A guest commentary by Rae Ann Wessel proves that we are continuing to look at Lake Okeechobee’s environmental problems through a distorted political microscope rather than a scientific one.

Wessel takes issue with farm water being considered “cleaner” than other water flowing to the lake. Not once does she compare phosphorus levels in that farm water with phosphorus levels in other water flowing into Lake Okeechobee.

“Political” science is absolutely ruining efforts to fix the system. Sugar farm water is cleaner (from 80 to 150 parts per billion phosphorus) when compared to the water entering Lake Okeechobee from all other possible sources (which range from 200 to 800 ppb phosphorus).

Cleaner, by definition, requires comparison to other water quality.

In addition, the cost for cleaning farm water pales in comparison to what must be spent to clean the much heavier phosphorus loading from the northern tributaries. The relative contribution into Lake Okeechobee from the south is less than 3 percent of both phosphorus and total water flow. Continuing to harp on this 3 percent while ignoring the other 97 percent is both paltry and political.

While we are routing the cleanest water in the system south, or flushing it to tide in already wet coastal areas, Lake Okeechobee remains at a drastically low level. We are now three months into the rainy season with nothing to show for it.

More importantly, the state’s decision not to pump farm water back into the lake leaves us without a real solution to the anticipated drought this coming spring.

It is time to stop looking at the sugar farming area south of Lake Okeechobee in a vacuum.

Farmers have given up 40,000 acres of farm land for cleansing marshes (equivalent to a city of Fort Myers’
size), pay an agricultural privilege tax to farm their own land, have mandatory best management practices to reduce phosphorus and pay for constant water-quality monitoring. Efforts to clean up other runoff from every other area are financed by tax dollars.

So, what is the real agenda? To put farmers out of business? The environment would suffer far more from whatever replaces those farms. Until real science trumps political science, we will continue to face more dangerous droughts in the swamp of South Florida.

Judy Sanchez, of Clewiston, is the director of corporate communications for the U.S. Sugar Corp.