By Joel Engelhardt
FloridaBulldog.org
For months environmentalists have whispered that the Legislature’s push toward water storage north of Lake Okeechobee was driven by sugar interests. Behind their fear is the belief that an underground water storage method that got $100 million in the two past legislative cycles and is in line for another $50 million this year would do more to help farming than it would to help the Everglades.
By Katherine Lewin
FloridaBulldog.org
Nineteen years ago, the South Florida Water Management District bought 16,158 rural acres south of Lake Okeechobee leased for sugar cane farming as part of the massive Everglades restoration project. But one night last month, just hours before the district’s morning meeting, a resolution was quietly added to the governing board’s agenda that would extend the lease to a subsidiary of Florida Crystals, delaying restoration for as long as eight years.
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
At the heart of a controversial plan for a huge new development near the northwest edge of the Everglades – dubbed “Big Sugar City” by environmentalists – is a crucial, but less noticed proposal for a $400 million makeover of a flyspeck of an airport in rural Hendry County.
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
Weeks after news that Gov. Rick Scott and Florida GOP leaders took secret hunting trips to Texas financed by Florida’s sugar industry, U.S. Sugar and Hilliard Brothers are pushing plans for a massive new development in rural Hendry County near the northwest edge of the Everglades. The Sugar Hill Sector Plan envisions turning more than 67 square miles of sugar cane fields, citrus groves and pasture lands into a planned community.
We are a 501(c)(3) organization. All donations are tax deductible.
Join Our Email List
Florida Bulldog delivers fact-based watchdog reporting as a public service that’s essential to a free and democratic society. We are nonprofit, independent, nonpartisan, experienced. No fake news here.
