Kick Ass Part 43

In past years the blooms were smaller, localized. They came and went in a couple months. This one was born in October, and continues to spread like an 50-square-mile amoeba.

Chilly weather hasn't killed it, only moved it from the remote middle part of the bay-Everglades National Park-toward the populated islands. Each night at the fishing docks, backcountry guides grimly exchange information on the movement of the algae; on some days it's a challenge to find clear water.

The cloudy bloom not only looks like sewage, it blocks out vital sunlight, causing marine life to flee or perish. Sponges are dying by thousands-clots of them can be found bobbing in the algae. That's bad news for future lobster harvests; the juvenile crustaceans require healthy sponges for food and protection.

Even more alarming is that strong winter winds have pushed broad streaks of the algae out of the bay through the Keys bridges, into the Atlantic. The offsh.o.r.e reefs, already imperiled, could suffocate if the microbic crud thickens.

Imagine what would happen to the boating, diving and fishing-in other words, the entire Keys economy. Disaster is the only word for it, like an oil spill that won't go away.

This weekend the nation's top environmental groups are gathered in Tallaha.s.see for the annual Everglades Coalition. The task is to devise a way to remap South Florida's plumbing to repair the Everglades.

Incredibly, it's the first time that the agenda includes a serious scientific discussion of the fate of Florida Bay. Pray that it's not too late.

Douglas would trade medal for preserved Glades December 2, 1993 A bone-numbing north wind blew across the breadth of Everglades early this week. At the farthest tip, near Cape Sable, the sky flashed with wild birds: herons, curlews, ibises, blue egrets, white pelicans, sandpipers and a few roseate spoonbills.

They swarmed to the mud banks and oyster beds as the tide ran out, diving, wading, and wheeling overhead in such numbers that one could hardly imagine the place is dying. It is.

A long way off, an amazing woman named Marjory Stoneman Douglas was sleeping at the White House as an honored guest of the first family. On Tuesday she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for a life's work trying to preserve the Everglades.

Medallions are nice, but Mrs. Douglas probably would trade hers in an instant for one solid promise from Mr. Clinton. Water is what the Everglades needs-a restored flow, streaming pure from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.The way it was 103 years ago, when Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born.

That any of her Everglades remains untouched is the miracle. What Mrs. Douglas and her colleagues accomplished will never be done again. Not a chance.

Look at a map. The entire southwest thumb of Florida is a park-2,300 square miles that can't be malled, dredged, subdivided or plowed into golf courses. President Harry Truman made it official in 1947, the same year that Mrs. Douglas came out with her masterpiece, River of Gross.

Originally the park was 460,000 acres, a small piece of the total Everglades.The remainder was to be channelized by the Army Corps with the unabashed mission of conquest. In 1950 the park doubled its size, and has since grown to 1.5 million acres.

Saving so much raw real estate from the clutches of banks, developers, and speculators would be impossible today. Even if such a vast spread existed, the forces of greed would never surrender it for preservation.

The creation of Everglades National Park culminated a crusade that began in 1927, when Mrs. Douglas was just one voice on a local committee pushing for it. She admits that she knew "next to nothing" about the Everglades. When she started researching her book, she'd visited the place only a few times.

Today she is its patron saint. Ironically, her highest honor comes when her beloved Everglades is most imperiled. Although it can't be paved, it is being starved. Man-made ca.n.a.ls with man-made faucets govern the ebb of its lifeblood; decisions rest with bureaucrats sympathetic to special interests.

The headwaters of Mrs. Douglas' river are spoiled by the sewage of millionaire sugar barons. What moves south is siphoned to suburbs, cities and a handful of vegetable farmers. The water that reaches Florida Bay is an anemic trickle-a 10th of what it once was. The bay, muddy and algae-clogged, languishes.

Those grand birds that rise from the mangroves on a wintry breeze are but a fleeting fraction of what once thrived here. Yet it would be untrue to say that the sight isn't a cause for hope. Given half a chance, nature rebounds swiftly.

Soon the Clinton administration will reveal more details of its controversial Everglades restoration plan, which includes a cleanup settlement with Big Sugar. At stake is more than bird life. It's our water, our economy, our whole future.

For political impact, the Everglades deal will be promoted as tough, bold and urgent. It had better be exactly that, or Mr. Clinton will have to contend again with Mrs. Douglas.

