Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

In South Florida, the dynamics are simple. Developers are running out of land, and they will fight for every acre. Land-use attorney Don McCloskey beautifully articulates his clients' selfless philosophy: "Government cannot use my private property to save the world."

So much for the Everglades, and for the underground aquifer that gives us water.

The EPA's logic is politically convenient: Marshes that already are damaged don't deserve protection.To be deemed valuable, wetlands had better be wet, and free from foreign vegetation.

The irony is classic Florida. Melaleucas originally were imported in a grandiose scheme to suck the Everglades dry. Though that plan was thwarted, it looks as if the stubborn exotics finally will get their revenge. The trees won't have to drink a drop, they'll just have to stand there.

Developers gleefully will be counting them, one by one, to prove that their land isn't worth saving.

Glades need a hero before options dry up January 12, 1992

Big Sugar might help save the Everglades, in spite of itself.

The longer that cane growers refuse to clean up their waste and the more unfiltered scum they pump into the watershed, the greater the public backlash. No cause has so enlarged and galvanized the conservation movement.

Cheers went up when acting U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen sued Florida for letting growers pollute Everglades National Park. More cheers went up when Gov. Lawton Chiles recently settled the case.

The agreement called for a modest cleanup that gives Big Sugar years to comply. The industry's arrogant response: 18 lawsuits against the Department of Environmental Regulation and state water managers.

People got mad—even people who didn't fish or hunt, who didn't care much about alligator nests or the sight of wild flamingos at sunrise. People who simply knew a scandal when they saw one.

Big Sugar gets all the water it wants for practically nothing, dirties it with tons of phosphates, then spits it back at nature. That's not the only reason the Everglades is in trouble, but what's wrong can't be fixed until the cane growers get on board.

"What we're talking about," said DER chief Carol Browner, "is a significant replumbing of South Florida."

When the Everglades Coalition met this weekend in Key Largo, the conference drew nationally known conservationists, biologists, planners, lobbyists and water experts. There were lawyers, too—mean, tough, hungry lawyers. That's what it takes these days to battle the special interests.

The mood was sober because the situation is dire. Half the original Everglades has been lost to drainage and development. Fish and mammals are dying from mercury poisoning. The number of nesting wading birds is down to 7,000 annually (in 1931 it was 100,000). Brazilian pepper trees have devoured 100,000 acres of native vegetation.

Everyone agrees the Everglades is dying from pollution, droughts and urbanization. The worst predictions are coming true at the worst possible time. Just when Tallahassee awakens to the crisis, the state finds itself broke and panicky.

Without heroes in the Legislature, there will be no money to clean up the Everglades. No money to find out where the lethal mercury is coining from. No money to purchase endangered wetlands. "It's kind of scary," said Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay. "The economics of growth may now be coinciding with the politics of decline."

That's an amazing admission from a Florida politician, and maybe MacKay wouldn't have said it at a convention of home builders. But he's absolutely right.

For 40 years the natural marsh was diked, dammed and diverted to benefit farmers and developers. Today 4 million people in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties rely on the Everglades system for their drinking water. Nature's plumbing can't handle it.

Big Sugar can be blamed for stubborn avarice, but the industry makes one irrefutable point: Overdevelopment has done more to destroy the Everglades than all the cane and dairy farmers put together.

Cleaning agricultural runoff isn't hard, it's just expensive. The people problem is not so easy to clean up. MacKay wonders what happens when South Florida's 4 million becomes 6 million, and the 6 million becomes 8 million. Where will they get their water?

They probably won't. The plight of the Everglades has transcended images of panthers and bald eagles. Now it means something even the most thickheaded legislator can understand: no water. Suddenly growth management is more than a slogan, it's an imperative.

In his speech, MacKay compared Florida to a big gangly teenager. "We don't have the foggiest notion of what we want to be when we grow up."

Unless other politicians start listening, the one thing we'll definitely be is thirsty.

Big Sugar's sly cleanup plan is dirty pool April 12, 1992