Green Means Money

Consumer advocates and environmentalists get labeled as tax-and-spenders. They demand better regulation and anti-pollution mandates. That all costs money. But the consumer and green groups that have teamed with taxpayer watchdogs to compile a new hit list of 74 wasteful federal programs belie the stereotype. Green Scissors 2001 is the latest report from an unusual array of public-interest groups that have been working together since 1994. Co-authors of this year's report range from the National Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society to the Concord Coalition and Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Environmentalists and taxpayers have a lot in common," the Friends of the Earth's Erich Pica said Feb. 22 when Green Scissors 2001 was released. "We are united in the belief that Americans should not borrow from our future. We must not leave our children with an unbearable fiscal debt or a polluted environment."

Among the dozens of programs, the Green Scissors coalition urged President George W. Bush and Congress to take the clippers to three that are near and dear to some Floridians:

Taxpayer subsidies for sugar producers. Last year, the federal government paid growers around $400-million as part of a program, which dates from the Great Depression, to prop up domestic sugar prices. The price supports inflate the cost of sugar for consumers, who spent $1.9-billion more than they should have on the product in 1998.

This corporate welfare goes to an industry that has managed to find hundreds of thousands of dollars during the past decade to fight ballot measures and legislation that would have forced growers to pay their share of the $7.8-billion cleanup of the Florida Everglades. South Florida sugar growers destroy an estimated three to five acres a day by dumping phosphorus and other pollutants into the Everglades.

The resilience of sugar supports is a tribute to the political clout of the four biggest subsidy recipients -- the Fanjul family, U.S. Sugar Corp., Talisman Sugar Corp. and A. Duda & Sons Co. A 1994 St. Petersburg Times analysis found the quartet had shelled out $2.5-million in federal campaign contributions and national soft-money donations from 1979 through 1994 while taking in $163-million worth of sugar subsidies in just 1994. Tampa's Lykes Bros. Inc. got $1-million in subsidies that year.

Alone within the Florida congressional delegation, Rep. Dan Miller (R-Bradenton) has gone out of his way to wage war on the subsidies. But Miller's attempt last year to eliminate "non-recourse loans" to sugar growers was defeated by the industry lobby. Such loans, payable in crops rather than cash, have saddled the federal government with 1.1-million tons of sugar, which must be dumped on the world market.

Grants for saving perpetually eroding beaches. Since 1921, federal taxpayers have picked up 77 percent of the $2.4-billion cost of "beach renourishment" projects in coastal states, including Florida. If such work is so important to coastal economies, as proponents argue, the Green Scissors coalition believes those communities should pay 65 percent of the cost. But only after a study of environmental damage caused by beach restoration is completed.

Conservationists are increasingly troubled by the mechanics of widening a beach. Sand is dredged from the offshore habitats of endangered sea turtles. Piping the sand onto shore creates havoc in the nesting areas of the loggerhead, leatherback and green turtles.

The coalition pointed out that the public is barred from long stretches of beach newly "renourished" at taxpayer expense that happen to be located behind the gates of exclusive resorts and other compounds. Along the shoreline, the widening of beaches encourages risky construction, whose owners get bailed out later by federal flood insurance when natural disasters strike.

Americans leave behind $74-billion when they return home from beach vacations every year. Some of that money should go toward defraying the cost of keeping sand under their feet, according to the coalition.

Federal maintenance of the underused Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Navigation System. The Congressional Budget Office found this inland waterway to be one of the most highly subsidized commercial navigation systems in the country. U.S. taxpayers spend almost $20-million annually to keep open the barge route through Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Yet an average of fewer than two barges travel it each day and most of those don't use the Apalachicola River.

Despite that, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to allocate another $46-million to reduce the impact of dredging the rivers and an extra $9-million a year for general maintenance.

U.S. Sen. Bob Graham is one of the few in Congress looking at decommissioning the river system for barge traffic. He faces opposition from most of the Alabama and Georgia delegations.

The rest of Green Scissors 2001 is a long list of boondoggles. But the coalition reported significant victories last year. Energy companies are now required to pay true market prices for oil pumped from federal lands. Major energy producers had been cheating taxpayers out of an estimated $68-million in royalties while reporting record profits to their shareholders.

There is much work left to do in order to throw the energy industry completely off the dole, said Lexi Shultz, an attorney for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a coalition member. "President Bush has said that he trusts us with our own money," said Shultz. "Well, trust us. We don't want our money wasted on ineffective energy programs that benefit big companies while polluting our environment and endangering public health." To view Green Scissors 2001, visit www.greenscissors.org.

Contact Staff Writer Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or frangilpin@weeklyplanet.com.