By MARIO AGUIRRE

CLEWISTON, Fla. — A stench comparable to rotting molasses dominates the air in this tiny town on the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee. But the people who live here have put up with it for 80 years — without it, the town would not exist.

The odor comes from the giant sugar mill owned by the United States Sugar Corp., which created the town in the 1930s and has been the community’s dominant employer ever since.

“Oh, it’s rough,” Chris Vary, a former mill worker, said of the syrupy scent. “But we’ve always referred to it as the smell of money.”

Now, residents say, the town’s survival is in peril after U.S. Sugar’s deal to sell its 180,000-acre tract of land to the state. The agreement aims to help restore the natural flow of water into the Everglades.

Though the pact is supposed to allow U.S. Sugar to stay in business, some residents say they believe the outcome will be the closing of the sugar mill and, with it, the ruin of Clewiston.

“This town is going to be a ghost town,” said Myriam G. Garcia, who works at a job placement center in Clewiston.

U.S. Sugar has already dealt the town a financial blow through the steady downsizing of its workforce since 2000, decreasing the number of jobs to 1,700 from 3,000 after a streamlining of its operations and manufacturing process. Jobs once done manually are now computerized.

The town’s uncertain financial future is making it a challenge to attract new businesses.

After announcing plans in 2007 to move into Clewiston Commercial Park, City Mattress, a bedding company, has put its plans on hold as it waits for the South Florida economy to rebound, said Wendell Johnson, Clewiston’s city manager.

Knapheide Manufacturing, which specializes in custom truck bodies, said it would not meet its deadline to start construction this month.

The commercial park, which opened last September as a way to increase the town’s tax base and create jobs, has yet to be occupied.

“We don’t stand a chance,” said Butch Wilson, a local historian and curator at the Clewiston Museum. “With the economy like it is, who’s going to have the money in the next seven years and bring industry?”

The recession is starting to take a greater toll on this town of 6,400, whose 11.9 percent unemployment rate is higher than the national figure.

Like the rest of the country, Clewiston has been hurt by the collapse of real estate prices. Vary, the former mill worker, who now runs a plumbing business out of his garage, said his home was appraised in 2006 for $180,000. Now, he said, he would be lucky if it sold for $125,000.

U.S. Sugar Corporation agreed in December to sell 300 square miles of land to South Florida Water Management District. A sugar mill is shown here from Clewiston, Fla. (Daniel Belis/ NYT INSTITUTE)

The uncertainty over U.S. Sugar’s future has further clouded the town’s real estate picture, said Miller Couse, chief executive of First 1 Bank in Clewiston. “We don’t know what the value of anything here in this community is right now,” he said.

Vary’s plumbing business is also ailing. A year ago, he averaged 10 to 12 service calls a day and bought property to build a shop. Now he handles about four calls a day and has given up the idea of moving out of his garage.

“I want to get away from here,” said Vary, a resident of Clewiston since 1979. “I don’t like walking out my door and being at work.”

The town’s diminishing job prospects are evident in the higher number of empty desks in the county’s schools. In the past year, 300 students have been pulled from the school system, many of them children of parents who used to work in the sugar mill, said Richard A. Murphy, superintendent of Hendry County Schools.

The void is expected to lead to a cut in school financing after the Florida Department of Education tallies student enrollment figures, said Jim Vary, Chris Vary’s father, who taught in Hendry County for 23 years before retiring.

“You sit back and scratch your head, and you wonder what goes through the minds of the people who are making the decisions that affect you every day,” Jim Vary said. “It’s a shame.”

Although U.S. Sugar has been Clewiston’s lifeblood for decades, many environmentalists believe its presence has come at a steep price. They have long argued that the production of sugar has resulted in the release of large quantities of harmful phosphorus into the Everglades. State officials said the deal with U.S. Sugar would rescue and preserve the giant waterway.

The South Florida Water Management District — a regional agency responsible for water quality, flood control, water supply and environmental restoration — agreed last December to purchase U.S. Sugar’s land for $1.34 billion, a price that could climb to as high as $3.4 billion when interest is factored in.

Under the agreement, the South Florida Water Management District would lease the property to U.S. Sugar for the next seven years, with the option to extend those leases if the district is not prepared to build projects on the land, said Judy C. Sanchez, director of corporate communications for U.S. Sugar.

“There’s no need to fear a ghost town, because those processing jobs will continue,” Sanchez said. “Even if U.S. Sugar were to decide after those seven years to sell the processing facilities, those jobs would remain.”

Clewiston Mayor Mali Chamness said U.S. Sugar has stated at various meetings since June that it is “only interested in operating maybe for the next seven years.” If the company pulls out before then, she said, the land could go to someone else.

“I don’t think they have a long-term interest in staying in this area,” Chamness added.

Either way, some Clewiston residents are dubious, saying they believe that the fate of the town was an afterthought in assembling one of the largest environmental deals in Florida’s history.

“The state is using my tax money to purchase basically all this land in this company, and in return they want to cut funding for my school for my children, social services for police, paramedics, firemen for the state,” Chris Vary said. “Why use my tax dollars to put me out of work?”

Wilson agrees. “It’s not a rosy future at all,” he said. “What makes me mad and makes the community mad is it should have been done in a different way, to ensure that we were going to have a future.”