On June 30, 1998, the St. Johns River Water Management District and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service shut down the muck farms on Lake Apopka's shores. This action was taken to clean up the lake, which had become a pea-green broth as a result of more than 50 years of vegetable farming.
Growers were paid a whopping $91-million for the 13,000 acres they had farmed. They also were paid an appraised value of $29-million for equipment acquired during the buy-out. After the farms closed, approximately 2,500 farm workers, most of them poor and Hispanic, lost their jobs. Many lived in labor camps in the impacted area, and some owned their homes.
Before the farms shut down, Florida officials promised the workers that they would not suffer unnecessarily. The Legislature established a $5-million effort intended to retrain the farm workers, relocate and compensate them for the loss of their homes and aid businesses hurt by the shutdown. Under provisions of the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Act of 1970, the workers were to receive cash to find new housing. Those forced to relocate had 18 months to apply for assistance.
Five years later, few workers have received a dime, and the program, advertised as a safety net for the workers, has failed.
An Orlando Sentinel analysis shows that the retraining programs - secretarial and nursing jobs and English and GED classes - were not operating until long after workers were unemployed. Many workers did not speak English or were illiterate. Many others had been forced to leave the area because they could not find jobs.
All institutions that received money, some more than $100,000, to retrain the displaced workers had little if any success. According to the Sentinel, Westside Tech in Winter Garden, for example, received $105,000 and graduated fewer than two dozen farm workers. The Lake Technical Center in Eutis received $68,000, graduating only 13. Anthony House, a charity in Zellwood, received $125,000 to teach resume writing and job interviewing. The agency had hoped to graduate 49 students, but only 10 earned certificates of completion.
In many instances, local authorities - even as they agreed to do so - never intended to use the money to retrain and relocate farm workers. State officials backed them.
Much of the money meant to retrain workers went elsewhere. "To date, Orange County has spent only a third of its money, $1.1-million of $3.2-million," the Sentinel states. "Officials say most of the remaining funds are to be spent on a nearly five-mile water and wastewater pipe along U.S. Highway 441 in northwest Orange. Officials hope access to dependable water supplies will entice development in the area."
With a green light from officials, the city of Apopka spent only a quarter of its $1.3-million on farm workers. Much of the remainder is being held in an impact fee trust fund to encourage land development. Lake County, the Sentinel reports, is the only county that spent all of its allocation.
Alas, though, Lake spent the money on projects in towns nowhere near Lake Apopka, that had nothing to do with the muck farms.
"That's probably not how it should have been spent," former Lake County Commissioner Richard Swartz told the Sentinel. "It sounds to me like the county used the money to plug some other holes."
The list of misdirected retraining funds goes on.
The relocation program has been abused just as much, as local officials wrangled over contracts and profit margins. The date passed for individual farm workers to apply for relocation funds. In many instances, systems had not be set up for applications, and, where offices were open, no staff members were available to help non-English speakers complete the paperwork.
At the same time, the unemployed field hands could not afford to remain in their local homes. Some, like Esteban Almeda, who lived with his wife and two children in a mobile home owned by the grower, were evicted.
The Farmworker Association of Apopka estimated that the relocation program owed Almeda as much as $10,000. He did not receive a dime because he and his family moved back to Mission, Texas, where they could find work and place a roof over their heads. Almeda is not alone. Because farm workers, as a group, lack political clout, they have been abandoned - a tragedy that would not happen to any other segment of the U.S. population.
Our treatment of the Lake Apopka area farm workers is one of our greatest shames.
