160131-a
Flood Control Operations Update
SFWMD.gov – Press Release
January 31, 2016
The South Florida Water Management District completed a rare "back pumping" flood control operation at 5:30 p.m. this evening. Pumps at the S-2 and S-3 structures along the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee are now shut down after four days of operation, and no water is being sent into the lake through these structures.  “Following the wettest January day in South Florida in 25 years, SFWMD water managers initiated temporary back pumping on the evening of Jan. 27 to protect thousands of families, businesses and property in the Glades communities, where 6 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.   “The SFWMD Governing Board's policy limits back pumping operations solely for flood control purposes under emergency conditions, clearly defined in a Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit. After the Board's policy was instituted, the practice has been used only eight other times since 2008 — four of which were following impacts from tropical storms.  “Faced with record-setting rainfall this winter, SFWMD water managers have maximized the amount of water that can be safely stored in the regional system to maintain flood protection for residents and businesses throughout South Florida.
“To increase water storage and operational flexibility, the District is making steady progress with projects that will provide these much-needed benefits. These include completion and operation of the A-1 Flow Equalization Basin, ongoing construction of the C-43 and C-44 reservoirs and rehabilitation of the Ten Mile Creek Reservoir.   “Together, these and other initiatives will reduce the need for back pumping into Lake Okeechobee, reduce harmful freshwater discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries and help to restore South Florida's treasured natural systems.”

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Protesters rally for clean water and no sea wall
News-Press.com – by Patricia Borns
January 31, 2016
A rally in Fort Myers Beach Sunday brought together a crowd of about 30 protesters with two issues and one common outcry -- frustration with their local governments.
Southwest Florida Clean Water Movement's John Heim said he planned the rally months ago to draw attention to polluted water discharges from Lake Okeechobee that affect local waterways and beaches. He was joined by Beach residents concerned about the proposed sea wall of hotel developer Grand Resorts FMB, which would change the natural beach formation, the demonstrators said.
"For over 20 years we have been fighting Lake O discharges for our community," Heim said, "and as activists, we are highly against the sea wall. The perfect storm has come together."
The vocal but peaceful group marched from Times Square to Crescent Beach Family Park waving "Save Fort Myers Beach" signs and chanting, to bring their message to tourists and the media.
"We are politically driven, because a lot of these problems are political," Heim said. "We will be calling for the resignation of (Fort Myers Beach) Mayor Anita Cereceda at Monday's town council meeting, and then for the resignation of (Lee County) Commissioner Larry Kiker."

160130-a
A devious fracking bill
TBO.com – Editorial
January 30, 2016
It is troubling to see the Florida Legislature plow ahead with a bill that would rob local governments of any control over fracking in their communities.
Supporters say the measure is aimed at regulating fracking and would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to study what impacts fracking and related excavation processes would have, particularly on water sources.
That sounds reasonable, but this industry-driven bill is primarily aimed at ensuring local governments don’t get in the way of the drilling industry’s plans.
The House passed its fracking bill this week while a similar Senate bill also is progressing.
It doesn’t matter to lawmakers that 64 local governments have passed resolutions opposing fracking, and have good reason to be cautious about the practice in Florida.
In the process, a mixture of water, sand and caustic chemicals is pumped deep into the ground to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas.
We are not necessarily opposed to fracking. It has, as we have said, produced an abundant supply of energy and increased oil to near-record highs. It also is helping make the country energy-sufficient. In addition, natural gas burns cleaner than oil.
But none of that changes the fact that this is a messy undertaking that could be particularly damaging in Florida, with its porous limestone below the surface and underground aquifers that supply most of the state’s drinking water.
Yet House lawmakers dismissed the objections of local governments, physicians and others in adopting legislation that would prevent cities and counties from adopting fracking bans or any regulations that would “impose a moratorium on, effectively prohibit, or inordinately burden” mining activities.
