This Florida environmental disaster may have started as an unintended consequence of ignorance, but it has evolved into something that appears devious or criminal.

Decades ago, the federal government dramatically altered central Florida's natural wetlands system associated with the meandering Kissimmee River, which feeds Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades and ultimately flows into the state's estuaries.

According to "Marsh Madness," a Field & Stream article by Hal Herring, the natural dynamics persisted unabated for many millennia. During the rainy season, Lake O's southern bank overflowed, releasing a skinny sheet of water, in places 60-miles wide.

The slow-moving floodwaters flowed across 11,000-square-miles of wilderness, Herring wrote. The natural wetland this created not only filtered nutrients from the watershed and fed the Everglades, it was a boon for wildlife and later aided local economies.

But, Herring said, at some point the massive periodic event was viewed as a nuisance that threatened safety and property. After a devastating hurricane, the Herbert Hoover Dike was built in 1928 to contain and control Lake O from flooding land and crops to the south.

Under the dike's protection, the newly drained wetland was converted mostly to agricultural acreage.

Then, in 1948, Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to tame the Kissimmee River north of Lake O. Herring said they turned 103 miles of stream, swamp and oxbows, with a floodplain three miles wide, into a linear ditch known as the C-38 Canal. This "fire-hosed floodwaters 56 miles southward, into Lake O," he said.

Again, farmers and ranchers and housing developments quickly occupied the drained wetland, which for thousands of years had filtered water into the river. Swampland was now farmland, which produced additional nutrients destined for the coast.

What began as 470,000 acres was established as the Everglades Agricultural Area, which now occupies 700,000 acres. Today, nearly 500,000 acres of it is occupied by sugar-producing crops.

Since the 1930s, the Corps of Engineers has released Lake O's tainted water to prevent flooding of the 700,000 acres, which would kill the sugar cane crop. Those toxic flows are discharged directly into the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian River Lagoon, resulting in a nasty, toxic, seagrass-killing mess.

Herring cites a Miami Herald report that two major sugar companies gave nearly $58 million to Florida political campaigns over the past 22 years. Despite Big Sugar's political stronghold on the deadly status quo, two possible solutions are in the works to help abate the flow of pollution.

Florida anglers are watching, praying and, hopefully, voting.