A longtime Everglades scientist was handcuffed in a Miami courtroom and taken to jail Thursday to begin serving a 10-day jail sentence in a case that divided the normally tightknit Florida environmental community.
The sentence caps a three-year battle between hydrologist Tom Van Lent and his former bosses at the Everglades Foundation, who accused him of stealing trade secrets when he quit in 2022.
“ The foundation has no trade secrets, but they do wish to hide anything that would embarrass them or worse,” Van Lent said outside the Miami-Dade County courthouse before surrendering.
“ While I remain frustrated and angry at this injustice, I believe that serving 10 days in jail is worth protecting my and my wife's privacy and standing up for science and the Everglades.”
READ MORE: In fight over research, influential Everglades Foundation sues its former chief scientist
Van Lent, a well-reguarded hydrologist who began working on Everglades restoration at the South Florida Water Management District in the 1980s, quit the nonprofit foundation in a dispute over a planned Palm Beach County reservoir. Van Lent had argued the project would likely fall short of providing clean freshwater — a primary aim of the massive $23 billion restoration effort — because lawmakers had scaled back its size. The Foundation hailed it as the “crown jewel” of restoration, despite backing an earlier report that laid out Van Lent’s concerns.
WLRN explored the case in its podcast Bright Lit Place, in episode 4.
Van Lent further angered his bosses on his last day, when he tweeted that he was leaving to work for another Everglades nonprofit, Friends of the Everglades, “who put facts over politics.”
“Trade secrets from nonprofits? Trade secrets in science? Trade secrets in restoring the Everglades? It's ludicrous.”Chris McVoy, scientist and Lake Worth city commissioner
On Thursday, Van Lent, 67, said he was not told what kind of conditions he would encounter serving his jail sentence. His attorney had advised him to wear laceless shoes, he said.
”I'm not looking forward to this. It's an absolute outrage,” he said. “But I will follow the directive of the court and this battle will continue.”
As a deputy cuffed Van Lent in a small, fourth-floor courtroom, his wife, family and colleagues looked on, seated in chairs normally reserved for a jury, some in tears. Most had sported stickers that read, “Science over politics,” or had Van Lent’s initials in the center of a heart.
Just after deputies led him away, his wife Lois headed to her car for the eight-hour drive back to Tallahassee.
“ We live in terrible times, but there is power through community, and that's what y'all are — a community,” Lois Van Lent said before thanking her husband’s supporters.
In addition to a jail sentence, Van Lent was also ordered to pay $178,000 for Foundation attorney fees. Van Lent has filed for bankruptcy. Van Lent lost his appeal.
'Environmental unraveling'
The case highlighted the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that has long dogged restoration work, even as publicly environmentalists and politicians have struggled to maintain a bipartisan alliance.
It also stunned Everglades advocates, many of whom have fought for decades to restore the wetlands that protect South Florida’s drinking water and help keep it from flooding, often sharing information and working hand in hand.
In its lawsuit, the Foundation claimed Van Lent stole trade secrets and asked a judge to issue an injunction barring him from sharing the information. It demanded he turn over all Foundation material along with his computers and electronic devices. Van Lent has said he complied, but began removing personal information, that included health and financial records.
Two weeks later, the Foundation claimed Van Lent violated the injunction and asked a judge to hold him in criminal contempt, which carried a potential jail sentence. Then, just before a hearing five months later, both sides agreed to settle the case when Van Lent signed off on a permanent injunction barring him from using or sharing any Foundation material.
The settlement unraveled weeks later when the Foundation claimed Van Lent violated both the original injunction issued by the judge to stop downloading material and the settlement agreement by failing to turn over all his electronic devices.
“ I never in a hundred years thought I would be here seeing a scientist of his caliber, of his integrity being sent to jail for stealing trade secrets,” Chris McVoy, a soil scientist, Lake Worth city commissioner and board member for Friends of the Everglades said before Thursday’s hearing. “Trade secrets from nonprofits? Trade secrets in science? Trade secrets in restoring the Everglades? It's ludicrous.”
While Van Lent vowed to continue fighting the case to clear his name, Foundation attorney Jorge Piedra said following the hearing that once Van Lent serves the jail sentence, the case will end under the terms of the September 2022 settlement. In an emailed response to WLRN, the Everglades Foundation said it considered the matter closed and remains "focused on our mission to restore and protect America’s Everglades through science, advocacy, and education."
The trade secrets claim settled without ever being proven.
The sentence comes at a pivotal time for the Everglades, While long-delayed restoration work has sped up in recent years with record-spending, the swamp continues to struggle with increasing impacts from climate change even as the Trump administration has cut funding for researching the dangers fueled by a warming planet. The administration is also taking aim at key laws that help protect the Everglades, including the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. And this month, the state opened an immigrant detention center in the middle of the River of Grass in the Big Cypress National Preserve.
“Our leaders stitched together a fabric of environmental protections that were rooted in science,” Friends executive director Eve Samples said in explaining the organization’s founding by Marjory Stoneman Douglas to protect the area now occupied by the detention center. “Now the question is whether that fabric will hold. This sure looks like a moment of environmental unraveling.”
This story was updated with a response from the Everglades Foundation.
Sign up for WLRN’s environment newsletter Field Notes to receive our insider’s guide for living in South Florida’s changing landscape. Get original reporting and recaps, with context, delivered to your inbox every Friday. Subscribe here.