It is typical of a Legislature that is far more concerned with appeasing special interests than the public health or the environment — not to mention the property values of landowners who would be affected by nearby fracking.
As Florida Politics reported, Rep. Larry Lee, a Port St. Lucie Democrat, rightly chastised his colleagues who rammed through the legislation while arrogantly dismissing the public health, environmental and home-rule issues raided opponents:
“Yesterday, over 27 counties said they wanted to ban fracking yet you are up here representing your county and you are going to push that green button just because leadership says to do it. It’s wrong.”
The state, by all means, should adopt fracking safety standards. But local governments — and the people they represent — should have the final say on whether this potentially damaging activity is appropriate in their communities.
Related:           Letter: Fracking: Maybe we can become another Flint, Michigan     St. Augustine Record
Anti-fracking rallies to take place across state this weekend Florida Politics (blog)
Florida Prohibits Local Fracking Bans           Daily Caller

160130-b
Lake O water set to be discharged into St. Lucie Estuary
Palm Beach Post
January. 30, 2016
The Army Corps of Engineers is set to increase water discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie Estuary as soon as this week.
The estuary links the lake and the Indian River Lagoon, which stretches 156 miles from Hobe Sound to the Ponce de Leon inlet south of Daytona Beach. It has been called the nation’s most diverse estuary, with more than 2,200 types of animals and 2,100 types of plants.
Conditions in the lagoon have been stressed in recent years by factors such as discharges of polluted water from the lake into the estuary. A toxic algae bloom in 2013 took a major toll on the lagoon’s sea grasses, oysters and wildlife, and drew hundreds to protests calling for changes.
High water levels in the lake this year require increased discharges into not only the St. Lucie Estuary but also the Caloosahatchee, which drains toward Fort Myers, the Corps’ Jacksonville District office said Friday.
Following recent heavy rains, the lake’s water level Saturday morning was 15.98 feet, the Corps said. That’s more than a foot higher than last year and more than two feet higher than in 2013. The Corps’ preferred level is between 12.5 and 15.5 feet.
“The lake jumped a quarter of a foot over the past 24 hours,” Jim Jeffords, operations division chief for the Jacksonville District, said Friday. “With heavy rains contributing to increased flows and challenges throughout the system, we must use all available tools to protect the health and safety of people living and working in south Florida.”
The new discharge levels are 6,500 cubic feet per second into the Caloosahatchee and 2,800 into the St. Lucie. “Additional runoff from rain in the Caloosahatchee or the St. Lucie basins could occasionally result in flows that exceed targets,” the Corps said.
It was not clear Saturday when these additional discharges would begin or when lake water would reach the lagoon. The release depends in part on weather conditions near the lake.

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The seas are swallowing South Florida. Where’s Marco Rubio ?
Grist.org - by Nina Burleigh
January 30, 2016
An unusual January storm bent palm trees and turned city sidewalks into creeks as a small group of Miami-area mayors and administrators huddled in Pinecrest, one of Miami-Dade County’s 34 municipalities. They had come at the invitation of Pinecrest’s mayor to discuss rising sea levels, long predicted by climate change scientists and now regularly inundating their towns. The mood in the room was somewhere between pessimism and panic.
On the agenda: making flood prediction maps to help prioritize which roads, schools and hospitals to save as waters rise; how to keep saltwater from leaching into the aquifer; and what to do about 1.6 million septic tanks whose failure could create a Third World sanitation challenge. Someone also brought up the alarming possibility of the sea engulfing the nearby Turkey Point nuclear power plant
The scale of South Florida’s looming catastrophe — $69 billion worth of property is at risk of flooding in less than 15 years — is playing out like a big-budget disaster movie, but dealing with it has been largely left to local political and business leaders in tiny rooms like the Pinecrest Municipal Center’s Council Chamber. Their biggest problem is the one climate scientists have struggled with for decades: creating a sense of urgency. Before adjourning, the mayors considered finding a mascot to get people’s attention, like a climate change Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl of the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” campaign. Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason suggested a WWE wrestler could be hired for television and billboard ads with the slogan “Climate change: The problem is bigger than you think.”
The irony — that Miami’s local leaders still have to sell the urgency of rising sea levels — was sharpened as the meeting adjourned and participants exited into a veil of rain during what is supposed to be Florida’s dry season. Small ponds formed in streets, another pretty average day in a city where reports of fish swimming in flooded boulevards and backyards during storms and high tides are becoming more common. Almost everyone knows someone who has stalled a car in rising waters, and Miami police now urge drivers to carry special window-busting hammers for such incidents.
About 2.4 million people in the Miami area live less than four feet above the high-tide line, and the ocean is expected to rise between 6.6 and 30 feet by 2100. Eighty-four years is a long time, but water doesn’t rise like that all at once. It is already happening. Inch by inch, the slow inundation of Miami has begun, affecting infrastructure and life in one of the world’s sexiest cities.
South Florida business leaders and even many local Republican politicians are no longer in climate change denial. Now, deep in the fine print of resolutions and memoranda being passed around among the various task forces in the area, one sees the mantra “Elevate. Isolate. Relocate.” Abandonment of some parts of the community to water is now accepted as unavoidable. Even the most conservative estimates assume that a percentage of the next generation of Floridians will become internally displaced Americans, climate change refugees.
While panicking Miami policymakers are contemplating dire climate-related matters like the possibility of relocating people and infrastructure, Florida’s two presidential candidates are silent. Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush have ignored the problem. Bush has no constituents to answer to anymore, but Rubio does. On the campaign trail, he brushes off questions about climate change by saying, “I’m not a scientist.” His silence is a stark contrast to the deeds of Florida’s senior senator, Bill Nelson, a Democrat and former astronaut. Last year, Nelson held a rare Senate field hearing in Miami Beach on sea-level rise, and he frequently speaks about the issue on the Senate floor.
Miami-area Democrats are predictably harsh in their criticism of Rubio’s indifference, using words like “useless,” and “a waste of time.” But even local Republicans are tired of pretending they don’t need waders to get across town. Republican Antonio Argiz, chair and CEO of a prominent accounting company and past chair of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, lives in a house near the Coral Gables waterfront. He now leaves his sedan parked on high ground during rainstorms and texts his wife to pick him up at the end of their street in the family SUV, rather than risk stalling out in rapidly rising waters.
 “I just think saying ‘I’m not a scientist’ is the wrong position to take,” Argiz says. “Climate change will destroy our economy, sooner or later. I think like everything in life, you face things head-on and try to come up with solutions, and you don’t wait until the last minute. … [If] this thing continues as it has in the last six or seven years, we are going to have a major problem 15 to 20 years down the road.”
Rubio’s local political mentor, County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa, works out of an office decorated with framed and signed pictures of the junior senator. She has chaired a climate task force since 2013. She has also sponsored more than a dozen proposals, including sea-level-related sewer improvements, proposals for public purchase of endangered coastline and the creation and implementation of climate action plans.
She supports Rubio and excuses his silence on this issue as caution. “I’ve never heard him deny anything. He’s not a scientist, [not] able to say what is causing it. I’m not a scientist either. I convene experts. At the end of the day, we need to be careful. The extremists can create an economic blockade by making people think they shouldn’t invest in the United States because we will be underwater.”
A freshman Republican from suburban Miami, Rep. Carlos Curbelo, has taken a leadership role on Capitol Hill on climate change. Like Rubio, Curbelo is a young, second-generation Cuban-American. He says there’s a middle way between alarm and ignoring the problem. “Presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who are very familiar with these challenges, should, on the national stage, be sincere with the American public — in this case, Republican primary voters — and tell them that we are already seeing major challenges and threats to our ability to live in South Florida.”
