Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

discharges (from Lake Okeechobee), which carry pollutants from agricultural lands

...the state’s inability to close a deal to purchase thousands of acres of land south of Lake Okeechobee — to create a natural runoff from the lake into the Florida Everglades, where the diverse ecosystem could naturally filter toxins from the north — has been to blame for the problems But the area south of the lake has been controlled by sugar farmers for decades, and environmentalists like Mr. Perry say state legislators in Tallahassee kowtow to agricultural lobbyists who fund their re-election campaigns.

“The flow used to go south to the Everglades, and now this is a man-made, criminal disaster,” Mr. Perry said. “They, as in the state and federal government, say they can’t send the water south, but they can. This is an absolute atrocity that they are allowed to continue this in the name of agriculture. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

The 2016 sugar harvest was the longest on record because of rain delays, making it also one of the most profitable on record, resulting in 2.15 million tons of sugar. Under Mr. Scott, the board of the South Florida Water Management District failed in 2015 to carry out a plan to buy roughly 47,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar south of Lake Okeechobee that would have acted as a reservoir for the lake’s runoff.

“The political leadership has not been putting the demand on the agencies to fix the problem,” Mr. Perry said. “This water was never meant to go east and west — it was meant to go south.”...