We have one urgent reason for asking you to eliminate the sugar subsidies in the Farm Bill: Government aid to the sugar industry is hampering government efforts to save the Everglades.

The nation is preparing to spend more than 8 billion dollars over 40 years to rescue Florida's vitally important Everglades ecosystem while at the same time it is handing multi-millions to the sugar cane growers who primarily are responsible for the perilous condition of this ecosystem.

The problem is not just the money that the growers get from this classic example of corporate welfare. The problem also is that these federal handouts enable the farmers to stay in the Everglades and continue to threaten its demise.

Huge swaths of Everglades are being poisoned by the pollution-laden water pumped off the sugar fields. These releases contained 425 tons of phosphorus last year. An ever-expanding area of Everglades is choked by thick stands of cattails that replace Everglades vegetation, shut out wildlife and interrupt water flow. Three to five aces of Everglades die every day. Pollutants from the cane fields also are pouring into Lake Okeechobee and turning it putrid despite a flurry of lawsuits and legal mandates to halt this outrage. A state Everglades cleanup program (The Everglades Forever Act), that sticks the South Florida taxpayer with most of the cost, is not doing the job.

Almost half a million acres of sugar cane is growing in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee. The EAA, as it is known, was created for the farmers free of charge by the Army Corps of Engineers about 50 years ago.  The Corps drained 700,000 acres in the heart of the Everglades at the headwaters of the River of Grass, that wide, shallow movement of water that sustains the Everglades. Think of it-700,000 acres, more than a thousand square miles. The drained land stretches about 50 miles at its widest and deepest points.

The Corps also installed some of the world's largest pumps and deepened and widened major canals to keep the EAA dry. These pumps and canals, with their locks and levees, operate at taxpayers expense.

Besides being the major polluter, the EAA is responsible for many other problems in the Everglades that include:
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· Tremendous loss of fresh water to sea.  An average of 130 million gallons a year is flushed away to keep the EAA dry. This is water that once recharged the Everglades system. Water storage, in the EAA and other places, is critical to restore the Everglades.

· .Disruption of the entire hydrology and ecology.  This is the consequence of maintaining a drained area in the middle of the Everglades watershed. The Everglades now is cut off from Lake Okeechobee, which periodically overflowed its banks into the River of Grass. Besides being polluted, the water now fails to move at the right depth at the right time over the right space. The disrupted flow to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay has caused a 90 percent loss of wading birds and serious damage to the fishing grounds, including the Ten Thousand Islands and the Florida Keys. In addition, 68 species of plans and animals found in South Florida are threatened or endangered.

· Staggering loss of soil. The peat and muck that lies above the limestone base is
disappearing, as happens when organic soil is drained. Some land in the EAA already
has gone out of production because the soil is too thin. The U.S. Geological Survey
predicts farming will cease "within decades". The only way to stop the loss is to put
the water back on the land. The Everglades once contained the largest body of
organic soil in the world.  It takes a century to form one inch. It takes just a few years
to lose it when drained.

· Threat of urban sprawl. When the EAA is no longer farmed it it expected to be
developed. Urbanization already presses against the borders of the EAA, which is commuting distance from the crowded East Coast. Funds used to subsidize the sugar farmers should be diverted to buy land in the EAA and return it as nearly as possible to its natural condition.

· Restoration slowdown.  To save some of the water wasted to sea, government
      purchased 60,000 acres in the EAA for $152 million as the site for water storage
      reservoirs. Yet sugar cane continues to grow on this public land. Construction of the
      first reservoir is not scheduled to begin until 2005, if then, because of opposition from
      sugar interests.

· Subsidies that pick the people's pockets. Sugar gets supports that keep the price
      artificially high, costing consumers $2 billion last year and driving candy makers and
      other manufacturers to foreign countries.  The growers get low interest government
      loans backed by future crops. Forfeitures are allowed. This year the federal govern
      government bought more than $400 million of surplus sugar it has no use for.  It costs
      the taxpayers $1.3 million a month to store this sugar in industry warehouses.
              The South Florida Water Management District uses funds from property owners
      in 16 counties to operate water management systems solely for the benefit of the
     EAA. One study estimated that the EAA gets $238 million a year in public
     assistance.
               The state program that attempts to clean up pollution from the cane fields costs
     the growers only 15 percent of the $1.6 billion cost.

· Favoritism in government water management.  When South Florida cities were subject to
     drastic water restrictions during a recent drought, the government water managers drained
     almost three feet---150 billion gallons---off of Lake Okeechobee to irrigate the sugar fields.
     Conversely, last year when Lake Okeechobee was too high and about a foot of water
     was drained to protect the environment, all of South Florida estuaries and the Everglades got
     soaked with polluted water. Water managers declared that all areas were "sharing adversity".
     But the sugar fields were exempt. They remained dry.

      The lake is considered a water storage area both for the EAA and the urban
       coast. But the EAA draws an average of 170 million gallons a day, while only an
       average of 13 million gallons a day are sent to recharge coastal well fields.

       The Water Management District is run by a board of directors appointed by the
       governor and traditionally dominated by agricultural interests.  The board shares
       water management decisions with the Army Corps of Engineers. At times it appears
       that the whole Everglades system is run primarily for the benefit of the EAA and the
       occupying sugar interests instead of for the natural system of four million acres on
       which the whole region depends for clean fresh water.

       Because Congress approved the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) last year many people think the Everglades is saved and they can stop worrying about it. But in that they are very much mistaken because government continues to support the very sources that are destroying the Everglades.
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       The Everglades can't take any more of this abuse. Please help rescue it by eliminating the sugar subsidies from the Farm Bill.