Blog angers Glades farmers
Sugar cane growers may have contributed to flooding, blog says.
In the latest round of discord between Everglades Agricultural Area farmers and environmental groups, the farmers have called the Bullsugar group and Everglades Trust “anti-farmer,” and accused them of spreading misinformation.
The reaction from Belle Gladebased EAA Farmers follows a July 6 blog posting by bullsugar.org’s Peter Girard. Girard raised the question of whether sugar cane growers contributed to flooding in the Everglades by pumping water off their fields and into canals.
Not so, say the farmers. The flooding in the Everglades was caused by record rainfall in June, they say, and they incurred losses in rice fields and feed corn due to the unprecedented rainfall. In addition, sugar cane has been sitting under water on the farms for weeks, drowning the roots during the most important growth period of the plant’s cycle.
“The anti-farmer activists at the Everglades Trust and Bullsugar are hijacking this devastating weather event and using it as part of their campaign, shamelessly spreading more harmful misinformation about the hardworking men and women who farm the fresh vegetables, fruits and grains that are served on tables across America,” EAA Farmers spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said.
“We do still have standing water in places on our farms, and there has been some crop damage as a result. We don’t yet know the full extent of the damage,” U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez added.
Girard said Bullsugar is definitely not anti-farmer.
“We’re for stopping toxic discharges to our estuaries and providing clean fresh water to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. EAA farmers have an opportunity to play a key role in these initiatives, and we’re hopeful that they will,” Girard said.
Everglades Trust executive director Kimberly Mitchell added: “To suggest that we are anti-farmer is so ridiculous. We are pro getting the water from Lake Okeechobee to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.”
Mitchell said the issue isn’t just about the environment, adding that the Everglades is the source of drinking water for 8 million Floridians.
The South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said they took emergency actions in late June to protect wildlife from high water in conservation areas and to protect the Everglades ecosystem from further harm.
Among those actions was back-pumping billions 8.5 billion of gallons of water into Lake Okeechobee and sending as much water as possible to the Atlantic Ocean, said SFWMD spokesman Randy Smith.
“Nothing but a direct rainfall on this portion of the Everglades contributed to the flooding,” Smith said. “It would be impossible to separate 100 percent sugar water from what we were sending back, which was coming out of a shallow reservoir. We had a very devastating situation in the water conservation areas, or the Everglades.”
The normal flow of water is to the south. The pumping from the reservoir and storm water treatment areas to the south of Lake Okeechobee was to move as much water as possible to prevent it from exacerbating the already flooded Everglades. The shallow reservoir is normally 2 feet deep, and the rain basically doubled the depth.
Smith said the pumps were shut off July 3, but it’s expected to take a couple of months for the water to drain from the southern portion of the Everglades. Farmers do not control the pumps, he said, the SFWMD does. The Corps also opened some of the flood control gates it operates.
The SFWMD reported that June rainfall nearly doubled the district-wide average and the deluge of rain on June 6 broke century-old rainfall records across South Florida, including in Palm Beach County.