Palm Beach Post Editorial Thursday, December 22, 2005
Florida Crystals, one of the state's two largest sugar cane growers, has thrived over four decades with the public's help. Drainage systems help to make farming possible. A loan program keeps prices stable. Yet the company still pays only lip service to its public partners.
Its refusal to get off South Florida Water Management District land to make way for a crucial reservoir probably will cost the public agency $8 million. The Fanjul family-owned company could have followed its competitors and left willingly. Instead, it exploited a technicality to force the district to pay. Giving in to Florida Crystals' threats is the correct decision, but it should not have come to this.
The reservoir on 17,000 acres of the former Talisman Sugar land in southwest Palm Beach County can reduce by 15 percent the amount of excess Lake Okeechobee water that otherwise would be discharged east into the St. Lucie River or west into the Caloosahatchee River. Those discharges of polluted water have fouled the rivers and prompted lawsuits against the district.
The fight is over removing Florida Crystals from 11,000 acres. The eviction notice shouldn't have come as a surprise. When the district bought the land in 1999, it allowed farming for at least five years. The district did so. It agreed to give the farmers 30 months' notice. The district did that, too.
Florida Crystals, however, didn't want to leave. It objected, on technicalities, to the 30-month notice and the 12-month notice and the six-month notice. Florida Crystals' contract said it didn't have to give up farming until the federal government authorized the reservoir work. But the water district didn't want to wait for Congress to pay its share of the $400 million job. It is borrowing the money for the reservoir and several other important Everglades restoration projects under the "Acceler8" program.
A lawsuit would have delayed reservoir construction, now scheduled to start in April. U.S. Sugar and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida vacated 6,000 acres without payment. Florida Crystals gets to continue farming 6,500 acres for three years — paying the district $1 million in rent — farm 2,800 neighboring acres and, the kicker, manage the reservoir property for a cool $8 million.
The water management district doesn't feel too bad because the $8 million is less than a private company would have charged. Florida Crystals is happy because it squeezed more money out of taxpayers for doing what it long ago agreed to do. Florida Crystals is a dominant force in the Glades, which Hurricane Wilma tore up. Florida Crystals could be a leader in the recovery by returning some of the fortune it has taken from the region. We know where the company can find $8 million for starters.