131231-a
First-ever trolley to Everglades and Biscayne National Parks begins Saturday
Miami Herald – by Staff
December 31, 2031
The first ever public transportation to Everglades and Biscayne National Parks will begin Saturday with the launch of the Homestead National Park Trolley service.
The new service, a partnership between the City of Homestead and the parks, is the only public transportation available to the South Florida national parks.
At the 11 a.m. grand opening, there will be live music, free food and educational programs about the park.
Every weekend from January through April, the trolley service will be free to the parks and will depart from Historic Downtown Homestead at 104 N. Krome Avenue. The trolley connects to Miami-Dade public bus routes.
To mark the inauguration, the first trolley ride will departs the celebration at 1 p.m. headed to Biscayne National Park.
For more information on the Homestead National Parks Trolley schedule and routes as well as ranger-guided walks at the National Parks and other activities, visit: www.cityofhomestead.com/gateway

131231-b
Florida's mangrove forests expand north with climate change
NBCnews.com – by Tia Ghose, LiveScience
December 31, 2013
Fewer deep freezes, attributable to Earth's warming climate, have caused mangrove forests to expand northward in Florida over the past three decades, new research suggests.
"Mangroves showed the largest increases in regions where cold snaps became less frequent over the past 30 years," study co-author Kyle Cavanaugh, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland, wrote in an email.
The findings, published today (Dec. 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that climate change could alter ecosystems even more dramatically in the years to come.
Mangrove forests typically grow in tidal regions in tropical and subtropical climates. They serve a vital ecological function: The trees and shrubs that live in these regions can thrive in salty water, shifting sands and hot temperatures, and tree roots trap sediments, slowing the lapping of water and allowing other life to flourish.
To see how climate changes have affected Florida's mangrove forests, Cavanaugh and his colleagues looked at 28 years of satellite data from Florida's East Coast. They found that the area taken up by mangrove forests in the northernmost latitudes had doubled over the last few decades, while the southern stretches changed little.
This expansion wasn't connected to changes in average temperature, sea level rise, rain or land use. Instead, the regions with expanding mangroves experienced fewer cold snaps — periods when the temperature dips below 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 4 degrees Celsius).
The new results imply that mangrove forests may expand quickly with global warming in the coming decades. Though what this means for surrounding communities and the life that depends on the forests isn't yet clear.
"Right now we don't have enough information to determine if this is good or bad for humans," Cavanaugh said. "As mangroves expand they displace salt marsh. Both of these habitats are important ecologically and economically, and both are threatened by rising sea levels and coastal development."
With further global warming, mangrove expansion probably won't be confined to Florida.
"There is evidence that the ranges of mangroves in other parts of the world are also restricted by cold temperatures," Cavanaugh said.
And because water-dispersed plants can often travel farther than those dispersed by wind or plants, the mangrove expansion could be very rapid, the authors write in their paper.

131231-c
Silver Springs becomes state park
Ocala.com - by Joe Callahan, Staff writer
December 31, 2013
It was a place where steamboats docked, families explored, tourists visited, and "Tarzan" and "Sea Hunt" were filmed.
Sept. 30, 2013, marked the end of an era, the last day of "Silver Springs: Nature's Theme Park."
The following day, the state's one-time largest tourist attraction merged with Silver River State Park to become Silver Springs State Park.
Though the animals, like bears and giraffes, are now gone, the symbolic glass-bottomed boats remain. The state contracted out the ride and nearby concessions.
The beginning of the end of the theme park came in January, when Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet amended a lease with Palace Entertainment that allowed the company to leave 16 years before its contract expired. In return, Palace agreed to spend $4 million in renovations.
This transition was the Star-Banner's pick as Marion County's No. 1 story of 2013. Reporters, editors, photographers and other newsroom employees chose the Top 10 from a list of 30 contenders.
(Since Dec. 22 the Star-Banner has been counting down the Top 10 stories of 2013).

131230-a
Environmental groups file suit to replace Ceitus Barrier in Cape
Cape Coral Daily Breeze
December 30, 2013
Half a dozen environmental organizations have filed a lawsuit against the city of Cape Coral and a state agency in hope of forcing the replacement of the barrier in the North Spreader Canal.
The Florida Watershed Council Inc.; Caloosahatchee River Citizens Association Inc. (Riverwatch); Responsible Growth Management Coalition Inc.; Calusa Land Trust And Nature Preserve Of Pine Island Inc.; Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Inc.; and the Greater Pine Island Civic Association Inc., along with environmental activist Phil Buchanan, carried through on a previous notification and filed the suit on Dec. 27 to enforce a Settlement Agreement and Consent Order the organizations maintain require the city to replace the Ceitus Barrier with either a boat lift or boat lock.
Also named in the suit is the Department of Environmental Protection.
According to a prepared statement issued by the organizations, the Ceitus Barrier historically separated stormwater from flowing directly into Matlacha Pass until it was removed by the city of Cape Coral.
"Without it stormwater now dumps directly into one location - Matlacha Pass Aquatic Preserve, which is an Outstanding Florida Waterbody," according to the statement issued Friday.
"The lawsuit will enforce the terms of a Consent Order and Settlement Agreement signed in 2008 by Cape Coral and DEP, as well as Lee County and nine non-profit environmental organizations and individual residents," the joint release states. "The Settlement Agreement resolved a previous legal dispute over Cape Coral's refusal to replace the Barrier. The Settlement Agreement required that Cape Coral seek permits to restore or replace the Barrier. DEP was to approve the permits within 30 days so the Barrier would be in place before the rainy season in 2010. However, Cape Coral did not obtain or diligently pursue the permits as agreed, and over two years have passed. DEP has thus far done nothing to enforce the Consent Order or the Settlement Agreement."
The suit further alleges that "The removal of the Ceitus Barrier changed what was a stormwater spreader system into a stormwater drainage ditch that dumps directly into Matlacha Pass, a designated 'Outstanding Florida Water.' The excess poor quality fresh water and siltation during the rainy season has a disastrous affect on the survival of salt water dependent marine life, including sea grasses, oysters, tunicates, sponges, and (fish) eggs and hatchings.
"Rerouting of stormwater from their historic flows through the wetlands directly into Matlacha Pass also (1) also deprives wetlands and fish nurseries of essential fresh water, and (2) prevents wetlands from filtering the water before it reaches Matlacha Pass."
"The coffee-colored, polluted water now flowing through our estuary is not all coming down the Caloosahatchee - some of it is draining through North Cape Coral and down into what presently constitutes the North Cape Stormwater Drainage Ditch on into Matlacha Pass," Buchanan, a Pine Island resident, said in the release. "This violates the terms of our Settlement Agreement as well as the DEP Consent Order, and it's time we enforce these legally binding agreements - we should not have to insist that our governments obey their own laws. We can no longer tolerate governmental agencies that do nothing when it comes to our environment."
Both the city and the state dispute the environmental groups' interpretation of that settlement agreement, with city officials stating in October that the then-threatend lawsuit to force replacement of the barrier removed from the city waterway was without merit.
Officials with the state agency previously declined comment on the suit but did say reinstallation of a barrier would cause more harm than environmental good and that both the city and state had followed proper procedure in hammering out a plan to protect water quality.
"The city was required to file a permit to replace the barrier and we denied it," John Englehardt, local director of the Florida DEP, said in the earlier interview. "We found most of the water is tidal and just putting a barrier there would not have the impact we thought it would. Where the water comes in, it goes out."
Englehardt also said a barrier would have a negative impact on the smalltooth sawfish, a protected species, and that the city had developed a "net ecosystem benefits package" in lieu of barrier replacement and that plan satisfied the conditions of the consent order.
A spokesperson for the city of Cape Coral said the city does not respond pending litigation.

131230-b
Snakes pose a threat
PNJ.com - Editorial
December 30, 2013
In the Everglades, an area synonymous with Florida wildlife, Burmese pythons now slither through the river of grass. The invasive snakes can grow to more than 20 feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds. One 16-footer was found with a full-grown deer in its belly. Others have devoured alligators. Sightings in the Everglades of raccoons, opossums, bobcats and other mammals have plummeted.
Just west of Miami, state biologists are taking a survey based on the suspicion that rock pythons are now established there. The rock python, the largest snake in Africa, will eat almost anything.
Meanwhile, in a federal court in Washington, D.C., the United States Association of Reptile Keepers is suing to overturn a ban on the importation and transportation of four constrictor snakes – including the Burmese python.
That’s crazy.
In January 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – taking into account public comments and business and environmental analyses – banned the Burmese python, yellow anaconda, and the northern and southern African pythons as injurious wildlife. The rule was announced at a news conference in the Everglades.
Those who already owned snakes could keep them – unless possession was illegal under state law, as it is in Florida for the Burmese python. But they could not bring them across state lines.
However, the United States Association of Reptile Keepers says the ban is crippling the constricting-snake industry, which brought in $100 million in revenue each year – about a tenth of the $1 billion to $1.4 billion generated by the reptile industry as a whole.
“Many thousands of small businesses are financially reliant on this trade,” the association said.
A key allegation is that the Fish and Wildlife Service used improper climate data to calculate where the invasive snakes could survive in the wild. In trying to guess where these snakes can or can’t survive, let’s err on the side of caution. As South Florida can attest, once an invasive species is established, there is no eliminating it.
Besides, Florida continues to attract people from all over the country with the same gentle climate that allows the snakes to thrive. So if the snakes are freely traded elsewhere, you know where some will wind up.
The spread of creatures that pose such a threat should be stopped. Let’s hope the court sees it that way, too.

131230-c
Water for Everglades
Florida Current – (The Week Ahead for Dec. 30, 2013 to Jan. 3, 2014)
December 30, 2013
The South Florida Water Management District holds a Water Resource Advisory Commission meeting starting 9 a.m. Thursday at South Florida Water Management District headquarters, B-1 Auditorium, 3301 Gun Club Road, West Palm Beach. The panel is expected to discuss changing water releases to Everglades National Park and the Everglades restoration project. The agenda can be found here.

131229-a
DEP Poll Concerns Environmentalists
Tampa Bay Times - by Craig Pittman
December 29, 2013
For four months, Florida's environmental regulators have been asking businesses and local governments how much their rules are costing.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has been sending out sur­ veys asking questions like, "What kinds of costs did you incur applying for your industrial wastewater permit?" and "Would you be required to incur the costs … if not for the permit application and compliance require­ments?"
"I've never seen a survey like this before," said Vicki Tschinkel, who ran the DEP's predecessor, the Department of Environmental Regulation, from 1981 to 1987 and now is on the board of 1,000 Friends of Florida.
Florida environmentalists are alarmed by the sur­- vey's focus on tabulating the cost of 15 permits that are supposed to protect the environment.
"It looks over the top, like they're saying, ‘Give us reasons to reduce regulations in Florida,' " said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon Florida.
The survey says the DEP is asking these questions because the agency "wishes to better understand the economic impacts our regulations have on permit and license holders."
Actually, the goal is aimed more toward the future, explained DEP press secretary Patrick Gillespie.
Under state law, he said, "any time any agency proposes a rule change, it has to calculate whether the proposed rule would have a cost attached to it."
But it can be hard to calculate the cost without knowing the price tag of the current rules, he said.
"The department sent out the survey to regulated businesses to try to collect data for any future proposed rule changes," Gillespie said.
A Tampa Bay Times request to see the results of the survey so far did not yield the names of respondents, but the DEP spreadsheet did show the numbers in various categories.
Since the surveys began going out in August, 72 responses have come back to the DEP.
Twenty-five replies came from businesses, 14 from individuals, 17 from counties, seven from cities and nine from other government agencies.
Fifty of them reported that they had obtained permits from the DEP, 43 had gotten state permits from one of the five water management districts, and 16 had gotten permits from city or county governments.
Three types of permits were the most common: Eleven said they had gotten consumptive-use permits for pumping water from the aquifer; 23 said they had received environmental resource permits, issued for filling in wetlands or building docks; and 23 got permits for dealing with stormwater runoff.
Of the 11 that got con­sumptive-use permits, three identified themselves as power plant owners, and eight said they had spent more than $10,000 fulfilling all the requirements for the permit.
Of the 23 that obtained an environmental resource permit, 17 said they had spent more than $10,000 and five said they had spent more than $5,000.
A majority of those who responded to the survey said they wouldn't have spent that much money — on consultants, engineering, biological monitoring and other expenses — if it hadn't been for the permit.
The survey does not ask any questions about the results of those permits, prompting Lee to say, "It suggests a fixation on something that's not part of keeping Florida green."

131229-b
Putting water on the front burner
StAugustine.com – Tampa Tribune (Dec.15, 2013)
December 29, 2013
It’s too early to say whether the 2014 session of the Florida Legislature will be the “Year of Water,” but momentum is building in that direction.
And if correct policy decisions are made, the state will be in a stronger position to protect the environment, including Florida’s wondrous natural springs, strengthen the economy, and bolster agriculture.
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam recently noted that the environmental “devastation” on both sides of the state caused by the release of high volumes of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee this year has created “momentum” among lawmakers to fund water resource projects and discuss water policy next session.
In addition, Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, who has been chosen by colleagues to succeed House Speaker Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel after the 2014 session, has said that water issues will be a top priority during his two-year term overseeing the House.
Putting water on the front burner is essential to Florida’s future. Water shortages are common in the Tampa Bay area and other parts of the state, as are water use restrictions. And too often, piecemeal approaches are taken that fail to address the challenges the state has in meeting the water needs of the public, agricultural interests and businesses, especially in times of drought.
This new emphasis on water issues and the environment will greatly benefit Florida. Though surrounded by water, Florida has major water challenges. Comprehensive water policies that include all facets of water use are needed instead of the reactionary approach of the past.

131229-c
USACE Adopts Flawed Study ... Again
Bradenton Times – by John Rehill
December 29, 2013
BRADENTON -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that the Areawide Environmental Impact Statement for Phosphate Mining in the Central Florida Phosphate District was reviewed and approved in its entirety by the Corp. However, it failed to mention that CH2M HILL, the company that performed the impact statement, has numerous ties to both of the phosphate companies at the center of the study. 
A consent decree from the federal courts ordered the USACE to perform the AEIS before any further permitting of phosphate mining in the Central Florida Phosphate District (CFPD). 
The AEIS objective is to study past, present and future cumulative effects of phosphate mining in the CFPD. The primary sectors to be focused on in the study: the environment, human health, economics, natural resources, animal habitat and navigational waterways.
There is serious question as to whether CH2M HILL's evaluations were accurate in the AEIS they submitted to the USACE. Critics claim that insufficient data and missing submissions were a problem, along with more conflicts of interest than having Bernard Madoff rewrite the ponzi scheme laws.
Conflicts of interest
CH2M HILL stated it had no conflict of interest, with either CF Industries or Mosaic Mining LLC. It failed to mention that the company has numerous contracts in Florida, making large amounts of money on projects that are promoted as "alternative water sources" in areas where the water supply has been compromised by mining operations.
Over a billion dollars in taxpayer funds have been spent to construct and repair the CW Bill Young Regional Reservoir and the Apollo Beach Desalinization Plant. During the 10-year period of construction and repair, the price of water from Tampa Bay Water (TBW) has almost doubled, even though a successful water conservation program reduced the overall use of water, throughout the region TBW services. 
That's because water retrieved from the Bill Young Reservoir cost TBW customers twice as much as it did to retrieve ground water from the aquifer. The desalinization plant water cost three times the amount to produce and process, than if retrieved from the aquifer.
There is no mention in the AEIS of the financial burden placed on Tampa Bay Water customers, who were bamboozled into more expensive alternative water sources to subsidize mining costs.
CH2M HILL is in the water business and a global leader in supplying the very expensive membranes used in desalinization plants. One could easily say that it behooves CH2M HILL if water conditions remain in peril. There are currently 11 desalinization plants under construction or in operation in Florida. 
The Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) contributed $75 million of taxpayers' money to construct the problematic desalinization plant and spent more than $200 million to repair the equally troubled Bill Young Reservoir. Developing alternative sources has allowed SWFWMD to permit Mosaic Mining and CF Industries to draw the more than 25 billion gallons of Florida aquifer water they use annually. That is nearly twice the total amount of the capacity of the B.Y. Reservoir. 
The additional cost to Tampa Bay Water customers, for having to pay for the inflated price of water, from 2001-2010, would have covered the cost to build the Sunshine Skyway and Tropicana Field. Those costs are already gone from the pockets of Tampa Bay Water customers, and the mining companies pay next to nothing for the billions of gallons they take from the aquifer. 
The CH2M HILL / Mosaic Mining conflict of interest gets even more egregious when factoring in the relationship they have with fluoride. CH2M HILL is in the water supply business, and fluoridation makes them millions of dollars annually.  
Just weeks prior to being announced as the USACE's choice to perform the phosphate mining AEIS, CH2M HILL signed a $55 million water contract with Ft. Campbell, in Kentucky, and the fort's unstable-fluoride was the issue in canceling their predecessor's contract. 
CH2M HILL is in the fluoridation business, and the primary source for industrial fluoride is phosphate mining. They have water plants throughout the world, and nearly all of their facilities fluoridate the water. In that sense, it's not in their interest to put a strain on phosphate mining operations.
None of this was noted in CH2M HILL's signed disclosure agreement. 
Equally disturbing is the methods by which the Hydrologic/Water Quality Modeling was performed. I emailed John Fellows and requested that information and the name of the USACE agent that examined the results. Fellows replied:
John.P.Fellows@usace.army.mil 
to: John.Rehill@thebradentontimes.com 
Dated 6/25/2013 
I am working with the third-party contractor to get the data files you have requested.  
I can respond to your request for "the name of the ACOE agent who did the evaluation". As stated in the FAQs, CH2M HILL, the third-party contractor, wrote most of the AEIS, with some parts written by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The AEIS was reviewed and approved in its entirety by the Corps. In the specific cases of the surface water hydrology, water quality, and economic analyses, those analyses were performed by CH2M HILL staff under the direction of the Corps.
USACE Regulatory Project Manager, John Fellows
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies ? (Who's guarding the guardians ?)
Under the direction of the Corps is not the same as, overseeing the process; the Corps stated it would be overseeing the AEIS process. I have been unable to find a single example of someone checking the math, or validating data in the study. Fellows clearly didn't answer my question, nor did he get back to me with additional data. 
Also clear, is that the modeling data I requested in the final AEIS submitted by CH2M HILL, was constructed from both of the phosphate company's self-reported-data, taken from different submissions to regulatory agencies (dating back a decade). The modeling profiles were spit out of a number crunch program that used parameters presented by the phosphate companies that were being evaluated. What was produced was a "simulated simplification" report, that is based on assumptions.  
Excerpt from the report: 
For the predictive simulations, ground-water pumpage for the Applicants was based on information provided by the Applicants or allocated quantities in the Applicants’ SWFWMD WUPs, and are described in greater detail in the discussions below for each alternative.
It was assumed that withdrawal rates in the base year conditions of 2010 were the same as those in 2006, as there was very little growth in demand between 2006 and 2010. 
Par for the course for the USACE to endorse an AEIS so flawed.
The USACE has earned its troubled reputation as being synonymous with boondoggle, and there is a long list of failures to support that claim. Hurricane Katrina, MRGO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), Kissimmee River and the near destruction of the Florida Everglades, are just a few of their multi-billion dollar blunders.  
In 1951, Harold Ickes said, "no more lawless or irresponsible federal group than the U.S Corps of Army Engineers has ever attempted to operate in the United States, either inside or outside the law." Ickes believed the Corps was outside of presidential control and working for special interests at the expense of the general public. 
Ickes was the appointed U.S. Secretary of Interior from 1933 to 1946, and simultaneously served as Public Works Director for Franklin D Roosevelt. He pioneered FDR's New Deal and ordered the desegregation of all U.S. national parks. His opposition to corruption earned him the name "Honest Harold."   
Twenty years later, there was an even more critical view of the USACE, by Arthur Morgan in his book Dams and other Disasters. In it, Morgan chronologically critiques a century of disastrous failures by the USACE resulting in enormous unnecessary cost and environmental disaster. 
Morgan was a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and a highly respected engineer. In his book, he covers the shoddy engineering practices of the Corp, and describes how the Corp mistreated Native Americans, lied to the public, pursued environmentally damaging projects, hid information and demonized any opposition to silent dissent.
Today, it seems the USACE has refined its tactics, pretending to have a public participation program that solicits citizen input. They have vowed to change their image.
The problem with their new program is that they are still lying to the public, hiding information, supporting projects devastating to the environment, and I don't believe there are any Pow-Wows on their calendar. 
John Fellows, was appointed to oversee the AEIS. He announced that the citizen input program would be extended, allowing additional letters to the hundreds already submitted. That means the people that pay his salary will continue to pour their heart and soul into their story, with hopes that the devastation to the land and people in the CFPD will cease.  
But I think Fellows knew the decision was made before the question was asked. He might be merely trying to exhaust the efforts of those who oppose mining, while giving the impression that the USACE cares what you think.
As the old saying goes -- with friends like that, who needs enemies ?

131228-a
Bad year for manatees, dolphins
Miami Herald - Editorial
December 28, 2013
High death rates require urgent federal, state response
Two beloved sea mammals — manatees and bottlenose dolphins — suffered record numbers of deaths this year, baffling scientists and rightly raising concerns about the health of the waters surrounding Florida. Surely, what we humans dump into our waters must share the blame along with natural causes.
So far, 803 manatees have died in 2013, well above the 392 deaths in 2012. The 800 deaths are about 16 percent of the state's estimated population of 5,000 manatees total. A massive bloom of Red Tide algae along the southwest coast killed 276 manatees early in 2013 — the worst Red Tide toll on sea cows ever recorded. But an unidentified illness is killing manatees in the Indian River Lagoon on Florida's Gold Coast. So far, 117 have died there since July 2012.
The only good news is that manatee deaths from encounters with boats are down, to 71 deaths, from last year's 81. But back to Indian River Lagoon. The deaths of dolphins and pelicans have also hit unprecedented numbers in the estuary. Scientists are stumped, but there's little doubt that the summer's flood-prevention diversion of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon and the Caloosahatchee River on the West Coast must be taken into account. The nitrogen-laden outfall deadened the St. Lucie and created an enormous environmental crisis in the lagoon.
Meantime, nearly 1,000 dolphins — eight times the historical average — have washed up dead along the Eastern Seaboard, from New York to Florida. Nearly 80 dolphins whose permanent home was (here it is again) the Indian River Lagoon have died, while another 233 died in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Many of the Eastern Seaboard dolphins’ deaths were from morbillivirus, a disease deadly for dolphins. The last outbreak of the virus was 25 years ago.
Again, the dirty water from the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ diversion of lake water during hurricane season, along with other urban pollutants, could be contributing to the dolphins’ deaths in the lagoon. And in the Gulf, lingering effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill could also be a culprit in dolphins’ demise there.
But scientists can't explain why the morbillivirus has cropped up again. They theorize that one reason for so many deaths is that many of the dolphins weren’t alive during the first viral outbreak and therefore weren't immune. And the range of dead manatees is also disturbing. In all, 173 breeding females died, which could impact the future of the manatee population.
Federal and state officials have only begun to address the nearly annual diversion of lake water to the east and west coasts. It’s too dirty now to send south into the Everglades, where it belongs. The joint federal-state Everglades cleanup plan will eventually restore the rightful flow, but that’s years away, giving little relief to the St. Lucie River and lagoon soon. But the state has earmarked nearly $3 million for some cleanup work along the St. Lucie. And the Corps and South Florida Water Management District are expanding storage areas to hold and filter polluted lake spill water before moving it in any direction.
But manatees and dolphins keep dying, and nobody knows how to save them. Dolphins, in particular, are harbingers of the overall health of our oceans. For that reason alone, federal and state officials should be alarmed enough to stem these killing seasons as quickly as possible.

131228-b
Revived Palm Beach County reservoir making progress
Sun Sentinel - by Andy Reid
December 28, 2013
The extended arm of a crane peeks above the lip of a nearly mile-wide hole, which reaches about 50 feet deep.
A slow parade of trucks and big-wheeled construction vehicles descends into the worksite below, pumping out water and spreading concrete at depths usually not reached in swampy, flat South Florida.
After years of delay, progress is being made on the $64 million project to get a reservoir west of Royal Palm Beach pumping water south to replenish the Everglades.
"Nobody appreciates the size until they see it," said Gregory Coffelt, principal engineer for the South Florida Water Management District. "It's pretty mindboggling."
While the water-storage portion of the reservoir was completed back in 2008, the pumps, levee upgrades and other infrastructure improvements needed to get water flowing were left undone — hampering the ability to put the reservoir and its water to use.
Now after years of budget delays that slowed construction and controversies that dogged the project, the district expects to have the reservoir fully operational by 2016.
The massive structure known as the L-8 reservoir was created from nearly 1,000 acres of former rock mines at Palm Beach Aggregates, on Southern Boulevard west of Royal Palm Beach.
Project backers contend that the area's unique geology — less porous than South Florida's usual below-ground limestone — makes it ideal for holding water.
The reservoir, which cost the South Florida Water Management District about $220 million, stretches for 2.8 miles north of Southern Boulevard and is nearly 1 mile wide.
It's 53-feet-deep and capable of holding 15 billion gallons of water. That's enough to cover 34,000 football fields with water one-foot deep, according to the water management district.
The reservoir was originally built to collect water that would be used to replenish the Loxahatchee River, to compensate for freshwater flows blocked though the years due to flood control for South Florida's development.
But a budget squeeze and other economic factors delayed construction of the pump station needed to make the reservoir fully operational. Also, controversies related to the reservoir and other Palm Beach Aggregates land dealings dogged the project.
Palm Beach Aggregates ended up reimbursing the district for a $2.4 million secret "success fee" that federal prosecutors contend was paid to an engineering consultant who suggested that the district approve the reservoir deal — without revealing he was a consultant for Palm Beach Aggregates.
That success fee and another Palm Beach Aggregates land deal were tied to separate scandals that eventually ousted two Palm Beach County commissioners.
Also, concerns have been raised about the elevated levels of chloride in the reservoir's water. Those chloride levels remain above state standards for freshwater, according to the district.
Water managers blame the elevated chloride levels on not having the big pumps to circulate water in and out of the reservoir. They say once construction is complete, water quality will improve.
"Over time the chloride levels have been going down," said Alan Shirkey, a district project manager overseeing the reservoir project. "Once these facilities are in place they are going to continue to go down and down and down."
Despite the past hurdles, a new Everglades restoration effort triggered renewed interest in completing the L-8 reservoir.
The state's new $880 million plan for meeting federal water quality standards includes sending most of the reservoir's water south, through stormwater treatment areas and then into northern reaches of the Everglades.
Another, smaller reservoir proposed to the north is now planned to store water needed for the Loxahatchee River.

131227-a
Everglades refuge stalled at 10 acres but expected to grow
Orlando Sentinel - by Kevin Spear,
December 27, 2013
When a national wildlife refuge was created two years ago to preserve a vast landscape between Orlando and the Everglades, authorities warned that assembling the property wouldn't happen quickly.
They were right about that. The refuge today amounts to 10 acres donated by the Nature Conservancy. Nothing so far has been purchased by the U.S. government, but $4.5 million should be available for land buys in the near future.
The Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge was billed with much fanfare as a federal rescue of an imperiled environmental treasure in Florida. Drawn across Osceola, Polk, Okeechobee and Highlands counties, the refuge would target 50,000 acres for outright purchase and an additional 100,000 acres for partial ownership.
"This is a long-term commitment to the resource and to the landscape," said refuge manager Charlie Pelizza recently, commenting much as he did two years ago. "We don't expect it to happen in one year, five years or 10 years."
The refuge may eventually reach Metro Orlando by taking in 10,000 acres of prairie, woods and wetlands just south of the Orange County line in Osceola County.
The entire 150,000-acre mosaic of properties that federal officials want to acquire could cost more than a half-billion dollars.
Though still one of the smallest of the more than 560 refuges owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Everglades Headwaters refuge has a big job: protect wildlife and water along the Kissimmee River, which begins as rain running off Orlando streets and flows more than 100 miles to Lake Okeechobee.
Though the Fish and Wildlife Service has not dedicated any specific amount of money or funding source, the agency has given the project enough priority to raid other programs.
Pelizza said the refuge's bank account now has $4.5 million to spend on land, and appraisals are being done on a half-dozen parcels. That's not a lot of money or many parcels, he said, but it's more progress than could have been achieved through the agency's regular way of doing business.
Pelizza said an additional $5 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund is potentially in the offing, depending on Congress' budget decisions.
People outside the agency are watching the refuge's slow progress with a mix of reactions.
Two of the most active proponents of the refuge, photographer Carlton Ward and bear biologist Joe Guthrie, showcased its potential last year during their high-profile wildlife-corridor expedition from the Everglades to Georgia.
Both think the refuge is as strongly supported as ever by ranchers, hunters, environmentalists and government agencies tasked with restoring waters and plumbing of the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee and Everglades.
It is intended to be a different animal as far as refuges go; the Fish and Wildlife Service wants most of it to remain primarily under the care and control of ranchers.
Under that concept, the agency would buy from ranchers what's called a conservation easement. That would allow ranchers to own their land and continue ranching but would permanently bar them from many practices, including real-estate development.
The upside is that ranchers stay in business, the land is reasonably well-protected and governments don't have to manage the property. The downside is the public won't have access to those portions of refuge.
Also under that approach, other agencies and environmental groups are eager to partner with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Among them is Florida's Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, which, when state money is available, would help buy conservation easements.
Others active in protecting Florida's environmental lands worry that land prices, depressed by the Great Recession when the refuge was created, are rising and may put parcels beyond the reach of the Fish and Wildlife Service budget.
"The risk we have now is the changing market," said George Willson, a Tallahassee consultant long involved in acquisitions of environmental lands. "Just in the next few weeks you'll see some huge transfers in ownership of some South Florida ranches. The buyers are re-entering the market."

131227-b
Florida about to pass New York in population -- moving into the top 3 states
Jacksonville.com - Florida Times Union - by John Leacock
December 27, 2013
Florida’s about to pass New York in population.
Evidently not hurt much by news about the Stand Your Ground law and giant pythons in the Everglades, the Sunshine State is on a tear to pass the Empire State among the most populous states, according to The New York Times.
The Times says Census Bureau figures to be released Monday will show Florida edging out New York for the No. 3 spot after California and Texas. The difference could be just thousands of people as both states’ populations each hover just under 20 million.
The Times predicts the switch in the top three could have serious economic and political consequences for New York but boons for Florida.
Census statistics “inform how billions of dollars in federal funding and grants are divvied up,” according to the article.
Among the reasons given for Florida’s rise is its attraction to foreign-born immigrants. Another is taxes. Florida has no personal income tax. New York does. Gov. Rick Scott, quoted in the article, says it’s also the state’s pro-business and low-tax approach.
Another consistent attraction is retiring Americans; an old story — no pun intended — but one that’s still a significant factor for places like New York. New Yorkers are flocking here, the Times said, to the tune of more than 50,000 a year. It even refers to Jacksonville as one of Florida’s hubs.
Oddly enough, New York isn’t really losing population. It’s just growing at a slower rate than Florida, according to the article.  New York is growing at 1 percent annually. Florida is about 2.7 percent.
But the conversation always turns back to the weather. As Scott puts it in the article: “When I call on companies around the country, I clearly talk to them about what the weather’s like.”
Not mentioned by the Times are other obvious unique Florida draws like Homestead’s Coral Castle, the Burt Reynolds Museum in Jupiter, St. Augustine’s Fountain of Youth, the Skunk Ape Research Center in Ochopee or the Weeki Wachee mermaids.
Draws aside, there are drawbacks to being the third most populous state. The Times said there will be a need for more services and a rise in congestion on Florida highways.
The article describes desperate attempts by New York’s Gov. Andew M. Cuomo to revive his state’s fortunes and boost its population but admits that Florida has been creeping up on New York for decades now.
What to do?
Cuomo tried the old “I like seasons” line when asked about the tide of people making a beeline to Florida for the sunshine. “If that’s what you prefer,” he’s quoted as saying.
Yes, some people prefer that. But to be fair, coming up with a retort to sunny weather isn’t easy.

