Bittel Sweets

摘要

Staining an otherwise cerulean sky, oily black smoke billows a mile high from more than half a dozen fires south of Lake Okeechobee. You can see the smoke from West Palm Beach, like the exhalations of detonated bombs. It is eerily quiet. From the highway around the lake, from the outskirts of towns such as ('anal Point, Moore Haven and Harlem (where they hold the Miss Brown Sugar Contest), sugarcane runs to the horizon, a ghostly replacement of what was once saw-grass marshes. Flames rush through patches of cane, burning off extraneous tassels and blades, leaving only the sucrose-rich stalks. You can hear the fires cackle from the streets of Clewiston, "America's Sweetest Town." Since 1931, it has been home to the U.S. Sugar Corporation, one of the oldest and largest players in the sugar industry, an industry that survives on our insatiable appetite for things sweet and on political largesse. It is in fact the industry that dictated the direction of the $8 billion Everglades restoration project. Last spring, in a bravura display of clout, the industry succeeded in ramming a sweetheart deal through the Florida legislature that gives Big Sugar more time to clean up its act. The measure, enthusiastically signed by Governor Jeb Bush, pushes back a looming 2006 water cleanup deadline to 2016, and, even as amended in a last-minute deal, gives sugar companies until 2017 to pay a cleanup tax. "Big Sugar is not only raping the resource; it expects breakfast in the morning," wrote Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas.