Florida Legislature Fails To Act On 'Polluters Pay' Mandate

The 1994 Everglades Forever Act allowed property owners from Orlando to Key West to be taxed to help finance the $800 million Everglades cleanup. Most of the phosphorus pollution pouring into the north Everglades comes from sugar growers fields and farms in the 500,000-acre Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee. The constitutional amendment said anyone in that area who pollutes the Everglades is "primarily responsible for paying the costs of abatement of that pollution". Taxpayers will have provided $279 million by 2004, but farmers will have paid little more than half that amount by 2006.