131227-c
Heavy rains, run-off may lead to large algal blooms
News-Press.com - by Chad Gillis and Kevin Lollar
December 27, 2013
Coastal Florida is heavily dependent on tourism, and you can’t have a healthy, vibrant coast without clean water.
Politicians and business interests from Southwest Florida spent much of 2013 traveling to Senate hearings in Washington, D.C., to testify and worrying that the coming winter and spring will produce mass algal blooms.
Water quality dominated headlines in 2013 as heavy rains, stormwater and agriculture run-off fed algal blooms, shut down swimming beaches and killed a record number of manatees. At one point the amount of water flowing into Lake Okeechobee was six times greater than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s ability to pump it down the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers. Senate hearings were held on the east coast, and grassroots rallies sprouted up in towns like St. Lucie and Clewiston.
The 2005 summer was similar, although rainfall then came mostly from tropical storms and hurricanes. The winter and spring after 2005, however, were plagued by some of the heaviest concentrations of red tide recorded, with some samples showing 150 million or more cells of Karenia brevis per liter. Fish kills and respiratory irritation in humans and marine mammals can start when concentrations reach 10,000 cells per liter, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Heavy nutrients loads are needed for harmful algal blooms like red tide. With the amount of rain and run-off (from south of Orlando to Lake Okeechobee and west to Sanibel) the area received in the past seven months, locals waters are literally saturated with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen.
Water quality scientists say the table has been set for a red tide event in the coming six months. The 2005 outbreak lasted for more than a year.
Lionfish
Mike Campbell, head of Lee County’s artificial reef program, has declared war on lionfish and is planning the first battle for early summer 2014.
Natives of the Indo-Pacific region, lionfish have been established from North Carolina to Miami since 2002.
They started showing up off the Southwest Florida coast in 2011; divers are now seeing large numbers of lionfish on deep-water reefs, wrecks and natural ledges.
Lionfish eat large numbers of juvenile fish, including snappers and groupers, and a single lionfish can quickly dominate an ecosystem.
The best way to combat these invaders is a counter attack in the form of a lionfish derby, in which divers compete to see how many lionfish they can kill.
Since 2009, lionfish derbies in the Bahamas, on Florida’s east coast and in the Keys have removed more than 13,000 lionfish.
Campbell is in the initial planning stages of the first Southwest Florida lionfish derby.
Wood storks nesting
Wood storks have not nested six of the last seven years in Corkscrew Swamp, home to the largest stork breeding colony in North America. Managers there are hoping for a boost in breeding numbers this year.
Wood storks are highly specialized feeders that need almost perfect conditions to raise offspring. These wading birds have been on a roller coaster ride, from a population perspective, in recent years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that stork can be down-listed once nesting numbers reach 6,000 in the bird’s historic range for three consecutive years. While that mark was reached three times between 2001 and 2006, recent years have produced nothing at Corkscrew.
Groups like the Florida Home Builders Association are pushing the federal government to down-list the bird, which would make it easier to obtain permits for construction in historic wood stork nesting areas.
This year’s nesting season should be wrapped up by late May or early June

131227-d
Iconic airboats won’t be part of Everglades culture for much longer
Miami Herald - by Sue Cocking
December 27, 2013
Privately operated airboats, icons of the Gladesmen culture of the Everglades, will be dwindling in number because the Park Service isn’t granting any new licenses.
Today, South Florida airboat owners like Keith Price, Don Onstad and Charlie Erwin range freely throughout the East Everglades in their roaring, slough-skimming craft as they have for decades.
They buzz through the sawgrass to a lone pond apple tree they call the “Christmas Tree” — a makeshift memorial decorated with stuffed animals and topped by an American flag where several of their departed friends’ ashes have been scattered by propeller wash. They hunt for artifacts on tree islands like the Duck Club — named for a ramshackle cabin built in the 1950s that’s reputed to have hosted former President Dwight Eisenhower for duck hunting and card playing. They rescue stranded airboaters, escort Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops on slough slogs and pick up countless party balloons that float in from town.
“We are the protectors of the Everglades,” Erwin said.
But maybe not for much longer. The three Gladesmen — all longtime members of the Airboat Association of Florida ranging in age from 60 to 72 — will be among the last private airboaters to operate in the vast marsh south of Tamiami Trail if officials at Everglades National Park get their way.
The park’s proposed general management plan for the next 15 to 20 years calls for an end to all private airboating in the East Everglades once the “grandfathers” who operate there now have died. The region was added to the national park in 1989, and whoever can prove he or she had a registered airboat in Miami-Dade County back then could obtain a non-transferrable, non-renewable permit to operate on designated trails only for the remainder of their lives. Park officials estimate 1,000 to 2,000 airboaters would be affected.
As for longtime commercial airboat tour operators along the Trail — Coopertown, Everglades Safari Park, and Gator Park — the park proposes to buy their properties, turn them into concessionaires and confine their operations to a “front country zone” of about 10,000 to 11,000 acres just south of the Trail. If the park’s preferred plan is adopted sometime next year, then the rest of the East Everglades — more than 80,000 acres — would be designated as wilderness with no mechanical propulsion — even bicycles — allowed.
Park planner Fred Herling says the aim is to strike a balance between the desires of airboaters and other visitors such as paddlers and hikers.
“We acknowledge private airboating and commercial airboating is an important way for people to experience the Everglades,” Herling said. “And there are people who want to experience it in a more wilderness way.”
But long-timers such as Price, Erwin and Onstad argue that the region hasn’t truly been a wilderness for a very long time, that it has been hunted, fished, frogged and farmed for centuries starting with Native Americans and culminating with the Gladesmen, whose culture has evolved over the past 100 years.
“This place is special,” Price, the 60-year-old president of the airboat association, said. “I have pictures of my daughter climbing the trees. My daughter is 40 now and still climbs the trees. They will put up markers and boundaries and tell us we can’t go there because it’s virgin land. There’s something that’s been here longer than the park’s been here and that’s Gladesmen culture. We don’t want to destroy something we want to share with our children and grandchildren. We’re just trying to hang onto our rights.”
And private airboat owners like Price are not the only ones.
All three commercial airboat tour operators along Tamiami Trail acknowledge the National Park Service has approached them over the past month with offers to buy their properties. But no deals have been closed yet, and the business owners are wary of becoming concessionaires, paying rent to the park service with little say in how their day-to-day operations will be conducted.
Going in, the tour operators already were aggravated by being told to cease operations during the federal government shutdown last October. And before that, road and bridge construction on the Trail — aimed at unblocking the flow of fresh water south from Lake Okeechobee through the ’Glades to Florida Bay — deterred some visitors from their attractions. Rick Farace, who runs Everglades Safari Park, says he sees no more water flowing south under the new bridge than before, and that it seems to be going north instead.
“The government can’t even run itself,” Farace said.
There’s actually a scientific explanation for what Farace observed, according to South Florida Water Management District spokesman Gabe Margasak: “It's a good observation. The situation is possible when the northeast Shark River Slough water levels are higher than in the L-29 canal [north of Tamiami Trail]. The district isn't moving any water out of the area. The water is equalizing itself because of recent rainfall. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.”
Erwin, secretary of the airboat club, is frustrated by the impending limitations on airboat access to a place he has enjoyed since boyhood.
“You ate whatever you found out there,” he said. “You’d stick a couple frogs, kill a deer. Anything the park does, they kick out the people who truly love it and let in snowbirds. You get on your little boardwalk and take pictures. With the park service, it’s all about parks for profit.”
Price and his fellow club members — there are about 200 — hope to convince lawmakers to keep the East Everglades open to airboating.
“We need recognition, bringing representatives and senators out here and making them aware of what’s going on,” Price said. “Laws are made by man; they can be changed by man. We won’t let this Gladesmen culture die.”
Related:           Airboats won't be part of Everglades much longer    Wink News
Future rules would make East Everglades off limits to airboats        The News-Press
Airboats won't be part of the Everglades much longer          Tallahassee.com
Airboats may cease to be part of Everglades  Pensacola News Journal
Airboats won't be part of Everglades much longer    In-Depth-MiamiHerald.com

131226-a
Conservation amendment reaches 500K signatures
SaintPetersBlog.com - by Peter Schorsch
December 26, 2013
 A proposed constitutional amendment advancing Everglades land conservation has now submitted over 500,000 verified signatures, according to the state Division of Elections.
Florida Water and Land Legacy need a total 683,149 valid petition signatures by the Feb. 1 deadline for the initiative to make it to onto the November 2014 ballot.
As of Monday, the certified total stands at 519,356.
If passed by voters, the amendment would require Florida to set aside money for conservation of land and other natural resources to help protect the Everglades.
The group raised nearly $2.16 million in contributions through Nov. 30 for the signature collection effort to bring the measure to the ballot. They also passed another milestone recently when the Florida Supreme Court approved the ballot language

131226-b
District completes draft water plan
SouthLakePress.com - Staff Report
December 26, 2013
The St. Johns River Water Management District has completed its draft Water Supply Plan and has made it available at floridaswater.com/DWSP2013 for review and comment by the public, local governments and other stakeholders.
A public meeting to discuss the plan is scheduled for Jan. 28 in Tavares.
The plan was developed as part of the district’s commitment to ensuring that adequate and sustainable water supplies are available to meet future needs, while protecting the environment. The document informs water users about the projected future increase in water demand, sustainable withdrawal limits for water resources and related natural systems, and the methods and means to supply water in a sustainable manner.
“The district’s total population is expected to increase by almost 1.8 million people between 2010 and 2035, and total water demand is expected to increase by 314 million gallons per day,” district spokesman Hank Largin said. “The plan provides water users with a clear plan to meet water supply needs through the year 2035.”
Although water conservation can partially offset the projected increase in water demand, the plan identifies sufficient alternative water supply development options and management techniques to supply the needed water, Largin said.
Individual regional water supply plans are being developed and will be incorporated into the Plan, including information from the Central Florida Water Initiative and theNorth Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership.

131226-c
Northeast Florida residents to discuss water plan and how it affects the St. Johns River
StAugustineRecord.com – by Meredith Rutland
December 26, 2013
The issue of how Central Florida is going to supplement its water supply, and the idea that the St. Johns River could be chosen as a source, will be discussed at a workshop held by the St. Johns River Water Management District.
The public comment period for the Central Florida Water Initiative’s draft water plan has been extended. A public meeting to discuss the water plan and what it means for the river will be from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 16 at the St. Johns River Water Management District headquarters, 4049 Reid St., Palatka.
Central Florida is growing faster than its water source can support. Rather than pull more water from the Floridan aquifer, which is overtapped, water districts from Central and North Florida are looking for other sources of water.
It’s estimated that Central Florida will grow to 4.1 million people by 2035, a 49 percent increase from the population in 2010.
The St. Johns River is one suggested source for that water, and various proposals in the draft plan say as much as 155 million gallons a day could be taken from the river.
River advocates say this plan would threaten the health of the already-strained river, such as increasing toxic algae blooms.
The St. Johns Water Management District asserts the suggested plans aren’t final. However, if implemented, the 155 million gallons a day would be a safe amount to take from the St. Johns River, said Tom Bartol, assistant director of the Division of Regulatory, Engineering and Environmental Services for the St. Johns River Water Management District.
To review the full plan, go to cfwiwater.com. Public comment will be collected until Jan. 31.

131226-d
Water should be a top priority
Sun Sentinel – by Editorial Board
December 26, 2013
After years of official neglect, Florida's precious but imperiled waterways are finally starting to draw the attention they badly need from the state's leaders. It's about time.
State Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam has made the issue a priority. So, too, have the next Senate president and House speaker, placing water at the front and center of new initiatives coming out of the Florida Legislature.
But talk, as the saying goes, is cheap. The Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott will need to put some serious money and regulatory muscle into protecting and restoring Florida's waterways.
The state can't tolerate ecological disasters like this summer's polluted discharges from a bloated Lake Okeechobee that wreaked havoc along the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers.
The devastation prompted stinky algae blooms, cut into area tourism and prompted state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and other lawmakers to request more than $220 million in increased spending to improve the quality of water flowing in and out of Lake Okeechobee.
Unfortunately, more damage can occur if the state's current hodgepodge of water polices doesn't soon become a comprehensive plan. Florida's waterways are not only the source of the state's drinking water, but the lifeblood of its agricultural industry, the foundation of its rich and diverse ecosystems and wildlife, and a critical component of its tourism-driven economy.
Florida has no future without clean water.
Federal and state lawmakers launched a multibillion-dollar effort years ago to restore the Everglades, an initiative that has been plagued by the lack of quick federal funding and the excruiating delays in the federal permitting process by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Still, pledges by Gov. Rick Scott to budget $40 million to build the C-44 reservoir on the St. Lucie side of the lake and another $90 million to finish raising parts of Tamiami Trail to allow for more water to flow under the highway into Everglades National Park are promising.
Until now, state lawmakers haven't been up to the challenge. Earlier this year, for example, the Legislature approved just $10 million to restore springs in Central Florida, although the regional water management district estimated that $120 million would be needed for the job.
Now a bipartisan group of state senators has drafted a comprehensive plan to protect and restore springs. He says the plan is intended to complement, not supplant, the other water restoration efforts.
A plan by Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, addresses a critical need in Central Florida, but lawmakers should avoid the danger of squabbling over local projects when waterways across the state are threatened.
A comprehensive approach is needed to reduce fertilizer runoff from farms, suburban lawns and septic tanks. It also must address measures to increase water recycling and storage, and limit pumping. Such steps would address the two sides of the water problem in Florida: quality and quantity.
The talk of completing restoration work along the Kissimmee River to reduce nutrient flows into Lake Okeechobee, for example, is encouraging, but long overdue.
Environmentalists are rightly skeptical of any plans from the Legislature. Lawmakers have underfunded efforts before, and been too timid in regulating polluters. They'll need to go beyond superficial suggestions. They'll need to follow through with decisive, effective action.
The multibillion-dollar cost of restoring the Everglades is a stark lesson for lawmakers in the economics of neglecting water problems. As expensive as steps to solve these problems might seem now, they'll be peanuts compared to the bill in the future if nothing is done.

131225-
DEP survey on permitting costs concerns environmentalists
Tampa Bay Times – by Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
December 25, 2013
For four months, Florida's environmental regulators have been asking businesses and local governments how much their rules are costing.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has been sending out surveys asking questions like, "What kinds of costs did you incur applying for your industrial wastewater permit ?" and, "Would you be required to incur the costs … if not for the permit application and compliance requirements?"
"I've never seen a survey like this before," said Vicki Tschinkel, who ran the DEP's predecessor, the Department of Environmental Regulation, from 1981 to 1987 and now is on the board of 1,000 Friends of Florida.
Florida environmentalists are alarmed by the survey's focus on tabulating the cost of 15 permits that are supposed to protect the environment.
"It looks over the top, like they're saying, 'Give us reasons to reduce regulations in Florida,' " said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon Florida.
The survey says the DEP is asking these questions because the agency "wishes to better understand the economic impacts our regulations have on permit and license holders."
Actually, the goal is aimed more toward the future, explained DEP press secretary Patrick Gillespie. Under state law, he said, "any time any agency proposes a rule change, it has to calculate whether the proposed rule would have a cost attached to it."
But it can be hard to calculate the cost without knowing the price tag of the current rules, he said.
"The department sent out the survey to regulated businesses to try to collect data for any future proposed rule changes," Gillespie said.
A Tampa Bay Times request to see the results of the survey so far did not yield the names of respondents, but the DEP spreadsheet did show the numbers in various categories.
Since the surveys began going out in August, 72 responses have come back to the DEP. Twenty-five replies came from businesses, 14 from individuals, 17 from counties, seven from cities and nine from other government agencies.
Fifty of them reported that they had obtained permits from the DEP, 43 had gotten state permits from one of the five water management districts, and 16 had gotten permits from city or county governments.
Three types of permits were the most common: Eleven said they had gotten consumptive-use permits for pumping water from the aquifer; 23 said they had received environmental resource permits, issued for filling in wetlands or building docks; and 23 got permits for dealing with stormwater runoff.
Of the 11 that got consumptive-use permits, three identified themselves as power plant owners, and eight said they had spent more than $10,000 fulfilling all the requirements for the permit.
Of the 23 that obtained an environmental resource permit, 17 said they had spent more than $10,000 and five said they had spent more than $5,000. A majority of those who responded to the survey said they wouldn't have spent that much money — on consultants, engineering, biological monitoring and other expenses — if it hadn't been for the permit.
The survey does not ask any questions about the results of those permits, prompting Lee to say, "It suggests a fixation on something that's not part of keeping Florida green."

131224-a
Burmese python becomes gator bait in Everglades
CBS Miami
December 24, 2013
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The Florida Everglades is known for its famous river of grass, unique wildlife and of course, those annoying and invasive Burmese pythons.
But there’s one less python slithering through the River of Grass after losing its battle with an alligator on its home turf.
A photo taken in the Everglades National Park and posted on the agency’s Facebook page shows a large python jutting out of the mouth of an equally large alligator.
The Facebook posting reads: ‘Gator and Python Report!’
“Earlier this month Park staff were notified by Mr. Steve Greene of another “Gator and Python” incident. Mr. Greene reported the following: “I saw this… as you are heading to Royal Palm. The Gator was thrashing around which caught my attention. The gator was moving fast and very determined to get under the bridge.”
Park officials said alligators, an apex predator in the Everglades, are sometimes seen consuming the large snakes.
But sometimes the reverse can happen.
In 2005, wildlife researchers found a dead, headless python after it apparently tried to digest a 6-foot-long alligator.
The 13-foot python actually bust his gut open while trying to digest the gator. The mostly intact dead gator was found sticking out of a hole in the midsection of the python, and wads of gator skin were found in the snake’s gastrointestinal tract.
Burmese pythons, according to researchers, regard the Everglades as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The snakes, which have no natural predators in the area, are native to India and other parts of Asia.
The large population of the Burmese pythons is likely due to humans releasing pets into the wild, either intentionally or in Hurricane Andrew’s aftermath in 1992.
Wildlife officials are working hard to control the python population before it undermines the ongoing efforts to restore natural water flow through the Everglades.
Related:           Everglades National Park gator wins battle vs. invasive Burmese ... ABC Action
Alligator wins reptile death match      NEWS.com.au
Burmese Python Becomes Gator Bait In Everglades CBS Local
Search on for rock pythons in Florida            Lehigh Acres News Star

131224-b
Citrus canker found in Northwest Florida
CrestviewBulletin.com - by Larry Williams, Okaloosa County Extension Office
December 24, 2013
Citrus canker is a serious disease of citrus trees that was recently confirmed for the first time in southern Santa Rosa County. Because of questions I’m getting from the public, I’d like to share the following article written by Blake Thaxton and Mary Derrick, with University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension office in Santa Rosa County, and Mikaela Anderson, with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Division of Plant Industry.
Canker is caused by the bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri. Citrus canker has been a major pest in south and central Florida. It is economically damaging to the citrus industry and is also problematic to homeowners because it causes premature fruit drop and discolored fruit. Eventually infected trees become unproductive.
Canker was first introduced in 1912 into Florida and was declared eradicated in 1933. The disease was found again in the Tampa area in 1986. It was declared eradicated in 1994, but once again was found in 1995 in Miami. This time, the disease was not successfully eradicated, in part because hurricanes made the disease too widespread to control.
Despite its prevalence in south and central Florida, this disease has not been known in the Panhandle. The University of Florida and FDACS/DPI will be assessing the extent of the disease in Santa Rosa County.
How might you know if your citrus is infected by canker? One of the best indicators of canker is the presence of lesions, diseased spots, on the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves. The lesions are raised and have a rough surface and are surrounded by yellow halos. Similar lesions may be present on the fruit and stems as well.
If you suspect that your trees may have citrus canker, contact the DPI helpline at 1-888-397-1517 before taking any action, to reduce accidental spread of this disease.
Canker is highly contagious to citrus only and spreads rapidly due to wind, rain its presence on people's hands, clothes and tools.
Do not transport plant material that shows canker symptoms. Decontamination practices should be used when going from one citrus tree to the next. Hand washing with soap and water for 20 seconds or more to eliminate bacterium on the skin should be practiced, as well as using alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Pruning tools that come into contact with citrus should be disinfected by a fresh solution of one ounce of household bleach to one gallon of water.
Do not move a plant infected with citrus canker. Please call your local extension office for further instructions.

131224-c
Disagreements flow over Florida springs' future
Herald Tribune - by Fred Hiers, Halifax Media Group
December 24, 2013
Robert Knight's prediction for many of the springs in this region is bleak.
To glimpse their future, the environmental scientist said, just take stock of the springs' problems today: too much groundwater pumping and too much polluting nitrates.
In a decade or two, some area springs will be reduced to little more than standing pools of water, backwash from the rivers they once fed, Knight and some other scientists think.
Other springs will become flowing green stews of algae feeding off polluting nitrates from over fertilizing, too many septic tanks and aging wastewater treatment plants.
Knight is director of the nonprofit Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute and president of Wetland Solutions Inc. in Gainesville.
Other scientists and government agencies disagree with his bleak prognosis, saying there is still hope that the springs can be coaxed into better health.
They say that most of the flow problem can be attributed to the recent droughts, not overpumping.
Read this special report at fragilesprings.com.

131224-d
EPA appeals District Court ruling to exempt farmyard runoff from discharge permits
Bloomberg BNA.com – by Amena H. Saiyid
December 24, 2013
The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to review a district court ruling that said the agency can't require farmers to obtain Clean Water Act discharge permits for agricultural stormwater runoff from farmyards (Alt v. EPA, 4th Cir., No. 13-2534, appeal filed 12/23/13).
The Dec. 23 appeal by EPA follows an Oct. 23 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia holding that stormwater runoff from litter and manure is exempt from National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting requirements under Section 402 of the Clean Water Act (Alt v. EPA, 2013 BL 218814, N.D. W.Va., No. 2:12-cv-00042, 10/23/13; ).
The environmental groups Food and Water Watch, Potomac Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance, Center for Food Safety and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which intervened on behalf of the EPA, also filed separate notice of appeal Dec. 20 of the ruling.
The district court ruled that litter and manure washed from “the farmyard to navigable waters by a precipitation event is an agricultural stormwater discharge, and, therefore, not a point source discharge, thereby rendering it exempt from the NPDES permit requirement of the Clean Water Act.”
Lawsuit Filed in 2012.
At issue was a 2012 lawsuit filed by West Virginia poultry grower Lois Alt against the EPA, challenging the agency's authority to regulate livestock farms under the Clean Water Act by interpreting regulations in ways that treat ordinary agricultural stormwater runoff as “process wastewater,” effectively making all areas of poultry farms regulated production areas.
In particular, the district court said the areas between poultry houses are clearly not animal confinement areas and that manure and litter in the farmyard “would remain in place and not become discharges of a pollutant unless and until stormwater conveyed the particles to navigable waters.”
Alt challenged the basis for the EPA administrative order against the Eight is Enough broiler operation near Old Fields, W.Va., that threatened penalties as high as $37,500 a day for not obtaining an NPDES permit.
EPA could not be reached for comment on the appeal.
However, Scott Edwards, co-founder of the Food and Water Justice, a project of Food and Water Watch, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 23, “We believe that the court completely misapplied well-settled law in exempting the Alt pollution discharges from the Clean Water Act.”
Edwards said, “The court has, in effect, given these highly polluting, yet sorely under-regulated facilities, an even greater license to pollute. Not only does the law require permits for the kinds of pollution that Alt admits is coming from her operation, but the deteriorating conditions of our waterways demands it.”
Ellen Steen, general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which intervened on behalf of Alt in the case, told Bloomberg BNA in a Dec. 23 e-mail, “If EPA wishes to persist in its unlawful application of the Clean Water Act, we are pleased to take the matter to the appellate court. We are confident the Fourth Circuit, too, will decide this case in favor of Mrs. Alt.”

131223-a
Desalination is the answer to water shortage
Orlando Sentinel - by Choice Edwards, Clermont, FL
December 23, 2013
At a recent Central Florida Water Initiative public meeting in Clermont, the group's spokesperson laid out a vision for dealing with the fast-approaching water shortage. The spokesperson mentioned numerous groundwater and reclamation initiatives but only one addressing desalination. In fact, desalination was listed No. 5 of several future initiatives. Fifth!
I am ignorant about many things and water shortage is one of those. Nonetheless, I do know that only 70 percent of the planet is covered with water and that seawater accounts for all of that except for a small fraction. That is an almost inexhaustible potential supply of the most precious thing on Earth aside from oxygen.
I also know that surface-water withdrawals are finite and, according to most people in the know, is rapidly dwindling. Not everyone is onboard with conserving when others are not inclined to do the same. Water impact fees will be opposed by big business.
The answer for the long term is desalination of seawater. I know desalination is purported to be harmful to the environment, consumes lots of energy and is expensive. So what? Education is thought by some to be expensive. However, we are wise enough to prefer that cost over the cost of ignorance. If you think desalination is expensive now, see how costly it will be after we become more and more embroiled in water wars.
Already, some states are engaged in battles over surface-water withdrawals. Regarding desalination, some say, "That dog won't hunt" and "that mule won't plow."
However, desalination is the only game in town not dependent upon the unpredictability of rainfall. Mother Nature gives the example of how to desalinate seawater.
Today, desalination is a common process that's used in seaside cities and towns worldwide. There are 15,000 desalination plants around the world providing freshwater from salt and brackish water. The U.S. had 324 as of 2010, according to research.
This number continues to grow as researchers work to improve the process, both in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency.
It doesn't take an astrophysicist like Neil deGrasse Tyson to figure this one out.
Thirsty people will pay the future higher cost of potable water, or take it from those who have it.
Consider this: the Sabal Trail Transmission LLC wants to build a 474-mile natural-gas pipeline from Alabama to Florida at a cost of $3 billion. The Tampa Bay desalination plant cost $158 million to build. Don't tell me we don't have the money — we only lack the will to do the obvious.
Remember the old Fram oil-filter commercial? The familiar line is apt in this discussion: "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."

131223-b
Studies: Indian River Lagoon Facing ‘Uniform Mortality Event'
TheLedger.com - (Part 1 of 5) by Dinah Voyles Pulver, Halifax Media Group
December 23, 2013 at 12:48 a.m.
A CRISIS GRIPS THE INDIAN RIVER LAGOON
Record numbers of manatees, dolphins and pelicans died in the past year — often from mysterious maladies. Sea grass flats are decimated. Unprecedented algae blooms have formed.
To the casual observer driving along the lagoon system, which stretches 156 miles between Volusia and Palm Beach counties, the estuary seems an ecological gem. But looks are deceiving.
Decades of ditching, draining and pollution left the lagoon system vulnerable and tipped toward catastrophe, experts say. Over the past three years, massive algae blooms have blocked light to the sea grasses, the foundation of the diverse ecosystem. More than 60 percent of its sea grasses — at least 47,000 acres — are gone. Scientists are looking into whether the algae blooms are a factor in the marine life deaths.
Repairing the damage to the lagoon system will take years and agency wish lists for restoration projects total into the billions of dollars. But those who depend on the lagoon system for their livelihoods are already measuring the cost of its degradation in terms of ruined crab and clam harvests, lost fishing, and tourism opportunities.
"I'm very, very concerned," said Edgewater Mayor Mike Thomas. "This is our lifeline. We make our living off that water."
In recent months, The News-Journal traveled the length of the lagoon system interviewing more than 100 people and reviewing dozens of documents to understand what's happened and what can be done to repair the damage. Experts offer a bleak outlook.
"My greatest concern is that we have reached a tipping point and we may not be able to get back," said John Windsor, a professor and program chair of Marine and Environmental Systems at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. "There have been some really bad indicators."
MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS, BROWN WATER
After three years of algae blooms, a mysterious illness stalks the lagoon system's sea life. Scientists studying the resulting deaths call it a "uniform mortality event." Not including numerous fish kills, the death toll since the summer of 2012 stands at:
76 bottlenose dolphins;
250 brown pelicans;
At least 116 manatees, and possibly more. All told, more than 250 manatees have died in the lagoon system. Many of the manatee carcasses were too decomposed to determine whether the deaths were a result of the mysterious illness.
Beyond the algae blooms and marine life deaths in the central and northern part of the lagoon system this summer, massive water releases from Lake Okeechobee and the surrounding region basin poured into the lagoon system's southern end for months. Brown water, carrying pollutants from an area that reaches as far north as Orlando, wiped out sea grass beds, killed fish and shellfish and fed toxic algae blooms that triggered human health alerts in Martin County.
Those water releases, though devastating for the southern end of the lagoon system, didn't reach into Brevard or Volusia counties. But they did draw new state and national attention to the plight of the lagoon system.
The foul water flow elicited protests from residents and officials to the south, as well as from southwest Florida, where similar releases from the Lake Okeechobee region flowed into an estuary through the Caloosahatchee River. The protests triggered a state Senate select committee and a Congressional briefing in Washington. Hoping for federal cash to fix the troubles afflicting the lagoon system, Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, the groups are now urging President Barack Obama to come see the situation for himself.
The lagoon system fringes Florida's east coast between Ponce Inlet and Jupiter Inlet, a collection of rivers and estuaries that resemble a large saltwater lake spanning two climate zones. Its length and proximity to key ocean currents in South Florida and the Caribbean are the reasons some consider it the world's most diverse estuary, with an array of more than 4,300 species of fish, plants, shellfish and other wildlife.
The St. Johns River Water Management District estimates the total annual economic impact of the lagoon system at $3.7 billion, including commercial and recreational fishing, tourism and research and education.
But its diversity and ability to attract tourists that help drive the economy may be in peril.
The water in the lagoon system used to remind Edgewater's Mayor Thomas of the Florida Keys. "I loved looking down at the bottom and seeing the rays and horseshoe crabs and all the different varieties of wildlife. But you can't see that today."
Dozens of scientists, research groups and others are trying to understand the myriad changes taking place in the system, what those changes mean for the future, and whether anything can be done to reverse the change.
YEARS OF WARNING
In 2002, Jim Egan, a former executive director of the nonprofit Marine Resources Council, told The News-Journal: "The next decade will decide whether the Indian River Lagoon becomes more sterile or it retains production as it has for thousands of years."
Today, the phrase often used in meetings and forums to describe the disaster in the lagoon system is "perfect storm." Some longtime residents think of it more as death by a thousand cuts.
Neal Goodrich, whose family has lived in Oak Hill for more than a century, remembers the pristine, beautiful waterways of his youth. He's among those relying on those waterways for his livelihood, working to keep his fishing guide business alive despite algae blooms that sometimes make it hard to find fish.
When Goodrich takes clients out, they tell him he lives in paradise. He tells them: "You should have been here 30 or 40 years ago."
In the 1950s, Mosquito Lagoon sparkled in the late afternoon sun, alive with thousands of silvery mullet leaping over the water, Goodrich said. Sea grass grew so long, "it'd come clean out of the water" on flats legendary for the sport fish they attracted.
Over time, he and his cousin, Jim Goodrich, have seen more boats, houses and storm water, more spraying for mosquitoes and invasive species, and more causeways bridging the lagoon system to the beach and Cape Canaveral, all of which they believe afflict the estuary.
For others who have been around since the start of restoration efforts, like Duane DeFreese, a national expert on coastal and ocean research, recent conversations seem like déjà vu.
"We were talking about nutrients and water clarity back in the late 1970s and early 1980s," said DeFreese, a Brevard County resident and senior vice president for Aquafiber Technologies Corp. in Orlando.
A FRAGILE SYSTEM
The Florida Legislature passed the Indian River Lagoon Protection Act in 1990. Huge reductions were made in the flow of wastewater and efforts began to improve storm water treatment, but officials say the directive to target areas where septic tanks were a threat was never completed.
Trouble periodically reappeared. Sea turtles grew tennis ball-sized tumors. Dolphins developed skin disorders, fungal diseases and humanlike viruses.
Still, as restoration efforts continued, the future seemed brighter. Sea grasses flourished in 2009, thanks in large part to Mother Nature. Several years with below-normal rainfall meant less storm water ran into the lagoon system. That meant less pollution from nearby streets and yards.
But the lack of fresh water can be a blessing or a curse in the lagoon system, where species depend on a fragile balance between water that is too fresh or too salty.
By 2009 and 2010, salinity levels in parts of the system reached near record highs. In Mosquito Lagoon, salinity reached more than 40 parts per thousand, even higher than ocean water, said Joel Steward, a technical program manager for the St. Johns water district.
Then, in early January 2010, overnight low temperatures dropped to freezing or below for more than a week straight in Daytona Beach and Melbourne. Water temperature in Haulover Canal, which crosses from the Indian River to Mosquito Lagoon just south of Oak Hill, reached a low of 39 degrees.
The frigid temperatures killed thousands of fish and prompted the rescue of hundreds of ailing green sea turtles.
Steward suspects the freezes also caused massive deaths among microscopic plankton and large masses of drift algae that may have played a larger role in the system than anyone realized.
The dying algae likely delivered a double whammy, water district scientists said, no longer filtering the water and releasing its own load of nutrients into the water as it died.
A wild swing in temperatures then resulted in one of the hottest summers on record, then another prolonged freeze in December 2010. Into that weakened system, Mother Nature delivered one more blow.
On the last four days of March 2011, 4.56 inches of rain fell in the region, washing dirt, slime and chemicals from yards and streets into the lagoon system. Experts say it probably fueled a massive blue-green algae "superbloom" that had already started in the Banana River in Brevard County between Cape Canaveral and Indian Harbour Beach. It quickly multiplied and spread into the northern Indian River Lagoon and into Mosquito Lagoon.
Blocked from essential sunlight, the sea grass began to die, releasing even more nutrients to feed the monster algae bloom. Researchers studying the marine animal deaths are looking into whether the loss of sea grass played a role. It's the main food source for manatees, the scientists said, and a key resource for fish eaten by dolphins.
‘DO SOMETHING'
Infuriated by the algae blooms, Diane Barile, who helped found the Marine Resources Council to push for lagoon restoration in 1983, spoke to the Brevard County Commission at an October workshop.
"I failed. You failed. Everybody in this room failed," the retired educator told the commission, drawing wild cheers and applause from the audience of more than 200.
"Do something," she said. "Stop talking."
But deciding what to do is a challenge. While many officials and experts say they understand that emotion, they say a measured approach — taking into consideration what has and hasn't worked and where to get the most impact for money spent — will take time.
Brevard Commissioner Chuck Nelson said the many agencies responsible for the lagoon system are "reaching those kinds of decision points where you'd better err on the side of the lagoon, because once it's gone you're not going to get it back."
The water district has committed $3.7 million over the next three years — over and above its $500,000 annual science budget for the lagoon system — to investigate what's going on in the lagoon system and why. A full report is expected in 2017. District scientists want to learn more about how water moves in the lagoon and how levels of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen drive what happens.
Steward said the time it takes the lagoon system and its sea grass beds and wildlife to recover will depend on the strength and frequency of disturbances, its natural resilience, and human action to protect the estuary.
To former state Rep. Tony Sasso, who now heads Keep Brevard Beautiful, it's alarming to hear experts say the entire makeup of the lagoon system may be changing into a phytoplankton system from a critter system.
"It's like holy smokes, that's a big deal," said the marine engineer. "That's game-changing kind of stuff."
Paul Eberle of New Smyrna Beach often kayaks on the Mosquito Lagoon, one of three waterways in the lagoon system. He's concerned for its future based on the events of the past year.
"It's such a precious thing we have," Eberle said. "Let's not destroy it."

