Email records prove that a U.S. Sugar lobbyist has been directing policy at a state agency.TC Palm’s Lucas Daprile uncovered a truth this week that too many people already knew: Sugar controls the South Florida Water Management District and actively blocks clean water rules and Everglades restoration.  Just days ago Michael Grunwald, author of The Swamp and the leading expert on Everglades politics pretended not to know this, telling CBS4’s Jim DeFede: “They’re not the ones making the decisions.” It turns out they absolutely are the ones making the decisions, and Grunwald knows better. The industry has been getting a pass from journalists on a foundational lie: that sugar is operating in good faith, doing its part to solve Florida’s [...]

Sugar isn’t the only corrupt industry that can buy communities to silence complaints about its pollution. But it might be the only one that gets taxpayers to pick up the cost.Martin County taxpayers are being pushed by Flint, Michigan-based US Sugar to join a long line of Floridians paying to clean up the company’s waste.  Next week sugar-financed Martin County commissioner Doug Smith expects voters to tax themselves, supposedly for leaky septic systems that experts say aren’t causing toxic algae blooms. Commissioners aren’t mentioning that the tax and the project will help US Sugar avoid sharing responsibility for the blooms. Or telling voters exactly how they plan to spend taxpayers’ money, either. It’s a proven winner from US Sugar’s playbook. Here’s how [...]

The key to making the EAA reservoir work might have been under our feet all along.Scientists have said for years that the project can’t succeed without enough land. To stop discharges to the coasts and restore the Everglades, the system needs more than storage. It needs to constantly refill and empty as fast as it can in the wet season, flowing through treatment marshes to filter out pollution before sending it south. It works like a river using a floodplain to clean water as it goes. US Sugar says the scientists are wrong, the public owns enough land already to make it work, and the industry won’t sell any. They might be (partly) right. Records show there’s more public land available in the EAA [...]

When it comes to using independent science to affirm what is happening in the real world, the State of Florida is abdicating its responsibility. Miami, March For Science, April 22, 2017 The direction comes from the top. One of Rick Scott's first acts as governor was to slash the science budget of the state agency charged with Everglades restoration; the South Florida Water Management District.Environmentalists had good reason to be alarmed. Restoring the Everglades ecosystem requires attention to biodiversity on the microscopic scale. It had been determined, after decades of litigation in federal court, that more than ten parts per billion of phosphorous, laid out by the ton by Big Sugar in its fertilizer run-off, and the Everglades dies. Firing [...]

Remember how Big Sugar said the problem in Florida’s estuaries was septic tanks adjacent to the Indian River? They say the same about the mercury problem in the Everglades and Florida waterways: it’s someone else’s fault. Not of course that Big Sugar fails to clean up its pollution.   The same sort of wizardry applies to how Big Sugar talks about mercury. Let’s break it down: For mercury contamination to pollute aquatic ecosystems, the mercury must first be transformed to the powerful neurotoxicant methylmercury. Once methylmercury is formed, it can readily enter the base of aquatic food chains and accumulate at increasingly higher concentrations up the food chain from algae to predatory fish and ultimately to terrestrial wildlife such as [...]

Big Sugar controls Florida except for the rain.Managing government regulations and laws are routine costs of Big Sugar business. It takes  big money to externalize the costs of pollution, say, or to increase costs to public health as a  consequence of promoting added sugar in the American diet. Expensive as lobbying, lawyering and politicking may be, millions per year are only a  fraction of the windfall derived from government subsidies and sugar price supports. Alfie and Pepe Fanjul, Florida Crystals Floods or drought are other matters. Big Sugar can't plan for too much rain or too little, but in both cases, the effect of weather extremes is to make crop yields unpredictable. Reducing unpredictability to the maximum extent possible challenges [...]

Let Miami-Dade County know Transportation/Mobility is important! Every seven years, the Comprehensive Development Master Plan (CDMP) is reviewed and updated as required per Chapter 163 of the Florida Statutes, a process known as an Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR). EAR includes an evaluation of the progress the county has made in implementing the goals, objectives, policies, maps and text of the CDMP, and also recommends changes.Help shape the future of Miami-Dade County! Your vision can make a difference. Attend a workshop, take the EAR2018 Survey or email your comments.Opportunities for participation:  Take the EAR2018 survey.   Attend a Town Hall Workshop: Thursday, June 8, 6-8:30pmAfrican Heritage Cultural Arts Center 6161 NW 22 Ave, Miami, FL 33142Saturday, June 10, 10am-noonNorman and Jean Reach Park 7895 NW 176 [...]

  Fixing Florida’s destroyed estuaries and Everglades and Florida Bay depends on voters and taxpayers re-engaging with public officials. Case in point: how and why a vast new wetland system — at least 60,000 acres — was removed from legislation, now law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott.Before the start of the Florida legislature, Senate President Joe Negron pledged that acquiring 60,000 acres of land from Big Sugar owners was a top priority. The addition of significant additional acreage for water storage and cleansing marshes -- using lands south of Lake Okeechobee now in sugarcane production -- had been a science-based goal of Everglades restoration since at least 2000. And not just the Everglades.By the end of the session, a bill [...]