The sugar industry is the only sector in all of American agriculture that has consistently backed Democrats for the last two decades.
And for those same two decades, that industry was pumping phosphorus pollution into the Florida Everglades while its lobbyists blocked every serious effort to clean it up.
One Florida couple spent their lives fighting both of them – and Ron DeSantis just gave them the state's highest honor for doing it.
The Fight Nobody in Washington Wanted to Have
George Barley saw what was happening to the Everglades before most people knew there was a problem.
A Harvard-educated Florida native and successful businessman, Barley co-founded the Everglades Foundation in 1993 alongside investor Paul Tudor Jones II.
The mission was simple and the opposition was enormous.
Big Sugar had turned Lake Okeechobee into an irrigation reservoir for 400,000 acres of sugarcane fields, dumping phosphorus-laden runoff into the ecosystem while its lobbyists kept state and federal officials looking the other way.
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When the industry finally faced a federal pollution lawsuit, it did what it always does – spent millions lobbying to shape the legislative settlement.
The result was the 1994 Everglades Forever Act, which shifted the cleanup burden onto Florida taxpayers while capping the sugar industry's total contribution at $320 million – a fraction of the actual damage.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas – the legendary conservationist who named the Everglades the "River of Grass" – was so disgusted she demanded her name be removed from the legislation.
George Barley kept fighting anyway.
Then he died – his plane went down in 1995 en route to a briefing with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Everglades restoration.
She Picked Up Where He Left Off
Mary Barley, an Islamorada resident and conservationist, could have walked away.
Instead, she took over as chairwoman of the Everglades Foundation and drove the fight through a Washington establishment that had spent years accommodating the industry destroying the ecosystem she loved.
She won.
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan – the largest ecosystem restoration project in American history – passed in 2000.
Mary was a central force behind it.
She also championed the Florida constitutional amendment that established direct accountability for nutrient pollution damage – the kind of mechanism that forces polluters to pay instead of just promising to do better.
TIME magazine named her one of 100 "Heroes of the Planet."
The U.S. House honored her.
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The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida honored her.
In 2025 she became the first woman inducted into the Everglades Coalition Hall of Fame – with George inducted alongside her, making them the only married couple to ever receive that honor.
Why DeSantis Had to Fight the Same Fight
Here is what makes DeSantis presenting this award on April 28 in Palm Beach more than a ceremony.
The work the Barleys started in 1993 is still being fought today – and the same forces are still obstructing it.
Under the Biden Administration, federal Army Corps projects faced significant delays, some taking three times longer to complete than under state management – compounded further by Biden's Interior Department leadership.
Florida's approach, managed by the South Florida Water Management District, has outpaced the federal timeline by delivering projects 6 to 7 years faster and under budget.
In April 2026, DeSantis and the Army Corps announced that all federally funded contracts for the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir – the crown jewel of Everglades restoration – have been executed, locking in a 2029 completion date five years ahead of schedule.
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That reservoir, the single most important project in the entire restoration plan, exists because of everything George and Mary Barley built from scratch thirty years ago.
"George should be here," Mary told the crowd at the ceremony.
"He wouldn't have missed it for the world."
She's right – and what would have fired him up most is watching DeSantis move faster on restoration in seven years than the federal government managed in the previous three decades.
"We've dedicated $8 billion over the past seven years for Everglades restoration and water quality improvements," DeSantis said at the April announcement. "That's a massive, massive increase of what Florida had been doing prior to that."
The people who actually love Florida – not the lobbyists, not the bureaucrats, not the politicians taking sugar money – are winning.
Sources:
- Jim McCarthy, "Fighters for Everglades Restoration Get Governor's Medal of Freedom," Keys Weekly, May 14, 2026.
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Landmark Agreement with U.S. Department of the Army to Accelerate Everglades Restoration," flgov.com, July 2025.
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Major Milestone in Everglades Restoration with Full Execution of Accelerated EAA Reservoir Contracts," flgov.com, April 13, 2026.
- Marco Rubio, Brian Mast, Francis Rooney, Joint Statement on Army Corps Decision, rubio.senate.gov, May 2020.
- Alan Farago, "Florida's Sugar Barons Grow Fat on Subsidies, Diabetes and Everglades Destruction," The Ecologist, September 2014.