131223-c
Why the next major hurricane could devastate Miami
MotherJones.com - by Greg Hanscom
December 23, 2013
Miami dodged a bullet during Hurricane Andrew. It may not be so lucky next time.
This story originally appeared on Grist, and is reproduced here as part of the ClimateDesk collaboration.
Note to self: The next time you take the Climate Change Tour of Miami with Nicole Hernandez Hammer, bring Dramamine.
I'm sitting in the back seat of a rental car as Hammer, the assistant director for research at the Florida Center for Environmental Studies, careens around the Magic City like Danica Patrick. One of her graduate students rides shotgun, navigating with her iPhone.
Our mission for the day is to survey parts of this city that will be flooded as climate change continues to drive up the level of the sea. Hammer, who studies the impacts of sea-level rise on infrastructure and communities, has kindly agreed to act as my tour guide and pilot. I'm just hoping I can keep my breakfast down.
Our first stop is Star Island, where celebs like Don Johnson, Gloria Estefan, and Shaquille O'Neal have owned homes over the years. For a cool $18-$35 million, the local realtors known as The Jills would be happy to set you up with your own walled-in villa where you can sit in your rooftop hot tub and listen to the waves lapping a little too close to your foundation.
Next, we drive through Opa-locka, a neighborhood built in the 1920s by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss, themed after the Arabian Nights. City hall, which sits on Sharazad Blvd., is a Moorish castle. The neighborhood is now mired in poverty and crime, and, adding insult to injury, it will sooner or later be mired in seawater: Even though it sits well inland, behind the coastal ridge, its low elevation means that water will flood in via the porous limestone on which the whole city is built.
We drive out to Virginia Key, where Miami-Dade County is in the process of doing a $1.6 billion upgrade on a sewage treatment plant that critics say could be vulnerable to catastrophic damage with just a couple of feet of sea level rise. South of here is the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, which sustained serious damage in Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
And therein, as the saying goes, lies the rub. Sea-level rise happens relatively slowly—it's often measured in millimeters per year. But throw a major storm on top of rising seas, and things can get ugly in a hurry. Andrew, which slammed into the Florida coast on Aug. 24, 1992, was the latest case in point.
"I was here for Andrew," Hammer says. "It tore our house apart."
The statement brings me up short: "I'm sorry. Come again?"
The last time a major hurricane hit Miami directly was in 1926. It's only a matter of time, forecasters say, before the next one arrives.
"It was the day after Lollapalooza," Hammer recalls. "I was 16." She and her mother and two younger brothers — Oscar, 10 (who, incidentally, grew up to be this guy), and Mikey, 6—were home in their stucco, ranch-style house in a middle-class subdivision called King's Grant. A storm was brewing off the coast, and an aunt and uncle and two young cousins had joined them. Hammer's father, a physician, was at work at Baptist Hospital of Miami, about a 30-minute drive away. "We were like, ‘Oh, it's a sleepover.' We were joking and singing songs," Hammer says.
The next thing Hammer remembers is the walls beginning to vibrate: "It started getting really loud. It was like a train running all around the house." When windows started shattering, the family retreated to an inside hallway. When entire rooms began to collapse, they fled to the living room, where they huddled with the family's dog, a pug named Bugsy, under a pile of overturned couches.
"My uncle took the dining room table and jammed it against the front door because it kept blowing in," Hammer says. "The roof was coming off in chunks. It was pouring rain, and we were lying in about 6 inches of water."
At some point during the mayhem, her father called from the hospital to see if they were OK. By some stroke of luck (or its opposite), the phone rang just as a window blew in, knocking the receiver off the hook. The last thing he heard before the connection cut out was his children screaming.
Andrew was eventually deemed a Category 5 hurricane, as strong as they come. It hit like a buzz saw, lashing the coast with 165 mile-per-hour winds, dumping eight inches of rain on Miami-Dade County, and kicking up storm tides reaching almost 17 feet. In the process, it tossed cars and boats around like a kid throwing a sandbox tantrum. The community of Homestead, which was hit head-on, was almost completely leveled. Some 1.4 million people lost power and 150,000 lost telephone service.
Hammer doesn't know how long she and her family huddled in their living room before the wind finally subsided. She does remember it getting suddenly quiet—and hoping that it wasn't just a temporary lull as the eye of the storm passed overhead. "We thought, if it's the eye, if we're only halfway through, we're not going to make it," she says.
Eventually, they heard a car pull into the driveway. It was Hammer's father. Finding everyone soaked but alive (the pug made it, too—Hammer says one of her brothers kept him safe by lying on top of him), Mr. Hernandez took them to the hospital. "It was crowded and noisy," Hammer recalls. "But what I remember most is the smell. There was this funk—it was hot-and-sick-people smell."
All told, Andrew had done more than $25 billion in damage. In Dade County alone, it killed 15 people, destroyed more than 25,000 homes, damaged many more, and left a quarter million people temporarily homeless.
But it could have been much worse. The storm made landfall south of the city proper, missing touristy Miami Beach and the downtown area, as well as the Port of Miami and the airport. And for all its power, it was relatively small. "Andrew was a compact system," says the summary on the National Hurricane Center's website. "A little larger system, or one making landfall just a few nautical miles further to the north, would have been catastrophic…"
Since then, the stakes have only gotten higher. More than 5.5 million people now live in metro Miami, and the seas have steadily risen. According to a report released in May by the real estate data company CoreLogic, 132,000 homes in Miami, worth $48 billion, are vulnerable to hurricane-driven storm-surge damage. With a one-foot rise in sea level, those numbers jump to 340,000 homes and $94 billion. The World Bank ranks Miami as the most climate vulnerable city in the world.
Hurricane Andrew spurred a major overhaul of building codes in Florida and other coastal areas, but no one doubts that a direct hit from a category 5 storm could wreak massive havoc here. The last time a major hurricane hit Miami directly was in 1926. It's only a matter of time, forecasters say, before the next one arrives.
After the chaos of Andrew had subsided, Hammer's mother loaded the kids into the car and drove north to the Delray Beach area, where they started over from scratch. The kids never saw the house in King's Grant—or what was left of it—again.
But Hammer's mother has since moved back to the city, and Hammer says her work is motivated by a love for this place, however vulnerable it may be. "The scary thing is, in Miami, the storms come and then they go. We leave and then we come back stronger," Hammer muses as she drives me back to my hotel. "But sea level rise is becoming the new normal. The way we adapt and become more resilient has to change."
I'll talk more about that, and about how environmental and economic factors are conspiring to force Miami to change, in future posts.

131222-a
Global warming scientist warns Florida will be under water
Guardian Liberty Voice - by Michele Wessel
December 22, 2013.
A senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Jane Long, has warned Florida residents that global warming will lead to them being under water. The remarks were made at a recent three-day conference targeting journalists and addressing the issue of global warming and worldwide climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Though there was discussion of global climate change, Florida was a hot topic as presenters discussed the consequences of rising sea levels. Leonard Berry, a professor at Florida Atlantic University and also a presenter at the conference told his audience “(c)limate change for us in Florida is not a future problem….it’s a current problem.” Berry used photos from 2012 flooding to demonstrate his point.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a rise in sea level of one to two feet by the middle of this century and a rise in sea level of four to six feet by the end of this century. According to Berry, cities like Tampa Bay have “major problems at three feet.” He attributes Florida’s particular vulnerabiliy to both sea level rise from global warming and the presence of sinkholes in the area which means that in addition to the water rising, the land is sinking creating a perfect storm for eventual flooding.
To make matters worse for Florida, and the rest of the world, scientists are not particularly optimistic about the possibility of reversing problems already begun by global warming. The problem being that energy use continues to rise,  which leads to  a rise in carbon dioxide emissions and a subsequent rise in the temperature of the Earth. According to Long and others, even if all emissions were stopped tomorrow, global warming would continue for thousands of years.
Long’s view is that “(w)e’re failing completely on a global scale.” Despite great efforts to inspire global change, results are minimal, even in areas like Florida that have now been warned they face a future under water. While Florida officials have begun to address the problem, there has been little action among citizens and business owners toward making true change. According to Ben Strauss, director of the Program on Sea Level Rise, “people tend to underestimate the gravity” of the problem, perhaps largely because the issue seems as though it is something that will need to be addressed only in the far off future.
Not so, if Long’s warning that portions of Florida could be under water as a result of global warming by the middle of the current century is to be believed. Some others weighing in on the issue agree with her prediction, saying that when sea level rises an additional two to three feet, Florida will “start to lose everything” in coastal areas.
Scientists maintain that only a truly global response to the problem has any hope of making an impact on the effects of global warming already in process. They explain that above all else, carbon dioxide emissions must be cut, with recommendations that the United States alone cut its emissions by at least 80% by the middle of the century. Those kind of cuts mean more reliance on nuclear and renewable energy sources. Development of alternate energy sources isn’t currently happening in Florida, or anywhere else in America, on a scale wide enough to have the level of impact needed.
Like Long and her prediction that global warming will lead to Florida being under water by mid-century, Harold R. Wanless, a professor at the University of Miami has also said that now is the time for Floridians to prepare for the rise in sea level that is seemingly inevitable. Professor Wanless has expressed his frustration with current engineering plots to remedy the problems that could arise from future flooding, and insists that the best solution at this point is simply to move inland and stop all further development along the coastline.

131222-b
Water problems demand action statewide
Orlando Sentinel - Editorial
December 22, 2013
It's past time to act on state's water issues. Florida has no future without clean water. Federal and state lawmakers launched a multibillion-dollar effort years ago to restore the Everglades, but the progress has been halting and generally slow, mared in political posturing, bureaucratic battles and law suites.
 "After years of official neglect, Florida's precious but imperiled waterways are finally starting to draw the attention they badly need from the state's leaders. It's about time."
The two lawmakers in line to be Senate president and House speaker after the 2014 elections, both Central Florida Republicans, have declared that dealing with water problems will be among their priorities. State Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam has been active and outspoken on the issue, too.
But talk, as the saying goes, is cheap. The Legislature and Gov. Scott will need to put some serious money and regulatory muscle into protecting and restoring Florida's waterways.
Those waterways are not only the source of the state's drinking water, but the lifeblood of its agricultural industry, the foundation of its rich and diverse ecosystems and wildlife, and a critical component of its tourism-driven economy. Florida has no future without clean water.
Federal and state lawmakers launched a multibillion-dollar effort years ago to restore the Everglades, but other Florida waterways in distress; including the state's iconic natural springs and the Indian River Lagoon demand action, too.
State lawmakers, until now, haven't been up to the challenge. Earlier this year, for example, they set aside only $15.5 million for springs restoration in the $74 billion state budget. And that was after the state's regional water-management districts estimated that $120 million would be needed for the job.
The tide could be turning. Last month a state Senate committee recommended a $220 million plan to rescue the Indian River Lagoon and other badly degraded waterways.
Now a bipartisan group of state senators, led by Altamonte Springs Republican David Simmons, has drafted a comprehensive plan to restore and protect springs. Other lawmakers, including Orlando Democrats Darren Soto and Linda Stewart, also have been working on springs legislation.
Simmons' plan includes measures aimed at reducing pollution from fertilizer runoff from farms and lawns, and from septic tanks. It also includes provisions to increase water recycling and storage, and limit pumping. Such steps would address the two sides of the water problem in Florida: quality and quantity. Simmons says these efforts could be funded with a portion of documentary-stamp revenue, a $2 billion-a-year pot of money.
Environmentalists are rightly skeptical of any plans from the Legislature. Lawmakers have underfunded efforts before, and been too timid in taking on polluters. They'll need to follow through this time with decisive, effective action.
The multibillion-dollar cost of restoring the Everglades is a stark lesson for lawmakers in the economics of neglecting water problems. As expensive as steps to solve those problems might seem now, they'll be peanuts compared to the bill in the future if nothing is done.

131221-
Wildlife officers determined to catch nasty python invading South Florida
Miami Herald - by Sue Cocking
December 21-
State and federal wildlife biologists have pretty much given up hope of eradicating some exotic species invading Florida such as the lionfish, tegu lizard, and Burmese python.
But they feel like they still have a chance to knock out another: the Northern African python.
Growing larger than the notorious Burmese and with a nastier disposition, the snake also known as the African rock python was first spotted in South Florida in 2002 — probably an abandoned pet. About 30 have been found over the past five years, mainly around the C-4 levee north of Tamiami Trail, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wildlife biologist Jennifer Eckles.
While Eckles said there’s no estimate of the population, the snakes may be confined to about a 10-square-mile area north and south of the Trail east of Krome Avenue.
“It doesn’t seem like they are spreading outside this range,” Eckles said.
“The fact that they haven’t been found in Everglades National Park makes us think they are confined to this area,” she said. “We haven’t found any hatchlings in a long time. We haven’t found any hatched eggs. The females we’ve found had unfertilized eggs, so we’re hoping we’ve already impacted their population enough that they’re having a hard time trying to reproduce.”
Eckles and colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Florida, Miami-Dade County, South Florida Water Management District and Everglades National Park conduct regular searches, including one Friday covering about a half-mile of the C-4 levee.
Armed with snake hooks, they patrolled the levee road and its banks, looking under rocks and piles of melaleuca timber.
“You look for that iridescent shine,” said Liz Barraco, the Fish and Wildlife’s exotic pet amnesty program coordinator.
But searchers came up empty-handed.
“These weren’t necessarily ideal weather conditions,” Barraco said. “After a cool night and a warm morning, you are likely to catch them basking.”
If the hunt had been successful, Eckles said, snakes would have been euthanized and studied. So far, their stomach contents have included Muscovy ducks, raccoons and opossums.
While Northern African pythons can grow to 20 feet, the largest found in Florida so far measured 14 feet. A Florida law adopted in 2010 prohibits keeping them as pets.
Eckles said anyone who comes upon a suspected python –– African or Burmese — should keep a safe distance, take a picture and report it to the state’s hotline at 111-IVEGOT1.
Related:           Everglades Officials Take Proactive Approach Against Rock Pythons ...     University Herald
State Biologists Warn of Another Python Menace in Everglades      The Ledger
Everglades National Park Ready With Ranger-Led Programs For ...            National Parks Traveler
New South Fla. threat: invasive rock pythons            St. Augustine Record

131220-a
Ignoring the causes
Gainesville.com - Editorial
December 20, 2013
How many times do we Floridians have to be told what is ailing our spectacular freshwater springs ? Frankly, it takes little more than a glance into any spring to identify the problems. The algae-covered bottom and the low water lines are telltale — and it is a story that is told over and over from Ichetucknee Springs to Manatee Springs to Silver Springs.
Nitrate pollution and overpumping are slowly but surely destroying our springs.
In this paper's series “Fragile Springs,” virtually every article has identified nitrate pollution, sometimes 10 times normal levels, and declining spring flows, sometimes by up to half, as the primary causes of the degradation and diminishment of Florida's 700 natural springs.
Neither is a big revelation. Nitrate pollution and declining water flows have been cited by environmentalists and state water managers for years as detrimental to our springs' health. Yet the problems not only persist but worsen.
Springs degradation is inarguably a state crisis, yet our lawmakers in Tallahassee refuse to have serious discussions about saving our springs, let alone taking serious steps. Oh, there have been attempts to begin reversing the destructive practices that are destroying our springs, but they have been short-lived.
Former Sen. Lee Constantine pushed through legislation in 2010 that would have required Florida's 2.7 million septic tanks to undergo inspections to make sure they were working properly. But that bill was repealed just two years later under pressure from special-interest groups.
Even the original water management bill, passed in 1972, recognized that overpumping could imperil our springs and demanded that the water districts determine the minimum flows and levels of the state's waterways, including its springs, and monitor them. Now more than 40 years later, we still await that mandate to be carried out.
Water tables and water flows continue to fall. Nitrate and stormwater pollution continue to increase. Yet we see no concentrated efforts in the Legislature to curb the use of fertilizers for either agricultural or domestic use or stem continued expansion of septic tanks.
As for water flow, consumptive use permits not only are not being curbed, the administration of Gov. Rick Scott is working feverishly to make it even easier for large water users to get and keep permits.
Maybe most inexplicable in the whole springs' crisis is that the people who live around and love Florida's springs not only are cognizant, but impassioned over these natural gems that are slowly dying, yet our government officials are not.
At some point the Florida Legislature has to make some tough decisions and enact some tough laws that will severely curb nitrate pollution and slow the drawdown of the aquifer if we are to save our springs. As State Sen. Charlie Dean of Inverness said recently, we have enough studies; we know what is killing our springs.
We can see it. Now it is time to do something substantive to save them.

131220-b
Record 16 percent of Florida's manatee population died this year
MiamiNewTimes.com - by Kyle Munzenrieder
December 20, 2013
Over 800 manatees have died this year in Florida waters; the highest number of deaths recorded since records were initiated back in the '70s. That's sixteen percent of the state's total population, and more than twice the number of manatees that died last year.
The 803 manatees that have died so far this year top the old record from 2010, when 766 sea cows died. That year's deaths were blamed on a cold snap; this year's number was partially attributed to a massive outbreak of red tide according to The Tampa Bay Times. About 276 manatees died due to the red tide bloom along the Southwest coast earlier this year.
Several more deaths can be attributed to a mysterious ailment that has affected wildlife in the Indian River Lagoon, a phenomenon scientists can't quite explain. A mysterious algae bloom has sprung up in the body water which blocks light to the sea grass. Nearly 60 percent of the lagoon's sea grass has died off in the past three years. Meanwhile, record number of manatees, dolphins and pelicans have also died in the lagoon. The death toll since mid-2012 includes 76 dolphins, 250 brown pelicans and 116 manatees.
All-in-all this year's death toll is shocking and could have serious consequences for the future of the species. About 173 of the manatees that died this year were breeding age females.

131220-c
The Everglades: A 30-year work in progress
WFSU.org - by Lynn Hatter
December 20, 2013
More than 100 years ago, Florida’s Everglades covered the southern tip of the state, starting at Lake Okeechobee. Today, most of the system has been carved away to make room for growth in the Orlando and Miami markets.  One of the biggest plugs in the system is the Tamiami Trail, a road that acts as a dam, and cuts diagonally across the Everglades from Tampa to Miami. Efforts are now underway to make part of the trail a series of bridges, a project South Florida Water Management Assistant Director Ernie Barnett says would, in his words, “pull the plug in the bathtub”:  
"They strategically lined the bridging up with historical flow paths," Barnett said during a November hearing before the Florida Senate", so the 2.6 miles of bridge and the one mile existing bridge will allow about 4,000 acre-feet of flow per day and remove the damming effect that Tamiami Trail has.”
Pulling The Plug
Tamiami, along with South Florida’s network of canals, has contributed to starving the Everglades of much-needed freshwater. It has helped divert the natural flow of the South Florida watershed elsewhere, to make the region habitable for humans.
The Everglades itself acts as a water filtration system: water comes in, it trickles down into the earth and recharges the state’s underground aquifer—which provides drinking water to nearly all Florida residents. But when the water flow is cut—the aquifer can’t recharge.
“Maybe people wringing their hands over this should say we’re in a water management crisis," said Erik Stabenau, an oceanographer with Everglades National Park.
For about 30 years, promises to restore the Everglades have been made – and then broken. To date, only two projects have been completed, but more are on the way. 
Everglades Restoration A Key To Florida's Water Future
During the past several years Florida has dealt with polluted rivers, toxic algae blooms, saltwater intrusion and even drought—leaving questions about the future of water in the state unclear, but the answer to those problems could largely come by trying to restore the Everglades. Stabenau says many of the problems the state has seen this year—overflows from Lake Okeechobee, a lack of freshwater storage, and saltwater intrusion in South Florida, can be traced back to the destruction of the Everglades system:
“It used to be that the Everglades was our storage. Lake-O would flow South, Everglades would fill up several feet deeper than they are today," he said. "That water would then percolate down, refilling the aquifer...the water would flow slowly to the South out to the coast, lower the salinity in the coastal system...and that system doesn’t work that way anymore.” 
Those estuaries would act as a buffer against the saltwater in the ocean that’s contaminating south Florida drinking water wells. The state is also throwing away freshwater, when it steers overflows from Lake Okeechobee out into the ocean, as it did this summer.
On the way into Everglades State Park, cities give way to towns, and towns, yield to acres and acres of farmland. Late-model cars sit along the highway, their owners bent down deep in the fields tending to the crops. Those crops are nurtured by fertilizers. And with no natural buffer between the park and the farmland, when it rains, that fertilizer-filled water flows, adding to the Everglades’ many problems.
Inside the park tourists walk the pathways alongside birds standing in shallow ponds. There is even an alligator relaxing by the side of the narrow road that leads into the park. At the visitor’s center, there’s a display chronicling the history of the Everglades, and the clashes between farmers, developers, environmentalists and governments: all with different visions for what the Everglades should be.  
Florida lawmakers will consider a $220 million proposal for addressing Florida’s water issues during the upcoming legislative session. Among the plans are some that would directly impact the Everglades.

131219-a
Central Everglades Planning Project report delayed until 2014
TCPalm - by Alex Sanz, WPTV NewsChannel 5
December 19, 2013
WEST PALM BEACH — The Army Corps of Engineers will not complete the Central Everglades Planning Project report before the end of the year, WPTV NewsChannel 5 has learned.
The report, commissioned to develop a long-term plan to send discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee into the southern Everglades — and away from the east and west coasts of Florida — was expected to be delivered to Congress this month.
“There was this assumption that there was this end-of-year deadline. As of this point, there is not a bill in which to include any sort of Everglades report,” John Campbell, an Army Corps spokesman, told WPTV. “We, I think, are at a point where we know it’s not going to be finished by the end of the year. But, there’s still the same sense of urgency because, should Congress come to reconciliation and pass that bill, we want this report ready to go.”
The bill, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2013, would clear the way for the Army Corps to develop the long-term plan.
If the draft report isn’t delivered to Congress before the bill is reauthorized, it may be seven years before action can be taken.
The report is expected be completed in mid-2014, Campbell told WPTV.

131219-b
State studies as water disaster looms
Jacksonville.com - by Ron Littlepage
December 19, 2013
The Department of Environmental Regulation’s oft-stated goal is “to get the water right.”
That’s not happening.
As 2013 draws to a close, our waterways are indeed troubled.
The heart of Jacksonville — the St. Johns River — was again plagued by algal blooms this year with toxicity levels that measured off the chart.
And those blooms, normally confined to the warmer months, continued into December.
To our south, the Indian River Lagoon — an estuary that stretches for 156 miles and is considered one of the most ecologically diverse systems in the world — is near collapse.
Hundreds of manatees, dolphins and pelicans have died there. Crab and clam populations have dwindled.
The lagoon, like the St. Johns, is beset by algal blooms that have wiped out 47,000 acres of sea grasses, which are vital to marine life.
Still farther to the south, Lake Okeechobee is a disaster waiting to happen and the restoration of the Everglades is decades away from completion.
In North and Central Florida, our iconic springs are losing flow and becoming choked with algae. Some have disappeared altogether.
At the end of 2013, we are nowhere close to getting the water right.
Over development. Storm water runoff. Septic tanks. Over fertilization. Nutrient overloads. Canals and ditches that divert water from its natural flow.
And more threats will be coming in 2014, especially for the St. Johns River.
A proposed deep dredge of the river’s shipping channel will impact its health, and Central Florida is once again eyeing taking up to 262 million gallons of water a day out of the river to keep up with the burgeoning growth there that has restarted with the end of the recession.
State officials should be in emergency mode to deal with an impending disaster.
Instead we get studies that take three, four, five years to determine what to do. In the meantime, our waterways are further degraded.
These problems began long before Rick Scott became governor, but he has made them worse by gutting growth management laws, neutering the state’s water managers and weakening environmental regulations.
The upcoming year is an election year. Protecting our waterways must be made a campaign issue in the gubernatorial and legislative races.
Last week, about 50 environmental groups gathered in Orlando to sign a “Floridians’ Clean Water Declaration” and to pledge to work together for the state’s waterways.
Protests such as theirs draw needed attention, but real power for change comes at the ballot box.
Make Scott answer what he’s going to do to save our waterways. If Charlie Crist is the Democratic nominee, make him answer as well.
And put the same questions to legislative candidates.
Jobs, jobs, jobs is not the answer. If we don’t get the water right, there won’t be any.

131219-c
Taking a Bite Out of the Environment: Top 10 Most Environmentally Destructive Foods
OneGreenPlanet.org – by Kate Good
December 20, 2013
If you think your waistline is the only thing being affected by your food choices, it is time to think again. In fact, many of the foods we eat everyday might be causing major damage to the planet.
The foods we buy represent a ton of energy and water that we never see as consumers. Looking at a small chocolate bar on a shelf, you only get a quick glimpse into the lifecycle that brought it to that store. Considering the process from farm to production and distribution, that seemingly tiny package proves to have a large environmental footprint.
Taking a deeper look into the lifecycle of some of the most environmentally destructive foods, we came up with a list of the top 10 offenders. By avoiding some of the most harmful foods, you can help limit your own environmental impact and protect the planet in the process.
1. Lamb
According to the Environmental Working Group, every four oz. of lamb consumed is equivalent to driving seven miles in your car.  That’s an average of about 20 kilograms of CO2 released into the atmosphere for every pound of lamb. Every 2 pounds of lamb produced requires 2,314 gallons of water.
 2. Beef
A close second to lamb, beef production releases the equivalent of driving about 6 ½ miles in your car for every four oz. consumed. It also requires over 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.
 3. Corn
Cornfields span over 97 million acres in the US—about twice the size of New York State. American cornfields consume over 6 billon gallons of freshwater each year. On average, one acre of corn uses 60 gallons of fossil fuels in production and distribution—that’s more than it takes to fill up the average American car 5 times!
4. Soybeans
Soy’s impact on the environment comes from forest clearing. Forests act like carbon sinks, trapping carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. In Brazil, the area of forest cleared for soybean plantations is responsible for the release of over 473 million tons of carbon dioxide. Every 2 pounds of soybeans produced requires about 530 gallons of water, one bushel of soybeans weighs about 60 pounds.
5. Palm Oil
Palm oil is a vegetable oil that makes its way into about 50 percent of all consumer goods, so everything from margarine to shampoo to fuels. Deforestation related to palm oil is estimated to contribute more than 558 million metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere by 2020.
 6. Chocolate
Chocolate is a $50 billion industry. As such a powerhouse industry, cacao plantations are responsible for huge amounts of deforestation. A two-ounce bar of chocolate has a carbon footprint of 169grams. A footprint about four times its size. The water footprint of chocolate is about 24,000 liters per kilogram of chocolate.
 7. Sugar
According to the World Wildlife Fund, sugar cane production has caused a greater loss of biodiversity than any other crop on the planet. In Florida, the run-off of phosphorus from sugar cane fields is largely responsible for the decline of the Everglades. It can take up to 5,000 gallons of water to grow one acre of sugar cane.
8. Cheese
Considering the energy that is put into the cow that produces the dairy aside from actual production of cheese itself, there is a 1 to 9 ratio of kilograms cheese produced to kilograms of CO2 emissions. For imported cheese, this ratio shoots up to 1 to 19 to account for the carbon cost of air transport. And who doesn’t love an authentic Swiss cheese…
 9. Salmon
‘Farmed and Dangerous’: industrial salmon farming is considered the most destructive practice in aquaculture production systems. Most salmon is air shipped, bringing its total carbon footprint equivalent to driving your car three miles for every four oz consumed. The chemicals used to keep salmon ‘healthy’ are put directly into the water, allowing direct passage of antibiotics and pesticides into watersheds.
10. Eggs
In the U.S., egg farmers produce around 79 billion eggs per year.  The average 24 oz carton of eggs has a carbon footprint of 5 pounds. The average egg weighs two ounces and has a water footprint of 200 liters. Meaning a dozen eggs boasts a water footprint of 2,400 liters.

131219-d
Unable to agree, Palm Bay council gives up on fertilizer issue
Florida Today.com
December 19, 2013
Unable to agree on how strict of a fertilizer ordinance to enact, the Palm Bay city council has given up on fertilizer restrictions altogether. At least for now.
Earlier this month the council directed city staff to draft an ordinance based on Florida Department of Environmental Protection recommendations plus a 10-foot fertilizer-free zone around all bodies of water and requiring a phosphorous test before fertilizer use.
That draft came before the council for a first reading tonight. Twenty members of the public spoke on the issue. When it came time to vote, however, the council was split.
Councilwoman Michele Paccione refused to give up her original request for a more strict ordinance that included a rainy season ban, but that was supported only by herself and Deputy Mayor Ken Greene.
When Mayor William Capote asked about the original draft, with the FDEP recommended restrictions plus the buffer zone and soil test requirement, it was crickets on the dais and the ordinance failed without a vote.

131219-e
Water tests show St. Lucie River improving for now
CBS 12 News - by Jana Eschbach
STUART, Fla. -- It was a green summer and then a brown fall for the St. Lucie River, as the river was inundated with toxic water filled with toxic algae.
The water was so bacteria-ridden that the Martin County Health Department issued an alert not to even touch the water or get wet.
Tonight there is some good news. Following a series of samples in the acceptable range for enteric bacteria, the health advisory to avoid contact with the waters near Leighton Park in Palm City and the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart is over.
Enteric bacteria a sign of fecal contamination. The bacteria was found in large amounts in the regions for the past 14 months.
"I was very disappointed. We couldn't go fishing. We do a lot of in the water fishing and haven't been able to go to the sandbar so its been very disappointing," said Palm City waterfront homeowner Dean Roker. "This advisory being lifted is good news. Good news."
The bacteria comes from the water released from Lake Okeechobee into the the St Lucie Estuary, which is composed of storm water runoff, pets, wildlife and human sewage.
With close to a billion gallons of fresh water pouring into the St. Lucie River every day this summer, the salt water estuary got sick and became coated with a toxic green algae, turning the water a dark brown muddy foam color.
It was enough to motivate thousands of people this year to protest the decades-old problem of letting water from Lake Okeechobee flow into the St lucie River.
The movement made its way all the way to Washington, where Congressman Patrick Murphy and many local leaders were part of a special Congressional hearing with the issue being brought in front of key decision makers in Washington.
The health advisory had been in effect for the Roosevelt Bridge since October 2012.
"It doesn't mean whatever fish you eat will be healthy and all of our oysters are gone, so I know you are not eating oysters out of here because they are all dead," said River Mass Protest Organizer, Clint Starling.  "Its good news but it is not good. You have all this marine life living in filthy toxic water all this time, so because it is healthy today, doesn't mean the entire river marine life is back to healthy."
The health department will continue to be test weekly along the river here, as well as out closer to the inlet at Sandsprit Park, the Stuart Sandbar.
The sandbar advisory was lifted October 23rd, just one week after the releases from the S-80 locks at the Okeechobee waterway.  Testing biweekly is underway for ocean beaches and the Indian River Lagoon causeways.
"Once it stops raining, the water gets clean again and then next year we will have the same problem," Starling said.
The solution to river pollution will cost billions with a B and take decades to resolve. 
Under the Central Everglades Restoration Plan, which is already hitting another delay this week, the Army Corps of Engineers admits they will not have the Chief's Report or even the paperwork needed to get the CERP projects launched until mid-2014.
River and beach water sample results are available by clicking on the Florida Department of Health in Martin County’s website : www.MartinCountyHealth.com and clicking on the Environmental Health link. Water tests show St. Lucie River improving for now

131219-f
Wetlands shrink after rainy season
News-Press.com
December 19, 2013
South Florida’s wetlands are starting to drain after one of the heaviest tropical seasons in recent decades. The pools are shrinking, forcing predators and prey into confined areas. It makes for perfect wildlife viewing and photography opportunities.
Staffer Andrew West couldn’t resist snapping a few frames along U.S. 41 east on a recent trip to see a traditional Miccosukee family living in a village in the Everglades. I couldn’t resist shooting photos of him shooting photos. Canals along Highway 29 and U.S. 41 east in Collier County are packed with wildlife this time of year, drawing wildlife, nature lovers and freshwater anglers.
Dry conditions started in October and persist, with 2.62 inches of rain recorded on average in Lee and coastal Collier counties since Oct. 2, according to the South Florida Water Management District. That’s less than half the 6.58 inches of precipitation this region gets on average.
The receding waters create a “shooting fish in a bucket” scenario, with largemouth bass, bream, exotic cichlids, Oscars and gar piled up in shrinking ponds, sloughs, canals and ditches.
Herons and egrets of all sorts, wood storks, anhingas, ibis and vultures are drawn to these concentrated food sources.
Recap recorded panther killings
News of an 18-month-old female Florida panther being shot in Big Cypress National Preserve has made headlines in recent weeks.
While this was the first shooting recorded in Big Cypress since it was created in 1974, people shooting panthers is not new, or all that rare, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission records.
Two panthers were killed, one in Seminole and one in Collier counties, between Feb. 23 and March 17 of 2011. Another panther, FP188, is considered a suspicious death as the carcass was decayed when found on private property in Collier. Although the panther had been shot, biologists were unable to determine whether the panther was shot before or after it died.
Todd Benfield shot and killed a 3-year-old female panther in Collier in October of 2009. He served jail time and paid $10,000 in fines. But Benfield‘s was a rare case because the shooter was caught.
That same year a 2-year-old female was shot and killed in Hendry County. A Georgia hunter killed a panther there in November 2008.
No one knows for sure how many panthers are shot and killed each year. Some biologists believe the number is much higher than records show because not all panther bodies are recovered. Sometimes the carcasses are so decomposed a necropsy won’t reveal cause of death.
Red tide talk coming to FGCU
FGCU continues to build on it’s Moonlight on the Marsh lecture series, which is in its second year and drew 650 participants during the 2012-13 version. More than 20 scientists from countries such as Denmark, China, Estonia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Canada.
A particularly interesting lecture for residents, visitors and business owners in Southwest Florida is planned for Jan. 16, with Hans. W. Pearl, University of North Carolina, giving a talk titled “Algal Blooms and Red Tides: What’s Manageable and What’s Not.” Pearl is a William R. Kenan professor at UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, N.C. The lectures take place at FGCU’s Everglades Wetland Research Park in Naples at 7 p.m.
Lectures with topics on beach pollution, wetland protection and dealing with invasive Burmese pythons are planned on Jan. 30, Feb. 13 and Feb. 27. FGCU professor and series director Bill Mitsch can be reached for information at 325-1365 or wmitsch@fgcu.edu.

131218-a
A rosy outlook for 2014
NaplesNews.com - by Dave Trecker
December 18, 2013
The New Year is often a time for retrospection -- a time to recount the good and bad of the past year.
Let's skip that for 2013. There was too much bad and not enough good. Dysfunction in Washington. Clam Pass reopened, reclosed, reopened. Furor over sand trucks and furor over an oil well. Citrus greening. Trey Radel.
Instead of reliving disappointments, let's look ahead.
Here are some things -- good things -- 2014 holds in store.
Legislation - Tallahassee is poised to take on water-quality problems statewide -- as well as cleaning up water from Lake Okeechobee and bridging a portion of the Tamiami Trail to boost flow to the Everglades.
Fire District Consolidation - Voters will get to weigh in on consolidating the East Naples and Golden Gate Fire Districts -- a win-win proposition if there ever was one. This should serve as a model for other mergers down the road.
Music - ArtsNaples is giving us Italy in May -- a celebration of Italian music and art. This is on top of Schubert and Mussorgsky concerts at The Phil, and Beethoven's 9th in April. Count your blessings!
Beach Renourishment - Some civic groups are taking a hard look at how to save our beaches -- other than trucking in quarry sand. Experts will speak at a public forum on January 9, 3:00-5:00 p.m. at the North Naples United Methodist Church on Goodlette Road. Don't miss it.
Media Infrastructure - The Pelican Bay Foundation struck a blow for the consumer by refusing to reward bad service. In 2014, Comcast will be phased out, replaced by Summit Broadband, as fiber is installed in 6,500 households in Pelican Bay.
Economy - Everything seems to be coming up roses. Unemployment will drop further in 2014, and Florida will see big gains in the housing market. And the Institute for Economic Competitiveness says Naples will lead the state in job growth.
Wellness - Collier County may become a Blue Zone -- a community committed to healthy lifestyles. Dr. Allen Weiss, head of NCH Healthcare, is promoting the program, which targets "an environment of health" leading to robust old age. We're on our way. We currently rank as the third healthiest county in the state.
Elections - 2014 is an election year, and there will be plenty of action. Referenda, the contest for Radel's seat and, of course, city and county races. Incumbents Sam Saad and Doug Finlay and newcomers Linda Penniman and Wynn Phillips will vie for three city council seats. In county commission races, Georgia Hiller will try to re-up in District 2, and Lavigne Kirkpatrick and Penny Taylor will contend for the District 4 seat. More candidate filings are expected. And some fireworks.
Economic Development - Regionalism will get into full swing in 2014, with Collier and Lee Counties signing on to the Southwest Florida Economic Development Alliance. A public-private coalition -- The Partnership for Collier's Economic Future -- will help drive growth locally. And for soccer fans, a sports complex may be coming.
So good things are on tap -- for the environment, the arts, the economy and more.
All in all, 2014 looks to be a pretty good year.

