Big Sug­ar and the Ever­glades strive to sur­vive together

By Court­ney Robishaw

A truck moves along the perime­ter of a field of thick dark green sug­ar cane that sprouts up to 12-feet tall, spray­ing accel­er­ant as it pass­es. Smoke ris­es. Yel­low and orange flames arise. Crunch­ing and crack­ling are heard for 20 min­utes until sud­den­ly the fire dies out and only black­ened smoky cane remains ready for harvest.

This pow­er­ful blaze at a field owned by U.S. Sug­ar Corp. is sym­bol­ic of the pow­er of the South Flori­da com­pa­ny and its influ­ence on the Flori­da Everglades.

U.S. Sug­ar is one of the prime sug­ar cane grow­ers in the agri­cul­tur­al dis­trict just south of Lake Okee­chobee. Here the sug­ar many Amer­i­cans use is grown in rich “black gold” soil com­prised of organ­ic plant mate­r­i­al. But U.S. Sug­ar is often is often in con­flict with pro-envi­ron­men­tal groups, because grow­ing sug­ar pro­duces min­er­als, most notably phos­pho­rus, which pol­lutes the Everglades.

“U.S. Sug­ar is inter­est­ed in fix­ing the prob­lem,” said Judy Sanchez, senior direc­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pub­lic affairs for the com­pa­ny. We are inter­est­ed in doing “as many best prac­tices as we can.”

At one point it looked like U.S. Sug­ar might get out of the busi­ness of grow­ing sug­ar cane. In a deal first pro­posed in 2008 by Gov.Charlie Crist, U.S. Sug­ar sold 27,000 acres of its land to the state of Flori­da for restora­tion. The deal was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to be 187,000 acres, but less land was sold because of the down­turn in the econ­o­my. A con­tract option remains to sell the rest of their land, approx­i­mate­ly 150,000 acres, to the state over ten years.

How­ev­er, Sanchez, is not opti­mistic about the sale actu­al­ly going through.

Many would be dis­heart­ened if that hap­pened, like Lar­ry Perez, a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tions inter­preter at Ever­glades Nation­al Park.

“God knows that was a hard fought bat­tle to begin with, just to get the rel­a­tive­ly small amount of land that we’ve wound up get­ting for restora­tion, so that would set us back,” he said.

Since 1994, farm­ers have been required to reduce their impact on the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly in cut­ting phos­pho­rous lev­els by at least 25 per­cent. The aver­age reduc­tion since then has been at 50 per­cent and last year, phos­pho­rus was reduced by 79 per­cent in the Ever­glades, accord­ing to Sanchez.

How­ev­er, some like Paul Gray, a sci­en­tist and Lake Okee­chobee spe­cial­ist for the Audubon Soci­ety, wor­ry that not enough is being done because the vol­ume of con­t­a­m­i­nants keeps rising.

“Every year, we are mak­ing the phos­pho­rus prob­lem worse and worse and hope it gets bet­ter,” he said. “Agri­cul­ture has to get more sophis­ti­cat­ed with how they man­age agri­cul­tur­al prop­er­ties,” Gray added.

The Ever­glades his­tor­i­cal­ly has had very few min­er­als and when phos­pho­rus is added to the water flow­ing out of the agri­cul­tur­al dis­trict it affects the veg­e­ta­tion, said Stu­art Appel­baum, chief of the plan­ning and pol­i­cyd divi­sion of the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers in Flori­da.

For instance, the Arthur R. Mar­shall Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge, which is just down­stream from the agri­cul­tur­al dis­trict, cur­rent­ly has a phos­pho­rus lev­el five times high­er than it should be, accord­ing to Donat­to Sur­ratt, project man­ag­er for Loxahatchee’s water mon­i­tor­ing program.

Farm­ers such as U.S. Sug­ar say they are striv­ing to reduce their impact.

Farm­ers are required by the South Flori­da Water Man­age­ment Dis­trict, if they want to move water in and out of canals, to come up with a numer­i­cal point sys­tem that cre­ates a pos­i­tive impact. The com­bi­na­tion of best man­age­ment prac­tices a farm choos­es must add up to 25 points, accord­ing to Sanchez.

“We imple­ment most of the best man­age­ment prac­tices applic­a­ble to sug­ar cane and it is well over 25 points on most of our farms,” said Sanchez.

Spend­ing $4 mil­lion to $5 mil­lion a year, U.S. Sug­ar imple­ment­ed many of these best prac­tices, includ­ing mod­i­fy­ing pump­ing prac­tices in order to pre­vent sed­i­ment in the soil from being pumped with the water as it moves off the farm.

U.S. Sug­ar waits to turn on its pumps until there is about an inch of water on the fields. They then turn them on slow­ly to pre­vent sed­i­ment, along with min­er­als, from being stirred up in the canals, accord­ing to Sanchez.

In the canals, U.S. Sug­ar also built hills and val­leys so the sed­i­ment gets trapped, while water flows over­head. U.S. Sug­ar also lets weeds build up along­side canals to cap­ture wind ero­sion, accord­ing to Sanchez.

U.S. Sug­ar also uses a tech­nique known as laser lev­el­ing to make fields “table-top” lev­el, because any­time soil or water is moved around, phos­pho­rus is moved into the pub­lic water supply.

“Laser tech­nol­o­gy is not cheap, but is one way tech­nol­o­gy is assist­ing farm­ers in being more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly,” Sanchez said.

“If you don’t move water, you’re not mov­ing phos­pho­rus,” she added.

U.S. Sug­ar also uses band­ing tech­nol­o­gy, a machine that real­izes a small band of fer­til­iz­er at the bot­tom of the sug­ar cane crop instead of all over the field.

How­ev­er, some, like Jonathan Ull­man, senior field orga­niz­er for the Sier­ra Club, crit­i­cized U.S. Sugar’s efforts and say they need to do more in pay­ing for the clean-up.

“The sug­ar indus­try needs to pay their fair share to clean the water and they’re not. They’re only pay­ing, I believe, 14 per­cent of the cost,” said Ullman.

He added that the South Flori­da tax­pay­ers pay for the major­i­ty of the clean-up.

While crit­ics are con­cerned about the degree of pol­lu­tion the farm­ers are cre­at­ing, they are even more wor­ried what might hap­pen if the farm­ers left. While that seems far fetched, many note that the rich soil nur­tur­ing the sug­ar cane is slow­ly erod­ing away.

Said Melis­sa Mar­tin, a senior ecol­o­gist at Lox­a­hatch­ee Refuge. “There is no doubt we are los­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of soil,” she said.

The region could become so low that it becomes a big lake or at worst, it could be sold for development