MIAMI — Sugar growers moved on two fronts Wednesday to force a federal judge off the Everglades restoration case, claiming he has lost his impartiality while policing cleanup efforts for 15 years.

U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler "has given every appearance that he is no longer going to be fair and impartial," said Robert Coker, senior vice president of U.S. Sugar Corp. "His change in his behavior has been so startling that we have no choice."

U.S. Sugar filed a motion asking Chief U.S. District Judge William Zloch to disqualify Hoeveler, while New Hope Sugar Co., another industry leader, asked the federal appeals court in Atlanta to immediately step in.

"They no doubt don't want to hear what I have to say," the judge responded from his chambers. "I won't hold it against (them). Anyway, it doesn't phaze me one way or the other."

New Hope claimed the judge's recent orders "were crafted so as to threaten and bully a state legislative process." Jorge Dominicis, vice president of New Hope's parent Florida Crystals, said, "In the last couple of months, he has become a litigator as opposed to the arbitrator."

U.S. Sugar also objected to recent news interviews given by Hoeveler and says his actions violate the code of conduct for federal judges.

The attempts to oust Hoeveler from the case follow his comments in court last month that a new Everglades bill passed by the Florida Legislature was "clearly defective" before Gov. Jeb Bush signed it. The law would extend some of the deadlines for Everglades restoration.

The judge stated his intent to stick to a 1992 agreement with the state dictating a 2006 deadline for cleaning up the quality of water flowing into Everglades National Park from the broader Everglades ecosystem above it.

Farmers, ranchers and suburban homeowners are blamed for transforming the face of the Everglades with runoff polluted with fertilizers and animal wastes.

Hoeveler, who was partially disabled by a stroke, has a hearing scheduled Tuesday to get an update on the state of restoration work intended to restore the low-nutrient ecosystem.

Dexter Lehtinen, an attorney for Miccosukee Indians challenging the pace of state cleanup work, called the two-pronged legal attack an "obstructionist tactic designed to disorient and confuse the public and divert the issues."

Allison DeFoor, a former Everglades czar for Bush, said, "The problem here is that extremists have basically now defined the agenda, and that's bad."

Federal judges have lifetime appointments. They sometimes drop out of cases due to conflicts of interest but are rarely thrown off cases. A high-profile exception was the removal of the Washington judge hearing the Microsoft antitrust case in 2001.

Bush's office issued a statement calling Hoeveler a "highly respected jurist who cares deeply about the future of the Everglades.

"It is unfortunate that the issue of Everglades protection has become so contentious that some interested parties fear judicial bias," Bush's statement said. "We will continue to honor our commitments under the consent decree regardless of the outcome of this situation."