131218-b
County sets hearing for tougher fertilizer rules
Florida Today
December 18, 2013
Commissioners have qualms despite OKing date.
The public hearing is 2½ months away. But the debate already has begun on whether Brevard County should enact stricter rules on the use of fertilizer as a way to help improve the condition of the Indian River Lagoon.
County commissioners on Tuesday approved setting a March 6 hearing date on proposed rule changes for fertilizer application in unincorporated areas of the county. But even the proposal to schedule a hearing date attracted 16 speakers — six in favor of the stricter rules and 10 opposed.
Supporters of the stricter rules said they believe the changes are a needed component to help improve conditions of the lagoon by reducing the nitrogen and phosphorous — key components of fertilizer — entering the lagoon. Opponents — most of them who have connections to companies that make fertilizer or treat lawns with fertilizer — said the rules are fine the way they are now.
County commissioners will consider a series of changes to the rules, including:
• Banning application of fertilizer from June 1 through Sept. 30, except on newly planted turf or landscape plants.
• Banning fertilizer containing phosphorous, unless there is a specific need for it.
• Establishing stricter regulation of nitrogen in fertilizer, including requiring that it contain at least 50 percent “slow-release” nitrogen.
• Extending to 15 feet, up from the current 10 feet, the “fertilizer-free zone” near bodies of water.
Industry officials contend that banning most fertilizer use during the four-month rainy season would be counterproductive, because people would overfertilize just before and just after the ban period, increasing the potential for runoff into the lagoon. They also question whether there is enough scientific evidence that the changes would improve the condition of the lagoon.
“We all love the Indian River Lagoon,” said Jason Steele of Melbourne, who appeared before the commission as director of government affairs for Smith and Associates, which represents a conglomerate of fertilizer companies. “There are probably literally a hundred places that we can point our finger at that are detrimental to the Indian River Lagoon. There is no science that the proper application of fertilizer is to the detriment of the Indian River Lagoon. To point the finger at the fertilizer industry, I think, is the wrong thing to do.”
Steele, a former Florida state representative, said he supports a “model state ordinance” that is similar to what Brevard has in effect. Other fertilizer and lawn-care industry representatives who spoke at the meeting also said they support that rule.
Brevard County commissioners voted 3-2 last year to enact rules slightly stricter than the model state ordinance. At the time, they rejected the much stricter rules that were unanimously recommended by the advisory Local Planning Agency. It is those strict rules that now are being reconsidered.
Supporters of proposed stricter rules said the current rules are not enough.
“The waters of the Indian River Lagoon are impaired,” said Nancy Higgs of Melbourne Beach, a former county commissioner. “There is no one thing you can do. This is something that you can do. We need to take action. We need to do everything we can do at this level.”

131218-c
Five Star & Urban Waters Restoration Program 2014 - Request for Proposals
NFWF.org
(December 18, 2013)
The Five Star and Urban Waters Restoration Program seeks to develop nation-wide-community stewardship of local natural resources, preserving these resources for future generations and enhancing habitat for local wildlife. Projects seek to address water quality issues in priority watersheds, such as erosion due to unstable streambanks, pollution from stormwater runoff, and degraded shorelines caused by development.
The program focuses on the stewardship and restoration of coastal, wetland and riparian ecosystems across the country. Its goal is to meet the conservation needs of important species and habitats, providing measurable and meaningful conservation and educational outcomes. The program requires the establishment and/or enhancement of diverse partnerships and an education/outreach component that will help shape and sustain behavior to achieve conservation goals.
Funding priorities for this program include:
On-the-ground wetland, riparian, in-stream and/or coastal habitat restoration
Meaningful education and training activities, either through community outreach, participation and/or integration with K-12 environmental curriculum
Measurable ecological, educational and community benefits
Partnerships: Five Star projects should engage a diverse group of community partners to achieve ecological and educational outcomes.
To date, the Foundation has funded over 500 projects in 50 states, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands through this program. More than $10.8 million in grants has leveraged more than $30.8 million in other funds or donated services.
Major funding for this project is provided by NFWF's partnerships with EPA, the US Forest Service, Southern Company and FedEx. Grants will be $20,000.00 to $50,000.00 and will vary in size, duration and scale. In general, most smaller-scale, one-year projects will be in the $20,000-$30,000* range. Two-year, larger-scale urban projects will be eligible for grants up to $50,000. Only a very limited number of projects meeting the highest competitive criteria will be awarded $50,000. We anticipate the average grant award will be $25,000-$35,000.  A minimum 1:1 match of cash and/or in-kind/contributed goods and services to funds requested is expected.  The ratio of matching funds offered by the applicant is one criterion considered during the review process. All potential sources of match, including cash contributions and dollar equivalent value of in-kind goods and services (including volunteer services) must be listed on the application.
Matching funds for the requested grant amount may be federal or non-federal in nature. However, Federal funds may be used as match only for non-federal sources of cash and/or in-kind contributions. Check with NFWF to confirm applicability of your matching funds sources.
Deadline for applications:  February 5, 2014
http://www.nfwf.org/fivestar/Pages/2014rfp.aspx

131218-d
It's All In The Climate: New study from research scientists at Florida International University predict
PRWEB.com
December 18, 2013
Banana Growth Heading North for the Next 50 Years.
Research scientists at Florida International University say that climate change during the next 50 years will result in opportunities for Latin America's banana crop to expand northward to plantations with more favorable growing conditions.
The study was published in the current edition of the science journal Ecological Economics.
Brian Machovina and Kenneth J. Feeley, authors of the study, examined changes in conditions for cultivating bananas on plantations in 11 South and Central American countries. They found that as weather conditions become too hot and dry on many existing plantations, chances for raising successful crops will improve in areas of Mexico, Peru and Ecuador.
“Not all plantations will have problems,” explained Machovina, a Ph.D. candidate at Florida International University’s Department of Biological Sciences and a co-inventor of Yonanas, the popular kitchen appliance that turns ripe frozen bananas and other fruits into an all-natural treat that tastes like soft serve ice cream. “By expanding irrigation, applying regional water conservation measures, or developing climate resilient strains, many existing plantations are likely to be thriving well into the 2060s. Our findings are not a disaster prediction, but highlight the need for adaptability by potentially expanding cultivation in new countries and taking the right steps to avoid possible hazards ahead in existing plantations.”
Annually, bananas are a $5 billion export crop worldwide and Ecuador is the largest producer, accounting for a $2 billion share of the market. Latin America produces 80% of banana exports which are vital for many countries' economies in Central and South America.
Yonanas, the leading appliance in its category, has a natural interest in protecting the banana production, particularly in Latin America. Machovina’s research interests, which focus on food security and sustainability, call attention to shifting climate conditions and the steps that will be necessary to prepare for coming change. “Finding viable and innovative solutions that will protect agriculture through long-term adaptation and improvements in land management is critical given projected climate change,” Machovina added.
Working under the guidance of his dissertation advisor and climate-change expert Feeley, Machovina determined the changes based on projections by computer models. Their conclusions about rising temperatures and wider dryness in tropical countries of Latin America and the likely impact on banana plantation production, includes pinpointing areas that will be favorable for cultivating bananas in the coming decades, as well as recommendations for water conservation and resilient banana variety development for areas affected negatively by projected climate change.
To obtain a copy of the study published in Ecological Economics, please visit http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913002619.

131218-e
Our Indian River Lagoon series: Managing the crisis
Daytona Beach News Journal
December 18, 2013
 “Crisis” is not a word that journalists or newspapers should kick around often.
It means a time of great danger or trouble, one that could lead to further unpleasant events. Yet few other words describe what is happening in the Indian River Lagoon, which stretches from Ponce Inlet in Volusia County to Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County. The lagoon system includes the Mosquito Lagoon, Banana River, and the Indian River.
One Martin County official said the 156-mile lagoon system has become Florida’s single biggest issue. As the evidence of loss piles up — from mysterious manatee-and-dolphin deaths, to unprecedented algae blooms, to the loss of critical sea grasses — there is little doubt that the lagoon system ranks among Florida’s biggest environmental challenges over the next decade.
Today, The News-Journal kicks off a five-day series on the lagoon system, the research efforts to pinpoint specific problems and their root causes, the agencies tasked with maintaining and repairing the system, and the costs involved.
At issue is one of the world’s most diverse estuaries, with more than 4,300 species of fish, plants, shellfish and other wildlife.
With so much at stake, we examined how Florida came to this environmental crossroads.
We investigated the possible causes, including unintended consequences as a result of human activities and past water management practices.
We interviewed dozens of the people involved in finding solutions, from researchers, to Volusia County officials, to Tallahassee lawmakers.
And, over a period of weeks, reporter Dinah Voyles Pulver traveled the length of the lagoon system to see and hear firsthand the concerns of residents along the estuary.
The death toll of many diverse life forms in the lagoon system is what got collective attention in the first place. Record numbers of manatees and dolphins have perished since 2012, many of them from mysterious causes. And 47,000 acres of sea grass have disappeared in recent years — 60 percent of the lagoon’s sea grass beds.
To be sure, human activity has caused many of the lagoon system’s troubles. But Mother Nature has also contributed. A contributing main cause of recent problems may have been a couple of cold snaps going back to January 2010.
But decades of well-intended water manipulation are causing a bulk of the problems in the lagoon system. Among other things, more than twice as much fresh water is draining into the lagoon system now as did 100 years ago. That water brings with it silt and a variety of pollutants.
In Volusia County, the cost of the demise of the lagoon system would be substantial. The St. Johns River Water Management District says the annual economic impact of the lagoon system is $3.7 billion, supporting 15,000 full-time and part-time jobs. The lagoon supports eco-tourism, fishermen and more.
The health of the Indian River Lagoon is a state and federal issue. Hundreds of millions of dollars are already invested in fixing the water issues that have led to the lagoon system’s troubles. But there’s also a need to better understand some of the lagoon system’s problems, so that future dollars are spent fixing the right things. Among other efforts, the St. Johns district has committed $3.7 million to investigate the causes of the lagoon’s problems.
We hope you’ll read our series about the Indian River Lagoon. We also invite you to share your thoughts and ideas about the lagoon system at lagoon@news-jrnl.com.

131218-f
Study: Dolphins suffering from lung disease due to Gulf oil spill
Wall Street Journal - by Cameron McWhirter and Tom Fowler
December 18, 2013
Study finds strong connection between Deepwater Horizon spill and dolphin deaths.
Dolphins in an area hard hit by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill are suffering from lung diseases and other abnormalities that are "consistent with petroleum hydrocarbon exposure and toxicity," according to a new federal-backed scientific study released Wednesday.
The peer-reviewed paper, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, makes the strongest connection to date between the spill and dolphin deaths, which spiked in the Gulf of Mexico after the spill.
BP disputes that the report shows any clear link between the spill and dolphin illnesses.
Scientists, including those from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, caught, examined and released about 30 bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, in 2011. Moderate to severe lung diseases associated with oil contamination were prevalent among many of the dolphins, and almost half had "a guarded or worse prognosis, and 17% were considered poor or grave, indicating they were not expected to live," according to the study. Dolphins in the area likely will have more difficulty reproducing, the study found.
The scientists also looked at dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, as a control because that area wasn't hurt by the oil spill. The study didn't find elevated lung diseases among that dolphin population.
"Finally we get the truth," said Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper, an environmental group on Alabama's coast. "Having this information gets us started on the path toward a solution, toward fixing what has been broken for 3½ years."
If top ocean predators like dolphins are suffering, scientists now need to learn how the spill has hurt other animals, including "smaller sea creatures, and larger life, even humans," she said.
BP said the study failed to make a connection between the spill and sick dolphins.
"The agency still has not provided BP with any data demonstrating that the alleged poor health of any dolphins was caused by oil exposure," said spokesman Jason Ryan in an email. "In addition, the symptoms that NOAA has observed in this study have been seen in other dolphin mortality events that have been related to contaminants and conditions found in the northern Gulf, such as PCBs, DDT and pesticides, unusual cold stun events, and toxins from harmful algal blooms."
In April 2010, an explosion erupted at the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, after a blowout of the well that lay 5,000 feet below the ocean surface. The rig sank and the well spewed oil. Over 87 days, oil slicks fanned out across 68,000 miles of open water and fouled more than 1,000 miles of coastline. About 4.2 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf according to official estimates, although BP now argues it was closer to 2.45 million barrels that leaked. It was the worst offshore oil spill in American history.
The dolphin study was conducted as part of a process led by NOAA called a Natural Resource Damage Assessment, or NRDA, in response to the spill. The NRDA is a wide range of scientific studies to determine the impact of the oil on everything from seafloor corals to zooplankton to large mammals. If studies find a link between the spill and any damage, BP would be expected to pay compensation or for the costs of restoration, although the company can appeal findings of the studies in court.
The study was paid for by funds BP agreed to provide for NRDA work, but BP wasn't involved in the analysis. The company was given a copy of the data.
Researchers on the study are working closely with scientists trying to figure out the cause of an epidemic of dolphin deaths that began in the Gulf of Mexico in February 2010. Since that time, more than 1,050 dolphins have been stranded from Texas to Florida, according to NOAA. Almost all have died.

131217-a
Controversial plan for pumping water from sinkhole gets state permit
Craig Pittman, Tampa Bay Times
December 17, 2013
A controversial plan to pump water out of a Tampa sinkhole to supplement the flow of the Hills­borough River won unanimous support Tuesday from the Southwest Florida Water Management District board.
The city's $11 million plan calls for pumping up to 2 million gallons a day from Blue Sink, a complex of sinkholes in Sulphur Springs, then piping that water to the base of the dam on the river and pouring it out.
The water from Blue Sink is supposed to help replace the river flow that was lost when the city built the dam in 1897 to create a reservoir that provides Tampa's drinking water. The restored freshwater flow will help hold the salinity of Tampa Bay in check, which is important for the health of the snook and other fish living there.
However, people who live around Blue Sink fear pumping water from the sinkholes will create even more sinkholes, not to mention draining their lakes and sucking their private wells dry.
"We're just concerned about what might happen," Jim Wilson of the North Forest Hills Neighborhood Association told the board of the agency commonly called Swiftmud.
Tampa Water Department chief Brad Baird said that the neighbors have nothing to worry about. He pointed out that the permit requires regular monitoring of Blue Sink, as well as a promise by the city to fix any problems that the pumping might cause.
The city's engineers, in their application for a 30-year pumping permit, estimated that at most the city would need to pump water from the sink just 287 to 318 days out of a year. Some years, Baird said, they might not need any water from the sink at all.
The city's studies say none of the 800 wells within a 1-mile radius "is expected to be significantly impacted" by that amount of pumping. At most they might drop two-tenths of a foot, the city's engineers predict.
But those conclusions are based on a pair of 30-day pumping tests and a computer model, and the neighbors are not buying the test results.
Hydrologists have repeatedly pointed out that the computer model commonly used for Florida water permitting assumes that what is underground is sand. It's actually karst, a Swiss cheese arrangement of crumbling limestone, which alters both the speed and the direction of the flow of the aquifer.
Not all the neighbors felt the same way. Barbara Ewanowski, whose family has long owned Ewanowski Spring, pointed out that her spring provides the water that flows through Blue Sink. But since the sinkhole was plugged with trash and other debris, the water has repeatedly backed up and flooded her property, killing dozens of oak trees.
Pumping water out of Blue Sink would help restore her property, she said, so she's supporting the project.
So is Friends of the River, the group that has pushed hardest for restoring the Hillsborough's historic flow into Tampa Bay.
"I am confident the use of Blue Sink will not endanger the environment," John Ovink of the Friends of the River told the Swiftmud board.
Swiftmud is more than just the regulator issuing the permit for the Blue Sink pumping.
It's also Tampa's partner on the Blue Sink project, paying half of the tab. Swiftmud also happens to be the regulator that pushed for restoring the river's flow into Tampa Bay and is now overseeing how Tampa carries out that order.
Now that Swiftmud has approved the permit, construction is likely to begin next year and finish in 2015.

131217-b
Florida editorial roundup
Associated Press, Bradenton.com
December 17, 2013
The Tampa Tribune on putting water on the front burner (December 15, 2013):
It's too early to say whether the 2014 session of the Florida Legislature will be the "Year of Water," but momentum is building in that direction. And if correct policy decisions are made, the state will be in a stronger position to protect the environment, including Florida's wondrous natural springs, strengthen the economy, and bolster agriculture.
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam recently noted that the environmental "devastation" on both sides of the state caused by the release of high volumes of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee this year has created "momentum" among lawmakers to fund water resource projects and discuss water policy next session.
In addition, Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, who has been chosen by colleagues to succeed House Speaker Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel after the 2014 session, has said that water issues will be a top priority during his two-year term overseeing the House.
Putting water on the front burner is essential to Florida's future. Water shortages are common in the Tampa Bay area and other parts of the state, as are water use restrictions. And too often, piecemeal approaches are taken that fail to address the challenges the state has in meeting the water needs of the public, agricultural interests and businesses, especially in times of drought.
The Legislature hurt matters by gutting the state's Growth Management Act, which required a statewide planning perspective in addition to local and regional reviews.
This renewed attention to water issues comes as the state Senate considers a $220 million plan to reduce pollution and redirect water in South Florida. But Crisafulli, in comments to reporters recently, was right to caution that officials shouldn't get "too laser-focused" on one region — that water issues need to be looked at "from the standpoint of the overall needs of the state."
Those needs, he noted, include agriculture, drinking water, cleaning up Florida's polluted natural springs, and helping the troubled Apalachicola River region.
Putnam also has stressed that other areas need help as well. "There is an extraordinary bias to the south at the expense of the springs and Apalachicola Bay," he said last month.
The South Florida water improvement plan includes $20 million to clean up Indian River Lagoon, and proposals to clean water that flows into Lake Okeechobee from the Orlando area. Meanwhile, Putnam's proposed 2014 budget includes $10 million to target "nutrient reduction practices" and $5.2 million to address farming nutrient runoff into freshwater springs in North Florida — a major problem.
The Department of Environmental Protection is requesting $75 million for Everglades' restoration, $15 million for springs cleanup and $40 million to purchase environmental lands, among other projects.
Locally of note, Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, whose businesses include a large chicken farming operation in east Pasco County, is drafting legislation calling for a comprehensive study on expanding "the beneficial use of reclaimed water, storm water and excess surface water ..."
The study would include evaluating the feasibility of building "regional storage features" on public or private land that could store such water for use in agricultural irrigation, public water supply and wetland restoration, among other uses.
Although building regional facilities may be cost prohibitive, it only makes sense to put to use the tens of millions of gallons of treated wastewater and other water that is dumped into Florida waters. Doing so could reduce groundwater pumping and greatly help farmers and ranchers.
Crisafulli also says the state needs to return to investing in local water projects — a worthwhile endeavor that was severely curtailed during the state's economic downturn. Alternative water supply projects in the Tampa Bay area have resulted in a huge decrease in groundwater pumping that had damaged the environment.
We cannot afford to return to the days of groundwater overpumping, which is why the state needs to help communities develop water projects. Nor should lawmakers fall for a water-supply scheme that surfaces every few years in Florida — tapping water-rich areas, such as North Florida, to satisfy the thirst of regions that have poorly managed growth. The local-sources first law must be followed.
This new emphasis on water issues and the environment will greatly benefit Florida. Though surrounded by water, Florida has major water challenges. Comprehensive water policies that include all facets of water use are needed instead of the reactionary approach of the past.

131217-c
Homestead reaches for the sky with observation tower idea
Miami Herald - by Lidia Dinkova
December 17, 2013
Fresh off a fizzled attempt to turn its depressed downtown into a mini Georgetown, Homestead is already cooking up something new, and it’s big — really big.
560 feet big.
The city is moving ahead with preliminary plans to build a steel tower that size — one designed to divert tourists zipping down Florida’s Turnpike en route to the Keys. The tower would feature an Everglades-themed interactive theater and an observatory that corkscrews from ground level to the tippy-top, where it would rotate.
From that lofty perch, tourists could gaze out on the River of Grass to the west, Biscayne National Park to the east, Miami’s skyline to the north and the Florida Keys to the south.
This in a city whose current highest elevation is the municipal water tower.
Are they kidding? Not a chance, said Rick Ammirato, the city’s director of community redevelopment.
“It’s not a panacea, but we are hoping it is something that sparks redevelopment downtown,” Ammirato said.
Downtown Homestead could use a spark. Krome Avenue, which bisects the city center, currently features a variety of vacant lots and empty storefronts, as well as health clinics, a hardware store, a recently shuttered burger bar, multiple Mexican restaurants, a long-abandoned movie theater, a derelict motor lodge and Dade Medical College.
The owner of the college, Ernesto Perez, secured a contract to buy 19 municipally-owned lots in and around downtown to expand his educational empire and open other businesses. Former Mayor Steve Bateman, a cheerleader for the endeavor, boasted that Perez’s vision would turn Homestead into a miniature Georgetown. He was then arrested on unrelated corruption charges, which are still pending. His dealings with Perez — Bateman’s real estate agent wife handled some of Perez’s land deal — are being scrutinized by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office.
Homestead effectively pulled the plug on that plan last week, refusing to give Perez’s associates an extension on the deal to buy the land at a steep discount.
On Wednesday night, the City Council will vote on whether to give a Dallas-based entertainment and tourism consulting company, Leisure and Recreation Concepts, also known as LARC Inc., $32,000 for a comprehensive plan for the tower. The city already paid the company $38,000 for an economic-feasibility study, which determined that the project is indeed feasible.
Michael Jenkins, LARC’s president and founder, said the tower would withstand a storm on par with Hurricane Andrew, which nearly destroyed Homestead in 1992.
LARC, whose website is headlined, “No dream too big, no task too small,” describes itself as “a full-service, turnkey provider of consulting, design, and management services to the entertainment and tourism industries.”
Jenkins, who was involved in the start up of the Six Flags theme park chain, has helped plan dozens of projects from Australia to Brazil to Bahrain to Myrtle Beach. The Internet Broadway Database also credits him with three Tony Awards, and six other nominations, mostly for producing musicals.
Homestead resident Kevin Sullivan, 74, said he supports having LARC move forward on the planning, but added: “For whatever reason, we just don’t seem to get our act together in Homestead. We spend a lot of money, and we don’t seem to get results. There's absolutely nothing to show for it.”
South Florida is a place where ambitious plans are sometimes hatched only to die on the drawing board. Among them: the Watson Island amusement park, the Everglades airport, and the highway linking Key Biscayne to Key Largo, none of which exist.
Homestead says this proposal is grounded in reality. It is less expensive than those others: The city is talking about a public-private partnership with a cost in the $20 million range.
Vice Mayor Stephen Shelley, for one, said the tower idea is better than the college expansion because the city will be calling the shots.
Added Jeff Porter, who succeeded Bateman as Homestead mayor: “Just because you take a swing, and you miss the ball on the first swing, that doesn’t mean you lay the bat down. I think we have to continue to swing until we hit the ball.”

131217-e
Sugar subsidy yields bitter harvest
Wisconsin State Journal
December 18, 2013
Let’s count the winners and losers from the federal program that subsidizes sugar production.
Winners: The sugar industry.
Losers: Consumers, the economy, the environment, taxpayers and Caribbean nations.
Weigh the losers against the winners, and the conclusion is inescapable: Congress should make reform of the sugar program a top priority in a new farm bill.
The sugar program is a complex web of policies designed to prop up the domestic price of sugar and protect the U.S. sugar business from foreign competition, which is often also subsidized. The Department of Agriculture limits sugar imports, regulates the domestic marketing of sugar and provides loans to processors.
A handful of sugar processors and about 5,000 sugar cane and beet growers benefit by receiving artificially high prices for their products. But the costs are steep.
American consumers pay a price for sugar 64 percent to 92 percent higher than the world price. The extra costs amount to $3.5 billion a year, according to an Iowa State University study.
The sugar program kills three U.S, jobs for every one it saves, according to a Commerce Department report, as American candy makers move jobs abroad to avoid high U.S. costs for sugar.
Because the sugar program encourages farmers to grow more sugar, more fertilizer runoff is contaminating the Everglades.
Import quotas restrict the amount of sugar Caribbean nations can sell to the United States, limiting their economic growth.
Furthermore, while the sugar program is normally free of costs to taxpayers, the program this year cost $280 million. Huge sugar supplies dropped the market price sharply. But taxpayers — not the sugar industry — took the loss.
The low prices prompted sugar processors to default on government-backed loans. In lieu of payment, the government received sugar pledged as collateral. The government then sold the sugar to ethanol makers, absorbing the loss.
Efforts to pass a better sugar policy have repeatedly failed in the face of fierce lobbying by the sugar industry. This year has been no exception, even though agreement has been reached on reform of most other farm commodity programs.
What’s required is a Congress that will stand up for the nation’s interests rather than the interests of a single concentrated industry. Americans should demand no less.

131217-f
Swiftmud enacts new watering limits in Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay Times – by Craig Pittman, Writer
December 17, 2013
Tampa Bay area residents will be restricted to watering their lawns only once a week beginning Dec. 26.
The restriction, approved by the Southwest Florida Water Management District's board on Tuesday, was put in place because of reduced river levels and increasing water supply concerns.
The problem is due in part to the fact that the 15.5 billion gallon C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir in rural Hillsborough County is being repaired to fix a cracking problem. That means that water skimmed from the Alafia River and other surface sources couldn't be stored during the summer rainy season for use during the subsequent dry season.
In addition to the reduced lawn watering schedule, allowable watering hours were reduced. Micro-irrigation and hand watering of nonlawn areas still are allowed any day, if needed. The once-per-week schedule will remain in place through March and affects residents in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties.
Reclaimed water remains subject to voluntary watering hours, unless restricted by local governments or utilities.
Twice-per-week lawn watering schedules remain in effect for Charlotte, Citrus, Desoto, Hardee, Highlands, Lake, Levy, Manatee, Polk and Sumter counties. Some local governments such as Hernando and Sarasota counties and the cities of Brooksville, Longboat Key and Venice have local ordinances and choose to remain on one-day-per-week restrictions.

131217-g
The Yearling
Off-grid.net - by Amy Suarez
December 17, 2013
Its “The Year of The Yearling,” the seventy-fifth-anniversary celebration of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s 1938 novel about a young boy whose pet deer unwittingly threatens the survival of his family farm.
The Yearling has been described as a magnificent, transparent, slow-moving river. Its style is direct and free of fireworks, its subjects planted at the beginnings of the sentences, solid as potatoes.In 1945 it was made into a motion picture starring Gregory Peck.
The Yearling reflects a world we’re losing, and does so in an orgy of carnage. Among the things killed and (mostly) eaten in the book are alligators, rabbits, deer, raccoons, squirrels, gopher tortoises (threatened), bass, bream, turkeys, foxes, possums, rattlesnakes, black bears (threatened), lynxes (endangered), panthers (endangered), curlews (endangered), and the last great wolf pack east of the Mississippi (critically endangered). Marjorie wrote of one of the final American frontiers, where nature hadn’t yet been swallowed by civilization, but she came at it with sympathy for the killers, the people who slaughter the beasts in order to survive, and these days that feels odd.
With the predators of Florida pretty much wiped out, and the deer population almost unmanageably large. Perhaps those who choose to remain will be the kind of gun-loving, off-grid survivalists to whom The Yearling’s own gun-loving, off-grid survivalists will speak loudly and beautifully.
Florida is the state where grown women impersonate mermaids for a living, where a family of egomaniacs is trying to build the nation’s largest private home (they’re calling it Versailles). Florida is where an armed adult can stand his ground before an unarmed teenager.
Because she concentrated her work in Florida, Marjorie is seen as a regionalist. In this country, literary tastemaking begins in New York City, and regionalists can appear diminished by sticking to one place that is perceived to be less important. Florence Turcotte, the archivist in charge of the Rawlings papers at the University of Florida, believes that Marjorie would have broken out of her regionalist reputation had she lived longer.
Students often have difficulty with the book. It is long, and there’s so much description. The plot is slow.
The average child who picked up The Yearling when it was released, during the Great Depression, would have heard the book speaking directly to him, in his world not unlike Jody’s, with hunger and poverty all around.
Steven Noll, another historian, sees the history of Florida as a battle against water up until 1970, with dredging and drying up the Everglades and handling mosquitoes and humidity; since then, the battle has been to keep the water that remains. By 1990, Florida had wiped out 46 percent of its wetlands, and the flora and fauna of the state suffered catastrophically. The aquifer is diminishing at an alarming rate, though the politicians in Tallahassee don’t seem to be noticing. The more that is pumped, the more brittle the limestone layer between the aquifer and the surface becomes, leading to more sinkholes. The more they deplete the freshwater aquifer, the more the salt water of the ocean will intrude, hastened by rising sea levels. Once polluted by salt water, freshwater deposits are gone forever. The state of Florida will no longer be able to support its agriculture, its tourism economy, or its population of 19.3 million.

131216-b
Palm Beach Society: The Arthur R. Marshall Foundation for The Everglades Gala
GossipExtra.com
December 16, 2013
PALM BEACH — The Arthur R. Marshall Foundation for the Everglades, named one of the best small charities of Palm Beach County, tapped into Palm Beach’s river of green over the weekend for its yearly black-tie fundraiser.
The numbers are still being tallied, but it was clear Saturday night that the 180 guests at The Colony Palm Beach dug deep in their wallets to preserve the River of Grass.
“This is not just about how much as it is to raise awareness about the Everglades, South Florida’s most important water supply,” said foundation president Nancy Marshall, who started the educational foundation with her husband John Marshall 15 years ago.
Who else was there? Check out Mike Jachles gallery here.

131215-a
Downtown Doral, a Codina Partners development, brings city flair to the suburbs
Miami Herald - by Ina Paiva Cordle
December 15, 2013
In the western outskirts of Miami-Dade County, a sophisticated new urban center is taking shape, complete with several luxury condominium towers, townhouses, apartments, office buildings, shops, restaurants, a charter school, a park with a public art pavilion and a government center.
Downtown Doral, a 120-acre mixed-use development by Codina Partners, aims to transform the industrial, workday world of Doral into a real hometown.
The goal, said Codina Partners Executive Chairman Armando Codina, is to create a “live, work, learn and play” community, where families can enjoy the fruits of urban life — while spending less for housing than they would in other such enclaves of Miami-Dade.
“This is not a project; this is a city,” Codina said, seated in a conference room inside Downtown Doral’s sales center. The community, which stretches from NW 87th Avenue to NW 79th Avenue, and from NW 54th Street to the Trump National Doral Miami, will be created in phases, with most facets completed in five years, he said.
Downtown Doral represents Codina Partners’ largest investment ever — over $1 billion. It also marks the first project Codina has undertaken from inception to completion with his daughter Ana-Marie Codina Barlick, 37, who Friday was named the company’s chief executive.
Codina, 67, a pioneering South Florida developer best known for suburban office and industrial parks, has reconfigured much of Miami-Dade over several decades. He ventured into what is now Doral almost 30 years ago, when he built Beacon Centre. In 2006, he merged his former company, Codina Group, with Florida East Coast Industries, and sold that company in 2007 to Fortress Investment Group, based in New York.
He retained only one asset: the Downtown Doral property.
Real estate consultant Jack McCabe calls Codina, “one of the best known and best capitalized developers in Florida.”
“Without a doubt, this will be a huge boon for Doral,” said McCabe, chief executive of McCabe Research & Consulting, in Deerfield Beach.
Downtown Doral, which has been planned for several years, is coming to fruition amid a flurry of new residential construction in South Florida. The recession and recent collapse of the real estate market are now mere distant memories, as real estate values rise again — and developers rush to bring new projects to market.
“Within the last 18 months, without a doubt, builders’ and developers’ confidence is extremely strong,” McCabe said. “The developers expect the positive market conditions to continue for at least five- to seven- years longer, and we have seen some major developments with thousands of new units — 175 new condo projects with over 24,000 units in South Florida.”
Most of those new projects are located east of I-95, near the ocean or in downtown Miami. Only a handful have been announced for the suburbs, said Peter Zalewski, principal of Condo Vultures LLC, a real estate consultancy.
The cornerstone of Downtown Doral will be 2,840 upscale living units — the vast majority, more than 2,100 condo units spread among eight or nine condominium towers, each up to 20 stories high. In addition, the project will have three apartment buildings with 454 rental apartments, plus 90 townhouses.
“Doral has never seen anything like this,” said Codina. Residents also will have such nearby amenities as golf at the Trump National Doral Miami.
Codina, who has eschewed condo projects in the past, brought in Oswaldo Betancourt in September as executive vice president for development and construction to oversee Downtown Doral’s condo development. Betancourt previously had been vice president at Related Group’s condo division.
For the first and second tower, Codina Partners has hired renowned Miami-based architects Charles Sieger and Jose Suarez of Sieger Suarez Architectural Partnership, who designed such high-end Related projects as the Apogee, the Murano at Portofino and Murano Grande in Miami Beach and Bal Harbour’s St. Regis Resort & Residences. Designer Adriana Hoyos is creating the luxe interiors, and units are available fully finished, with flooring, kitchens and bathrooms, to be move-in ready.
Pre-construction sales for the first tower opened to the public earlier this month. Construction is slated to begin in six months, and the building will be completed in late 2015.
The condos range from the low $200,000s for a one-bedroom to $600,000s for a three-bedroom unit with a den, and $800,000 for a penthouse, Betancourt said. The luxury condos are set to compete with towers in such urban areas as the Brickell Corridor, but at lower prices. A unit that costs $370 per square foot in Downtown Doral might cost between $550 and $600 per square foot on Brickell, he said.
“If a developer is able to achieve more than $350 a square foot in Doral, it will trigger wildfire in condo development in Doral,” Zalewski said.
Doral, a suburban/industrial area west of Miami International Airport, has become a hub for Venezuelans, as well as other Latin Americans. For those prospective buyers, as well as other local buyers who want to live close to work or family in Doral, affordable prices will be key, analysts say.
“Price points are going to be very important,” McCabe said. “They are going to need to have price points that are affordable for working-class and middle-class Floridians.”
To be sure, the volume of daytime workers in Doral is enormous — more than 150,000 according to the city, and growing. Doral is home to such major employers as Univision, Carnival Cruise Lines, the Federal Reserve Bank of Miami, the U.S. Southern Command and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, as well as the Miami Herald. It ranks as the region’s No. 1 warehouse/office market, according to real estate analyst David Dabby, principal of Dabby Group Advisors in Coral Gables.
Yet the city cites its population at just 46,000, and housing is somewhat limited. While other residential projects are planned or under construction, Codina Partners’ is by far the most ambitious.
“Generally speaking, the Doral area is dominated by single family houses and inferior old rental units,” Zalewski said. “And for the most part what you are seeing is niche building starting to occur with condos and townhouses, to allow people to get into the marketplace, because the economy is so strong there.”
Among other projects underway are two Related Group rental developments: Doral View Apartments, a 360-unit garden apartment project with 14 three-story buildings, and CityPlace Apartments, adjacent to CityPlace Doral, which will have more than 330,000 square feet of retail.
With its central location, Dabby said he expects that Downtown Doral “will have the demand to fill up its residential component.... People don’t want to drive; they will be happy to live close to their offices,” he said. “As long as they get the pricing right, it’s a winner.”
So far, 42 condo units on the first tower have been reserved. The developers are requiring a 20 percent deposit at contract signing, 20 percent at groundbreaking, 10 percent at topping off, and 50 percent at closing, Betancourt said. The condos are being marketed both locally and throughout Latin America, including in Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
Ingrid Sanchez, a Realtor with Keyes Co. in Doral, so far has sold 15 condo units, all to Venezuelans, who were lured by the scope of the development — the entertainment, restaurants, and a school — as well as the price, she said.
“It’s a new product in Doral,” Sanchez said. “It’s totally different than what we have seen before.”
For the third tower, Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott, who designed the luxury towers Jade Beach and Jade Ocean in Sunny Isles Beach, has been selected as the designer.
The developers are aiming for condo buildings that are unique and that differ from each other —“organic, not cookie-cutter,” said Codina Barlick, who is leading the Downtown Doral development. Rather than naming the towers, the developers have chosen to use addresses, like 5252 Paseo for the first condo building.
Two, three and four-bedroom townhouses are also being marketed. To date, 30 townhouses have been reserved pre-construction, with prices from $400,000 to $1 million, Codina Barlick said.
Downtown Doral’s roots lie in the former Koger Office Park, a series of 32 squat office buildings built in the 1970s that housed mostly government workers.
The original developer, Ira Koger, built such projects as Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, all over the country, using the same model: buy cheap land in the middle of nowhere and build cheap office buildings, aiming to be the lowest-cost bidder for government tenants, Codina said.
That formula worked until Sept. 11, 2001. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the U.S. government decided it no longer wanted its employees concentrated in one place, so as not to be an easy target.
“The combination of decrepit buildings and that the government moved out created the opportunity,” to buy the land, said Codina, who was approached by JP Morgan to be an equity partner and master developer in a joint venture to redevelop the property.
Another essential factor converged at the same time and propelled Codina’s vision for the project: the growing, newly incorporated city of Doral, whose 2003 incorporation Codina supported.
The city, he said, was full of commuting workers, 9 to 5. Codina knew they would need more places to eat and shop — and live.
“If you look at growth in Dade County, no place has grown as much as Doral,” he said. “To me, this was a no brainer.”
In Doral, like much of Miami-Dade‘s newly formed and expanding cities, planning largely has been absent. Zoning is haphazard. And the area lacks a downtown, Codina said.
His project, he hopes, will change that. “In my mind, this is not only an area that had grown a great deal, but Doral needed a downtown,” Codina said. “Doral needed a heart.”
A new Main Street is in the works, targeted to be an urban, walking, shopping and dining destination, with more than 50 retailers, encompassing as much as 180,000 square feet. At least 20 restaurants will be included in the downtown area, whose look will be somewhat akin to Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile. Codina Partners is partnering with Lennar Corp. in the retail and restaurant component, and the first phase, representing 80,000 square feet and a budget of $30 million, is expected to break ground in the first quarter of 2014.
So far, the partners said they have commitments from restaurant chains including Novecento, Royal Pig Pub and Zona Fresca.
More than 1 million square feet of office space is also planned for Downtown Doral in four new office buildings; the first was completed in 2010. Four existing Koger buildings will remain, Codina Barlick said.
Codina Partners is recasting the streets to be more urban and pedestrian friendly. NW 53rd Street, for example, has been converted from a busy four-lane thoroughfare to a two lane street with a bike path, parallel parking and sidewalks.
For Downtown Doral’s master plan, the developers hired architect and planners Richard Flierl and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.
Codina Partners has built a government center for the city of Doral, for which the city paid $20 million for the land and construction. Outside the building, wide pink concrete sidewalks front a park where a massive, $1 million public art sculpture designed by prominent artist Michele Oka Doner has just been installed.
Codina Barlick calls it “the signature for Doral.”
The steel-and-concrete open-air pavillion was three years in the making, said Oka Doner. Codina asked her to create a soul and heart for his new community. “My idea was to make something primal in a space that is based in chrome and glass,” Oka Doner said.
“I said to Armando that Doral doesn’t have to be a suburb of Miami,” she said. “I think it can be the gateway to the Everglades, so this is a piece that declares itself connected to the forces of nature.”
The three-acre park with the pavilion also includes a playground and Oka Doner-designed benches. The city required the developers to spend $50,000 on the pavilion; they ended up spending $1 million on the park, in addition to the $1 million for the artwork, Codina said.
“We wanted it to be a statement and one of the anchors for the project,” Codina Barlick said. “So we used all recycled, re-purposed wood” for the playground.
Additional public art is also a key component of Downtown Doral. Main Street will be anchored by two 30-foot high, custom-made metal sculptures, by a separate, as-yet-unnamed artist. Nearby, a charter elementary school also will be built, to be run by Miami-Dade Public Schools.
“I want real people, who want to send their kids to school,” Codina said of Downtown Doral’s future residents. “We want a real city and we want to bring in the local market.”
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, councilwoman for Doral, said Downtown Doral is just what the city needs.
“I definitely welcome the mixed use that this brings to this city because it creates community, and I think that is what residents want....” she said. “That is what is missing in Doral and that fills that void.”
Though some construction is underway, other parts of the development still have to wait until tenants’ leases expire so office buildings can be torn down to make way for new buildings, said Codina. “We demolish as quickly as we can demolish.”
Codina, a high-profile Cuban-born civic leader, at one time partnered with Jeb Bush to co-develop the upscale Deering Bay Yacht and Country Club community. Codina serves as a trustee of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts/YoungArts, chair of the Town Square Neighborhood Development Corp. and chairman emeritus of Florida International University’s broad of trustees. He and the late Knight Ridder chairman Alvah Chapman co-founded the Community Parnership for the Homeless, now called the Chapman Partnership. Codina currently sits on The Home Depot board of directors, and previously sat on the boards of General Motors and American Airline’s parent, AMR Corp.
While Downtown Doral is aleady a massive undertaking, the overall project may wind up to be even larger than the current vision.
Just south of Downtown Doral’s 120-acre property is another 125-acre parcel, the Great White Course — a golf course currently owned by the Sovereign Government of Singapore, which it acquired about two years ago through bankruptcy actions. The government of Singapore had been a senior lender to an investment fund that owned a number of resorts across the United States. The fund went into bankruptcy, and Singapore took ownership of the Great White Course, Codina Barlick said. The balance of the Doral Golf Resort was sold to the Trump Organization, and Trump National Doral Miami currently leases the active Great White Course from Singapore, she said.
Fronting 87th Avenue, across from the current Trump National Doral Miami and contiguous to Downtown Doral, the golf course is expected to come up for bid early next year. The property comes with development rights for residential, office and retail use, similar to Downtown Doral.
“We’re the logical buyer, and we will be an aggressive bidder,” Codina said.
If Codina Partners prevails, its Downtown Doral project would then more than double in size.
“Everyone in real estate has a lot of respect for Mr. Codina. He does a lot of research on his own, and obviously he feels confident about bringing this large scale development at this time,” McCabe said. “My expectation for the next three to five years is it will be a very successful project.”

