Associated Press

Low hanging oranges cling to trees barely out of the flood waters left behind by Tropical Storm Fay on Friday, Aug. 22, 2008, in Fort Pierce, Fla.. Some 400 acres of tomatoes were flooded near Immokalee in the southeastern portion of the state and St. Lucie County on the Atlantic coast suffered some $20 million in losses, mostly to cattle, citrus and nursery operations. There also were reports of grapefruits blown off trees in southeastern Florida and some areas where sugar cane was bent over in high winds.

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Mike Murphy wanted rain.

Now he wants it to go away.

The local grower’s citrus groves look more like lakes these days.

Since Tropical Storm Fay made landfall on Tuesday, he’s had as much as 18 inches of water standing under 3-year-old trees in his LaBelle grove in Hendry County.

“Just imagine looking across the grove and all you see is trees

sticking out of lakes. It was trunk to trunk on over 30 percent of our grove,” said Murphy, CEO of the Cooperative Producers Inc., the Ranch One Cooperative and the Cooperative Three Grove.

The grower cooperatives, which also own Florida’s Natural, a top producer of Florida orange juice, are working hard to pump the water sitting in the groves into reservoirs. But it takes time, especially when the rain won’t stop.

“We are having terrible problems right now,” Murphy said.

He expects root damage and tree loss. He was meeting with his board members Friday to share the bad news.

Pumps have been brought in from all over the state, he said, to get the water moving faster out of the groves.

Until Fay, growers were struggling with a long-standing drought, one of the worst on record in Florida.

“We were praying for rain,” Murphy said. “Well, we got it and we got too much at one time. So now we are trying to deal with exiting the waters.”

His cooperatives grow 7,400 acres of citrus in Lee, Hendry and Collier counties. The grove in Immokalee fared the best because it didn’t get as much rain, Murphy said.

With all the rain, other citrus growers in Southwest Florida are suffering, too.

Paul Meador, vice president for Everglades Harvesting & Hauling Inc. in LaBelle, which has thousands of acres of citrus in Collier, Hendry, Glades and Highlands counties, said Fay brought about 12 inches of rain to his groves on Tuesday.

After that, the rain just kept coming.

“We still have a lot of water standing,” Meador said. “We’ve had almost 25 inches of rain so far.”

The longer the water sits, the more damage the crop suffers.

Some reservoirs and dikes are so full that they are spilling water back into Meador’s groves as he tries to pump it out mechanically.

“Some dikes are breaking. It’s pretty serious,” Meador said.

On Florida’s east coast, some citrus growers have it even worse because Fay lingered there for days, bringing them even more rain.

“I really feel sorry for the east coast people. They are really hurting. Over there they did get up to 30 inches of rain,” said Mark Colbert, general manager of groves for Duda Products Inc. in LaBelle.

Duda is one of the lucky growers.

“We didn’t have any grove damage from the wind and I don’t anticipate having any from standing water,” Colbert said.

The grower’s pumps are doing a good job of draining water from the groves quickly. A modern grove design helps, Colbert said.

But he’s worried the storm will only bring more canker to his groves. The bacterial disease causes ugly lesions on fruit, stems and leaves, and makes fresh fruit unmarketable. It’s spread by wind and rain.

“Once you get it, you never get rid of it,” Colbert said.

The good news, he said, is that all the rain will help restore Lake Okeechobee, which so many of the state’s growers depend on to water their crops.

Though it’s early in the planting season for the region’s vegetable growers, they didn’t escape harm from Fay. Some lost plastic and plants.

Local plant nurseries also have seen damage, with roofs blowing off some greenhouses.

The local cattle industry could also take a hit. The standing water could lead to a shortage of pasture land and hay and put animals in stress, making them more vulnerable to illnesses.

Statewide, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is working to tally up the losses from Fay.

“We don’t have any damage estimates and we will not have any until the storm finishes its course,” said Terry McElroy, a department spokesman.

There have been reports that at least 500 acres of tomatoes were flooded out in the Immokalee area, he said.

Most winter vegetables aren’t planted until September. That helped the region’s growers avoid a major disaster.

Gene McAvoy, a multi-county vegetable agent for the University of Florida/IFAS, said the damages are “nothing catastrophic.”

He expects about a 5 percent loss in vegetables in Southwest Florida.

Only about 2,000 acres of vegetables are planted in the region.

Plastic on the ground, which keeps nutrients and fertilizer in place and protects young plants, was blown off less than 200 acres, McAvoy said.

Those fields will have to be rebedded and replanted, costing growers more money, he said.

The rain also has delaying new plantings, which will slow production.

Chuck Obern, owner of C&B Farms in the Devil’s Garden growing area in Hendry County, lost some of his plastic, along with nutrients and fertilizer. He has eggplant, peppers, watermelon and tomatoes in the ground.

“We are just getting started,” Obern said. “We’ve got about 150 acres in.”

He said he’s been able to pump the water off his fields over the past few days. But other nearby growers have not.

Some of his plants were killed after going completely under water during Fay. He expects to see more disease in his crops because of all the moisture and stress from the storm.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Obern said. “But we were lucky.”