Rubio lives in West Miami, nine feet above sea level and a few miles inland. When I visited his neighborhood during that January rainstorm, a shallow pond had formed in the middle of his street and the sidewalk was underwater. As the water table rises, groundwater bubbles up through storm drains. As that happens more often, in addition to flooding streets, it will cause more than a million septic tanks in the Miami area to bust, and if engineering precautions are not taken soon, that will contaminate the groundwater. At that point, the city will be, literally, in the shit.
Rubio did not always avoid the subject. Nine years ago, as a Florida legislator, he said climate change gave the state an opportunity to become a green energy leader. “This nation, and ultimately the world, is headed for an emissions tax and energy diversification,” he said in 2007. “Those changes will require technological advances that make those measures cost-effective. The demand for such advances will create an industry to meet it. Florida should become the Silicon Valley of that industry.” Rubio occasionally still talks about green energy on the campaign trail, but rarely.
When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio was a favorite of the Tea Party, with its “Drill, baby, drill” libertarianism and science denial. He stopped talking about green energy and climate and began openly questioning climate science. Miami geologist Harold Wanless, who has modeled sea-level rise for local leaders, met Rubio at a fundraiser that year and handed him a letter, signed by scientists, requesting a meeting to brief him on the data. Rubio took the letter but never responded.
Rubio sometimes espouses full climate-science denial. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it, and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy,” he said on ABC’s This Week this past May.
In the single Republican debate in which a moderator asked about climate change, Rubio said addressing it will hurt the economy. “We’re not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate,” Rubio said. “We’re not going to destroy our economy the way our left-wing government wants us to do. America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.”
As a U.S. senator, Rubio signed the “no climate tax” pledge circulated by anti-tax lobbyists, promising to not support a tax on carbon. He has said he would roll back Obama’s Clean Air Act actions, and he supports more offshore drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline. This month, Rubio got the endorsement of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — a legislative body that would, theoretically, be holding hearings on what to do about a major American city being flooded by rising seas. But Inhofe is a climate science denier who once graphically illustrated his belief that Earth isn’t warming by tossing a snowball on the Senate floor. In an interview with Newsweek, Inhofe says he still maintains that “the weather is always changing” and that carbon emissions have minimal effects on it, adding that Rubio’s doubts about climate change and support for fossil fuel extraction are in sync with his views
Jay Butera, the congressional liaison for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, who works with Miami mayors and also lobbies on Capitol Hill, says climate change denying Republicans lag behind some major oil and gas interests in their position on a carbon tax. “If you drill into Exxon Mobil’s position on this, you find they are advocating for a plan to put a gradually rising price on carbon,” he says. “There may be members of Congress who say, ‘I can’t act on this because Exxon will be upset.’ But Congress is sometimes a lagging indicator of public sentiment and even the interest groups.”
Rubio’s silence on Florida’s problem is also at odds with his constituents’ wishes. A June 2015 poll of Florida’s 27th Congressional District — including Miami, where Rubio lives — found 81 percent of respondents believed climate change is a problem Congress should address, and 82 percent wanted Congress to support economical ways to mitigate the problem.
The bulk of the responsibility — and the panic — has fallen on the local governments, including municipal mayors, in and around Miami. They have created local and regional climate-change task forces. One of the largest is the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a joint commitment of Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties to foster “climate resilience”; it has developed a coordinated legislative and policy agenda for state and federal advocacy. Miami-Dade just hired its first “chief resiliency officer” to coordinate efforts. The Miami-Dade County Sea-Level Rise Task Force, formed in 2013, has already recommended that government begin buying lands predicted to go underwater
The smaller municipalities are also racing the clock with preparations and investments. Coral Gables’s Mayor Cason put money into his city budget for experts in engineering and climate change, and he has commissioned a sea-level rise map predicting, in seven-inch increments, which roads and buildings are most vulnerable. Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, a Democrat, has already hiked the local storm drain tax to pay for $100 million worth of pumps to empty his flooded streets during high tides and to make alterations in the city drainage system. He plans to spend another $300 million on pumps.