131215-b
Florida's conservation-land sale likely to fall well short of goal
Orlando Sentinel - by Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
December 15, 2013
TALLAHASSEE — Florida's effort to sell off unneeded conservation lands is off to such a rocky start that it is unlikely to produce anything close to the $50 million envisioned by lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott.
Trying to kick-start the state's stalled land-conservation program, Scott and legislators agreed last spring to spend $70 million on environmental land-buying. Most of that amount — $50 million — would have to come from selling other lands "no longer necessary for conservation."
But since Florida's Department of Environmental Protection released a list of potential sales parcels totaling 5,300 acres in August, resistance from local politicians and environmental activists has been a steady drumbeat. More than 2,500 individuals and organizations have written letters and emails, the vast majority opposed to selling off various tracts.
The lands on the list "have clear conservation value," a coalition of environmental groups, including 1000 Friends of Florida, the Nature Conservancy and St. Johns Riverkeeper, wrote to the agency this fall.
Already, about a third of the 5,300 acres have been removed from the list. More than three-fourths of the remaining land is in the Green Swamp in Polk County. The disconnected slivers of conservation land known as the Hilochee Wildlife Management Area are home to bears and, scientists believe, some of the few remaining Florida panthers.
About 2,600 acres of the area are on the auction block. The Polk County Commission recently voted to send a letter to Scott and the Cabinet opposing the sale.
In September, 345 acres of conservation land near the Wekiva River in Orange and Seminole counties was removed from the list after intense opposition. The land was part of the swath of properties selected for public purchase by the 2004 Wekiva Parkway and Protection Act to shield the river, its springs and forests from the coming Wekiva Parkway.
A month later, the list of 170 parcels representing about 5,300 acres — from the Blackwater forest near Pensacola to the hardwood hammocks in the Florida Keys — was officially pared to 77, accounting for 3,405 acres. The list still includes 41 acres of Wekiwa Springs State Park in Orange and Seminole.
DEP officials plan to finalize the list within a month and will then first offer the lands to other state agencies or local governments — if any of them can take over management — before offering them to private buyers, likely in April.
No appraisals have been completed, but the effort is unlikely to produce anywhere close to the original $50 million goal, said Charles Lee, advocacy director for Audubon of Florida.
"It is a flop," said Lee, whose group is one of one of eight environmental organizations opposed to the sell-off. "I'd be very surprised if there were more than $5 million — maybe $7 million — worth of properties on the list that would actually bring in money."
The Hilochee lands are subject to development protections dating back to the 1970s, when the Green Swamp was designated an "area of critical state concern" because of its value to the aquifer and its proximity to Walt Disney World and encroaching development pressures.
Much of the land is wetlands and inaccessible by road. One 241-acre tract up for sale is a key piece of the Department of Transportation's plan to build an underpass for bears and panthers connecting Gator Creek to Peace River as part of the Interstate 4 work there.
"It's their property; they can do what they want with it," said Polk County Commissioner George Lindsey. "But we hope they would weigh our preferences in their total deliberation."
If nothing else, Lee says, the proposed sell-off has shown that the state hasn't wasted money on lands not needed for conservation. "What this exercise has proven is you don't have much junk kicking around in the inventory of environmental lands."

131214-a
County to build new storm water facility
StAugustine.com – by Peter.Guinta
December 14, 2013
The lower St. Johns River — and its tributary, Deep Creek — will be cleaner next year after construction of a 40-acre pond and adjacent wetlands near Flagler Estates designed to scrub stormwater pollutants and agricultural nutrients from the river.
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday that the county will get a grant of $796,0007 to build a stormwater treatment facility “required in the restoration plan for the St. Johns.”
Assistant County Engineer Andrew Ames said the DEP grant will “benefit a water body that’s considered impaired.”
Ames was referring to Deep Creek. But the St. Johns, with it frequent algae blooms poisonous to wildlife, is also impaired.
The money is part of the $6.14 million in federal grant money that the DEP awarded to nine high-priority watersheds in the state. This is the only one in Northeast Florida.
All projects specifically address “non-point pollution,” which includes oil, animal waste, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, sediment and other contaminants. Rainwater picks up these chemicals and washes them into surface water, killing fisheries and destroying habitat.
Drew Bartlett, the DEP’s deputy secretary for water policy and ecosystem restoration, said, “This funding allows the department to provide local governments additional targeted financial assistance for these needed projects.”
Ames explained that stormwater drains into the main discharge canals in the Hastings area, then is pumped out and put into the pond facility. It might stay there three weeks before it’s released into the wetland area, which further draws nutrients out of the water, he said.
That cleansed water then flows into Deep Creek and the St. Johns River.
Storms can overload the canals in a short time.
“Water sheets flowing from agricultural fields elevates levels of nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus in the water,” he said. “Rainwater pulls smoke, carbon and nitrogen from the air, a process called atmospheric deposition. About 30 percent of the nutrients come from rain.”
This stormwater project is just one the county has going, Ames said.
“We have a handful of different projects in different stages,” he said.
***
The other projects funded by the DEP grant include:
* $200,000 to Pensacola for storm water projects in the Gaberonne Swamp.
* $115,600 for Tallahassee for a project on the Upper Wakulla River.
* $750,000 for Tavares (in Lake County) to reduce nutrients in Lake Dora.
* $585,000 to Polk county for storm water improvements to Lake Gwyn.
* $350,000 to Plant City for treatment of Mill Creek and the Hillsborough River.
* $245,000 to Venice for storm water management of the Gulf estuary.
* $321,393 to Brevard County to help restore the Indian River Lagoon.
* $500,000 to St. Lucie County to treat storm water going into the St. Lucie River.

131214-b
Gardiner's first heavy lift is Indian River Lagoon
Orlando Sentinel – by Aaron Deslatte, Capitol View
December 14, 2013
TALLAHASSEE — Orlando's Andy Gardiner doesn't officially take the job of Senate president until after the 2014 elections, but the local problems demanding his attention are here now. Look to the muck choking off the Indian River Lagoon and killing its wildlife in droves. Two massive algae blooms that began in 2011 have destroyed 47,000 acres of sea grasses — 60 percent of the total there — and killed off hundreds of dolphins, manatees and pelicans.
The brown blooms stretch from Scottsmoor and the Mosquito Lagoon north of Titusville all the way south to Fort Pierce Inlet. They're a crisis made not in Washington or Tallahassee, but the daily dumping of grass cuttings, soil, fertilizer and pesticides from yards, farms and construction sites into the waterways since the 1950s.
As Brevard's population grew from just over 50,000 to north of 550,000 in the past six decades, the canals carved for waterfront development have become pipelines for the ingredients coalescing into the sludge now decimating the Indian River.
The fix won't be cheap: Gardiner and Sen. Thad Altman, both Republicans who represent parts of Brevard, plan to push for $20 million annually to start dredging it out. And it will take years to make a lasting dent – to the tune of $100 million to $120 million — to say nothing about new regulations or local resources to stop new runoff.
"This is truly the canary in the coal mine," said Altman, R-Viera.
Lawmakers didn't have to imagine what that coal mine looked like. The Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee got their hands dirty, thanks to Florida Institute of Technology chemistry professor John Trefry, a Melbourne resident who has tracked the pollution buildup for decades.
He gave each lawmaker a bag of the muck filling up the waterway – triple-bagged, and loaded with the "black mayonnaise," or organic materials, sulfur and water.
There are 5 million to 7 million cubic yards of it settled into the lagoon, or 1,000 football fields piled a yard deep.
Trefry said his students would have to bag 6 billion more to get it all out. "We're in a period of critical decline," Trefry said.
Lawmakers appear to be taking that warning seriously.
"It's time to quit talking and figure out how best we can do this," said Senate Environmental Preservation Chairman Charlie Dean, R-Inverness.
But Senate President Don Gaetz, quoting former budget chairman J.D. Alexander, boiled down the distributional politics awaiting next spring this way: "It's better to have no money than a little money."
Expecting about $1 billion in surplus cash, lawmakers and interest groups have probably already spent it mentally "40 or 50 times."
So, $20 million annually for five years requires some heavy lifting.
Luckily for local residents, Gardiner's term as Senate president will coincide with House Speaker-designate Steve Crisafulli, a developer whose Merritt Island hometown is front row to the lagoon calamity.
Gardiner this week signaled he planned to use his term as president to promote the tourism attractions that are Florida's natural ecosystems. He wants to try again to land $50 million for a statewide connection of biking trails, which Gov. Rick Scott vetoed last summer.
"We should be competing with the Colorado's and California's," Gardiner told reporters. "If 'were going to look at water quality, natural resources, let's look also at promotion of it."
He might have to start in his own back yard, which is hardly postcard picturesque at the moment.

131214-c
Long-delayed lagoon dredging plan is set to begin
VeroNews.com
December 14, 2013
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Army Corps of Engineers finally will dredge the Intracoastal Waterway between the Wabasso Bridge and Indian River/Brevard county line next summer and fall.
“I just received an update from the Corps and they are designing the project now to put it out to bid,” says Mark Crosley, executive director of the Florida Inland Navigation District. “They hope to be digging by August, and the dredging should take three months to complete.”
The muck-removal project, which has been delayed for years by public opposition and a lack of money, is intended mainly to benefit boaters and ensure safe navigation, but it will also aid the ecology of the lagoon in one of the areas hardest hit by nutrient overload and seagrass loss.
FDEP – Florida Department of Environmental Protection – has identified organic material in muck on the floor of the lagoon as a significant source of the nutrients that fed destructive algae blooms in 2011 and 2012.
The blooms, along with other as yet unexplained factors, wreaked havoc in the lagoon environment, leading to unprecedented seagrass destruction, loss of fish, and death among marine mammals, including bottlenose dolphins and manatees.
Most of the lagoon is only 3-to-5 feet deep, but the Intracoastal Waterway channel is supposed to be maintained at a 12-foot depth so large boats can travel safely up and down the coast.
Muck – a mixture of sand and decayed organic material – tends to settle in the channel, gradually reducing its depth and potentially interfering with navigation. When storms or currents roil the waterway, organic material in the channel churns up and clouds the water, cutting off light seagrass needs to survive and feeding algae blooms.
“The nice thing about the dredging is that besides keeping the channel clear, we get rid of the fine material that increases turbidity in the lagoon,” says Crosley. “That fine particulate muck is a negative to the system, so it is good to get it out of there.”
Public opposition to the project in Reach 1, which is what FIND and Corps call the stretch of the lagoon north of Wabasso Bridge, has focused mainly on a 72-acre muck containment pit FIND completed in 2012 at Duck Point in Sebastian.
The Corps plans to pump 140,000 cubic yards of dredge material into the pit, where it will dry out and solidify, and people living near the pit have been worried about possible contaminants in the muck.
FIND, a special taxing district created by the Florida Legislature in 1927 to create and keep open a waterway along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, began planning the dredging project and storage pit in 1997.
At that time, the district did some sediment testing, which found no toxic material, and held public meetings to inform residents.
By the time pit construction began in 2011, the population of Sebastian had doubled and new communities had been built near the containment area. Caught by surprise when bulldozers started to roll, residents who had never heard of the project and were unclear about its scope and purpose were angry and fearful.
Hostility to the project increased when local groups realized FIND had not tested the muck it planned to store near their homes in 14 years.
FIND eventually agreed to retest the muck, hiring Delray Beach-based American Vibracore Services for $76,000 to take sediment samples from three shoaling sections of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Tests were conducted for more than 60 substances and the muck turned out to be remarkably clean, with no pesticide or petroleum contamination.
Samples showed traces of arsenic, but not at dangerous levels. The project got a green light, but funding shortages caused further delays.
Now that dredging is finally scheduled to go ahead, Crosley is optimistic public fears have been put to rest.
“Hopefully we have alleviated all the concern. We have done additional work on this project, above and beyond what we normally do, to try and allay any worries people may have had.”

131213-a
Central Florida looks to the St. Johns to meet growing water needs
WJCT.org - by Cyd Hoskinson
December 13, 2013
A plan that would let Central Florida withdraw as much as 155 million gallons of water a day from the St. Johns River to meet the region’s growing needs is expected to be adopted this spring.
The so-called "Central Florida Regional Water Supply Plan" has been in the works for a number of years.
According to St. Johns Riverkeeper Lisa Rinaman, there’s been little if any input from this part of the state.
“They’ve been having stakeholder meetings in Central Florida where they reap the benefits of these actions," she said. "They have not, to date, had a stakeholders' meeting in Northeast Florida.”
Rinaman says she’s asked to be on one of the solution committees that will spend the next year looking at the bigger picture.
She also said the St. Johns River Water Management District has agreed to hold a workshop in Palatka next month so that people in Northeast Florida can weigh in on what the proposed water withdrawals will mean for this region.
The population of Central Florida is expected to surpass 4-million people by 2035. Experts say it will take at least a billion gallons of water a day to support the region.

131213-b
Consortium says no to moratorium on additional aquifer pumping
Orlando Sentinel - by Kevin Spear
December 13, 2013
A consortium tasked with guiding Central Florida to a new era of water decided Friday to double down on scrutinizing the doling out of the last available water in the Floridan Aquifer.
But the group ruled out a moratorium on issuing permits that would allow utilities and other users access to what's left in the aquifer, which is being tapped by Central Florida at an average rate of 850 gallons a day.
The Central Florida Water Initiative, comprised of utilities, state regulators and, in a recent addition, environmentalists, estimates the region could need as much as 1.1 billion gallons of water daily in 20 years.
With only about 50 million gallons a day left in the Floridan Aquifer, the initiative is setting the stage for greater reliance on conservation, recycled wastewater and other sources, such as the St. Johns River.
Getting the wheels turning for those measures will take years in many cases, and members worry utilities and other users will compete, if not fight for, the 50 million gallons.
But the initiative decided that a moratorium on tapping the 50 million gallons would require a bureaucracy-laden process that ultimately depends on the Legislature's approval.
Ed de la Parte, a lawyer who has worked for many utilities, said long before a moratorium took effect, there could be a "run on the bank" for the last of the aquifer's water.
The initiative decided the best option is to make water-permit actions transparent, up to date and easier for regulators and utilities to monitor. An enormous challenge for the initiative has been in getting Central Florida's three water-management agencies, which dole out water permits, to share data.
Also to be implemented is a mechanism to rewrite permits if they are linked to aquifer stresses. And any utility or company seeking a new permit will be presented with a "menu" of conservation options.

131213-c
Farm bill benefits Florida
Gainesville.com – by Jimmy Wohl, owner of Rafter T Ranch in Sebring, FL
December 13, 2013
It appears the farm bill conference committee is struggling to reach a final agreement. I am saddened by this impasse because as a rancher who takes pride in our land stewardship, I have firsthand experience with farm bill programs administered through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
These programs play a vital role in protecting and preserving our precious water resources, integrity of remaining habitat and the rapidly disappearing agricultural heritage that feeds and clothes the masses. Our family considers our ranch, Rafter T Ranch, a family heirloom to be preserved for future generations.
We have enrolled in two NRCS programs funded by previous farm bills, specifically the Wetlands Preserve Program (WRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) that gave us the ability to prevent fragmentation of our 5,178 acre ranch, prevent intensified land use changes in the future, and provide technical and financial support to implement management practices otherwise unaffordable with the typical revenues generated in the cattle business.
Under the WRP conservation easement, wetlands on our ranch were restored enabling enhanced water storage that removes nutrients from the water before it reaches Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Everglades, a national treasure. The easement also protects our land so that our grandchildren and their children will have a place to enjoy nature and be able to continue the ranching heritage that we and the community cherish.
Through EQIP we were provided financial and technical assistance to create additional water storage areas on my land further addressing the issue of nutrient removal from the Everglades system.
Other programs through the farm bill, such as the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP), allow ranchers and farmers to protect their agricultural way of life by purchasing conservation easements that allow for continued agricultural use, but prevent future conversion to more intensive uses, in most cases.
These farm bill programs not only directly benefit local communities by protecting and restoring natural resources and helping families stay on their land, but all of the American people by protecting our food supply, our agricultural heritage, and the ecosystem services provided by nature necessary for people to thrive.
Without the farm bill, families and lands throughout America will be negatively impacted. Families that might be able to stay in agriculture if afforded the opportunity to participate in WRP or FRPP might have to succumb to economic pressure and sell their land for development. Farmers and ranchers who desire to improve their agricultural practices to enhance fish and wildlife habitat on their property through EQIP will lose the opportunity for technical and financial assistance.
This has far reaching consequences for communities and nature. The programs within this bill are proven to work for people and nature, and foster partnerships among the government, private landowners and conservationists.
For the well-being of America’s land, water and people, I hope Congress can set aside their differences and come to agreement on the farm bill.
Related:           Farm Bill Benefits Florida's Economy            The Ledger, (Dec.16, 2013)

131213-d
Ignoring the culprits
Ocala.com - Editorial
December 13, 2013
How many times do we Floridians have to be told what is ailing our spectacular freshwater springs ? Frankly, it takes little more than a glance into any spring to identify the problems. The algae-covered bottom and the low water lines are telltale — and it is a story that is told over and over from Silver Springs to Manatee Springs to Ichetucknee Springs.
Nitrate pollution and overpumping are slowly but surely destroying our springs.
In this paper's series “Fragile Springs,” virtually every article has identified nitrate pollution, sometimes 10 times normal levels, and declining spring flows, sometimes by up to half, as the primary causes of the degradation and diminishment of Florida's 700 natural springs.
Neither is a big revelation. Nitrate pollution and declining water flows have been being cited by environmentalists and state water managers for more than a decade as detrimental to our springs' health. Yet the problems not only persist but worsen.
Springs degradation is inarguably a state crisis, yet our lawmakers in Tallahassee refuse to have serious discussions about saving our springs, let alone taking serious steps. Oh, there have been attempts to begin reversing the destructive practices that are destroying our springs, but they have been short-lived.
Former Sen. Lee Constantine pushed through legislation in 2010 that would have required Florida's 2.7 million septic tanks to undergo inspections to make sure they were working properly. But that bill was repealed just two years later under pressure from special interest groups.
Even the original water management bill, passed in 1972, recognized that overpumping could imperil our springs and demanded that the water districts determine the minimum flows and levels of the state's waterways, including its springs, and monitor them. Now more than 40 years later, we still await that mandate to be carried out, including at our own Silver and Rainbow springs.
Water tables and water flows continue to fall. Nitrate and stormwater pollution continue to increase. Yet we see no concentrated efforts in the Legislature to curb the use of fertilizers for either agricultural or domestic use or stem continued expansion of septic tanks, more than 100,000 of which are buried in Marion County.
As for water flow, consumptive use permits not only are not being curbed, the administration of Gov. Rick Scott is working feverishly to make it even easier for large water users to get and keep permits.
Maybe most inexplicable in the whole springs' crisis is that the people who live around and love Florida's springs not only are cognizant, but impassioned over these natural gems that are slowly dying, yet our government officials are not.
At some point the Florida Legislature has to make some tough decisions and enact some tough laws that will severely curb nitrate pollution and slow the drawdown of the aquifer if we are to save our springs. As State Sen. Charlie Dean of Inverness told us recently, we have enough studies, we know what is killing our springs. We can see it. Now it is time to do something substantive to save them.

131213-e
Leading on water
Gainesville.com - Editorial
December 13, 2013
Leadership has always been the missing ingredient in tackling Florida's ongoing water crisis. Nowhere in Tallahassee could a concerted effort be found in confronting the degradation and depletion of our state's water supply, or its lakes, rivers and springs.
But there is new hope. A coalition of five senators has come together to talk about bringing about serious reform to Florida's antiquated and, frankly, ineffective water policies.
Sens. Charlie Dean, Alan Hays, Bill Montford, David Simmons and Wilton Simpson have begun holding monthly meetings to map out both political and legislative strategies for bringing about long-overdue changes to not only water policy, but water conservation, supply and storage practices.
“A lot of people walk up to me and say you're too little, too late,” Dean, R-Inverness, told the Ocala Star-Banner. “But it's never too late when it comes to our water. Everything is relevant.”
It's not too late, but as The Sun and Star-Banner series “Fragile Springs” has shown, our springs and the lakes and rivers they feed are virtually all experiencing reduced flows and heightened pollution. That, in turn, suggests the same about their source, the Floridan Aquifer — our drinking water supply.
Five senators meeting regularly is hardly cause to declare victory, but it is an important leap from where the Legislature has been on water of late. All five are chairmen of key Senate committees, including Environmental Preservation and Conservation (Dean), Agriculture (Montford) and Community Affairs (Simpson). Dean said the quintet is focusing first on what is “doable” to stimulate some meaningful action. Next, they want to set attainable goals. Finally, they want to reach across the political and environmental spectrum.
Dean said everything has to be on the table, from greater water storage projects and metering big agricultural wells to mandatory conservation programs and, yes, even reconsideration of water permit allocations. “Somewhere along the line, we need to revisit the water consumption and gallonage of some of these big permits,” Dean said.
There is no doubt the five senators will encounter pushback. Water is essential to too many industries in our fair state. When these senators start tampering with the cheap and easy access to our most precious resource, the fight will be on. Bet on it.
That said, somebody, sometime has to take a stand. We hope these five senators are those people and this is that moment.
Florida's water is its most valuable environmental and economic resource, and it is indisputably in trouble.
“We all have our rights and concerns,” Dean said. “But what I really want to do is stop and recalibrate and try to do something that is doable and achievable to save our water.”
Doable and achievable to save our water. It's a good place to start the conversation. Let's hope Gov. Rick Scott and the senators' fellow lawmakers join in and do and achieve

131213-f
On water quality, is Tallahassee getting its head out of the muck ?
Palm Beach Post - Editorial by Randy Schultz
December 13,2013
On Wednesday morning, John Trefry presented a gift to each member of the Florida Senate Environmental and Conservation Preservation Committee. But he cautioned the members not to open them.
The gifts were triple-bagged samples of toxic muck from Indian River Lagoon, the type of muck that in late summer fouled the St. Lucie River in Martin County. Dr. Trefry, a professor of marine and environmental systems at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, cautioned that the muck contained hydrogen sulfide. How much of that toxic muck is in the lagoon, which stretches from near Daytona Beach to Jupiter Inlet ?  Enough, Dr. Trefry said, to cover 1,000 football fields one yard deep.
This story continues on our new premium website for subscribers, MyPalmBeachPost.com. Continue reading/get access here »

131213-g
Scientists map vast reserves of freshwater under the seabed
WCHE.org - by Editor
December 13, 2013
Not all the water in the sea is seawater.
Scientists think there are vast reserves of fresh groundwater buried under the oceans — a potentially valuable resource for coastal cities that need freshwater.
A recent report in Nature estimates the amount of fresh groundwater around the world at about 120,000 cubic miles — that's 100 times more than all the groundwater that has been pumped up from wells since the 1900s. The reserves are scattered across coastal regions around the world.
Researchers drilled down at various spots and used modeling techniques to calculate how much water there is altogether. The water isn't immediately drinkable, but it's much less salty than seawater and therefore cheaper to desalinate.
The study's lead author, Vincent Post of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training in Australia, says scientists knew such freshwater reserves existed but thought they formed only under rare conditions, according to ScienceDaily.
"Our research shows that fresh and brackish aquifers below the seabed are actually quite a common phenomenon," Post tells the science news site. He adds, "Knowing about these reserves is great news because this volume of water could sustain some regions for decades."
Two-thirds of the world's population will be living under water stress conditions by 2025, according to estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. In particular, coastal regions of the U.S., South America, the southern parts of Africa, Europe and Australia could see their water supply drop by 20 percent or more by 2050, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.
This isn't the first time scientists have found fresh groundwater buried in the seafloor, but the study is the first global survey of all the known undersea reserves, says Mark Person, professor of hydrology at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He says scientists have made such discoveries around the world — including in coastal regions off Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Indonesia and Tanzania.
"There's just been an explosion of interest in documenting all these instances of freshwater," says Person, one of the study's authors.
So how did all this water get there ?  Several million years ago, the sea level was a lot lower, so rainwater and runoff from glaciers filled up the water tables in these areas. Over time, sea levels rose and covered up the aquifers, which are sealed in by layers of sediment.
And why is this just coming to light ?  The depth of these reserves ranges from 650 to 3 miles. Person points out oil companies have to drill much deeper than that to find oil, so their instruments are not turned on at the level of these freshwater reserves.
Post tells ScienceDaily that there are two ways to get to the water: "Build a platform out at sea and drill into the seabed, or drill from the mainland or islands close to the aquifers."
That's not likely to come cheap.
While places such as Cape May, N.J., are already drilling and desalinating freshwater underground for use, getting to freshwater reserves under the oceans will probably be more expensive, says Kenneth Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University.
Miller's research has involved drilling into freshwater reserves offshore, and he says drilling three holes about 2,500 feet down cost around $13 million. And some reserves will be saltier – and need more processing — than others, depending on what kinds of sediment surrounds them. Finer grains seal in fresher water while coarser grains hold saltier water, Miller says.
"[Tapping the freshwater reserves] represents a potential alternative that may be economic," says Person, the study co-author. He notes, however, that the scientists have not yet tapped into one of these reserves and that this is a non-renewable resource.
And the study points out that water is relatively cheap now, but these reserves could be important if coastal areas have less water in the future.

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'Landmark' water proposals coming in 2014 session
Tallahassee.com – by Travis Pillow
December 12, 2013
Multi-year legislative focus would put money behind comprehensive effort to protect state's fresh water.
Florida lawmakers say they plan to take major steps to protect the state’s springs and freshwater supply during the next legislative session.
In recent weeks, the incoming leaders of the state House and Senate have signaled that they intend to make water issues a priority when they take the helm after the 2014 elections.
But a bipartisan group of state senators plan to get started before then. They are working on a proposal to protect Florida’s springs.
Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee and has been taking part in regular meetings with four Republican colleagues. He said they are working on “landmark” legislation intended to serve as “the opening play ... for a tremendous and significant approach to addressing water issues” over the next few years.
“I think you’re going to see that this spring, this session, there is going to be a concerted effort to take a first major step in a comprehensive solution to preserving both quantity and quality of water resources in the state of Florida — something not only for our children but our children’s children,” said Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs.
Simmons said Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, is the leader of the quintet, which also includes Sens. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby,and Alan Hays, R-Umatilla. All three chair key committees overseeing environmental issues.
They are working on proposals intended to:
• Require regulators to create protection zones and curb pollution around the state’s major springs.
• Limit water withdrawals that could harm flow levels in those springs.
• Encourage the use of reclaimed water and water-storage systems that would give businesses and farmers alternative water sources while reducing pumping from the aquifer.
• Ensure property owners are not stuck with the bills for connecting their homes to municipal sewer systems or cleaning up runoff from their septic tanks.
The legislation aims to attach deadlines to the state’s water-quality and water-quantity requirements, make them stronger around dozens of Florida’s most prized springs, and provide substantial state funding to help meet them, Simmons said.
He said the senators will likely revise their proposal as they hear from state agencies, local governments, industry groups and farmers. But he said he has advice for anyone who denies there’s a problem: “Get a reality check. Go down to one of our endangered springs and take a swim.”
“Doing nothing is not a solution, and that is unacceptable to us,” Simmons said. “Compromise is acceptable.”
Montford and Simmons said they hope to encourage those compromises by tackling a range of issues in a single bill, from water supplies to water-quality threats from septic tanks to wastewater treatment to agricultural runoff. By providing state funding, they intend to reduce, and in some cases eliminate, the costs to local governments, farmers and homeowners.
Eric Draper, the executive director of Audubon of Florida, said any effort to curb pollution affecting rivers and springs is going to face pushback from developers and agricultural interests. But with the economy rebounding and concerns about the health of Florida’s environment mounting across the state, he said he senses a growing appetite for springs legislation.
“I think we’re seeing the pendulum swinging back toward the legislators recognizing that Floridians want environmental protection,” he said.
Future legislative leaders have indicated they plan to wrestle with water-quality issues in the coming years. After his colleagues voted to designate him as the next Senate president, state Sen. Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said protecting the state’s natural resources, including water — and promoting them to boost tourism — would be one of his three main priorities leading the Senate.
His counterpart in the house, Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, has sent a similar message. In a recent newspaper guest column, he called for statewide water planning.
“If there’s one issue issue that I’ve identified, having the opportunity to become speaker (after the 2014 elections), this is the one,” he said.
Last session, lawmakers approved $10 million for springs protection, and Environmental Protection Secretary Herschel Vinyard said the state was able to turn that into $36 million in projects by working with local governments and water management districts.
Crisafulli said he expects the House to take a “project-based approach” in the upcoming session, and lay the groundwork for an overhaul of the state’s water policies in the years that follow, noting that lawmakers are not going to untangle Florida’s complex water issues in a single 60-day session.
Montford said he agrees it will take a multi-year effort.
“We did not get into the position we’re in overnight, and we will not get out overnight,” he said. “We’ll make a tremendous start on it this year.”

131212-c
Residents push for cleaner water in central Florida's waterways
WFTV.com
December 12, 2013
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. —  Residents are calling for cleaner water in central Florida's lakes, waterways and springs. On Thursday dozens of people rallied together to demand change from lawmakers.
The group is aiming to start a big campaign for clean water, but it could end up costing homeowners.
Bordered by aquatic weeds, Lake Sybelia isn't what it used to be, according to Chuck O'Neal.
"It's unfortunate that my nieces and nephews won't be able to swim in clear waters. They'll never know what this lake looked like," O'Neal said.
The lake is part of a water quality program that advocates said is going from bad to worse. Activists are launching a new campaign that calls for laws that would limit the amount of polluted run off that ends up in the natural resources.
"We are at critical mass now. We're not going to be able to continue in the way that we have," Rep. Linda Stewart said.
But new, higher standards would mean utility companies would be forced to update its systems. A cost that would likely be passed down to consumers. Legislators are talking about offering incentives to the companies to soften the impact.
Advocates said is something isn't done, Floridians will all pay more in the long run.
"We let it get to such bad conditions that we ended up putting way more money into it cleaning it up than we would have to just have tackled the problem to begin with," Stewart said.
A team of five state senators is spearheading a bill that would reform Florida's water policies, which they said are outdated and ineffective.

