Lawyers representing the sugar industry and federal government battled before a federal appeals court panel Wednesday over whether an Everglades restoration project is taking water reserved under federal law for farmers in the region.
A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta heard arguments in a Florida sugar industry challenge related to Lake Okeechobee water levels and a state stormwater treatment area now under construction.
Paul Clement, a lawyer representing U.S. Sugar, said the state’s 6,500-acre stormwater treatment area violates a 2000 federal law that requires water be maintained for farms and cities during and after Everglades restoration.
He also said lower Lake Okeechobee levels instituted recently by the Army Corps of Engineers also amounted to water supply reductions. And he argued that federal agencies have not analyzed the effects on water supplies as required by a 2000 federal law.