South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, a Democrat, commissioned a vulnerabilities study. “People don’t get it yet,” he says. “It’s one of those things that is creeping up on us. First thing is, the septic tanks will be compromised. The day that happens, the day you flush your toilet and poo is in your bathtub, that’s when people will move into hotels.”
Absent in this flurry of activity, both in body and in spirit, is Florida’s junior senator, which makes local leaders frustrated and furious. “We are working in isolation,” says Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner. “We are the first responders. We have to plan for and protect our citizens. You can’t wait for the cavalry to come in. We are it. Rubio is useless. He’s a denier.”
Miami Beach’s Levine says, “Marco Rubio is a defeatist. He has not helped us. He is a waste of time to us.” South Miami’s Stoddard accuses Rubio of answering to fossil fuel interests, not his home constituency. “He has given no acknowledgment that climate change is wrecking the economy. He is supporting the coal industry at the expense of the environment and the future.”
Rubio’s campaign office did not respond to emailed questions and phone calls to its offices about his positions on climate change science and solutions to Miami’s sea level problem, nor did his Senate office, save for emailing Newsweek a transcript of his answer to the single climate change question asked at the Republican debates and a 2007 op-ed he wrote for The Miami Herald. That piece criticized carbon caps as bad for the economy and supported ethanol and tax incentives for energy efficiency.
Last October, Citizens’ Climate Lobby delivered a letter to members of Florida’s congressional delegation and two senators, signed by 55 local mayors and business leaders, that stated, “We believe it is time for Congress to acknowledge what we in South Florida already know: that the escalating costs of sea-level rise and other climate impacts now pose a serious threat to the economic stability and future habitability of South Florida. We urge you to represent our interests and concerns in this matter.”
Rubio never responded.
Fifteen mayors — including Fort Lauderdale’s Jack Seiler, a Democrat, and Coral Gables’s Cason, a Republican — recently signed a letter to Rubio and Bush, requesting a meeting with them in late February to discuss climate change. Neither Rubio’s campaign nor his Senate office responded to emailed and phone call messages about whether he would attend that meeting.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tallied up Federal Election Commission filings and donations from all sources, the top campaign donor to Rubio and political action committees allied with him from 2009 to 2016 was the anti-climate-science Club for Growth. If he becomes the Republican presidential nominee, he also stands to benefit from the campaign largesse of the anti-climate-science Koch brothers, who have promised to lavish $1 billion on the general election. At a donor conference the Kochs hosted in January 2015 at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, California, Rubio was among five Republican candidates under consideration, and he won an informal straw poll.
Deep-pocketed fossil fuel donors might not be the only reason for Rubio to ignore the fish in Miami’s streets. First, climate science denial is common among Florida Republicans, so Rubio is in sync with many in his local party. Republican Gov. Rick Scott has even banned climate change and global warming from public discourse by state employees and contractors.
Local leaders, including some mayors, county commissioners and businessmen, worry that “alarmist” climate planning — for example, task force reports that predict things like relocation — could scare off developers, banks and insurers. Without an income tax, the state of Florida and the Miami area rely on real estate taxes and tourism to survive. Miami real estate is booming, fueled in part by South Americans parking their capital in the safety of El Norte, many investing in the dozens of high-rise buildings going up along the coast without any consideration of sea-level rise. Local lawmakers haven’t written any codes yet. Meanwhile, business leaders fear 30-year mortgages could go the way of the dodo bird in Miami, and experts predict property and flood insurance will get too expensive or even become unavailable.
Miami real estate attorney Wayne Pathman is the incoming chair of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. At an interview in his office overlooking Biscayne Bay, he says banks have not yet jettisoned the 30-year mortgage, but “it’s out there,” and he expects them to “start looking at how they give mortgages and protect their collateral” as sea levels rise.