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Senate negotiators point fingers at House as WRDA talks stall
E&E Publishing – by Annie Snider, E&E reporter
December 12, 2013
The lead Senate negotiators for a final water resources bill are raising the specter that a deal may not be reached and are laying the blame on the lower chamber, according to participants in a stakeholder call yesterday afternoon.
Michael Willis, president of Alden Street Consulting, said that Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) stressed that negotiations over a Water Resources Development Act were failing not because of disagreements between the two of them, as some reports have suggested, but because of intransigence on the part of House negotiators.
"They said it's not a partisan issue; it's really a House versus Senate issue," Willis said. "They're trying to negotiate, but they're not getting anything back from the House."
The pair warned that momentum on the legislation, which this year has been a high priority for leaders in both chambers, could be lost after the holiday recess, according to Willis. If a compromise is not reached by June of next year, the bill will be dead, he said the senators contended.
House and Senate staff have been meeting regularly to negotiate on the bill, but this week, the first face-to-face member-level meetings were to be held on a conference package since the public kickoff meeting before Thanksgiving. But Willis said yesterday's meeting between negotiators was canceled.
Throughout the legislative process, House Transportation and Infrastructure leaders have been particularly concerned about winning conservatives' support for the bill, sticking to a tight script and holding their cards close to their chests.
Despite opposition from fiscal conservative groups just before floor debate over the House bill in October, lawmakers voted 417-3 in support of the legislation to authorize new lock, dam, levee and environmental restoration projects (E&ENews PM, Oct. 22; Greenwire, Oct. 24). But with the Senate bill taking a significantly different approach to authorizing projects and including authorizations for some projects that were left out of the House bill -- namely, $10.3 billion for Louisiana flood protection -- a compromise bill stands to be a tough swallow for House conservatives.
Willis and other stakeholders say it is not clear which major issues remain to be resolved among conferees, although he said the senators noted that port interests need to be concerned. The House and Senate bills take different tacks to increasing the amount of funding in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and providing federal cost-share for maintaining harbors that are dredged deeper than 45 feet.
Those differences were among those that the Obama administration weighed in on yesterday in a letter to House and Senate negotiators."Where an investment primarily serves an identifiable group or geographic area, those beneficiaries should pay all or a substantial share of the costs," wrote Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. "Changes in cost sharing responsibilities between Federal and non-Federal beneficiaries will have the unintended consequence of reducing the number of projects in which the Federal government can invest."

131212-e
Sorry climate change skeptics: Arctic melting trend continues despite milder year
Huffington Post - by Seth Borenstein
December 12, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — The rapid melting in the Arctic eased up this year. But the government says global warming is still dramatically altering the top of the world, reducing the number of reindeer and shrinking snow and ice, while increasing certain fish and extending the growing season.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its report card for the Arctic on Thursday, portraying 2013 as moderate compared with the roasting 2012.
Overall Arctic temperatures didn't soar quite as high, and Greenland ice sheets and summer sea ice didn't melt as much.
"The Arctic caught a break, if you will, in 2013, but one year doesn't change the long-term trend toward a warmer Arctic," said report card editor Martin Jeffries, a University of Alaska geophysicist who is the science adviser to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.
While 2013 looks a tad cool compared with the last six years, it is unusually warm compared with the 20th century, he said.
The report card was released at the American Geophysical Union scientific conference in San Francisco.
Central Alaska's summer was one of the warmest on record, coming months after its coldest April since 1924, NOAA said. Fairbanks experienced a record 36 days of more than 80 degrees. And snow cover in May and June was near record low levels in North America and broke a record for the least snow in Eurasia.
But one of the biggest climate change indicators, summer sea ice, wasn't as bad as expected. Sea ice reached its sixth-lowest level since NOAA began measuring — up from the lowest ever in 2012. But the seven lowest levels have all occurred in the last seven years.
"This is simply natural variability," said National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze, who wasn't part of the NOAA report but praised it. "There is nothing about the year 2013 that provides any evidence that the Arctic is starting a path toward recovery."
He added: "Looking back 20 years from now, the world will be warmer and we'll have much less sea ice than today. We'll see that 2013 was just a temporary respite."
More ominous are long-term trends, NOAA's report card said.
Average Arctic temperatures have increased 3.6 degrees since the 1960s, rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. The growing season has lengthened by nearly a month since 1982.
Fish species are moving north, permafrost is melting, and shrubs are greening in ways that weren't seen before.
University of Virginia environmental scientist Howard Epstein warned that changes in the Arctic reverberate around the globe.
"The Arctic is not like Vegas," he said. "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic."

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Environmental groups raise $400k more for conservation amendment
Orlando Sentinel - by Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
December 11, 2013
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's environmental lobby has amassed another $700,000 last month to help land a billion-dollar conservation constitutional amendment on next year's general election ballot.
Environmentalists from Audubon of Florida, the Trust for Public Land, Sierra Club, Wildlife Federation and other groups have also mustered 446,912 valid signatures -- nearing closer to the 683,149 required to place a question on the November 2014 ballot -- for an amendment that would steer billions of tax dollars to conservation programs, including springs protection and the Everglades.
The groups raised just over $401,000 in November and got another $300,000 in loans. Its biggest contributors for the month were: the Florida and National Audubon chapters ($205,000); Trust for Public Land ($100,000); and the Florida Wildlife Federation ($67,000).
Following five years of budget cuts, the groups have raised $2.1 million over the last year, and enlisted more than 340 organizations to help push the constitutional amendment.
The organization overseeing the drive, Florida's Water and Land Legacy Inc., set a goal of collecting all its signatures by the end of November. The 446,912 figure is just the official number already verified by counties and the state.
The "Water and Land Conservation" amendment would devote 33 percent of revenues collected from documentary-stamp taxes on real estate transactions – a tax that generated $1.7 billion this year -- to a range of conservation efforts. State economists estimate it would raise $648 million in 2015, nearly $8 billion in its first decade and, by 2034, $1.27 billion a year.
That money would be earmarked for two decades, starting in 2015, to "acquire, restore, improve, and manage conservation lands," including the Everglades, along with protecting Florida's rivers, lakes and streams
Opponents say the amendment would undercut other programs funded by the same tax source. And even supporters worry that lawmakers could re-direct dollars raised by the amendment to pay for existing programs, resulting on little or no extra spending on conservation.
Those critics include lawmakers, business groups like the Florida Chamber, and statewide elected officials including Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

131211-c
Farm bill would preserve Fla. wetlands: My Word
Orlando Sentinel – by Shelly Lakly, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy, Florida Chapter.
December 11, 2013
As members of the Farm Bill Conference Committee in Congress negotiate, it is critical they understand how important the conservation programs contained in the bill are to Florida's farmers and citizens.
As the executive director of the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, I have seen the benefits of these programs on the ground in Florida. Over the years, our staff has worked with ranchers to ensure that we keep working lands working.
Agricultural lands, and particularly ranches and forests, are critical to Florida's economy, provide habitat for wildlife and recharge to our drinking-water supplies. These benefits are becoming increasingly important as the state faces environmental and water-related crises such as discharges of nutrient-laden water into estuarine systems. This greatly lowers the water table in our aquifer, which supplies most of our residents' drinking water.
A ranching family who participated in this vital program, the Lykes Brothers, enrolled a once-drained and depleted floodplain marsh system in Glades County into the Wetland Reserve Program.
The drainage basin, known as Rainey Slough, once collected, stored and slowly released water into Fisheating Creek, an important watershed supporting the function of the Everglades ecosystem. The inexpensive restoration of Rainey Slough has allowed the waters draining from nearby farm fields, working forests and cattle-ranching activities to once again be naturally stored in the floodplain and cleansed of excess nutrients before discharge into Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.
This provides direct economic benefits for the downstream residents of South Florida, who might otherwise have to pay for such nutrient clean-up. Also, a perpetual conservation easement leaves the land in private ownership, on the local tax rolls and under management by the landowner.
We have witnessed a return of native habitat within Rainey Slough since the restoration occurred more than a decade ago. Wildlife once again uses this system and provides opportunities for hunting prized game species, such as white-tailed deer and wild turkey.
Through the conservation programs contained in the farm bill, lands placed under a perpetual easement will not be developed, and farmers and ranchers can maintain their way of life for generations to come.

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Flood warnings: England will be submerged if global warming continues
DailyStar.co.uk - by Ross Kaniuk
December 11, 2013
HUGE swathes of Britain will be under the sea within the next 60 years, scientists have warned.
Much of the east coast of England and London, with its nine million population, will be covered by water.
Devon and Cornwall will become an island and parts of low-lying East Anglia will be submerged.
Brits were given a taste of the future last week when a tidal surge and 120mph winds left 1,400 buildings flooded and two people dead.
In Norfolk, three homes in the village of Hemsby slipped into the sea.
But now National Geographic magazine has revealed that the latest climate research shows sea levels will increase far higher than expected.
It had been thought that waters would rise by between two and three feet by the end of the century. Now it is believed the actual rise will be double that.
Radley Horton, at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in the US, said: “The melting of the ice sheets has been accelerating and if that continues we could see sea levels rise as much as six feet instead of two to three.”
 Hal Wanless, of Miami University’s geological sciences department, warned: “How do you get people to realise that Miami or London will not always be there?”
Another factor is the thawing permafrost which releases methane and leads to warmer temperatures.
And a sudden catastrophe could happen if Antartica’s massive Thwaites glacier, held in place by an undersea ridge, is washed free by rising seas. Mr Wanless says much of south-eastern Florida in the United States will be gone as early as the end of this century.
Southampton University geochemist Gavin Foster said if human behaviour does not change, the world will become completely ice free.
It is estimated that that amount of ice melting will raise seas by a colossal 216ft, which will see London and eastern England disappearing.
Even well before those areas are permanently submerged, surges from storms will take out homes far inland.

131211-e
NOAA: Whales died from malnutrition
Associated Press
December 11, 2013
Necropsies performed on the 11 pilot whales found dead in the Florida Keys show that they were emaciated and suffering from malnutrition, federal officials said Monday.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stranding coordinator Blair Mase said the whales' empty bellies could be a result of disease or of being out of the deep, cooler waters that form their natural habitat.
"Really we don't know how long they've been in the area and we don't have any clues of why they got here in the first place," she said in a conference call with the media. It could be weeks to months before the results of the necropsies come in, she said, and "there is a possibility there could be more whales in the area."
A fisherman found the 11 whales lying near each other Sunday in Snipe Point, on an island chain near Key West. The young ones, especially, were emaciated, said Julia Zaias, a veterinarian with the Marine Animal Rescue Society.
Zaias spoke with The Associated Press from a center in Key West where researchers handled samples on Monday. Two of the female whales were pregnant.
The samples would help researchers discover any illnesses or anything else that could help them understand why the whales had beached.
"We'll be testing for viruses," Zaias said. "We're looking to see if they have any there, and then we'll be looking for all other possible reasons."
The whales are believed to be part of a pod of 51 whales originally found stranded on a remote Everglades beach last Tuesday. Six other whales were found dead Wednesday, and four more had to be euthanized. Another whale was found dead Thursday.
Twenty-nine whales remain unaccounted for.
Related:           Scientists run tests on dead pilot whales        Marco Island Sun Times

131210-a
$24.7B water plan unveiled by state officials
Associated Press, Daily Rebublic
December 10, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — California water officials on Monday released a draft of a $24.7 billion plan to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, in part by building two 30-mile underground tunnels to ensure stable water delivery to millions of Californians.
The joint federal and state Bay Delta Conservation Plan, or BDCP, and environmental impact analysis comes after seven years of study, and includes plans for building the tunnels and completing significant habitat restoration work to improve the delivery of mountain snowmelt to Central Valley farms and cities throughout the state.
At the heart of the 50-year plan unveiled last summer by Gov. Jerry Brown are the twin tunnels with a 9,000-cubic-feet-per-second capacity that would replace the delta’s current pumping system that endangers fish and other wildlife.
Currently, the State Water Project and Central Valley Project pump water from the delta to 25 million people and three million acres of farmland.
But that supply has been interrupted in recent years, as salmon and smelt numbers declined in delta rivers, and federal regulators limited the amount of water that could be pumped from the delta.
Water officials believe that replacing the pumps with the tunnels and restoring more than 100,000 acres of new habitat above ground will help the fish rebound and keep the water flowing to customers.
The plan also outlines how officials would conduct research and implement monitoring during and after construction of the tunnels to study the project’s effect on dozens of plant and animal species.
State water officials also say the ambitious project would generate billions of dollars in jobs, especially in construction, in the delta region.
The release kicks off 120 days of public comment on the plan and environmental analysis.
“By meeting the state’s dual goals … of ecosystem restoration and water supply reliability, we will stabilize and secure against catastrophe the water deliveries that sustain our homes, jobs, and farms, and do so in a way that not only protects but enhances the environment,” said John Laird, California’s natural resources secretary.
Funding for the roughly $16 billion tunnel part of the project will come from the water agencies that would benefit most from it, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Those same agencies would pay for maintenance and operation of the tunnel.
A mixture of federal and state money would cover the remainder, including the possibility of general obligation bonds.
But critics of the plan say it would actually harm fish and agriculture by siphoning off more water from the estuary.
Dozens of conservation groups including the Sierra Club have been steadfast in their opposition, saying the project would ship more water from the delta south and create more environmental problems.
Conservationists say modern developments in water conservation and recycling can be used to reduce demand from southern California, and would be far more environmentally friendly than the tunnel project.
“We need a better plan for restoring the delta environment and making sure Californians all over the state get the water they need,” Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, said in a statement.
Still other environmental groups supported the effort, saying major changes are needed to help restore the badly damaged delta ecosystem.
The groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Nature Conservancy, stopped short of giving formal approval of the draft plan, saying they are reviewing the some 34,000 pages to see if previous concerns they raised were addressed.
“With California facing a possible third consecutive dry year and with poor environmental conditions in the Bay Delta, it is imperative that California makes significant progress on a comprehensive ecosystem and water supply solution,” the coalition wrote in a joint statement.

131210-b
9 Investigates increasing demand on freshwater in central Florida
WFTV.com
December 10, 2013
ORLANDO, Fla. —  Abundant freshwater for central Florida has been a way of life since the area was first settled, but according to a new report, that is coming to an end.
According to the Central Florida Water Initiative, water demand in Orange County will increase 50 percent by 2035, with water demand in Osceola County more than doubling.
Central Florida gets almost all of its water from the Floridan aquifer. Stretching more than 100,000 square miles, the Floridan aquifer provides freshwater for municipalities across the state, in addition to agriculture and industry.
However, the CFWI report calls on water management districts to "expand reclaimed water systems and other alternative water supplies to minimize the use of Floridan aquifer groundwater."
In other words, explore desalination and treated surface water as alternatives to pumping the aquifer.
"In central Florida, we're reaching that sustainable limit," said Hank Largin of the St. Johns River Water Management District. "We're going to get to the point where we can't take any more water out of the ground."
Development in central Florida has taken the largest toll on water resources. While in Orange County, SeaWorld is the single largest water consumer.
The next four spots in the top five water users list are occupied by golf courses. Combined, SeaWorld and the area's four golf courses used 795,742,000 gallons of water from November 2012 to October 2013.
While consumer and commercial demand for water has increased, agricultural demand has fallen, with demand in Orange County expected to fall by 50 percent in the next two decades as farmland is transformed into residential, commercial and industrial zones.
"You can't pave everything," said Orange County orange grower Carl Fabry.
Fabry is one of the few orange growers left in Orange County. He said, typically, farmland like his would be used as a filter for surface water as it made its way to the aquifer, replacing the water that was taken out.
"There is no recharge taking place of our good water," said Fabry.
The increasing demand, coupled with a decreased recharge, has the Central Florida Water Initiative exploring other possibilities for delivering water to the area.
Not far from central Florida, another major urban center is already exploring its options. In Tampa Bay, seawater undergoes desalination at a cost of $3.38 per 1,000 gallons, according to the CFWI.
Florida's immediate access to seawater provides a possible solution for coastal communities. However, any seawater delivered to central Florida would need to be pumped inland, adding to the already high cost of water desalination.
In the short term, limiting water use permits may become a primary option, along with taxes for pumping from the aquifer that would encourage limiting use.
Central Florida pulls more than 800 million gallons of water every day from the aquifer, but according to the study, that demand is projected to increase to more than 1.1 billion gallons a day in the next two decades.

131210-c
Deal for sugar land bad for public, but still in the public interest
West Palm Beach - by Randy Schultz, Editorial Writer
December 10, 2013
We see again that however important Everglades restoration is to Florida, it will happen on the sugar industry’s terms.
In mid-2012, Gov. Rick Scott sold the Obama administration on a new state plan for saving what remains of the Everglades. Gov. Scott had no environmental credentials, but he wanted out from the 1988 lawsuit that forced the state to start cleaning water that runs from sugar cane fields into the Everglades. A special tax on the 16 counties of the South Florida Water Management District and on the farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area finances projects to store and treat such runoff.
This story continues on our new premium website for subscribers, MyPalmBeachPost.com. Continue reading/get access here »

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Florida state official urges more seawater desalination
Desalination.biz
December 10, 2013
Florida, which is about to become the third most populous state in the USA, has been urged by its agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam, to invest more in seawater desalination to combat water scarcity.
In an editorial in Context Florida, the commissioner says that the introduction of water-saving irrigation technology and wastewater-reuse schemes has saved large amounts of water but will not be sufficient.
"Droughtproof water supplies, like seawater desalination, should be more aggressively pursued and included in water planning as future sources of Florida's water supply," Putnam writes. "The collection and storage of water for groundwater recharge and as an alternative source of water should continue to be encouraged with incentives to attract private landowner participation."

131210-e
U.S. losing wetlands at fast pace
Washington Post - by Darryl Fears
December 10, 2013
Study blames fierce storms, see-level rise, development boom.
WASHINGTON — In four years, the United States lost more than 360,000 acres of freshwater and saltwater wetlands to fierce storms, sea-level rise and booming development along the coasts, according to a newly released federal study.
The disappearance of so much grass and forest marsh on the edge of waterways is a disturbing sign that government projects to restore wetlands are failing to keep pace, environmentalists said, as storms intensify, the sea level creeps up and development paves the way for rising coastal populations.
Saltwater wetlands help buffer sea surges that cause flooding during powerful storms along the coasts — such as Hurricane Sandy last year — and freshwater wetlands soak up stormwater runoff that often causes sewers to overflow.
They also serve as nurseries for numerous species of fish and assorted marine life, while providing habitat for three-quarters of the nation’s waterfowl and migrating birds. Nearly half of endangered species depend on them to live.
“They are getting it from all directions,” said Tom Dahl, lead author of the study funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Study areas include the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Great Lakes and other fresh inland waters.
Across the nation, wetlands have been converted to open water in some places and to mud in others. They include mangrove swamps, salt marshes, freshwater forested swamps, shrub depressions and wetlands floating on the edges of rivers.
The disappearance of marshes during the period covered in the study — between 2004 and 2009 — represented a 25 percent increase in the rate of loss in the same areas from the previous survey, which covered the six-year period between 1998 to 2004.
Storms and wetlands have waged an epic struggle on the coasts for eons. What’s relatively new, and detrimental to the wetlands, is an explosion of coastal residential and business development, along with coastal farming, that drain water from the wetlands or fill them with dirt for agriculture, parking lots, housing and retail stores.
As a result, sizeable chunks of wetlands die. Surviving wetlands are battered by rainwater runoff pouring from newly built surfaces such as driveways and roads, and much of that water is polluted with garbage, toxins and fine particle sediment. Wetlands can’t handle the added deluge.
“The plumbing of the whole system is altered,” said Dahl, a senior scientist for wetlands status and trends for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Dahl and his co-author, Susan-Marie Stedman, a fisheries biologist for NOAA, were clear about the potential effects of such a massive decline.
“You lose places for those organisms to breed, feed, rest,” Dahl said. “You’re losing some capability for other environmental functions like filtering pollutants, providing some protection from storm damage.
“You’re losing recreational opportunities for bird-watching and canoeing. You’re affecting hydrology. The areas are no longer able to retain water. The hydrology is changing, and we don’t recognize what the full implications are,” he said.
Coastal counties generated $6.6 trillion largely on warm-weather recreation and tourism, slightly less than half the nation’s gross domestic product in 2011, according to a report by NOAA.
“Some estimates indicate that development will cover one quarter of the land area of the nation’s coastal watersheds by 2015,” according to the study, “Status and Trends of Wetlands in the Coastal Watersheds of the Conterminous United States.”
To gauge the status of wetlands, the scientists randomly selected four-square-mile areas and used high-resolution digital images to assess changes. More than 2,600 such areas were studied.
By researching wetland trends and other data, Dahl and Stedman determined that about 80,000 acres of wetlands disappeared each year in the years of the study, compared with 60,000 acres per year in the previous study.
The starkest decline was in the Gulf, which was roiled by several massive hurricanes, including Katrina, Rita and Ike, Dahl said. “They contributed to washing away some coastal salt-marsh area, piling sand on wetland, debris. It was the number of storms and intensity of storms.”
But human development was a major factor, especially in places such as coastal North Carolina on the Atlantic Coast, where a development boom is sending storm-water runoff cascading into wetlands that cannot handle it.
Inland, the situation isn’t that much better. Urban and suburban development, road building and tree harvesting muddied wetlands. Wetland loss along the Pacific Coast was comparatively minor because development is light and there are fewer storms, Dahl said.
“The overall message of this report is one of concern and that we need to take it seriously to address wetland loss,” said Bill Kittrell, director of conservation for The Nature Conservancy in Virginia.
Kittrell said programs aimed at restoring wetlands have had moderate success, and the study’s authors agreed. They attributed an increase of 50,000 acres in wetlands in the Great Lakes region to such efforts.
Gains also were also reported in South Carolina, Georgia and central Florida.
Kittrell said the conservancy received a $700,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to help the large environmental nonprofit organization overcome barriers to wetlands projects. But compared to the billions of dollars needed, it’s a drop the bucket.

131210-f
When it comes to America's waterways, we have proven repeatedly that we can't wait ... to make costly mistakes
Jacksonville.com
December 10, 2013
The city feared its port was falling behind competitors. So business leaders, politicians and engineers came up with a plan. They would carve out a more ship-friendly path.
Sure, it was going to cost a lot of money. But if we build this, the citizens were told, they will come. Ships, jobs, growth.
Yes, there were some swamp-hugging environmentalists who worried about losing more wetlands. But the obligatory studies had been done. The impact would be manageable and, considering the benefits, well worth it. What was more important, some marsh grass or jobs?
Everyone from the mayor to the president was on board. I’m betting someone even said, “We can’t wait.”
That was the 1950s. The city was New Orleans.
The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet was built as a shortcut for ships. Fifty years later, with fewer than one ship per day passing through, the MRGO was known more as a shortcut for storm surges.
This and decades of other man-made changes helped wipe out more than a million acres of wetlands near New Orleans. And without those acres to act like a storm-absorbing sponge, Hurricane Katrina rolled right into town.
These days the Port of New Orleans is busy. But the MRGO, which proved to be more of a money pit than a shipping channel, has been closed to navigation. And at the mouth of the Mississippi, a massive restoration is underway, attempting to resuscitate the wetlands.
As costly as all of this has been, it’s far from an isolated mistake.
America’s history is full of water management decisions, made in the name of jobs and economic growth, that haven’t produced the expected results. Or worse, have led to unexpected consequences.
The biggest example, of course, is right here in Florida. After trying to drain and tame the Everglades, we’re spending billions trying to undo what has been done. Not just because the birds and gators need the habitat. Because we’ve realized the millions of people living nearby need a healthy Everglades for fresh water and storm protection.
In the other corner of the country, near Seattle, more than $300 million was spent to tear down two dams and restore the Elwha River to its former self. A few decades ago that would have been unthinkable. But when I was there last fall, the locals — not just environmentalists, but also business leaders and conservative politicians — were talking about how they now believe there is more value in an Elwha that flows free, full of salmon and recreation, than one that stops to create electricity.
This isn’t to say that the plan for the St. Johns River — take 13 miles of it and carve 7 feet from the bottom — is the same as creating a 76-mile channel, draining the Everglades or damming the Elwha.
It is to say that even overwhelming political support — in this case, from local leaders to the president and his “We Can’t Wait” initiative — should be taken with a grain of salinity.
Maybe this is the right thing to do. Let’s make sure. Because with lingering questions about long-term costs and benefits, we can’t afford to get it wrong.

131209-b









Maggy HURCHALLA,
former Martin County Commissioner

131209-b
Did environmental icon Maggy Hurchalla finally outsmart herself ?
SunshineStateNews - by: Nancy Smith
December 9, 2013
Technology might finally have outsmarted Maggy Hurchalla, one of the state's leading environmentalists -- a champion of Everglades restoration and the author of Martin County's controversial, often-litigious, comprehensive plan rewrites.
What technology are we talking about? Her just-surfaced private email. The kind that never seems to go away. One of the "letters" she wrote to a county commissioner has become a focal point in a lawsuit against her for "tortious interference," legal lingo for interfering with a company's ability to conduct business.
Lake Point, a rock mine located in Martin County, filed the lawsuit against Hurchalla last February, claiming she worked "aggressively behind the scenes" making false statements in an attempt to kill a deal made with the previous commission majority that would transfer the 2,000-acre property to a state agency and allow mining for 20 years.
And in so doing, claims the suit, the five-time Martin County commissioner "has had a material impact on Lake Point’s business operation, costing time and money and harming the reputation of the project and the owners. Hurchalla is singling out Lake Point and is attempting to put Lake Point out of business.”
Hurchalla's inner circle scoffs and calls Lake Point's action a despicable SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). They predict she will be vindicated and her First Amendment rights confirmed.
Maybe. But read "Hurchalla-Fielding Email Exchange: Evidence of Skulduggery in Lake Point Case?" in the latest edition of Martin County Currents. It is an outstanding telling of Hurchalla's alleged take-charge involvement in the new commission majority's dealing with Lake Point.
As the story will tell you, Hurchalla had made several public comments that Lake Point destroyed 60 acres of wetlands, even though Martin County Growth Management Director Nicki van Vonno reported to the commission that no wetlands had been destroyed. Hurchalla also charged that Lake Point's rock pit was deeper than allowed by the county's Comp Plan, which the county has not verified and Lake Point disputes.
In the email, dated Jan. 12 -- just as the new commission majority was gearing up -- Hurchalla, using the code name "DEEP rockpit," appears to give advice to at least one commissioner on how to proceed to get out of the Lake Point deal:
“Avoid discussion of other issues," Hurchalla advises. "Don’t complicate things. Just set up a meeting to legally void that contract. Don’t issue any cease and desist order on the mining. Get the contract cancelled and wait for staff to come back. Doug (Commissioner Doug Smith) will scream that you are missing an opportunity to save the river and giving up money due the county. Engineering will back him up. (Don) Donaldson is Doug’s man.”
Commissioner Ed Fielding's response: “Thanks for the input, Maggy.”
(Click here for Hurchalla's private email with Fielding's response, attached to Lake Point's legal motion filed Nov. 25 in district court asking that the county be compelled to produce all commissioners' private emails that pertain to Lake Point, and to testify about them under oath.)
"Hurchalla is singling out Lake Point and is attempting to put Lake Point out of business,” the suit claims.
Now, this seems a little far-fetched, wouldn't you think ? How could any one person's sticks and stones inflict so much damage on a multi-million-dollar business?
Because Maggy Hurchalla is no ordinary Martin County citizen. Her word carries enormous weight. She is the most powerful person in the county -- more powerful even than "unelected commissioner" Virginia Sherlock, the environmental attorney who keeps county staff in line and commissioners on the same page as Hurchalla. 
Maggy -- everybody affectionately calls her by her first name -- has bonafide environmental credentials that elevate the county's standing as a quality place to live. At 72, she is beloved throughout Martin, the sister of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, brought up in Miami on the edge of the Everglades, a passionate conservationist who worked on the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) at its conception. 
But the community is about to discover there are two Maggy Hurchallas, public Maggy and puppeteer Maggy. I saw them both in the 28 years I lived on the Treasure Coast.
Public Maggy is the easy-going, charasmatic former Martin County commissioner who has pied-piper charisma, who kayaks gently in local waterways and shares with young and old alike her fierce love of nature and the environment that makes Martin County special. Public Maggy is the one who can laugh at adversity, who shines in every public opportunity, even volunteers to make a surprise guest voice appearance on “The Simpsons” FOX-TV show with sister Janet.
Martin County almost to its last resident admires public Maggy, and for all of those reasons she has earned her place in their heart.
But the other Maggy, the Maggy few see, lives behind the curtain. Puppeteer Maggy loves power, loves control. By all accounts, one of the hardest things Maggy ever had to face in public life was losing that power, losing her commission seat in 1994 to Elmira Gainey. Her way back into the limelight was through the Martin County Conservation Alliance, which she "remade" by removing all members who had connections in the business community -- some of the very people who helped establish the Alliance in the first place. During the 1990s, The Stuart News fielded bitter complaints that Maggy had driven a wedge between citizens who follow her lead and those who don't -- particularly those in any business loosely connected with development. Their point of view was unwelcome.
Puppeteer Maggy never ran for office again, but when a no-growth majority was elected to the county commission in 1996, she "volunteered" to rewrite the county's comprehensive plan -- particularly the parts that involved growth management and wetlands. Legal challenges have never been a problem for Maggy. It's right if she says so, the risk of defending a costly lawsuit is justified -- damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Maggy has always had powerful friends on Jupiter Island. During at least some of the years she didn't have the commission majority she wanted, attorneys for the Alliance -- usually with 1000 Friends of Florida's backing --  filed suit against the county.
Puppeteer Maggy tends her reputation like a garden, allowing journalists to write without correction that she "helped create" Martin County’s four-story height limit, even though she did not. Martin County's four-story height limit was formulated by the commission in place the same year Maggy was elected. By the time she had anything to do with it, the height limit was a done deal.
This is the Maggy who has one voice for "the citizens," and another for those who, like Sherlock and County Commission Chair Sarah Heard, do her bidding. For 20 years as county commissioner, if she believed it would bring more people to Martin, Maggy voted against it or worked behind the scenes to marginalize it. Moving the county from septic tanks to sewers was one of those things.
Since the early 1970s she has pulled the strings that made the county in her image.
Martin residents get their first glimpse -- it's just a glimpse for now -- of this other side of Maggy Hurchalla in her Jan. 12 email. There could be more to come if Lake Point lawyers get their hands on Commission Chair Heard's hard drive.

131208-a
Action on water in the Senate
Ocala.com
December 8,
Leadership has always been the missing ingredient in tackling Florida’s ongoing water crisis. Nowhere in Tallahassee could a concerted effort be found in confronting the degradation and depletion of our state’s water supply, or its lakes, rivers and springs.
But there is new hope. A coalition of five senators has come together to talk about bringing about serious reform to Florida’s antiquated and, frankly, ineffective water policies.
Sens. Charlie Dean, Alan Hays, Bill Montford, David Simmons and Wilton Simpson have begun holding monthly meetings to map out both political and legislative strategies for bringing about long-overdue changes to not only water policy, but water conservation, supply and storage practices.
“A lot of people walk up to me and say you’re too little, too late,” Dean, R-Inverness, told us this week. “But it’s never too late when it comes to our water. Everything is relevant.”
It’s not too late, but as the Star-Banner’s ongoing series, “Fragile Springs,” has shown over the past 11 days, our springs and the lakes and rivers they feed, are virtually all experiencing reduced flows and heightened pollution. That, in turn, suggests the same about their source, the Floridan Aquifer — our drinking water supply.
Five senators meeting regularly is hardly cause to declare victory, but it is an important leap from where the Legislature has been on water of late. All five are chairman of key Senate committees, including Environmental Preservation and Conservation (Dean), Agriculture (Montford) and Community Affairs (Simpson). Moreover, all of the five represent areas of Central and North Florida where the water crisis is taking a toll like never before, including Marion County with Dean and Hays.
Dean said the quintet of senators is focusing first on what is “doable” to stimulate some meaningful action. Next, they want to set attainable goals and be “inclusive” in the process. Finally, they want to reach across the political and environmental spectrum and “seek cooperation about what is best for our state.”
Dean said everything has to be on the table, from greater water storage projects and metering big agricultural wells to mandatory conservation programs and, yes, even reconsideration of water permit allocations. “Somewhere along the line, we need to revisit the water consumption and gallonage of some of these big permits,” Dean said.
There is no doubt the five senators will encounter pushback. Water is essential to too many industries in our fair state. When these senators start tampering with the cheap and easy access to our most precious resource, the fight will be on. Bet on it.
That said, somebody, sometime has to take a stand. We hope these five senators are those people and this is that moment.
Florida’s water is its most valuable environmental and economic resource, and it is indisputably in trouble.
“We all have our rights and concerns,” Dean said. “But what I really want to do is stop and recalibrate and try to do something that is doable and achievable to save our water.”
Doable and achievable to save our water. It’s a good place to start the conversation. Let’s hope Gov. Rick Scott and the senators’ fellow lawmakers join in and do and achieve.

131208-b
Ross: Why can't we all get along ?
TheLedger.com - by Bill Rufty
December 8, 2013
Historians and just everyday political junkies still talk about Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill sitting down and working out a plan that stabilized Social Security well into the 21st century — and about President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich working out a budget deal.
Senators from different parties would argue with one another on the floor of the Senate, vehemently divided on an issue, then go out and have dinner together that night or play golf together on the weekend. That doesn't happen much, if at all, today.
Collegiality has left Congress and perhaps politics in general, U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, said during a recent interview with The Ledger.
"I think the most overlooked thing we have (in Congress) is an appreciation of where we are, and what I mean by that is I've got some good friends who are Democrats. My mom was a Democrat. I could reach across the aisle, and I think that is healthy for this process," Ross said.
"But I think because of the introduction of social media, we have become a more polarized population. And we don't know how to get back together."
Ross said if members of Congress and party leaders had a better appreciation of the past, there would be more cooperation between the parties and there would be important legislation passed. "I think we could do tax reform, immigration reform," he said.
"I think the biggest — the biggest — issue before us now is not to be so divisive. ...There is this sense of polarization that shouldn't be there.
"And, when we offer a bill that makes sense, the other side is going to be against it because we are the ones who offer it — and that is the biggest situation I see happening now," Ross remarked.
With so many voters leaving both parties now to become independents, Ross sees the extremists on both ends beginning to control the primary elections in both parties.
"And those of us who believe we can reach across the aisle are fewer in number.
"I am a conservative, but there are people out there who could challenge me in my party because I am not conservative enough," he said.
MCKEEL ON LEGISLATORS' SPEED DIAL
Back in September, when the economy was looking better and state revenues appeared to be increasing somewhat, state Rep. Seth McKeel of Lakeland, the House appropriations chairman, said he'd had no requests from the other 119 representatives for special funds for their district because they understood the situation — that it might not be a sign of permanent recovery.
Boy, I'll bet he's on everyone's email address book and lunch requests now!
Last week, Florida budget estimators reported that there is more money in this year's budget than they expected and more still for the 2014-2015 fiscal year.
The Budget Estimating Conference picked up approximately $324 million in funds to be added to the current budget year alone, said McKeel, a Republican. That includes $226 million in recurring money — money that will continue year after year — and $99 million in nonrecurring funds — money just for this fiscal year.
The News Service of Florida is reporting that the revenues for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2014, could be upwards of a billion more.
McKeel's counterpart in the Senate, Budget Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, stated in September that he wanted some of the current budget redirected, especially increases in Everglades cleanup. That likely will be a discussion in the committee meetings leading up to the start of the Florida Legislature session, which opens March 4.
"With the economy on track, I am still committed to tax relief for Floridians (in 2014) and to a balanced, responsible budget delivered on time," Negron said.
No special session or extra days in the 2014 session is what he is saying.
And no wild spending.
If McKeel has not already been invited to the governor's office, he soon will be — considering the great news on the reviving economy and McKeel's assertion that there will be tax cuts and fee cuts.
Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, wants a $500 million tax cut during 2014 — the year he is up for re-election.
But the cautious and frugal McKeel will wai until the budget specialists present their next set of estimates next week: the expected costs for education funding and health care funding. Still, in his final year as House budget chief, McKeel will have more to work with than his last three predecessors did during the recession years, when budget cuts rather than tax cuts were the order of the day.