She might not be the type to return a presidential medallion, but she could definitely hang him with it.

Sugar bosses fight to keep real sweet deal April 30, 1995 Powerful politicians want to spoil Big Sugar's sweetheart deal by eliminating the program that artificially props up the price.

Sugar barons hate the word "welfare," but that's what it is: guaranteed income, at the expense of foreign growers and American consumers.

Last week a congressional subcommittee meeting in Belle Glade heard from scores of regular folks who said that wiping out federal price guarantees would wipe out their way of life.

The sugar companies say so, too: They just can't hack it in a free-market economy.

Judging from all that whining, you'd think they were barely sc.r.a.ping by-U.S. Sugar, Flo-Sun and the other growers. You'd think their saga was one of a small farmer, struggling to eke a living from the fickle soil.

That's the image being peddled these days, as Big Sugar lobbies to keep its place on the federal gravy train.

And it's impossible not to feel sympathy for the working people of Clewiston, Pahokee and Belle Glade, who rely on the industry's prosperity. Those folks are truly scared, and they made an impression on the visiting congressmen.

Big Sugar's other face was not so visible. Take the Fanjul family, for instance, which owns 170,000 acres of Okeechobee cane. Its tale is not such a humble tearjerker.

As heads of Flo-Sun, brothers Alfie and Pepe Fanjul have gotten grossly wealthy because the U.S. government lets them charge eight cents per pound above the world price for sugar, and imposes strict import quotas on foreign compet.i.tors.

Forbes magazine estimates the program enriches the Fanjuls by $65 million a year. Their combined fortune is said to exceed $500 million. They live luxuriantly in Palm Beach, and contribute heavily (and, up to now, productively) to both Democrats and Republicans.

Interestingly, the Cuban-born brothers have never applied for American citizenship. They keep Spanish pa.s.sports, which means their foreign a.s.sets aren't subject to U.S. estate taxes.

Oh, it gets better.

Recently the Fanjuls discovered the benefits of minority set-aside programs. They own most of a financial company, FAIC Securities, that's getting a cut of the juicy munic.i.p.al bond business from Dade and Broward.

Set-asides were conceived to help local minority-owned firms compete with underwriting giants such as Merrill Lynch. Broward finance director Phillip Allen told Forbes it was "irrelevant" that the Fanjuls were non-citizen multimillionaires.

It's naive to think that the anti-sugar sentiment in Congress was born of righteous indignation. The impetus for "reform" comes mainly from candy makers, soft drink companies and other commercial users of sugar.

Big Sugar's supporters contend that eliminating price supports won't help consumers, and they're right. Coca-Cola isn't famous for pa.s.sing its savings along to shoppers.

The best argument for axing the price supports is fairness. If Congress is slashing welfare, the blade ought to come down as brutally on corporate moochers as on social programs.

The sugar barons always howl about doom and disaster. They cried the same way when they were told to clean up the water they dump in the Everglades.

The truth is, they won't go out of business unless they choose to. A glimpse of the Fanjuls' lifestyle is glittering proof that Big Sugar isn't a struggling, shoestring operation.

Killing the price guarantees undoubtedly would have a major impact, and probably lead to a radical paring of expenses. For starters, the sugar barons could save millions by cutting back on lawyers, lobbyists, yachts, polo ponies.

Whoa. Now we're really talking disaster.

Sugar barons' campaign: Not sweet but low November 10, 1996 Big Sugar did a masterful job of crushing the penny-a-pound tax amendment. All it took were $24 million and a stupendous pack of lies.

With ammo like that, it would be possible to convince a majority of voters that dogs have wings.

Political campaigns are often orgies of deception, but the battle over Amendment 4 set a grimy new benchmark. Twisting the truth is commonplace in election years; abandoning it completely is unusual.

That's what happened when the sugar barons decided their only hope of victory was to scare and confuse the public. The best way to do that was to make stuff up, and they did a brilliant, if despicable, job.

As a result, there are people walking around Florida today who actually believe they would have paid the penny-per-pound sugar tax instead of the growers.

Because that's what Big Sugar told them over and over on TV It was the largest of many lies aimed at a stratum of voters who might be charitably described as impressionable.

