I left FLA in the early 90's but I was born and raised in the state and I have seen how things have changed for the worse.
For a few years prior to leaving FLA I volunteered with the GFC which is now the FWC. Because of that work, I saw quite a bit of the Water Management Areas(Everglades) from around the lake south to Dade county and even over on the west coast. In some of the WMAs south of Big Sugar, the water is crystal clear. So clear you can't tell there is water. I have seen areas where the water is FULL of fish and the water is invisible. The fish look like they were floating in air. If the fish would stay still you could collect an arm load of fish.
Well, it was that way decades ago.
Big Sugar is part of the Big Problem. I have been out with GFC biologists looking at water quality in the WMAs just south of sugar cane fields. The water was filthy. The water is all but black in color and you can't see very far into the water. It is simply loaded with stuff.
The cane fields are flooded and then drained as part of the growth process. Any chemical that is put on the cane is eventually going to get pumped into the water. The nutrient load is too much for native saw grass but cat tails love it. Back then there were areas set aside to hold water loaded with chemicals from the cane fields. This was to allow cat tails to filter the water before it moved south.
I seem to remember a law suit by environmental groups that stopped some of the movement of water from the lake to the south and that this water was no being moved to the coast.
Right before I left South FLA, I saw a news report on the loss of soil in the farm fields around the lake. The "soil" out there is really muck which is simply decaying saw grass and such. When the Everglades were drained, the exposed muck, "soil" starts to dry up and disappear. There was/is an agriculture station, I think it was in western Palm Beach county, and back in the 20's/30's a concrete post was buried to bedrock. The top of the post was left at grade level. The news report around 1990ish, show the top of the post about six feet above grade.
Driving around in the sugar cane fields, it certainly seems like the fields are MUCH lower than the dike roads. It would seem that at some point there will be no "soil" left for Big Sugar.
The sugar farms are HUGE. We went out on the farms to work and we were NOT welcome at all.
Once passing through security gates to access the "farm" we would then spend 20-30 minutes driving to a WMA to work in. Unreal amount of land is in sugar cane production and because of government protection, we pay more for sugar than we should.
Big Sugar got caught stealing the cane cutters wages back around 1990. At the time, they were bringing in single men to cut cane from the Islands during cane cutting season. This was all manual labor. After they got caught not fully paying wages, they started using machinery to cut cane and stopped bringing in as many people from the Islands.
There was one town out by the lake that had the highest HIV rate in the US. Everyone thought of San Francisco being hard hit by HIV, and it was, but that one town was in worse shape. I am sure it had nothing to do with thousands of single men brought in to cut sugar cane each season...
Back then there was long drought. It was so bad the Everglade were burning.
Power was lost in some areas because the fire went under the power transmission towers. It was unreal. Big Sugar blamed the water shortage on the people living in South FLA which was a big fat lie since 70% of the water back then was used by agriculture.
People moving to FLA have had a big negative affect on FLA. But Big Sugar is $%^&*()_ up more land and water area than people moving to the state.
I watched a program on PBS about the algae blooms going on and it was depressing. When I was living in FLA they were moving from talking to working on returning the Kissimmee river to it's normal channels instead of being a ditch. They were going to fix the Lake....
Decades later things have NOT improved but have gotten worse.
Later,
Dan