131207-a
Stranded whales were seen very close to shore
TopNews.us – by Sanjeeb Banerjee
December 7, 2013
Belief that an extensive aggregation of pilot whales stranded in Florida's Everglades National Park might have gone out to ocean were dashed when authorities detected seven whales that have now gone along with others swimming gradually in shallow water.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it is less energized by the change obviously in light of the fact that the whales aren't making a beeline for the deeper water they have to survive. The whales might likewise be influenced by days of lack of hydration, authorities said.
By Thursday evening, 11 whales had been discovered dead, and five others were unaccounted for, said Blair Mase, facilitator of the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
The Coast Guard supposed it had discovered nine whales Friday, however two of them that were spotted by helicopter near shore close Plover Key ended up being dolphins.
Prior Friday, experts accepted the whales could be taken off to ocean, when they couldn't be spotted.
The way that rescuers couldn't spot them had been a hint of something to look forward to for the unit after 51 whales were discovered stranded Tuesday and unanticipated recover endeavors were unsuccessful.

131207-b
Time for a talk about Lee County's Conservation 20/20 program
News-Press.com – by Thomas Himes
December 7, 2013
Program's future, purpose to be discussed this week
Lee County commissioners Tuesday will take another shot at sorting out Conservation 20/20 in a workshop that will address a wide range of issues.
From talking about how much money, if any, the program will receive next year to when voters should decide whether they want to keep the program, Commissioner Larry Kiker said everything is on the table.
“I think it’s the discussion that five people have to have with our staff as experts: How do we want to break it down and what’s correct” for funding next year, Kiker said.
This year, Lee took all the program’s traditional tax revenue from the conservation tax (a projected $26 million) and used it to plug a deficit in the all-purpose general fund.
In 1996, voters approved paying a conservation tax for seven years — $75 on every $150,000 of assessed property value. But commissioners continue to collect the dollars for conservation.
Commissioners need to decide whether they want to take Conservation 20/20’s tax levy again in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
“My opinion is they should fund what taxpayers voted to use that money for,” conservation advocate and FGCU public administration professor Margaret Banyan said. “For me it’s more of an issue that they sold the millage based on that idea. It’s a fundamental trust with citizens.”
Without Conservation 20/20’s tax revenue, Lee will have to make spending reductions, raise taxes rates or dip into its reserves in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
“There’s really quite a bit of questions that need to be answered about the continuation of the whole program,” Commissioner Frank Mann said.
Lee has about $63 million saved to buy conservation land after commissioners suspended purchases last year. The freeze came in response to clerk of court findings Lee paid too much for land.
While a committee was formed and some policies were adopted to address the clerk’s audit, Kiker said, Lee needs to take another look at land purchasing procedures.
The commission first looks at land when they’re asked to vote on buying it. That happens after the county has paid for appraisals and staff has negotiated prices.
The commission should be involved from the get-go, deciding whether a property should be admitted to the process, Kiker said.
While a commission-appointed committee scores properties based on their environmental value and other factors, there’s no threshold for passing or failing. As a result, Kiker said, low scoring properties are recommended for purchase.
Referendum
Commissioners also will reconsider whether a referendum should be held in 2014 or 2016, Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass and Kiker said.
Last year, commissioners decided they would ask voters to continue paying taxes for Conservation 20/20 in a 2016 referendum. The distant date was set in hopes of higher voter turnout at the next presidential election.
“If it has to go to a referendum or vote again, I believe the public will support it again,” Calusa Nature Center Director Mary Rawl said.
As Lee continues to urbanize, Rawl said, preserving open spaces is more important than ever. Tourists visit here to enjoy nature, providing a boost to the economy, she said. The nearby open spaces also create a higher quality of life for residents and visitors.
“I understand the program needs to be tweaked slightly and we’re heading in the right direction,” Rawl said of the importance of keeping and improving Conservation 20/20.
Additionally, Conservation 20/20 plays an essential role in water quality, Rawl said.
Rawl and Kiker agree Lee should consider putting wells on conservation land. While Kiker likes the idea for its potential to save Lee money on water, Rawl said she doesn’t see a problem with it.
Funding designated to preserve and maintain Lee’s inventory of nearly 25,000 acres also will be discussed Tuesday.
“We have not reached a clear understanding of how we’re going to handle the year-to-year maintenance of the properties we already have,” Mann said.

131206-a
35 Stranded whales in Everglades now moving in deeper water
Huffington Post - by Christine Armario
December 6, 2013
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. (AP) — When National Park Service volunteers Donna and John Buckley left a pod of 41 stranded whales Wednesday evening, their optimism was starting to wane.
The couple — from Michigan but now living in an Everglades boathouse — had spent two days of trying to coax the animals into deeper waters. On Tuesday, they physically pulled several whales from the sand of the remote Highlands Beach. They spent Wednesday with other wildlife workers in boats, forming a semi-circle around the pod and banging their vessels with anchor chains in an attempt to move the animals further offshore.
But the whales seemed fatigued and unmotivated. They moved just half a mile out to sea during the volunteers' rescue effort.
"I thought a number of them might not make it," Donna Buckley, 72, said.
On Thursday, Donna Buckley and her husband went back across the sage green waters to where they'd worked with the whales. This time, though, they were gone.
Sometime overnight the whales had begun moving toward their natural, deep-water habitat, some 20 miles from where they were found, a possibility that had seemed highly unlikely just a day before, when officials warned that the animals faced a puzzle of sandbars and shallow waters to make it out to sea.
A Coast Guard helicopter found two pods of whales early Thursday in a deeper area of water — about 12 feet. By late afternoon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries official Blair Mase said three pods had been located nine miles north of their original location and were moving offshore.
"That was a surprise," Donna Buckley, a former national canoe racing champion said. "Quite the surprise."
Mase cautioned that the whales still face a number of challenges. While they were no longer drifting in a dangerously shallow area of 2 to 3 feet of water, the whales were still about nine miles from the deeper, cooler water to which they're accustomed. Pilot whale pods also are known to be so close-knit that if one animal falls ill or dies, the others are likely to stay within the vicinity or even beach themselves as well.
"It's quite a distance to deeper water," Mase said.
About 15 vessels carrying about 35 personnel were involved in the effort to track the whales.
Wildlife workers had planned Thursday to try using noises such as banging on pipes and revving boat engines to herd the whales out to the open ocean. But that turned out to be unnecessary, and the workers simply used positioning of the boats to prevent any of the whales from turning away from the open sea, Mase said.
Teams from NOAA, the National Park Service, the Coast Guard and state wildlife agencies were working to prevent any more whales from stranding. A Coast Guard cutter was to remain stationed with the whales overnight Thursday.
At the end of efforts early Thursday evening, the number of deaths still stood at 11. Six were found dead Wednesday morning and four others were found in extremely poor condition and euthanized later that day. Another dead whale was confirmed Thursday, and five were unaccounted for.
Donna and John Buckley were the first to respond after a fishing guide spotted the beached whales Tuesday afternoon. A call came across the parks radio, and the Buckleys were the closest volunteers to the remote western edge of the Everglades park where the whales were found.
When they got to the beach, John Buckley waded through the shallow waters in a canoe while his wife stayed aboard the boat, counting the whales drifting before her. In their 28 years as volunteers in the Everglades, they had seen only one whale stranded before.
John Buckley climbed ashore and ran to one of about nine whales stuck on the sand. He grabbed its tail and began to pull.
"Once the whale could feel the water, it reacted," John Buckley, 72, said. "It wanted to help."
The whale flapped at him, knocking him into the water. He got back up and continued pushing the whale until it was entirely back in the water. Three park rangers then arrived and started working with him to pull the other whales off the beach.
A nearby calf and an adult whale were motionless.
"There was no helping them," John Buckley said.
But he and the rangers were able to help another calf and a whale that appeared to be its mother get back into the water.
The whales they were able to help save seemed ill, Donna Buckley said.
"They seemed very disoriented, confused," she said. "They didn't know which end was up."
The next day seemed to only confirm their suspicions that the whales were sick. The couple said the animals drifted languidly in the water, as if, John Buckley imagined, paralyzed by grief. He recalled how the whales seemed to look at him, quietly acknowledging his presence.
"They could have just rammed me and knocked me over, but they didn't do it," he said. "I could tell there was some thinking going on there. I just didn't understand."

131206-b
Fertilizer-free zones near water needed
FloridaToday.com – Letter by Judy Orcutt, Vero Beach, FL
December 6, 2013
In response to the recent guest column by Dr. Eric Brown, “Managing urban landscapes,” I am a lifelong Floridian who grew up in Winter Park skiing on the chain of lakes where Rollins College is located.
Fifty years ago, there were beautifully landscaped lawns on the water’s edge. In the summer, aquatic vegetation would grow out of control and entangle propellers. Harvester machines traveled the lakes, cutting and removing vegetation. The natural lake system was out of balance due to fertilizer runoff.
Recently, I returned to Winter Park and took the boat tour of the chain of lakes. The lawns were still immaculately maintained to the water’s edge. Residents have not learned the lesson about alternate landscape practices, including fertilizer- free zones near water. Still remaining are vast swaths of fertilizer-needy grass instead of more Florida-friendly landscaping ideas. The lakes were in terrible condition with algae growing rampantly.
As a highly regarded educational institution, Rollins College should be taking the lead in teaching sustainable landscape practices to protect our precious natural resources. Rollins should be setting an example in its own landscaping practices.
There is no doubt that excessive fertilizer application has affected all of Florida’s

131206-c
Naples money for Crist; environmental projects at forefront
Naples Daily News
December 6, 2013
Naples residents donated $145,000 in November to Charlie Crist for Florida, the political committee supporting Crist, the former Republican governor now running for governor as a Democrat.
According to the committee’s website, the committee received a $100,000 contribution from Susan McCurry on Nov. 26 and a $45,000 contribution from Eva Gomez on Nov. 27. Both women list Naples as their address.
Crist was in Naples in early November to meet with donors.
Conservation amendment tops 400,000 signatures
A group backing a proposed constitutional amendment that would funnel additional money to land-conservation and environmental efforts has more than 400,000 valid petition signatures, according to the state Division of Elections website.
As of this week, elections officials had validated 401,128 signatures submitted by Florida’s Water and Land Legacy Inc., which will need 683,149 to get on the November 2014 ballot.
The proposed amendment would require the state to set aside money to conserve land and other natural resources and help restore the Everglades. The Florida Supreme Court earlier this year approved the proposed ballot wording.
Cleanup plan not yet backed by House
The House isn’t ready to write a check for the Senate’s ambitious $220 million plan intended to help clean and redirect the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south through the Everglades.
Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, said this week the state needs to “balance” its water priorities, agreeing with the next House Speaker that the Legislature needs to take a comprehensive statewide look at its water needs in 2014.
“It’s real easy to write policy. The big question is where does the money come from,” said Caldwell, who chairs the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Subcommittee.
Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said the state needs a comprehensive approach to water that factors in issues faced by the agricultural industry, drinking-water sources, the state’s freshwater springs, the Apalachicola River region and South Florida.
“It’s important we don’t get too laser-focused on one region of the state,” said Crisafulli, who is slated to become speaker after the 2014 elections.
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam also has been pushing for a statewide approach, noting that South Florida isn’t the only part of the state where water quality and quantity have become dire issues.
The $220 million Senate plan includes projects such as $90 million that would be spread over three years to bridge a 2.6-mile section of U.S. 41 between Miami and Naples. The Senate has been prompted by discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee that have caused pollution in waterways such as the St. Lucie River and the Caloosahatchee River in Hendry and Lee counties.
Gulf Coast projects to get restoration money
Florida is in line for $88 million in restoration projects along the state’s oil spill-affected Gulf Coast.
The money was the latest proposed by the trustees for the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment as part of a $627 million draft plan announced Friday for the Gulf Coast states.
Each project — there are 28 proposed between Escambia and Franklin counties along Florida’s Panhandle — will be open for public review during 10 open houses planned between Dec. 16 and Jan. 29 at locations from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Panama City.
“This funding will work to protect Florida’s environment so future generations of Floridians will be able to enjoy our state’s great natural treasures,” Gov. Rick Scott said in a prepared statement.
The money comes from $1 billion that BP agreed to provide the trustees for restoration projects from the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon disaster.

131205-
Florida rescuers use noise to drive stranded whales out to sea
Reuters - by Jane Sutton
December 5, 2013
Some of the pilot whales that were stranded in the Florida Everglades swam out into deeper water on Thursday while rescuers tried to chase the rest out to sea by banging on pipes and revving their boat engines.
Wildlife workers had hoped the cacophony would encourage the whales to leave the shallow water where 51 short-finned pilot whales beached in a remote part of Everglades National Park earlier this week.
Ten have died, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA said.
On Thursday morning, Coast Guard helicopter crews spotted 15 to 20 of the survivors well north of the location where they were spotted a day earlier. By mid-afternoon on Thursday, they were in deeper water several miles from shore, NOAA said.
Biologists cautioned that beached pilot whales often re-beach and that survival rates in mass strandings were very low.
"Hard for them to get back to home range," NOAA said via Twitter.
Biologists were collecting samples from some of the carcasses in hopes of learning how they died.
About three dozen would-be rescuers from NOAA, the National Park Service, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and local police set out in boats to join the rescue effort, while the Coast Guard tracked them from the air.
A Coast Guard cutter crew was also enforcing a safety zone to protect the whales and keep sightseers away.
"A lot of people may have good intentions of helping them and do more harm than good," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss said.
Pilot whales live in tightly cohesive groups and typically will not leave ailing or dead members behind. They are a deep-water species that forages on squid, octopus and fish and cannot live long in shallow water.
Related: "Beached whales in the Everglades Nat. Park" (covered by at least 30 and more newspaper articles !)

131204-a
Dozens of whales beached in Everglades National Park in Florida
Reuters – by Jane Sutton
December 4, 2013
MIAMI (Reuters) - Dozens of whales were beached in the Everglades National Park in southwest Florida, and rangers and wildlife workers were trying to keep the animals stable until the tide rose enough to allow them to return to sea, a park spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
About 30 whales were stranded in shallow water, and 10 more were on the shore, in a remote park of the Everglades near the Gulf of Mexico when the pod was first sighted Tuesday, park spokeswoman Linda Friar said.
Of those on shore, four had died and workers had managed to get six back into deeper water, Friar said.
The animals were believed to be short-finned pilot whales, typically found in deep water in tropical and temperate areas.
"Pilot whales are common stranders. They tend to do this," Friar said. When rescued, she said, "they tend to rebeach themselves."
Rangers and workers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were trying to keep the whales wet and stable until the tide rose high enough for them to swim out, Friar said.
"This area of the park is probably the most challenging for something like this. When the tide goes out, there's hundreds of yards of very shallow shoals," Friar said, adding that the effort could take a few days.
Short-finned pilot whales typically travel in pods of 25 to 30 animals. Adults weigh 2,200 to 6,600 pounds (1,000 to 3,000 kg), with females averaging 12 feet long and males averaging 18 feet long, according to NOAA.
Related:
Pod of 20 to 30 Pilot Whales Stranded in Remote Florida Everglades         Science World Report
6 pilot whales dead after pod is stranded in remote area of Florida's ...        Montreal Gazette
Group of 30 whales stranded in Everglades National Park    UPI.com (blog)

131204-b
Strong fertilizer rules, tax on fertilizer urged
Florida Today – Letter by Vince Lamb, Merritt Island, FL
December 4, 2013
Large numbers of dolphins, manatees, pelicans, fish and other animals have died in the Indian River Lagoon from toxins caused by excessive nutrients.
The lagoon is so unhealthy that schoolchildren are not allowed to enter the waters during field trips. Residential fertilizer ranks high among the largest sources of nutrients that contaminate the lagoon.
Why is it hard to get our elected officials to pass ordinances that reduce the use of fertilizer? Is it more important to have dark green lawns than a healthy lagoon?
Strong fertilizer ordinances, as adopted by Rockledge, Satellite Beach and Vero Beach, include a rainy-season ban prohibiting the application of fertilizer containing nitrogen from June through September. Rainy-season fertilizer bans were implemented several years ago in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota. Nutrient levels have been reduced in nearby waters. The Tampa Bay Estuary is showing signs of recovery while our lagoon continues to decline.
Another possibility would be a tax on fertilizer to help fund lagoon recovery — maybe $25 per 40-pound bag. With a higher price, most people would use less. Charging polluters to clean up the messes they create seems fair.
During the 1960s and 1970s, air pollution was a big problem. Driving toward any large city, a brown haze was unmistakable. Despite loud objections from the automotive and fossil-fuel industries, legislation was passed to reduce air pollutants. Within a decade, air pollution virtually disappeared in the United States.
Are we ready to get serious about water pollution, before the last dolphin dies?

131204-c
We need commitment on Florida's water issues
Tallahassee.com – by Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, the House Majority Leader designated to be the speaker of the House for the 2014-2015 legislative sessions
December 4, 2013
One of Florida’s most precious resources is water. Our state is world renowned for our 1,200 miles of beaches, our springs and more than 7,700 large lakes.
Yet Florida’s water supply is more than just a tourist attraction — it’s also the heart of our agriculture industry and the source of drinking water we all depend upon to live our lives.
Water is so essential to our existence, yet water policy is often overlooked or tackled in a parochial manner. Neither approach is right.
To ignore the growing demand for and the quality of our supply leaves our state incredibly vulnerable. Focusing on one community at a time in a piecemeal approach can lead to new problems in another down the road.
As an example, look no further than South Florida’s recent challenges. This year, the region faced one of the rainiest summers on record. To reduce the chance of flooding, excess fresh water from Lake Okeechobee was pumped into South Florida estuaries. While this addressed the immediate problem of relieving pressure on the dike maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it also upset fragile coastal ecosystems downstream and negatively impacted the local economies.
Rightly, local public officials at every level mobilized to address the problem. Many of the ideas that have come out of the task force spearheaded by state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, correctly consider the state as a whole and the connectivity of our waterways. But, with emotions high and attention so focused on one region, there is a need to guard against tunnel vision and focusing exclusively on one problem to the detriment of others.
It is why I am calling on policymakers on every level to embrace three principles as we look for water policy solutions and establish water funding priorities.
First, as we deliberate on water issues, we must do so through the lens of a comprehensive, statewide approach to protect the long-term health of Florida’s water ecosystems. Water has no boundaries, and it is imperative that policymakers, opinion leaders and the public reject a limited parochial view.
There are issues across the state, from the Northern Indian River Lagoon, located in the legislative district I represent, to the Apalachicola River, to our freshwater springs, and I intend to see that each of them gets attention in Tallahassee.
Second, Florida’s water management policy must be flexible so that water managers can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. In a state that is annually in the path of hurricanes and tropical storms, where the average doorstep is only 100 feet above sea level, and where the decisions of neighboring states can harm our water supply, having an effective water management strategy is critical for our survival.
Third, we must attack our water needs with long-term and short-term strategies. Water management strategy is not enough. We must also continue to invest in proactive measures to effectively deal with our immediate water quality issues.
During the prolonged economic downturn, our state pulled back on funding local water projects. As the fiscal outlook improves, I believe it is critical that we re-engage our partnership with local governments to strategically invest in projects that will improve our overall water supply and quality, such as the Everglades restoration bill we passed this year.
The 2014 legislative session is approaching, and the Legislature must work with Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Herschel Vinyard, and the water management districts to craft a smart, comprehensive water policy for our state.
As a growing population, weather events and even decisions by neighboring states strain our water resources, it is imperative we have a comprehensive plan in place to protect water quality and access for all Floridians, not just today, but for generations to come.

131203-b
Climate change's biggest threats are those we aren't ready for: Report
Huffington Post – by Kate Sheppard
December 3, 2013
WASHINGTON -- Climatic changes -- and the results of those changes -- could occur within decades or even sooner, and they are becoming a greater concern for scientists, according to a new paper from the National Academy of Sciences.
"The most challenging changes are the abrupt ones," said James White, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder and chair of the report committee. White and several coauthors of the paper spoke at a press conference Tuesday morning.
The paper focuses on those impacts due to climate change that can happen most quickly. Among these are the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice that scientists have seen in the last decade and increased extinction pressure on plants and animals caused by the rapidly warming climate.
Many such changes, according to Tony Barnosky, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, are "things that people in this room will be around to see." He emphasized that scientists are "really worried about what's going to happen in the next several years or decades."
"The planet is going to be warmer than most species living on Earth today have seen it, including humans," said Barnosky. "The pace of change is orders of magnitude higher than what species have experienced in the last tens of millions of years."
Other, more gradually occurring changes can still have abrupt impacts on the ecosystem and human systems, such as the loss of fisheries or shifts in where certain crops can be cultivated. Rapid loss of ice, for example, would mean that sea levels rise at a much faster rate than the current trend, which would have a significant effect on coastal regions. A 3-foot rise in the seas is easier to prepare for if it happens on a 100-year horizon than if it happens within 30 years.
"If you think about gradual change, you can see where the road is and where you're going," said Barnosky. "With abrupt changes and effects, the road suddenly drops out from under you."
The paper did offer two bits of good news. One, scientists don't believe that climate change is likely to shut down the Atlantic jetstream, a possibility that had been discussed in some scientific research. They also don't believe that large, rapid emissions of methane from ice and Arctic soil will pose a serious threat in the short term, as had been considered previously.
"Giant methane belches are not a big worry," said Richard Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and committee member. "These really are systems that will affect us in the future, but they don't look like they're going to jump really fast."
The paper recommends increased investment in an early-warning system for monitoring abrupt impacts, such as surveillance programs to facilitate closer tracking of melting ice and methane releases, for example. Right now, investment in those systems is lacking in the U.S., and monitoring programs have been cut in recent years.
"The time has come for us to quit talking and actually take some action," said White. He noted that in the modern age, there are cameras everywhere, yet "remarkably very few of those watching devices are pointed at the environment."
"We ought to be watching that with the same zeal we watch banks and other precious things."

131203-c
Eastern Gulf of Mexico lease sale to open 465,000 acres for drilling
NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune – by Jennifer Larino
December 3, 2013
The federal government will open areas off the coasts of eastern Alabama and western Florida for new oil and gas drilling in March, the first lease sale in that area in five years.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Tuesday (Dec. 3) that it will put more than 465,000 acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico up for lease at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans on March 19. The leasing area covers waters more than three miles off the coast of eastern Alabama up to an eastern borderline that falls around Pensacola, Fla.
The sale will immediately follow the planned central Gulf lease sale announced in October, which will open 39 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for oil and gas exploration and development.
"This proposed sale is another important step to promote responsible domestic energy production through the safe, environmentally sound exploration and development of the Nation's offshore energy resources," BOEM Director Tommy Beaudreau said in a statement.
While the eastern Gulf sale will be markedly smaller, it marks the first time the Obama administration has approved lease sales as far east as the Florida panhandle under its five-year lease program rolled out in 2012. The administration unveiled the plan for future leasing after the BP oil spill in 2010 and a months-long deepwater drilling moratorium.
The administration has held four sales under the program, including a blockbuster June 2012 sale that drew a record $1.7 billion in high bids from oil and gas companies seeking to stake out acreage in the central Gulf.
The last time oil and gas companies had the chance to bid in the eastern Gulf was in March 2008. Many of the 134 leasing blocks to be included in next year's sale were offered but passed up by companies in the 2008 sale.
Companies might show more interest this time around given higher oil prices, new oil and gas mapping technology, and the announcement of major discoveries farther west. For example, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. hit a massive find of 1,000 feet of oil-bearing rock more than 100 miles off the Louisiana coast earlier this year.
BOEM estimates the 465,200 acres that will go up for lease hold 710 million barrels of oil and 162 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The majority of that will be subject to a revenue-sharing agreement under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas share in 37.5 percent of the lease payments to the federal government.
In addition, 12.5 percent of revenues from those leases are allocated to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal fund that provides money for state and local government to acquire land and water for preservation

131203-d
New recreational wetland areas open to public in South Florida
SWFlorida.Blogspot.com
December 3, 2012
CLEWISTON, FL. --  In a continuing effort to increase access to public lands, the South Florida Water Management District has opened Stormwater Treatment Area 5/6 (STA-5/6) in southeastern Hendry County to the public for expanded recreation. 
Visitors to the wetland will arrive to a new parking area and trailhead with restrooms and an educational kiosk and a picnic shelter farther into the site.
The vast wetland that cleans Everglades-bound water is already popular with bird watchers and hunters during organized activities with District partners such as the Hendry-Glades Audubon Society. Now, large portions of the approximately 16,000-acre area will be open to the general public for activities such as hiking, biking and wildlife viewing.
“A remarkable diversity of birds has already made this water quality facility a renowned recreational area,” said SFWMD Executive Director Blake Guillory. “Increasing access provides new opportunities for the public to enjoy South Florida’s unique slice of nature.”
Outdoor enthusiasts can walk or ride bicycles along levees in the STA, framed by an array of wading birds, alligators and aquatic life. Existing features at the site include a boardwalk built for disabled veterans and residents.
“This is something that has been needed for years, and to see it come together is wonderful,” said Hendry County Commission Chairman Karson Turner, who also serves on the SFWMD Water Resources Advisory Commission (WRAC). “Now, not only will the thousands of visitors we have come to this area be able to experience STA-5/6 in a more comfortable manner, but it will allow our local population to become more acquainted with this area and experience this facility in a more tangible way.”
The District has steadily increased access to the site south of Clewiston, with the first organized bird-watching program beginning in 2005 with a partnership with the Hendry-Glades Audubon Society. To date, Audubon volunteers, in coordination with the District, have hosted more than 6,700 bird watchers and photographers from across the globe on 183 individual tours at the site.
Since 2002, the District’s partners at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have led a series of organized waterfowl and alligator hunts at this wetland.
Hours of Operation
· Sunrise to sunset on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
· The area will be closed to the general public on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for wetland management purposes.
· The area will be closed on Sundays starting the Sunday before Thanksgiving until the first Sunday in February to allow for hunting activities.
Throughout South Florida, the District provides recreational access to its public lands while continuing to manage them to support environmental restoration, water supply, water quality and flood control missions.
At present, the District owns approximately 621,000 acres of land that are open to the public. Many of these properties are in their natural state or have enhancements such as picnic tables, informational kiosks, primitive campsites and hiking trails.

131203-e
Protecting the economy and land
TBO.com - Editorial
December 3, 2013
A report that found Florida’s parks generate $1.2 billion in economic impact highlights the importance of a constitutional amendment that would ensure future funding for land acquisition.
For years, Republicans and Democrats alike supported purchasing beaches, springs and wilderness tracts to ensure their preservation.
But where the state traditionally devoted about $300 million a year to land acquisition, that number has shrunk to less than $10 million.
Thus the need for the Florida’s Water and Land Legacy Campaign.
The citizens’ petition drive would place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would restore funding to normal levels by requiring 33 percent of the proceeds of the documentary stamp tax to be used for conservation.
This would not be a new tax. It would merely ensure a portion of the fee tied to real-estate development is used for environmental preservation, as originally was intended by the Florida Forever-Preservation 2000 programs.
Some background: In 1990, Republican Gov. Bob Martinez launched Preservation 2000, which used a portion of the proceeds from the documentary stamp tax on real estate transactions for land conservation. Republican Gov. Jeb Bush continued the popular program as Florida Forever.
But under Gov. Rick Scott and lawmakers in recent years, conservation funding has virtually dried up.
A reduction was understandable when the economy and state revenue hit the skids, but even as the economy rebounds and Florida’s population growth hits warp speed again, lawmakers still refuse to invest in protecting the natural resources that underpin the state’s appeal.
Indeed, some myopic lawmakers want to virtually eliminate state and local land purchases.
The economic report on our state parks, and the rapid growth of ecotourism, reveal the foolishness of such shenanigans.
According to the Department of Environmental Protection, about 26 million people visited state parks last year, generating $1.2 billion in economic activity and supporting nearly 20,000 jobs. The parks produced more than $77 million in sales tax dollars for the state.
And DEP estimates that for every 1,000 people who visit a state park or trail, the direct impact on the local economy is close to $47,000.
Such numbers do not address how many people want to live in Florida because of its natural beauty and recreational opportunities. Realtors know that conservation lands usually increase the value of surrounding properties because people like to live near undeveloped land.
And there also is no way to compute how many expenses conservation spares taxpayers by protecting water supplies, preventing pollution and other growth-related problems. Land acquisition also offers a way to protect resources without cumbersome regulations or disputes with landowners.
Scott seems to be slowly awakening to the value of conservation, but the Legislature has shown little interest in restoring reasonable funding to land acquisition and has even engaged in a poorly executed effort to sell off “surplus lands,” some of which have environmental value.
With the Water and Land Conservation Amendment, citizens can free conservation or political considerations and ensure future generations can enjoy our state’s unique natural beauty. (More information and the petition can be found at www.floridawaterlandlegacy.org/index.php)

131203-f
Reuse: the next wave for water conservation ?
SustainableIndustries.com – by Rachel Cernansky
December 3, 2013
California is known for many things — surf, sun, cinema — but water sustainability doesn’t likely crack the top 100. Yet it’s leading the way in a trend that’s picking up around the world: municipal wastewater being treated, disinfected and reused near its source for a variety of purposes, from wetlands restoration to irrigation — and, yes, drinking.
Water recycling, also known as reuse or reclamation, is not new; nonpotable (not for drinking) water recycling systems have been in place for decades. In arid states, including Texas and Nevada, and rainy states, such as Florida and Virginia, municipal wastewater is collected and treated to an extent that doesn’t meet drinking water standards, but is approved for certain uses that don’t involve human contact, such as agriculture, landscaping and golf course irrigation.
Today, due mainly to increasing drought conditions and groundwater depletion, nonpotable uses are expanding. Municipalities are figuring out more ways to treat sewage less like waste and more like a resource. In addition to watering golf greens, recycled water is being used for street cleaning, fire-fighting, geothermal energy production, preventing seawater intrusion into freshwater aquifers, industrial processing, commercial laundering, restoring natural wetlands and creating constructed wetlands.
“Everything that goes down the drain here is treated and reused,” says Greg Flores, vice president of public affairs for theSan Antonio Water System, citing university campuses, the San Antonio River Walk, and Toyota and Microsoft facilities as examples.
The more notable change, however, is that a growing number of municipalities are shifting toward or considering “potable reuse” — recycling wastewater into drinking water.
From drain to drink
In the 1990s, California’s Orange County faced serious water-related pressures: increasing seawater intrusion, the potential need to build a second ocean outfall to discharge wastewater to the ocean, and a recent drought with water experts predicting greater frequency of drought in the future — all the while expecting increased demand due to population growth. It decided to turn to potable reuse as a solution. In 2008, Orange County started operating its now-celebrated Groundwater Replenishment System [PDF], which injects treated wastewater into the water supply of nearly 600,000 residents. The project, says Orange County Water District president Shawn Dewane, is “taking water reuse to the next level. Instead of pouring it on the ground, in terms of landscape irrigation, [we are] turning it into drinking water.”
With a capacity of 70 million gallons per day, the Orange County system is the world’s largest for water purification and potable reuse. And it’s on track to reach 100 million gallons per day by 2015. Primarily because of its scale — and the fact that the problems Orange County faced in the 1990s have spread well beyond California — the system has attracted interest both nationally and internationally. Dewane says he’s recently hosted officials from Japan and United Arab Emirates, and his team also has been working with England and even Singapore, which already has a potable reuse system supplying about 30 percent of its drinking water. (Reuse is also already established and growing in Australia and some European countries.)
The Orange County system, like most potable reuse projects today, practices “indirect” reuse, which means there’s an environmental buffer — a groundwater basin, say, or a reservoir — between the wastewater treatment process and the municipal water supply intake. In direct potable reuse, there’s no environmental buffer; water is treated and sent directly back to the municipal water supply. It’s something that more, primarily arid, places are starting to consider as a way to make the most of their increasingly scarce water resources.
Experts say reuse technologies have been proven, and treatment plants can get wastewater as clean as distilled water. The three-step process used in Orange County — microfiltration, reverse osmosis and a combination of ultraviolet treatment with hydrogen peroxide — is becoming the standard for potable reuse. “That’s state of the art right now,” says Wade Miller, executive director of the WateReuse Association.
Direct potable reuse is already practiced, largely as an answer to increasing drought, in Big Spring, Texas, and in the southern African nation of Namibia, which boasts the world’s first major direct potable reuse system. Cloudcroft, N.M., expects to have a new direct potable reuse system up and running by next summer, and projects the system will provide 40,000 of the approximately 70,000 gallons used daily by the town. Brownwood, Texas, has plans to start direct potable reuse — it’s just waiting for city council approval — and San Diego is considering it as an alternative to scaling its existing million-gallon-a-day indirect reuse project to 15 million gallons.
Variety of benefits
Miller estimates that 7 out of every 100 gallons of U.S. wastewater gets recycled near its source, and says that number is growing about 5 percent annually. Water reuse is regulated at the state level — although the EPA has issued guidelines for reuse approximately every decade since 1980 — and more than half the states have some kind of regulation in place.
Aside from serving as a way for cities to supplement their increasingly stressed water sources, reuse can provide a variety of benefits. In the Pacific Northwest, reuse is growing because of decade-old temperature restrictions imposed by state agencies on wastewater treatment plant discharges to rivers.
“Let’s call it the kick-start of more reuse in Oregon and in Washington,” says Mark Cullington, biosolids and recycled water committee chair for the Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies. “Effluent is warmer than rivers, so what folks are doing is they’re looking to treat the effluent to a standard that allows it to be used on the land,” he says. “Anything from crop irrigation to using it for flushing toilets or other commercial and industrial practices.”
Water reuse can reduce the amount of freshwater diverted from sensitive ecosystems, as well as the amount of wastewater — and the pollution it carries — discharged to waterways. In the case of nonpotable reuse, it means avoiding the use of precious potable water where that level of quality is not required. Because of nutrients retained in water when it is not treated to drinking water standards, irrigating with recycled water can reduce chemical fertilizer use
And, while wastewater reuse is energy intensive, it often yields an energy savings because pumping imported water (from outside sources) consumes so much energy itself.
“We literally move water over a mountain range to get it here from Northern California,” says Shivaji Deshmukh, assistant general manager for the West Basin Municipal Water District, which runs a groundwater recharge system that supplies southwestern Los Angeles County. “While we’ll always need that supply, it does take a lot of energy to do that.” Reusing water locally takes less. In Orange County, recycling water for the groundwater replenishment system takes half the energy of importing water.
Challenges, too
Water reuse, however, is not automatically right for every circumstance. “There are a lot of places where the wastewater would have otherwise been important in returning to, say, a river or stream. By recycling water,” says Brian Richter, freshwater conservation program director at The Nature Conservancy, “you’re interrupting that return of the water to the natural environment. … It can be a really, really good option, but you have to understand the context.”
Water reuse is also expensive. Potable reuse systems require a high degree of treatment, and nonpotable systems require a separate piping system to distribute the water, which can add up to as much as, or more than, potable treatment. But Dewane of Orange County points out, “The really low-cost sources of water have pretty much already been developed. So this source of water’s not inexpensive. New sources of water are even more expensive, by and large.”
There are also challenges, particularly with nonpotable reuses such as irrigation, in dealing with seasonal fluctuations in demand.
The biggest hurdle, however, lies in gaining public acceptance. When people hear about “toilet to tap” technology, they get nervous — and grossed out. That’s why when municipalities look at reuse, the hardest part usually isn’t figuring out the right technology or engineering the system; it’s educating the public and involving them in the process in order to gain their approval.
Part of that is pointing out that water reuse occurs whether municipalities design for it or not. Wastewater treatment plants are constantly discharging effluent to waterways that eventually make their way to a water treatment plant somewhere. “Everybody’s downstream,” says Jenny Murray, recycled water program manager for Denver Water.
Wave of the future
Californian cities have found that as public understanding of water reuse grows, so does acceptance of its practice. “Almost one in five Californians are already connected to a utility that uses, or has [as] part of its water supply portfolio, potable reuse,” says Dave Smith, managing director of the WateReuse Association’s California chapter.
Deshmukh only sees reuse continuing to grow. “We feel we’re starting to hit a ceiling on how much we can recycle for [our customers’] needs,” he says. “We really feel the next step is direct potable.”
He says more public outreach is needed before that will happen, as are advances in the treatment process. Because direct potable reuse eliminates the environmental buffer, he would like to see better real-time monitoring. “We’re pretty good today, but we can do better.”
There’s no way to tell where else potable reuse, direct or indirect, will be adopted, but it’s clearly the direction more municipalities are looking. As water scarcity becomes a closer reality for many, people have no choice but to overlook the “yuck factor” that may have constrained the pursuit of reuse in the past.
Ellen Gilinsky, senior policy adviser for the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water, says the success of nonpotable reuse projects to date has laid a foundation for potable reuse moving forward. “I think you’re seeing sort of that progression,” she says. “People dip their toe in and then they see — oh, this is not so bad.”

