Sugar field burning plagues poor Florida towns with soot

Approved ~~ MJM

PAHOKEE, Fla. (AP) — For residents of the Glades, a string of poor, predominantly African American rural towns dotting the southern shore of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, the beginning of the annual sugar cane harvest in October means the arrival of “black snow.”

“You’d hate to come down here when it’s snowing,” said Kaniyah Patterson, an asthmatic 12-year-old who lives with her mother and grandmother in a housing project surrounded by several large sugar cane fields in the Palm Beach County community of Pahokee.

“That black stuff irritates me,” Kaniyah said, sighing. “Sometimes I can’t breathe.”

The “snow” is an airborne byproduct of the disputed practice of burning sugar fields before harvests. Kaniyah says it “stuffs up” her nose and stains her clothes. At times, she says, the poor air quality makes it difficult to keep up with her friends when playing outside.

For generations, Florida’s sugar cane farmers have legally set fire to their fields prior to the harvest, leaving only the cane, a practice that reduces transportation costs because they ship the cane without the surrounding vegetation.

Continued…

Article URL: https://apnews.com/ad86bf208ed24a5f831d97e5a6ab4f42