Robert Coker

Letter to news-press, 11.12.2005 from Robert Coker of US Sugar.....(3) replies follow.

Paul Reynolds..11.12.2005

Jack Luft.. 11.12.2005

Judy Sanchez of U.S. Sugar..11.14.2005

Paul Reynolds to Judy Sanchez ..11.14.2005

Judah should be ashamed
    Re: "Legal opinion sought O releases," Nov 9. Shame on Ray Judah for trying to take advantage of a natural disaster to advance his own political agenda. Everybody knows that he is gearing up to run for another office, hence the political grand standing. The truth is that south and central Florida have weathered an unprecedented series of hurricanes and heavy rains for the past two years, and all that water has taken its toll on Lake Okeechobee, the estuaries on both coasts, the Everglades and millions of people in South Florida.
    It is unbelievable — in the wake of the terrible flooding and devastation from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma — that any public official would be so callous as to call for more flooding of our already flooded and damaged farms and commiunties instead of trying to fix the system.
    Hundreds of our employees lost their homes, streets and fields were flooded and the state's sugarcane crop has been substantially damaged with early sugar industry estimates of Wilma's impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars with damages to crop, facilities and critical infrastruc- ture. It will be a long, long time before things return to "business as usual" in the agricultural area.
    While it has its obvious flaws, the flood control system that we have  did protect most people and property from the disastrous flooding that New Orleans suffered. However, until the CERP projects and the   South Florida Water Management District's accelerated projects to help Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries are built, it doesn't make sense to push one area's problems off on another.

ROBERT COKER
Senior Vice President
U.S. Sugar Corporation
Clewiston

My thanks to the News-Press for printing the letter from Robert Coker of US Sugar defending the massive water discharges from Lake Okeechobee. The ONLY way that people of intellect and good conscience are going to develop policies that are fair for ALL of our communities is to ferret out individuals like Mr. Coker and expose the dishonesty of their position. He, thankfully, seems willing to do that on his own.

Mr. Coker says, "It will be a long, long time before things return to "business as usual" in the agricultural area." We on the West and East Coasts are sympathetic to his problems but resentful of his "business as usual" solution is to destroy our ecology, our tourist and fishing industry, and indeed our quality of life with NO sharing of the problem by his industry or region.

The citizens of this community have invested $60 MILLION dollars replacing septic with a sewer system. With a full time population of just over 6000 we have taken this Island of about 12,000 acres and bought to protect almost two thirds of it as sanctuary for hundreds of species of fish and fowl. The ONLY thing we send to the sugar industry is our tax dollars and perhaps that has polluted their brains.

Mr. Coker's letter and his "logic" are outrageous. The people who live and work and play under these awful conditions that were created by and FOR his industry are not asking for an arm or leg when we try to get them to simply share some of the scum they send us down the River. We have had no voice with these pillagers of our environment and I would tell Mr. Coker that the days of our accepting his poison water are OVER.

Big Sugar pushed its problems – contaminated overflow from Lake Okeechobee into the cane fields – off to the Gulf and Indian River estuaries years ago when it politically engineered the water control system we now have.

So tell me again, how many millions of dollars in subsidies and tariff protection did Big Sugar receive last year, and the year before, and the decade before and the decade before that? And how many Jamaican workers did you import to cut your cane while paying them less than minimum wage, with no benefits and housing that evokes cotton plantations of the 1880’s?

And tell me again how many feet of everglades muck has evaporated since Big Sugar bought off protection of the everglades eco-system forty years ago and now is counting the days until nothing is left and you move on leaving your benighted Belle Glade, South Bay and Clewiston to twist in the wind?

Better not shout too loud or someone is going to look again at the subsidized rip-off Big Sugar has pulled on the American taxpayers and consumers for forty years.

And if you lose those subsidies – guess what – Hurricane Wilma is going to look like a summer breeze in comparison.

I understand your frustration, but the water that is coming from Lake
Okeechobee has nothing to do with sugar farms south of the Lake. That
water is primarily rainfall from north of the Lake and rainfall on the
Lake itself. It makes no sense to blame sugar farmers for these
releases and call for flooding their land.

We invite you to learn more about the system and how it works and would
be glad to help you to better understand farming's place in the system.

Ms. Sanchez,
Thank you for responding to my email.
I believe your industry's strategy of attempting to be seen as helpless victims in this issue is a poor, and very transparent one. The true victims of your policies are EVERY breathing organism in South Florida, whether lung or gill.
We hope the long term plan of reducing the level of the Lake may save our ecology eventually, but your lack of interest in our problem is killing us in the short term. Your failure to accept any responsibility does not demonstrate you are very good neighbors in our bigger community and I promise that your lack of participation in a fair solution is going to guarantee an outcome you will not like.
Thank you again for your response. It would be my pleasure to learn more about farming's place in our system if you would take some time to learn about ours too?
Paul Reynolds