131203-g
Shameful inaction
Miami Herald - Editorial
December 3, 2013
OUR OPINION: Congress must act on pending legislation before year runs out
A Congress best known for shutting down the government and the notorious sequester of government funds is about to claim another dubious distinction: the least productive session on Capitol Hill in post-war history. While the clock ticks down to the end of the year and the feuding continues, much of the nation’s business remains undone.
When the House returned this week from its Thanksgiving vacation (a vacation from what?), the 113th Congress had passed a mere 55 laws, few of major significance. Compared to this bunch of lawmakers — or rather, non-lawmakers — the deservedly maligned website of the Affordable Care Act seems like a model of efficiency and performance.
Unless it can vastly improve its output next year, this Congress is on track to be the least productive ever. We won’t hold our breath. Yet every now and then, members manage to surprise everyone by getting something done. On Tuesday, the House passed a new 10-year ban on firearms that can evade metal detectors and X-ray machines. It was a badly needed bill, and a first for gun legislation since last year’s massacre at Sandy Hook in Connecticut.
The bill is not perfect because it lacks an important provision requiring metal parts to make the gun fire, but it won strong bipartisan support because both sides decided to compromise and pass something meaningful rather than do nothing.
Meanwhile, time is running out. The House is scheduled to be in session only until the end of next week. The Senate won’t return from recess until next week, but is scheduled to remain for most of the month. But if lawmakers in both chambers can overcome their partisan fervor for a brief spell — particularly in the Republican-controlled House — a long list of urgent matters requires their attention. Among the most important:
• The farm bill: This is must-pass legislation that sets policy for farm subsidies, food stamps and other rural projects. Without renewal, the price of milk will skyrocket, but some Republicans want to cut $39 billion from the food stamp program over 10 years. Forget about it. Pass a bill that with adequate support for farmers that doesn’t increase hunger in America.
• Budget and taxes. The best that can be achieved in the hyper-partisan Congress is a modest deal that gets rid of some of the worst sequester cutbacks and averts another shutdown in January. Go for it. No one benefits from another shutdown.
• Immigration. We know — chances of House action are virtually nonexistent, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of dealing with one of the nation’s most pressing issues. The House should pass a bill that can be reconciled later with a good bill already passed in the Senate. Sooner is better than later.
• Everglades. A water-resources bill remains in the hands of a committee trying to reconcile House and Senate versions of legislation that includes support for the Central Everglades Planning Project and other vital waterways. A failure to enact this into law would be further proof of congressional dysfunction, considering that the bills won overwhelming support in both chambers.
There are many other important pieces of legislation crying for attention, including a bill that would avoid a disastrous cut in reimbursements for medical-care providers for Medicare recipients. Congress can’t make up for the harm caused by the shutdown and the sequester, but there is still time to mitigate the damage.

131203-h
The tremendous impact of Farm Bill programs on our environment and our economy
GoldRushCam.com
December 3, 2013
Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack joined Dale Hall, Chief Executive Officer of Ducks Unlimited, to highlight the value of public-private conservation efforts and the record conservation results achieved by producers, landowners and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) since 2009. Secretary Vilsack emphasized the critical need for Congress to pass a new Farm Bill to continue these efforts.
Across the nation, USDA works directly with farmers and ranchers to carry out conservation practices aimed at strengthening our nation's soil and water resources. USDA has partnered with more than 500,000 farmers, ranchers and landowners on these conservation projects since 2009 – a record number.
By protecting marginal cropland, preserving habitat and implementing environmentally-friendly production methods, these efforts preserve the ability of America's farmers and ranchers to continue producing an abundant food supply in the years to come. Conservation also strengthens outdoor recreation, which adds more than $640 billion every year to our economy.
The Farm Bill represents the nation's largest investment supporting the voluntary and successful conservation, restoration and management of America's working lands. A new Farm Bill would:
Continue targeted conservation efforts through a streamlined Regional Conservation Partnership Program. This new program will continue efforts under existing programs like the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Initiative, Healthy Forest Restoration Program, and Great Lakes Initiative to ensure soil quality, water quality, erosion control, forest restoration, and wildlife habitat.
Maintain key working lands programs including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program.
Continue participation in the Conservation Reserve Program – under which USDA has held a general signup each year since 2009.
Help ensure that natural resource conservation continues on tens of millions of acres, and further expand conservation, by linking crop insurance compliance to conservation program participation.
A Farm Bill would strengthen efforts USDA has undertaken across a range of innovative new landscape-scale initiatives aimed at restoring land and water. For example:
More than 844,000 acres were enrolled since 2010 under the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative to help treat land along the Mississippi River.
More than 275,000 acres were enrolled since 2011 under the Ogallala Aquifer Initiative, helping helps farmers and ranchers in the central United States conserve water.
More than 246,000 acres were enrolled since 2010 under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, working with producers to protect water quality and combat invasive species. America's Great Lakes hold 21 percent of the world's surface fresh water.
The USDA Everglades Initiative has enrolled nearly 215,000 acres since 2010, improving water quality and helping to restore fish and wildlife habitat in this unique coastal region.
In addition to America's working lands, our forest lands are providing new opportunities in conservation that benefit rural communities. USDA has undertaken new measures designed to modernize forest restoration and achieve the maximum benefit for landowners and the environment.
USDA has treated or harvested more than 500,000 acres for timber as part of 23 new "Collaborative Forest Restoration Projects." These efforts reduce fire risk and create jobs in rural America.
USDA has sold more than 10.3 million board feet of timber since 2009 from National Forest lands – and to ensure modern Forest management, USDA released and implemented a new Planning Rule to balance forest care and restoration with commonsense job creation.
To help spur innovation in conservation, USDA has invested in new research, monitoring and coordination efforts that help researchers and producers enhance conservation benefits on the land.
More than 1,000 Conservation Innovation Grants since 2009 have helped to fund technical assistance, research and capacity-building for innovative new conservation efforts and sustainable growing practices. For example, a CIG partnership with Michigan State University has helped small dairy farmers to evaluate the performance of a new technology to treat wastewater.
USDA undertook the Rapid Carbon Assessment, released this year to support conservation planners; and released the COMET-FARM™ tool, which enables farmers and ranchers to calculate how much carbon their soil is storing.
And to help American agriculture mitigate and adapt to climate change, USDA will soon announce seven regional " Climate Hubs" around the nation. The hubs will deliver region-specific information to help farmers and ranchers adapt to climate threats specific to their area.
We have boosted efforts to strengthen ecosystem markets. USDA has supported the creation of water quality trading markets that hold potential to boost income for producers while providing environmental benefits at a lower cost than more traditional approaches. And through the Working Lands for Wildlife Initiative, we are helping farmers and ranchers proactively protect species with declining populations.
Many of these conservation efforts, and USDA's ability to continue working with farmers, ranchers and landowners to protect our environment, depend on Congressional passage of a new Farm Bill. Americans are counting on Congress to get its job done and pass a Farm Bill as soon as possible.
The following charts provide a state-by-state look at the impact of some leading USDA conservation programs within the Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
State-by-State Efforts Under Selected NRCS and FSA Conservation Programs: FY2009-2012

131202-a
Amendment looks to limit sprawl, protect water and wildlife
Tallahassee.com – by Karl Etters
December 2, 2013
Amendment would designate fund to protect land, water and wildlife near urban areas
It’s a battle between Florida’s green spaces and urban sprawl.
A proposed ballot amendment could designate funding from real estate transactions toward acquiring and managing land vital to preserving water and wildlife health if it makes it before voters in 2014.
Those voters, 357,027 of them thus far, have signed a petition hoping to channel more than a third of the revenue of the paperwork involved with real estate transactions to the Land Acquisition Trust Fund.
The measure, sponsored by Florida’s Water and Land Legacy, looks to designate revenue for the next 20 years, estimated at $648 million in 2015 and increasing to $1.268 billion in 2034, from an existing excise tax and keeps those funds from falling into the General Revenue Fund.
Campaign Chair Will Abberger said the amendment is about designating a revenue stream toward preserving water quality and wildlife habitat that is unfazed by political shifts with an environmental impact reciprocal to that of real estate.
“If land is going to be developed, and usually there’s a real estate transaction that goes together with that, then why not put some of that money back into land conservation,” Abberger said.
The petition still needs 326,122 signatures by Feb. 1 to make onto the ballot.
Estimated revenue, established by a financial impact committee, takes into account Florida’s expected population growth of 1.3 percent and would not have any direct affect on local or state government revenues.
The committee also noted that further legislative action would be required to determine how the fund will be spent or saved.
Already 7.5 percent of document stamp taxes go into the fund, totaling $1.7 billion in revenue this year.
Of that, $563 million spilled into the state revenue fund and was distributed to several state agencies and other trust funds, for acquisition and management of environmental programs and historical properties.
If 60 percent of voters pass the amendment in November, that would no longer be the case.
No formal opposition to the amendment has been filed, but affordable housing lobbyists call the amendment, which does not mention affordable housing, a money grab by environmentalists.
Following the 2013 legislative session, just over $200 million was available from document stamp taxes for state and local government affordable housing funding, but that money was swept into the General Revenue Fund.
Affordable housing lobbyist Mark Hendrickson said while there is nothing wrong with funding environmental acquisition, but “the amendment as drafted is a huge grab of a larger share of the pie than those land purchase programs have received before.”
Hendrickson called the claim that no other programs will be hurt an “overwash” and that the document stamp tax critical to providing affordable housing came from the housing industry in the first place.
He predicted an appropriation for housing in the upcoming session in March.
“We’ve worked really hard through the tough years to be in a position as we have more flexibility in the budget,” Hendrickson said.
Funding for Florida Forever has slowed since 2009, but this year the Legislature agreed to give the Department of Environmental Protection $70 million for the land acquisition fund.
Originally, $50 million was expected to come from the sale of state-owned land deemed surplus conservation land.
Following public comment, the state reduced the number of properties for sale and is expected to fall short of its goal.
With chance for a shift in available funding, Abberger said the amendment would “guarantee that this funding will be in place for 20 years and that those priorities don’t shift with whatever the political winds are in Tallahassee that particular year.”
Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Adam Putnam said he was concerned about writing the state’s budget into the Constitution.
“When you look at how much trauma the state budget has undergone over the last five or six years,” Putnam said, “given that Florida was the epicenter of the real estate collapse, which completely dried up doc stamps and now we appear to be on the rebound, its seems like bad public policy.”
Abberger said in North Florida, the amendment would put money toward areas important to fisheries, like the Apalachicola Bay, and tourism economy.
Deciding what projects get funding would be similar process used by the Acquisition and Restoration Council, which ranks Florida Forever projects and decides on necessity.
There are no specific projects listed in the ballot language, although the Everglades are named a project area, but Abberger said the idea is setting aside those places that are important along with improving public access near urban centers.
Related:           Amendment looks to limit sprawl, protect water and wildlife           WTSP 10 News

131202-b
Citrus making a comeback in Pensacola area
PRIJ.com – by Carlton Proctor
December 2, 2013
Locally grown oranges, lemons and grapefruit available at a few locations.
On the agricultural maps of Florida’s 32 citrus growing counties, Escambia and Santa Rosa are nowhere to be found.
And with good reason.
The Sunshine State’s $9 billion citrus industry has always been concentrated below the frostbelt, in the balmier regions of Central and South Florida.
But milder winters, better growing techniques and heartier varieties of orange, lemon and grapefruit trees are sparking a modest cottage industry among Panhandle citrus growers.
Increasingly, locally grown citrus is showing up in Pensacola area grocery stores and farmers markets.
“We’ve been getting a lot more Meyer lemons, blood oranges and grapefruits that are grown locally,” said Eric Reese, produce manager for Apple Market on Scenic Highway. “Some is coming from people who have a lone tree in their backyard.
“But there’s also been a resurgence of local growers producing fruit. It’s definitely on its way back,” he said.
In the early part of the 20th century, there was a robust citrus industry in the Panhandle, especially for satsuma oranges.
Orange Beach, Ala., got its name from its extensive groves of orange trees.
But blight and severe freezes killed off the citrus industry, forcing central Gulf Coast growers to turn to other grove crops like pecans.
But now, with improved growing techniques and an increasing demand for local produce, some growers in the Panhandle are getting back in the citrus game.
Gadsden and Jackson County growers are leading the way, planting large groves of mandarin orange trees, which withstand cold weather better than other more cold-sensitive varieties like navel oranges.
“In our area, we really don’t have a citrus industry started yet,” said Beth Boles, with the Escambia County Extension Service, “although it’s coming.”
Boles said growers are becoming much more creative about protecting citrus trees from frost and other diseases.
Fighting frost
Local grower Jack Bush has more than 100 citrus trees in the ground producing satsuma oranges, lemons, limes, key limes and grapefruits on his spread in nearby Baldwin County, Ala.
Bush has come up with a lightweight protective shield for each of his trees that wards off frost.
He also has dug wells to extract ground water that remains a steady 60 degrees year-round and is sprayed on trees to ward off frost.
“What kills citrus trees is the frost,” he said. “When the frost settles on the tree, it gets into the bark. The trick is to keep the tree free of frost.”
So far this harvest season Bush has found luck.
“I’ve sold way over 4,000 pounds of satsumas this fall,” he said. “I’ve been going to all the local festivals every week as well as the farmer markets. I usually take 100 five-pound bags of fruit and I sell out every time.”
A regular at the Palafox Market in downtown Pensacola, Carl Stewart has more than a dozen citrus trees that he’s nursed to maturity and are now producing large quantities of oranges and lemons.
“I can go to the Palafox Market and sell the lemons and oranges for $1 a pound,” he said. “I think as time goes on, I will plant more trees.”
Tasty food source
Local citrus also is making its way to charitable organizations such as Manna Food Pantries and the Waterfront Rescue Mission.
Yes We Can Pensacola, a volunteer group started in 2008 by Gulf Breeze resident Anna Houghton, harvests unused fruit grown in backyards.
“We take fruit that people don’t want,” she said. “We realize people plant trees and enjoy them when they are younger. But as the trees age, they really don’t have the ability to use all the fruit.
“Some people’s trees get really huge, and while they still want some of the fruit, they can’t possibly use all of it,” she said.
That’s where Yes We Can Pensacola comes in to play.
“The first year, we collected about 2,500 pounds of fruit,” she said. “The next year, it went to 5,000 pounds, and then 15,000 pounds.”
Houghton recalls harvesting more than 1,400 pounds of fruit from a single grapefruit tree.
At a recent Yes We Can Pensacola picking at the home of Bruce and Viola Meredith, about a dozen volunteers used homemade pruning sticks to harvest hundreds of oranges.
Most of the fruit collected by Houghton’s cadre of volunteers, ranging from small children to senior citizens, winds up at Manna Food Pantries or other charitable food banks.
“Every year when it’s ready, we call Anna up and say, ‘Come and get
it,’ ” Bruce Meredeth said. “Once we learned that they gave it to Manna, we were on board.”
While local commercial growers are producing increasing quantities of citrus, much of the produce showing up in local stores comes from private growers.
Trees that were planted years ago as ornamentals have matured and are now producing prodigious quantities of fruit.
These days, everybody is bringing in locally grown oranges, lemons and limes harvested in backyards, said Jordan Morgan, store manager at Apple Market.
He said local fruit has become a good seller at the store.
“People have found out that locally grown fruit tastes better,” he said.

131202-c
Desalination a must for Florida, official says
WaterOnLine.com - by Sara Jerome
December 2, 2013
A Florida official is calling on his state to invest in seawater desalination as a way to combat water scarcity. 
According to Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, the Sunshine State needs to consider options beyond conservation and reuse. 
"Drought-proof water supplies, like seawater desalination, should be more aggressively pursued and included in water planning as future sources of Florida’s water supply. The collection and storage of water for groundwater recharge and as an alternative source of water should continue to be encouraged with incentives to attract private landowner participation," he said in a recent editorial. 
State studies back up the idea that Florida needs a wider range of solutions.
"Florida cannot meet its future demand for water by relying solely on the development of traditional ground and surface water sources. The state’s water demand is expected to grow by greater than 25% to about 8.7 billion gallons per day by the year 2025," according to a report by the state's Department of Environmental Protection. 
Currently, seawater is not widely used in Florida.
"Only a few plants draw their source water from coastal seawater. The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Facility is the only large-scale reverse osmosis facility in the state using a coastal surface water source," the report said. 
Putnam also called for more equality in the treatment of Florida's diverse set of water issues. 
"There is an extraordinary bias to the south at the expense of the springs and Apalachicola Bay," he recently said in Gannett's New-Press. 
The Florida legislature is considering spending $220 million to redirect water and reduce pollutants flowing from Lake Okeechobee, according to the report. 
But Putnam wants them to look at the bigger picture.  
"That includes the challenges of pollutants entering the state's springs, the St. Johns River and Tampa Bay, reducing pollution entering Lake Okeechobee from the north and the declining conditions of Apalachicola Bay in the Panhandle," the report said. 
Putnam is concerned about how changing conditions in the state will affect Florida's water supply, and eventually, the economy. 
"As our population continues to grow — this year we will surpass New York as the third most populated state in the nation — pressure on our fragile water supplies will increase," he said in his editorial. 
For more on how other states are approaching desalination, check out previous coverage on Water Online.

131202-d
Regulators must decide who gets Floridan Aquifer's last drops
Orlando Sentinel - by Kevin Spear,
December 2, 2013
Enjoy that pristine aquifer water while it's there. In the future, many Central Floridians are likely to find their faucets running with treated river water, desalinated seawater or purified sewage.
Authorities now are scrambling to prevent chaotic water competition in coming years and are taking early steps in the decades-long selection of communities that will get the last of the coveted water in the imperiled Floridan Aquifer. Difficult choices are coming.
"It is important to have these tough conversations now," said Jane Graham, an Audubon Florida legal expert participating in the region's Central Florida Water Initiative.
The initiative's regulators and utilities found the region has been consuming an average of 800 million gallons a day from the aquifer, a volume predicted to hit 1.1 billion in 20 years. But pumping more than 850 million gallons could degrade springs and other environments.
The investigative work is largely done. There are 50 million gallons available for what could be bare-knuckled grabbing; the initiative must decide how to dole it out.
Utilities and other users already have permits for that 50 million. They want the water but don't need it yet.
Meanwhile, regulators say they must consider applications for new or increased permits that would consume what's left in the aquifer.
The initiative has considered a moratorium on increased pumping. More likely are interim guidelines in coming weeks that will pressure utilities that want more to conserve more.
Last week, the initiative issued a draft of the Regional Water Supply Plan, an early and vague template for who will get aquifer water and who will get water from other sources.
Simply putting a number on aquifer limits reveals that Florida has little flexibility for prioritizing water use. State law says its use must be reasonable, beneficial and not harm other consumers or the environment. The bar is so low that lawns and hospitals can qualify equally.
"I don't think there is any definition of reasonable and beneficial," said Brian Wheeler, director of Toho Water Authority in Osceola County.
Not remotely spelled out is who is more worthy of aquifer water: a theme park's dolphin tank, the Gatorade factory in Kissimmee or Lake Eola Park, to name a fraction of the competing users.
With little clarity for who gets the Floridan's last gallons, Niagara Bottling LLC has asked to increase its aquifer pumping in Lake County from 484,000 gallons a day to 910,000 gallons.
Nearly 500 citizen comments filed with state authorities call for denial of the request but the California company is an appropriate consumer by some key considerations already shaping the future of water.
Many experts think the root of aquifer stress is that water is underpriced and squandered.
Niagara's bottles of Floridan water typically sell for $4 to $5 per case, while aquifer water that utilities sell to homeowners typically costs $2 to $5 per thousand gallons.
Bottled water is for drinking — far and away the best use of the aquifer, according experts. But about half of aquifer water piped to homes is sprayed on lawns, a practice expected to be widely done away with in coming decades.
The Niagara factory uses water efficiently, according to state officials.
By comparison, lawn watering is often done too frequently or when it rains, a waste that the state has tried to curb by limiting sprinkler use to once or twice a week.
A leading criticism about Niagara is directed toward state authorities for not charging the company for water.
But no one, including either a rural home with a private well or the Walt Disney World utility, is charged for what they withdraw from the Floridan. It's a public resource that not even the state can claim to own.
In turn, seemingly everybody who pumps and sells aquifer water makes money.
Private utilities are allowed to collect a profit of 10 percent. Municipal utilities can collect as much surplus revenue as they want. Orlando Utilities Commission banked $1.2 million in extra cash during the past year.
Richard Hamann, an environmental professor at the University of Florida and former regional water-board member, said the state needs more sophisticated ways to manage the aquifer.
Options most talked about include a tax on aquifer withdrawals, which would provide funding for water protections, and regulations that rank the worthiness of uses.
But with the anti-tax, anti-regulation climate in Tallahassee, "that's probably not going to happen," Hamann said.

131202-e
Statewide water planning is goal of next House Speaker
CBS-Miami
December 2, 2013
TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) – Florida may be surrounded by water, but the state has vast water problems that need to be addressed. That’s exactly what the next House speaker wants to do.
As the Senate pursues an ambitious $220 million plan to redirect water and reduce pollutants in South Florida, the next House speaker, Rep. Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, wants lawmakers to factor in water issues faced by the agriculture industry and drinking-water sources, as well as problems facing Florida’s freshwater springs, the Apalachicola River region in Florida’s Panhandle and the northern Indian River Lagoon, as they prepare to allocate money for water-resource projects in next year’s budget.
“The water issues need to be approached in a comprehensive fashion,” Crisafulli said Monday. “It’s important we don’t get too laser-focused on one region of the state, but look at it from the standpoint of the overall needs of the state.”
The directive from Crisafulli, who is in line to become House speaker in November 2014, sets up expected political horse-trading over funding for water issues between the House and Senate at a time when the Legislature has the prospects of a budget surplus entering the session.
The Senate plan was crafted by Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who chairs the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.
Negron’s plan was initially conceived with a focus on improving water quality in the St. Lucie estuary, which during the summer was inundated with nutrient-heavy waters released from nearby Lake Okeechobee under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As the plan advanced out of Negron’s Select Committee on Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee Basin, it included proposals by Gov. Rick Scott to increase the flow of water to the south, and by Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Ft. Myers, to assist the Caloosahatchee Estuary on the west side of the state.
“It’s exciting to see state leaders competing over who will do the most for the environment,” said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon of Florida. “This is something we haven’t seen in a long time.”
Draper, who has complimented Negron for being able to quickly put together a plan, agreed Monday with most of the general approach pitched by Crisafulli.
Negron said doesn’t believe a proposed statewide approach will impact the Lake Okeechobee and Everglades improvement plan.
“The more focus we have on water policies the better,” Negron said. “We can do more than one thing at one time.”
Negron noted that more than $10 million was budgeted for freshwater springs in the 2013 session and he expects more will be done next year. Also, the South Florida plan includes proposals to clean water that enters the lake from the Orlando region and $20 million to remove muck from the northern Indian River Lagoon that stretches into Crisafulli’s area of the Space Coast.
Crisafulli’s general proposal is intended to “reject a limited parochial view” and provide flexible policies that water managers can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances that range from the pending impact of hurricanes to decisions of neighboring states on Florida’s water supply.
Crisafulli said putting a premium on water issues that benefit the state will be a priority of his term as House speaker.
In an opinion piece for the Orlando Sentinel on Sunday, Crisafulli wrote that “focusing on one community at a time in a piecemeal approach can lead to new problems down the road.”
His focus will be primarily getting “tangible” projects in place rather than instituting new policies.
Crisafulli’s comments echo sentiments from Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam that lawmakers need to remember that South Florida isn’t the only part of the state where water quality and quantity have become dire issues.
“There is an extraordinary bias to the south at the expense of the springs and Apalachicola Bay,” Putnam told reporters on Nov. 18.
Florida has filed a federal lawsuit against Georgia about a shortage of freshwater flowing into Apalachicola Bay. Florida argues that heavy water consumption in the metro Atlanta area has reduced downstream flows into the bay, endangering Apalachicola’s oyster industry.
The budget proposal from Putnam’s department for the 2014 session includes $10 million to address nutrient reduction practices and water retention efforts in the Lake Okeechobee watershed, $8.2 million for best management practices in the northern Everglades, and $5.2 million to reduce agricultural nutrients from reaching the state’s northern freshwater springs.
The Department of Environmental Protection has included in its budget proposals $75 million that Gov. Rick Scott proposed for Everglades restoration efforts, $40 million for environmental land acquisition, and $15 million for springs restoration, up from the $10 million designated during the 2013 session.
The proposals are being considered by Scott, who will offer a budget plan before the 2014 legislative session.
The governor has a couple of items among Negron’s list, including $90 million that would be spread over three years to bridge a 2.6-mile section of the Tamiami Trail west of Miami.
Other provisions in the Senate plan include $40 million to speed construction of the state’s portion of a C-44 reservoir and stormwater treatment area for the Indian River Lagoon-South Restoration Project; $32 million for projects tied to ensuring that all surface-water discharges into the Everglades Protection Area meet water quality standards; and a request for the Army Corps to give DEP authority to regulate releases when the risk of dike failure around Lake Okeechobee is less than 10 percent.
“The News Service of Florida’s Jim Turner contributed to this report.”

131201-a
Putnam makes state's water woes a priority
Orlando Sentinel - by Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
December 1, 2013
SEBRING — Adam Putnam looks over the flooded prairie of the Rafter T Ranch and can smell the opportunity, stronger than cow flop.
The Republican Florida agriculture commissioner from Bartow has been decidedly low-profile during his first term in the office in dealing with a billion-dollar issue that doesn't usually grab big headlines: Florida's dwindling water supplies and growing thirst.
But now Putnam is facing a watershed moment of sorts, with a series of environmental calamities over the last year intensifying pressure for policymakers to tackle Florida's water woes.
Lawmakers this spring will consider steering part of an $840 million expected budget surplus into the re-plumbing of South Florida's Everglades. Putnam is lobbying to send more of those dollars to places like the Rafter T Ranch about 90 miles south of Orlando.
"There's not much that goes on around Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades that is cheap," he says. "For a fraction of what you spend on those projects, you could do a lot of good'' elsewhere in the state.
For instance, Central Florida's Silver Springs and others are threatened from development and agricultural operations trying to pump more water. In the Indian River Lagoon, two massive plankton blooms that began in 2011 have killed off dolphins, manatees, pelicans and sea grasses.
Thanks to a wetter-than-usual rainy season, water from Lake Okeechobee — fueled by flows from fertilizer-laden Central Florida — had to be pumped into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers in South Florida. The discharges fueled stinky algae blooms and damaged tourism in those coastal communities.
At Rafter T in rural Highlands County — one of eight pilot projects along the Kissimmee River watershed — Putnam is trying to promote part of the solution, he says. A third of the 5,200-acre cattle ranch is a connected chain of low-lying fields converted into grassy basins that store and filter water.
"We think Mother Nature is really smart and we've probably used too much technology to try to tame her," explains ranch owner Jimmy Wohl, whose family-owned company is paid $61,000 a year to put previously drained pasture lands underwater part of the year.
Wooden boards cover culverts connecting the ponds. Gravity instead of pumps push the water through earthen berms separating the fields, which are drained and used as cattle prairie during winter. The low-tech system catches the phosphorus and nitrogen fouling South Florida's rivers.
"You don't have to talk to space to manage water," Putnam said from the flatbed of a pickup, decked out in blue jeans and scuffed boots while touring the ranch recently.
It's an interesting change of pace for a guy who was the youngest-ever politician elected to Congress, once third in line for U.S. House speaker, and a short-list contender for governor some day.
"I could be wearing earmuffs," he said, "answering questions about cocaine," referring to a recent drug scandal in Washington.
Putnam can afford to take long drives on farms these days. Democrats concede they are unlikely to field a competitive challenger to him next year. Putnam fended off calls to challenge fellow Republican Gov. Rick Scott last year.
While current GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater may have designs on the Governor's Mansion in coming years, Putnam is 39 and can bide his time until a surer path to higher office — governor, or maybe U.S. Senate — presents itself.
"He's young enough where he doesn't really have to look for the next opportunity. He'll have plenty of opportunities," said Republican lobbyist and fundraiser Brian Ballard.
Putnam has largely won over Florida's environmental lobby, even though he opposes a land-conservation constitutional amendment that environmentalists have poured more than $1.7 million into placing on the 2014 ballot.
"He has the unique experience of someone whose family has lived in Florida for a long time," said Janet Bowman, a lawyer and lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy. "I suspect he'll run for governor eventually, but he doesn't look like someone interested in quick political payoff."
This spring, that credibility will be put to the test.
Senate budget chief Joe Negron, R-Stuart, wants more than $220 million for improved plumbing and studies around the Kissimmee River, Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee.
The big-ticket projects include concrete and intensively engineered system of dams and levees surrounding the southern edges of the lake.
"When you're in the emergency room, the first thing they do is stop the bleeding,'' Negron said. "I support the direction [Putnam] is going in, but right now I'm going to remain focused on Lake O and the Indian River Lagoon."
Putnam's office has asked for more than $20 million for water projects such as the Rafter T Ranch.
"There needs to be a more equitable allocation toward water projects scattered around the state because of the unique challenges of those areas," he said.

131201-b
Water-management policy essential to Florida's future
Orlando Sentinel - by Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, serves as the House majority leader and was designated by his peers to be the Republican speaker of the House for the 2014-15 legislative sessions.
December 1, 2013
One of Florida's most precious resources is water. Our state is world-renowned for its 1,200 miles of beaches, springs and more than 7,700 large lakes. Yet Florida's water supply is more than just a tourist attraction; it's also the heart of our agriculture industry and the source of drinking water we all depend upon to live our lives.
Water is so essential to our existence; yet water policy is often overlooked or tackled in a parochial manner. Neither approach is right. To ignore the growing demand for and the quality of our supply leaves our state incredibly vulnerable. Focusing on one community at a time in a piecemeal approach can lead to new problems down the road.
As an example, look no further than South Florida's recent challenges.
This year, the region faced one of the rainiest summers on record. To reduce the chance of flooding, excess fresh water from Lake Okeechobee was pumped into South Florida estuaries. While this addressed the immediate problem of relieving pressure on the dike maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it also upset fragile coastal ecosystems downstream and negatively impacted the local economies.
Rightly, local public officials at every level mobilized to address the problem. Many of the ideas that have come out of the task force spearheaded by Sen. Joe Negron correctly consider the state as a whole and the connectivity of our waterways. But, with emotions high and attention so focused on one region, there is a need to guard against tunnel vision and focusing exclusively on one problem to the detriment of others.
It is why I am calling on policy makers on every level to embrace three principles as we look for water-policy solutions and establish water-funding priorities.
First, as we deliberate on water issues, we must do so through the lens of a comprehensive, statewide approach to protect the long-term health of Florida's water ecosystems. Water has no boundaries, and it is imperative that policy makers, opinion leaders and the public reject a limited parochial view.
There are issues across the state, from the Northern Indian River Lagoon, located in the legislative district I represent, to the Apalachicola River, to our freshwater springs, and I intend to see that each of them gets attention in Tallahassee.
Second, Florida's water-management policy must be flexible so that water managers can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. In a state that is annually in the path of hurricanes and tropical storms, where the average doorstep is only 100 feet above sea level, and where the decisions of neighboring states can harm our water supply, having an effective water-management strategy is critical for our survival.
Third, we must attack our water needs with long-term and short-term strategies. Water-management strategy is not enough. We must also continue to invest in proactive measures to effectively deal with our immediate water-quality issues.
During the prolonged economic downturn, our state pulled back on funding local water projects. As the fiscal outlook improves, I believe it is critical that we re-engage our partnership with local governments to strategically invest in projects that will improve our overall water supply and quality, such as the Everglades restoration bill we passed this year.
The 2014 legislative session is approaching, and the Legislature must work with Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Herschel Vinyard and the water-management districts to craft a smart, comprehensive water policy for our state.
As a growing population, weather events and even decisions by neighboring states strain our water resources, it is imperative we have a comprehensive plan in place to protect water quality and access for all Floridians, not just today, but for generations to come.

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