Pathman’s first order of business as the chamber’s chair will be to introduce developers to climate scientists at seminars this spring. He is bipartisan, joking that framed pictures of him with Clintons and Obamas in his office can be quickly replaced with some of Bush and other Republicans if necessary. He says his goal is to spur political action by informing the men who write the checks to politicians. “Maybe today you can argue what Rubio is arguing now, but not 10 years from now, when you see a slowdown of the local economy and people saying, ‘My house used to get flooded four days a year. Now it’s 26 days a year,’” Pathman says.
Amid the growing panic, there is also a sense that South Florida could become a leader in acknowledging climate change and finding solutions — as Rubio once suggested. Curbelo even wrote an op-ed for The Miami Herald headlined “Climate Change Cannot Be a Partisan Issue.” He was the first House Republican co-sponsor of a resolution last year acknowledging that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another Miami Republican, also signed on.
But it’s a long and uncertain road from a House resolution to the billions Miami needs to deal with what’s ahead. Longtime Miami-Dade County Clerk of Courts Harvey Ruvin, a Democrat in a nonpartisan post and a local Cassandra on climate change for more than 20 years, has proposed that the federal government create a kind of Superfund site for natural catastrophes like Miami sea-level rise. Other climate change task forces in the area have suggested smaller federal efforts, including tax incentives and mortgage payment abatement periods to help property owners upgrade their septic systems. So far, none of those ideas have been taken up in Washington.
With nobody at the wheel in Washington or Tallahassee, Miami’s community leaders are appealing to the private sector for rescue funds. Miami-Dade County recently applied for a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The mayors who came to Pinecrest discussed applying for aid from rich guys Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, and Richard Branson. The Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce’s Pathman and municipal mayors insist human ingenuity and technology can save their city, if action starts now. But by 2030, $69 billion in coastal property in Florida will flood at high tide, according to “Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States,” a 2014 study bankrolled by Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and wealthy California environmentalist Tom Steyer.
While the Greater Miami area’s mayors cast around for a big mascot to lead the community on climate change — maybe someone like a pro wrestler — their junior senator has been a no-show, and was so even before primary politics took him away from home and the Senate. Area civic leaders, facing the greatest threat in history to the future of their community, if not their state — rising sea levels — are asking, Where’s Marco ?
“This is an issue for people in our party that takes some courage and some coming to terms with, because for so many years it’s been expected that Republicans disregard these concerns,” Curbelo says. “But members are getting there. A few have even come to me with suggestions. More Republicans are coming around to our side. Unfortunately, time is not.”

160129-a
Are we taking clean water for granted ?
CleanWaterNetwork - Linda Young, Executive Director, Florida Clean Water Network
January 29, 2016
As the nightmare in Flint, Michigan continues to unfold, I wonder if it is only a matter of time before we have similar drinking water crisis situations in one or more Florida cities.  We already have short-term drinking water emergencies across the state and have had reported and unreported emergencies over time. According to government reports, data on organic quality of water from the state's principal aquifers are limited; nevertheless, occasional incidences of organic contaminants that may affect human health and welfare are a reality.  Consider just a few examples that come to mind: 
1.  Escambia County – The Emerald Coast Utility Authority (ECUA) was awarded the title of having the dirtiest water in the nation a few years ago.  The utility admits to having 45 unregulated chemicals in their drinking water.  The most prevalent organic contaminants are dry-cleaning solvents and leaking underground gasoline storage tanks. All 32 wells owned by the ECUA are contaminated and have carbon filters on them, which do not completely remove all pollutants.
In 2009, ECUA sued Solutia (formerly Monsanto) chemical company in federal court, claiming that the company contaminated all of ECUA’s 32 wells with PFOA or PFOS toxic chemicals.  ECUA’s expert testified that there could be a correlation between the high birth defect rate in Escambia County, specifically for musculoskeletal and heart defects, and PFOS and PFOA exposure.  Just this week the US EPA has told residents of Hoosick Falls, New York that they should not drink or cook with water from the public water supply because of the chemical PFOA in the village water system.  
