Everglades Needs Sugar Deal Done Right

Carl Hiaasen

The new battle to save the Everglades depends on money and compromise even more than science.

Gov. Charlie Crist's grand plan to buy out U.S. Sugar is threatened by lagging tax revenues, costly lawsuits and the absence of a key player in the negotiations.

Twice downscaled, the governor's vision of converting thousands of acres of cane fields to water-cleansing marshes is far from dead. However, the deal is receiving close scrutiny and mounting criticism, some of it justified.

As it stands, Florida would pay $536 million for 72,800 acres of U.S. Sugar property near Lake Okeechobee. The company would be allowed to continue farming cane for at least seven years, and the state would keep an option to buy another 107,000 acres.

The purchase would add $45 million of annual debt to the already-strapped South Florida Water Management District, and cause the delay or cancellation of other Everglades projects in the works. Several have already been affected by forecasted deficits.

Meanwhile, the deal is an undisputed boon to U.S. Sugar, which has been struggling. Critics say the state is overpaying for the company's farm fields, which were appraised at pre-recession values.

What else is new? Government always overpays for land that it needs. The Florida Turnpike wouldn't exist today if the state had insisted on paying true market value for every parcel between Wildwood and Homestead.

There's only one Everglades watershed, and the time to salvage what remains of it is running out.

U.S. Sugar executives knew they could demand sweet terms. Included in the sales package were old citrus groves, far-flung segments that are basically worthless to the Glades' restoration plan.

However, there's also invaluable acreage for future wetlands and reservoirs just south of Clewiston in what was once the aortic funnel of South Florida's water supply.

The discouraging fact is that even if the U.S. Sugar deal goes through, all that land still won't be enough. Reviving the Everglades is impossible without including Florida Crystals, the thriving sugar empire run by the Fanjul family.

Florida Crystals owns sweeping miles of farmland that are crucial to the new Everglades map. Early on, the company had quietly shown an interest in participating in the governor's plan, either by selling some cane holdings to the state or swapping for U.S. Sugar tracts.

Something happened -- or maybe failed to happen -- and now Florida Crystals is vigorously fighting to block the Crist deal, claiming it amounts to a taxpayer bailout for U.S. Sugar.

That argument is rich with irony. Taxpayers have been bailing out big sugar growers for decades with federal price supports that enriched the industry even as it used the Everglades for a commode. Florida Crystals and rival U.S. Sugar both prospered handsomely.

Weary of being vilified, and facing stiffer regulations, Big Sugar in recent years has tried to clean up its act by cleaning its water runoff.

The people who run Florida Crystals are sharp. It's hard to believe they don't see the benefit to their brand's international image of participating as full partners in Everglades restoration.

It's also hard to believe that Crist doesn't know a single soul who can reasonably approach the Fanjuls about coming to the table.

The prospects for reconciliation are cloudy because the top lobbyists for U.S. Sugar are tight with the governor, and so is the company's law firm, Gunster Yoakley. The chairman is George LeMieux, Crist's former chief of staff and the man he picked to temporarily replace Mel Martinez in the U.S. Senate.

LeMieux says he has removed himself from all negotiations in the U.S. Sugar deal and will take no compensation from it. Still, his firm stands to make millions if the sale to Florida is approved.

There's nothing illegal about that, but the appearance of an inside political connection is smelly, and damaging to the larger cause.

The state's sugar buyout would be funded by "certificates of participation," bond-like instruments to be paid off with property tax revenues from 16 counties. Last Thursday, the water district's governing board kept the project alive by voting to extend a looming contract deadline.

Next hurdle: On April 7, the Florida Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments from opponents, including the Miccosukee Tribe and Florida Crystals. Both can afford to fight for a long, long time.

Crist, who's running for the Senate, wants voters to cheer his Everglades blueprint as a masterstroke. One step toward quieting skeptics would be to inform U.S. Sugar that the deal's off unless it switches to a neutral law firm, one that passes the political sniff test.

The next step would be reaching out to the Fanjuls and Florida Crystals, without whom there is no chance of making the Everglades flow cleanly again.

Even if by some miracle all the stars align, the mission will be dicey. This is only the biggest, costliest, most complicated plumbing job in the history of the human race.

The odds of getting it perfectly right are zero, but the consequences of getting it totally wrong are incalculable.

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Environment - Everglades Needs Sugar Deal Done Right | Carl Hiaasen