Sugar Industry's Position

The sugar industry, supported in their arguments by hired consultants, has produced its own studies which the industry claims justify a standard in the range of 15.6 to 18 parts per billion. The sugar industry's consultants used different statistical methods to analyze the state's data, and decided to retain and use samples which DEP and the South Florida Water Management rejected for reasons of quality control. Sugar industry consultants also present an argument that water with higher levels of phosphorus - supposedly in the 30 part per billion range, once flowed out of Lake Okeechobee into the northern Everglades prior to human settlement and development.

They cite the evidence of a band of trees made up of pond apple and other swamp forest vegetation to suggest existence of an area that once tolerated nutrient levels far higher than the 6 - 8 part per billion background levels normally found in undisturbed sawgrass marshes. They either want the criterion for the entire EPA adjusted upward to reflect this postulated higher phosphorus level, or as an alternative, suggest that different (higher phosphorus) criteria be adopted for the parts of the EPA nearest the sugar cane fields.

Clearly, such claims can never be conclusively substantiated. But more significantly, this sugar industry position has an absolutely fatal flaw. Even if speculation about water higher in nutrients than 10 parts per billion leaving Lake Okeechobee in ancient times were shown to be correct, the place such discharges flowed into to was some 25 miles north of the "Everglades Protection Area" where DEP's proposed 10 ppb water quality criterion is to be applied. Even assuming that a higher phosphorus zone once existed 25 miles north, that presents no evidence at all that such nutrient levels are appropriate in the sawgrass Everglades far to the south, where the criterion is to be applied and enforced.

Finally, the sugar industry's demand for setting two or more criteria in the EPA is ruled out by the law's clear language. Use of the term "criterion" in the law means one number, not several. And, the EFA says clearly that compliance must occur in "all parts of the Everglades Protection Area."