Florida GOP destroyed vast areas of FL Ecosystems and will do the same thing nationally if given the opportunity.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/8/1496609/-FL-GOP-have-destroyed-vast-areas-of-Florida-s-ecosystem-and-will-do-the-same-nationally-if-elected?detail=email

A dark and sleazy history has led to the destruction of large areas of coastal Florida and the Everglades. James Bovard in a post in USA Today provides a short history of the environmental and social impacts of the sugar industry:

In 1816, Congress imposed high tariffs on sugar imports in part to prop up the value of slaves in Louisiana. In the 1890s, Congress abolished and then re-imposed the sugar tariff, spurring a boom-bust in Cuba that helped drag the U.S. into the Spanish-American War.

The article notes that Florida does not have a natural climate for sugar production, farmers have to compensate by saturating the land with fertilizer. As nearly 500,000 acres of the Everglades were converted from slow-moving crystal-clear water teeming with life to a dead zone of poisoned water, sugar fields, phosphorous and fertilizer that has ravaged the fragile ecosystem of central and south Florida.

In 2014, the citizens of Florida passed Amendment 1 that designated billions of dollars to conservation efforts. The Water and Land Conservation Amendment required that, for the next 20 years, 33 percent of the proceeds from real estate documentary-stamp taxes go for land acquisition. For 2016, the share of the real-estate tax is projected to bring in more than $740 million. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by 75 percent of voters. In a stunning rebuke to the will of the Florida citizen, Republican Governor Rick Scott and his GOP teabagging legislature have used the proceeds for such things as salaries, benefits, insurance costs and vehicle purchases.

Earth Justice reports: 

The scuzzy water that’s wrecking this year’s tourist season comes courtesy of Big Sugar and other agricultural operators around Lake Okeechobee, which sits in the state’s sparsely populated center roughly between Palm Beach on the east coast and Fort Myers on the west coast. It’s America’s second biggest freshwater lake in the lower 48, and thanks to ridiculously permissive policies, it’s become a private dumping ground for mega-agricultural operations. These corporations pump the public’s water from the lake to irrigate their fields, then send the water; polluted with fertilizer and other farm chemicals, back into Lake Okeechobee