As one of the largest members of the Florida sugar industry, U.S. Sugar strongly disagrees with The Post's opinion that the "post-sugar cane era" is here ("Mines in the Everglades? Let's take another look," Sept. 3). The facts disprove The Post's assertion. Florida's sugar industry has vertically integrated over the past decade so that Florida farmers now grow sugar cane and process, refine and market their cane sugar directly to consumers across the United States. U.S. Sugar has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building the nation's largest and most efficient sugar processing and refining operation in Clewiston. Our new facility will be the lowest-cost sugar producer in the United States and Mexico. This represents our long-term confidence in the Everglades Agricultural Area sugar industry's future rather than its demise. Our rock mining operations are scaled at 100 to 200 acres a year. Both proposed mining projects total an insignificant fraction of our 200,000 acres of farmland. Why should The Post take issue with private rock pits built with private money on farmland when the newspaper strongly supported two other public projects that blasted similar rock for water storage and restoration? In 2002 and 2003, The Post editorialized in favor of the state spending more than $100 million to buy rock pits for storing water for environmental restoration. The Post also supported the South Florida Water Management District's spending more than $300 million blasting muck and rock to build reservoirs on former sugar-cane land just south of our proposed mine. How is it that some water storage is called restoration and other, similar water storage pits a potential roadblock to restoration? Unfortunately, this is not about rock mining. By its own admission, The Post already has seen the county report that says that rock mining is compatible with restoration efforts. The Post's motives become clear when it shills for a flow-way. Engineers and expert scientists for the Army Corps of Engineers and the water district repeatedly have shown that this utopian flow-way south will not work because of the very real constraints of the protected Everglades system. The water conservation areas and Everglades National Park cannot take more water during very wet times and cannot take less water during dry times. The water quantity and water quality requirements are now part of state and federal law. A combination of deep storage reservoirs and treatment marshes were selected as superior to a flow-way, and those projects are being built. Since we have been more than willing to discuss our present and future plans, there is no need for The Post to muddy the waters with false and misleading speculation. ROBERT E. COKER,
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