Aerial footage of Lake Okeechobee on Aug. 13, 2018. Credit: WINK News. Daniel Andrews, with Captains for Clean Water, is questioning the motives of U.S. Sugar in the midst of the SWFL water quality crisis. “Sugar often likes to put blame on north of the lake,” Andrews said. “It kind of gives them a way to pass the blame, but really the Everglades agriculture area sits in the way of sending water south.” This comes after U.S. Sugar said the 16,000 acre reservoir being built south of the lake will not impede harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges. “It was a good thing for the Everglades,” Malcom Wade, senior vice president for U.S. Sugar, said. “It had a minor benefit for the estuary discharges. It wasn’t the primary purpose and now it’s turning into a primary purpose.” Both candidates for governor in the state of Florida, Mayor Andrew Gillum and former Congressman Ron DeSantis, have been big supporters of the reservoir. “I was the one that got White House approval for the federal component of the southern reservoir, which we will get online,” DeSantis said. “We were billed because what you need to do is you need to send water into that reservoir, clean it and send it south to the Everglades and Florida bay, so you’re not discharging the polluted water into the Caloosahatche and St. Lucie estuaries. “I’ll be able to get that done,” DeSantis said. “Not only is it agriculture that plays a role, but it’s also some of the hyper developments taking place north of Lake Okeechobee,” Gillum said. “We need to deal with all that in the state.” But Wade said we should focus mainly on the north. “We’ve got to figure out how we stop that water from coming in,” Wade said, “and having to be discharged from out of the lake.” But Andrews disagrees. “We can’t stop the water from flowing into Lake Okeechobee,” Andrews said. “That’s the way it’s always flowed; that’s the way it always will.”