Commentary: Time to take hard look at truth about water issues

The conversation about water has reached a fevered pitch, and rightfully so. Red tide, blue-green algae and Lake Okeechobee discharges are extremely serious water issues that deserve serious attention.

An abundance of scientific organizations, studies and data say that water quality plays a role in all of them. People may be surprised to hear that U.S. Sugar agrees.

However, these water issues are so important that the discussion and, thus, the solutions must be based on facts rather than mere claims, hype or emotion. The News-Press recently editorialized that “several key water projects are years from going online throughout Florida, but they are needed to treat and store water, slow Lake O discharge and redirect harmful water away from the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers.” We agree with this.

Since sugarcane farmers have been blamed for everything from polluting the Everglades to controlling lake discharges, causing red tide and even Sahara dust, our water has been under the microscope — literally and figuratively — for some time.

Some articles even claim we’re impacting Tampa Bay and putting sugar in Lake Okeechobee. Often coverage has been focused on blame, not truth. So in taking a hard look at South Florida’s runoff, we’ll start with ours.

Many know that U.S. Sugar is the oldest, largest sugarcane farming company in South Florida; we also grow and process citrus, sweet corn and other winter vegetables. When we’re called “Big Sugar,” what people may not know is that we’re primarily employee and charity owned. Also, our farms are all in Florida and located primarily south of Lake Okeechobee.

Water doesn’t flow uphill and, being located south of the lake, the runoff from our land doesn’t naturally flow into the lake. For our water to reach the lake, it must be pumped. By law, the only water allowed to be pumped from our area back into Lake Okeechobee is emergency flood control for the lakeside cities, not protection for our farms. A small amount of our farm water is mixed with the cities’ flood protection. This year that was only 1 percent of the water flowing into the lake.

Many on Southwest Florida’s coast are concerned that the water in the Caloosahatchee River flowing from Lake Okeechobee causes red tide and harmful algae. We share that concern.

Lake Okeechobee discharges account for about 30 percent of the water that flowed down the Caloosahatchee this year. As I said, water from our sugarcane area south of the lake is only 1 percent. The rest is local runoff from lands along the river. There is a real problem, but our water isn’t the reason.

The 2,500 employee-owners of U.S. Sugar are proud of our farming heritage, our farming communities and our efforts to clean the water leaving our farms. We plan a series of ads and social media efforts detailing factual information about our water and our role in water issues. We don’t like the lies being told about us, even if they are great for fundraising for anti-farming groups.

We sincerely want the problems of red tide and algae to be solved, yet they will only be solved by solutions built on truth. Frankly, these water issues are so serious and complex that unless we start moving the discussion from hype to truth and base solutions on science rather than slogans, these problems will never actually be solved.

No one wants these problems solved more than we do. U.S. Sugar and its people are committed to being open and honest about our water, our farming practices and our heartfelt desire to work with our neighbors to use sound science and factual information to solve all of our shared water issues.

Buker lives in rural Glades County.

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