The manner in which the sugar industry defeated the penny-tax proposal is relevant only for what it means to the Everglades, which would have been the beneficiary of Amendment 4.

Since the referendum, which cost a stupefying $36 million, both sides have been talking vaguely about mending fences and getting down to the urgent task of cleaning up South Florida's water.

U.S. Sugar, in particular, has indicated a willingness to move ahead in harmony with conservationists. It would be great news, if it were true. The question is, how can you believe a word these guys say?

Look at the execrable campaign they just ran. Look at the avalanche of lawsuits they've unleashed to block or delay key facets of Everglades restoration.

On the other hand, you've got to wonder if the sugar barons are tired of being portrayed as the Antichrists of the environment. These aren't stupid people. Cynical and ruthless, to be sure-but not stupid.

They know most Floridians want their wetlands pure and protected. The lopsided vote in favor of Amendment 5, which requires polluters to pay for Everglades cleanup, was a sharp reminder of the public's pa.s.sion on that subject.

As a matter of fact, environmentalists hope to use Amendment 5 to pry more money out of the sugar industry. At the same time, EPA Chief Carol Browner says the feds want Big Sugar to fork over a bigger share.

Last week's impressive victory at the polls didn't get the sugar barons out of the political woods, nor did it improve their image. If they hope to hang onto their lucrative price supports, they need to appear more concerned about their waste water. They need to appear more reasonable and responsible.

And they need to make more friends. Cooperating actively with the Everglades cleanup would win them many.

Conservation groups should be similarly motivated to sit down at the bargaining table. The first incentive is economic-lawsuits and political campaigns are a drain of precious resources.

The second incentive is time, which is running out for our watershed. The sooner the replumbing begins, the better the chance of a successful restoration.

Many environmentalists acknowledge that n.o.body wins if Big Sugar bails out of Florida. Properly filtered, agricultural runoff is less damaging to the Everglades than the fallout from urban encroachment.

There's no reason why the farms can't stay and the great river can't be repaired and replenished. Let's hope the next $36 million is spent on the water, not on television commercials.

Everglades National Park 50th Anniversary Homage to a magical place October 19, 1997 The cabin hung on wooden stilts in a marsh pond, the stilts rising up through lily pads as big as hubcaps.

Getting there was tricky but my friends Andy and Matt knew the way-gunning a johnboat down subtle and sinuous trails, the sawgra.s.s whisking against the hull. If you were foolish enough to stick out your hand, it came back bleeding.

The stalks were so high and thick that they parted like a curtain when we plowed through. The boat's bow acted as a scoop, picking up gem-green chameleons and ribbon snakes and leopard frogs. By the time we reached the cabin, we'd usually have spider webs on our heads, and sometimes the spiders themselves.

We were kids, and it was fantastic. It was the Everglades.

One night we stood on the canted porch and watched tiny starbursts of color in the distant sky. At first we couldn't figure out what they were, and then we remembered: It was the Fourth of July. Those were fireworks over the city of Fort Lauderdale.

But we were so far away that all we could hear was the peeping of frogs and the hum of mosquitoes and the occasional trill of an owl. We didn't need to be told it was a magical place. We didn't need to be reminded how lucky we were.

I don't know if the old shack is still standing in Conservation Area 1B, but the eastward view certainly isn't the same. Instead of starlight you now get the glow from the Sawgra.s.s Mills mall, a humongous Ford dealership and, absurdly, the crown of a new pro hockey arena.

We wouldn't have thought it possible, three teenagers gazing across wild country that swept to all horizons. Ice hockey on the doorstep of the Everglades! We couldn't have imagined such soulless incongruity and blithering greed.

Fortunately, somebody was smarter than we were. Somebody 30 years earlier had realized that the most imposing of natural wonders, even a river of gra.s.s, could be destroyed if enough well-financed intruders set their minds to it.

And somebody also understood that Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties would inevitably grow westward as haphazardly as fungus, and with even less regard for their mother host.

So that, politically, the only part of the Everglades that could be set aside for true preservation was its remote southernmost spur, and not without a battle. As impenetrable as the area appeared, speculators nonetheless mulled ways to log it, plow it, mine it or subdivide it.

That the U.S. Congress and state Legislature ever went along with the idea of an Everglades National Park remains astounding, 50 years after its dedication.