The federal judge in the ECUA case, dismissed the case because the chemicals, though known to be dangerous carcinogens, are unregulated in Florida and no harm could be shown. People in Escambia County have been told, “not to worry” because as ECUA executive director Steve Sorrel was quoted in the media saying, “If it doesn’t violate the law, I don’t really pay much attention to it.”
2.  Dairy country - In predominantly agricultural regions of Florida, the frequency of drinking water wells contaminated by nitrates exceeds the national frequency (2.4%) found in the EPA survey. Of 3949 drinking water wells analyzed for nitrate by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, (FDACS) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2483 (63%) contained detectable nitrate and 584 wells (15%) contained nitrate above the EPA MCL (maximum contaminant level). Of the 584 wells statewide that exceeded the MCL, 519 were located in the Central Florida Ridge citrus growing region, encompassed primarily by Lake, Polk and Highland Counties. 
In the Suwannee basin, where most of the state’s CAFO dairies are located, high nitrate levels in drinking water wells are common.  The dairies are allowed to store their waste in unlined lagoons (some directly connecting with sink holes and the aquifer) and then spray onto or sheet-flow across fields.  In our sandy soils, the highly polluted water quickly reaches the aquifer. 
3.  Caloosahatchee – The Olga water treatment plant has been shut down a number of times due to harmful and/or toxic algal blooms in the Caloosahatchee River, most recently in 2015.  It serves east Lee County and North Ft. Myers.  The algal blooms are caused by the high nutrient levels in Lake Okeechobee waters which flow into the Caloosahatchee and the St Lucie rivers. 
4.  South Florida aquifer contamination - In South Florida, 20 of the nation's most stringently regulated disposal wells failed in the early 1990s, releasing partly treated sewage into aquifers that may one day be needed to supply Miami's drinking water.  The state responded by asking EPA for a variance to the Safe Drinking Water Act for South Florida so the disposal practices could continue. EPA adopted a rule specific to Florida that made it possible for facilities to continue injecting into zones without confinement. 
So what happens in Florida when a community water supply becomes contaminated?  Whose responsibility is it to do something?  According to state law, here’s the next steps: 
•  Section 62-550.521 of the Florida Administrative Code requires water suppliers to notify the FDEP of confirmed unregulated contaminants in the water.  After notification, the FDEP and the State Health Officer will decide whether the unregulated chemical presents an unreasonable risk to health and accordingly decide whether to direct corrective action including additional monitoring. 
Are we taking the safety of our water supply for granted ?  Are we placing too much trust in our local, state and federal officials who are supposed to be trustworthy and honest, always keeping the public interest at the forefront of their decisions? 
This week in the Tampa Bay Times we see an article (http://home.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/clearwater-to-be-pioneer-in-injecting-treated-wastewater-into-aquifer/2261624) about the City of Clearwater moving forward with a new “Toilet to Tap” system.  If you read this article, what the City of Clearwater is proposing sounds very reasonable. However, there is one major problem that immediately comes to mind:
The state and federal government do not regulate most toxic chemicals that are in our drinking water. They simply will not set pollution limits for dozens of chemicals that are known to be in our water and are known to have human health consequences. Some of these chemicals are pharmaceuticals, some industrial, man-made toxics, some naturally occurring, and some are known to cause cancer.
But because these chemicals are not regulated by the state of Florida, they go unabated and people are told that all is well because the water meets standards.
So I am not ready to accept the state's assurances that any water in Florida is safe to drink or even to fish and swim in when we know that so many chemicals are ignored.
I would like to ask each of you to contact your elected officials and let them know that you want our waters protected from dangerous chemicals.  Here are a few talking points to guide your communications:
1.   There are 118 human-health based toxics that need to be regulated in Florida for Class I, II, and III waters.  Florida regulates only 36 of these chemicals and those regulations have not been updated in 25 years.
