Decades of urban and agricultural development and rapid growth have taken their toll on the health of Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Everglades.

That story is widely reported. However, what is not so widely realized is the successful restoration program that Florida farmers have jump started in their region. For the past 12 years, farmers have significantly reduced phosphorus levels in water leaving the farms to protect the Everglades. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) considers the farming area water quality issues resolved and focuses on other water projects.

How We Got Here
The problems facing the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee started in 1928 when a violent hurricane swept through the Glades region forcing Lake Okeechobee to overflow its banks. More than 2,500 people were killed in the devastating floodwaters and city streets in Miami were knee-deep in water for months. To prevent that catastrophic event from ever occurring again, the United States government created a series of levees, canals and pumping stations along the Everglades to control the water.

The system worked for decades, protecting the communities from the lake region south down to Miami while ensuring adequate water supplies for both residents and farmers.

During the next several decades, Florida’s population boomed and development was rapid and widespread. By the late 1980s, development had taken its toll and the quality of water moving through the Everglades system was deteriorating. Federal and state governments got involved to devise strategies to improve the water conditions focusing on the Southern Everglades. Florida sugar farmers actively participated in the development of projects to clean the water heading south.

Best Management Practices
“Our livelihood depends on the health of the natural resources in the Glades,” said Carl Perry, a sugarcane farmer from Moore Haven. “If there is a problem, we have to do something about it. Over the years, flood control projects sent farm water and our nutrient rich soils to the Everglades.”

Perry and other Florida growers are taxed to supplement the state’s $685 million Everglades cleanup plan. In fact, farmers in the Glades region have invested tens of millions of dollars in Best Management Practices to improve their water and soil management techniques since 1994. For the past 12 years, farmers also have paid $25 per acre to help further clean the water coming from Lake Okeechobee, farms and suburban areas -- contributing more than $300 million to clean the water flowing south to the Everglades.

“The water that leaves the farming region is cleaner than rainwater,” Perry said. “Farmers have cut phosphorous levels from runoff in half, more than twice what was required of us.”

Added to the fact that sugarcane is a grass—an environmentally-friendly crop that requires only minimal amounts of fertilizer or other chemicals—it’s no wonder that farm water is one of the cleanest sources of water entering the Everglades. Note also that the Florida sugar industry runs its sugar manufacturing facilities on bagasse, the residual cane fiber from the raw milling process, making them energy efficient. Sugarcane is a clean, green and renewable energy source.

Problems Still Remain in Other Parts of the System
However, with attention focused on farmers south of Lake Okeechobee, little had been done to improve the huge flow of polluted water from the north. Thus Lake Okeechobee continues to deteriorate and release nutrient-laden water south.

Water drained from the ever-expanding suburban neighborhoods and development from Orlando/Disney south to Lake Okeechobee poses the most serious threat. For local water conditions to drastically improve, projects similar to those constructed in the sugar farming region must be developed to clean and store water north of Lake Okeechobee.

“For the sake of all Floridians, we must hope that our northern and suburban neighbors adopt some of the same rigorous practices that we turned to more than a decade ago,” Perry said. “After all, the land is not something we inherit from our parents; it’s something we borrow from our children. And I want to repay my kids with interest.”