Nature helped its own cause. Hurricanes hammered South Florida in the 1930s and 1940s, so most land grabbers weren't in the market for more submerged acreage. It was hard enough hawking the soggy, stamp-sized lots they already had.

Seasonal flooding and fires had become such a threat to coastal development that extravagant technology was being directed toward a radical solution: containing and controlling all water near the farms and newly sprouted towns.

Thus preoccupied, most entrepreneurs remained wary of the buggy, moccasin-infested wetlands below the Tamiami Trail. That particular wilderness was, if not unconquerable, presumed not worth the high cost of conquering.

So in 1947 there came to be a spectacular national park, 1.3 million acres and destined to grow.

Ironically, it wasn't long afterwards that the rest of the Everglades, an area five times the size of the park, came under attack from the dredge and the bulldozer-a methodical and arrogant replumbing. Hundreds of miles of ca.n.a.ls and dikes were gouged through the sawgra.s.s meadows, pond apple sloughs and cypress heads.

Once the big "water management" project got under way, not enough people considered what might happen to the park itself, to the south. Too few understood its vascular, life-or-death connection to the sugarcane fields of Clewiston, the limerock mines of Medley or the tomato farms of Homestead.

As a consequence, hundreds of millions of dollars are today being requisitioned to undo the damage and "restore" both the flow and purity of the Everglades. Nowhere in the world has such a ma.s.sive, complex hydrological repair been attempted. If by some miracle it succeeds, your children and their children probably will never run out of clean water.

And, as a fine bonus, they might get to see a healthier Everglades National Park.

As vulnerable and anemic as it is, the park remains impressive and occasionally awesome; still rightfully mentioned in the same breath with Yellowstone and Grand Canyon.

Visually, its beauty is of an inverse dimension, for the Glades are as flat as a skillet, the trees mostly tangled and scrubby, the waters slow and dark. The monotony of its landscape can be a deception, as endless and uninviting as arctic tundra.

But for anyone finding themselves on that long two-lane road to Flamingo when the sun comes up, there's no place comparable in the universe.

True, the Everglades have no regal herds of elk or buffalo to halt tourist traffic-you might briefly be delayed by a box turtle plodding across the blacktop, or by a homely opossum. Yet for the matchless diversity of its inhabitants, the park is truly unique.

That's because it is essentially the tailing-out of a great temperate river, transformed on its southerly glide from freshwater prairies to an immense salty estuary, Florida Bay.

Entering by canoe at Shark River, you would be among woodp.e.c.k.e.rs and mockingbirds, alligators and bullfrogs, garfish and ba.s.s, white-tailed deer and possibly otters. Most of them you wouldn't see, but they'd be there.

And by the time you finished paddling-at Cape Sable or Snake Bight or the Ten Thousand Islands-you would have also been among roseate spoonbills and white pelicans, eels and mangrove snakes, sawfish and redfish and crusty loggerhead turtles.

Buffaloes are grand, but name another park that harbors panthers at one end and hammerhead sharks at the other. Name another park where, on a spring morning, it's possible to encounter bald eagles, manatees, a jewfish the size of a wine cask, an indigo snake as rare as sapphire, and even a wild pink flamingo.

I feel blessed because the park's southern boundary reaches practically to my back door. One June evening, I walked the sh.o.r.e of a mangrove bay and counted four crocodile nests; in a whole lifetime most Floridians will never lay eyes on one. Another afternoon, in July, I helped tag and release a young green turtle, a seldom-seen species that once teetered toward extinction.

And only weeks ago, near Sandy Key, I saw a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins doing spectacular back-flips for no other reason but the joy of it. n.o.body was there to applaud or snap pictures; the dolphins were their own best audience, exactly as it ought to have been.

Such moments are remarkable if you consider what has happened to the rest of South Florida in the past half a century. It seems miraculous that the Everglades haven't been completely parched, poached or poisoned to stagnation by the six million people who've moved in around them.

The more who come, the more important the national park becomes-not only as a refuge for imperiled wildlife but as a symbolic monument for future human generations; one consecrated place that shows somebody down here cared, somebody understood, somebody appreciated.

A fantastic place from which your children and their children will, if they're lucky, never see the lights of an outlet mall or a car lot or a ridiculous hockey stadium. Just starburst glimpses of birds and baby gators and high-flying dolphins.