TCPalm outdoor columnist Ed Killer has penned a dead-on piece lambasting the Florida senators who voted in favor of notorious Senate Bill 2508 as being little but shills for Big Sugar, and determined to advance the industry’s priorities over clean water.

Killer calls the bill a “sneak attack,” noting it will prioritize water supply to farms in the Everglades Agricultural Area – mainly sugar farms – over the health of the Everglades, increase the chance of algae-laden discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and dilute the pot of funding available to build the EAA reservoir.

Why? Because that’s what Big Sugar wants.

From the column:

At least 16 of the 20 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee left no doubt of these three points:

• They serve special interests, not the majority of Florida’s voters
• They’re as power hungry as a James Bond movie villain
• They hate Florida’s water. …

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If sugar growers are worried about water supply, then why not set aside some of their own land and build reservoirs for water storage with its own money? Why not stop suing the federal government and trying to manipulate state government to get what it wants? 

This isn’t anti-ag sentiment. It’s just time the sugar industry became more responsible, proactive and sustainable with respect to managing its water needs. Send Lake O water south to the Everglades where it belongs and where Mother Nature intended it to go.

But it’s easier for the industry to just whip out its collective checkbook, deliver nice fat sums to political action committees that then give it to legislators – making it difficult to trace the money directly to the sugar companies – and get what they want.

And this will continue until Big Sugar’s shenanigans are stopped – by politicians who refuse to say “how high?” when Sugar says “jump.”