 14,500 acres northwest of Wellington in an unsuccessful attempt to lure The Scripps Research Institute.

Just west of that site, United States Sugar Corp. is planning to turn 4,000 of its acres into a lime rock mine.

Others wonder whether sugar companies will increasingly turn to development as farming wears away the soil. For environmentalists, perhaps their biggest fear is that replacing sugar cane with suburbs will worsen pollution of the Everglades.

''We were all shook up when we heard the Fanjuls were offering some of their land for Scripps,'' said Juanita Greene, conservation chairwoman of Friends of the Everglades, said of the wealthy family that controls Florida Crystals. Her group has advocated a government buyout of the whole sugar region.

``And for U.S. Sugar to propose this huge dredging, that's got us all shook up. What does this mean for Everglades restoration?''

Palm Beach County Commission Chairwoman Karen Marcus said that later this month she'll bring to commissioners a proposal from the Everglades Coalition for a moratorium on development in the sugar region.

Then, she said, county and state leaders should create a plan for the region, known as the Everglades Agricultural Area because it used to be the northern end of the Everglades.

Any plan should include studying how development would affect the $8.4 billion Everglades restoration and whether the government should buy sugar land once it's no longer farmed, she said.

Marcus said that if sugar farming is no longer possible, the land should be used for rice, plant nurseries or some other agricultural use.

''There's never been any intention in my mind for there to be rooftops out there,'' she said.

But the sugar companies may think differently. Florida Crystals Corp. in July made a bid for Scripps, suggesting it could immediately make 14,500 acres available for development. That's about the size of the town of Jupiter.

That wasn't the company's first move toward developing the land. In December, Florida Crystals unsuccessfully tried to add roughly the same land to the Northern Palm Beach County Improvement District, which would have made it easier for the company to develop.

Representatives of Florida Crystals did not return several messages this month. Most recently, U.S. Sugar has leased 4,000 acres of sugar cane land to a mining company to dig lime rock and create reservoirs.

In a statement last week, U.S. Sugar Senior Vice President Robert Coker hinted that the mine was just one step in the company's development plans.

''This mining lease is a part of U.S. Sugar's effort to maximize its land assets during a business and global trade atmosphere that has forced us to reduce the acreage devoted to sugar cane,'' the statement read. ``We will continue to look for opportunities to find the highest and best use of land that will not be farmed on a short or long-term basis.''

Environmentalists were adamant that development of the sugar fields should be off limits.

''It is not land that should be lived on,'' said Nathaniel Reed, a Hobe Sound environmentalist and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. ``It is land that should remain in agriculture or returned to native vegetation.''

Developing the land would cause flooding and create ''enormous urban sprawl,'' he said. ''It's a catastrophe in the making,'' Reed said.

Sugar companies would prefer to continue farming, said Phil Parsons, attorney for the Florida Sugar Cane League. ''I don't think it's a question of whether they'll continue or not continue farming,'' Parsons said. ``It's how much land will become other uses.''

And the vast majority will be farming, he said. Any development would be on a relatively small scale, Parsons said, unless another opportunity like Scripps comes along.

Otherwise, he predicts most development in South Florida will be redevelopment along the coast.