2.     All chemicals that are showing up in drinking waters need to be regulated and controlled.
3.     All fracking for oil and gas should be banned in Florida because it would involve secret chemicals being injected underground.  This will further threaten our drinking water supplies since more than 90% of our drinking water comes from underground sources.
Please feel free to share this with your friends.  It’s not cheerful news, but we all need to be informed.  Flint Michigan is a harsh reminder to all of us that many elected officials don’t care about our health and well-being.  If any of you are following the legislature, then you know we have lots of elected officials there who obviously don’t care what is best for their constituents.  Maybe in the 2016 election, we will be able to get better people elected to office in Florida.

160129-b
Emergency Lake pumping started Wednesday, polluted water coming to Fort Myers
News-Press.com – by Chad Gillis
January 29, 2016
A state environmental agency gave a presentation in Fort Myers on Thursday on cleaning up the Caloosahatchee River while another state agency pumped polluted farm water into Lake Okeechobee, which drains into the river. 
If water management in Florida seems confusing, that's because it is. The Army Corps of Engineers manages the Lake Okeechobee release protocol, but the South Florida Water Management District operates the pumps.
The district announced Thursday around 2 p.m. that it had declared an emergency the day before at 6 p.m., while the Army Corps was, ironically, taking public input in Clewiston on how to best protect areas around the lake from flooding.
How are these toxic releases possible?
"I'd call the water management district since they operate the pumps," said John Campbell, an Army Corps spokesman.
Shortly after that phone call between The News-Press and Campbell, the Army Corps sent out a press release saying it was going to lower the amount of lake water flowing to Fort Myers. Levels had been at 5,000 cubic feet per second, which is well beyond the ideal maximum level of 2,800 cubic feet per second. So the water releases were "lowered" to the maximum level.
Those types of discharges kill sea grass and oyster beds and can disrupt the marine food chain. But the water pumped back into Lake Okeechobee on Thursday from farms has far higher nutrient levels than the lake itself, which has been in violation of federal standards for decades even without the pollution loads from farms surrounding the lake.
"This set of releases is going to include polluted water from the Everglades," said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon of Florida. "This is not the water that's coming down the Kissimmee River and into Lake Okeechobee."
Recent studies have shown that exposure to bacteria can increase chances of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
These releases increase the frequency and duration of harmful algal blooms, which, in turn, can cripple the tourism and real estate industries.
"In the lake we already have (excess nutrients) for phosphorus, and as far as I know they’ve never gotten down to where the phosphorus loading was down to (meet federal requirements)," said Rick Bartleson, a former district water quality scientist who now works at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. "The only time they can say they did (meet the federal standards) was a hurricane year when it blew away their sensor."
Bartleson collects water quality samples in the river and estuary and reports his findings to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which gave Thursday's presentation in Fort Myers, and other agencies.
"This is adding more phosphorus to the lake, which already doesn’t meet the standards," he said. "They’re never going to meet the (federal standards) by back pumping." Back pumping is taking water used to irrigate farms and pumping it back into the lake. The practice virtually stopped a decade ago because of environmental concerns.
Once famous for its plethora of blue crabs and massive tarpon, the Caloosahatchee River today suffers from excessive nutrients (which feed potentially harmful algal blooms), unacceptable fecal coliform levels, turbidity and low levels of dissolved oxygen.
DEP's Kevin O'Donnell told a crowd of two dozen people Thursday that "in the east portion of the Caloosahatchee we have a nutrient problem. In the central portion … it looks like there is a lot of insufficient information (about the nutrients)."
"It’s reasonable to assume that if it continues for very long we would certainly be a recipient of elevated pollutant levels," said John Cassani, with the Southwest Florida Watershed Council.
Bartleson said future damages here will depend on how long the district pumps farm water into the lake.
"The more back pumping they do, the more water that’s coming out of the lake, the higher our phosphorus and total suspended solids will be in the estuary," Bartleson said. "In the estuary, phosphorus supports harmful algal called cyanobacteria." Cyanobacteria, in large amounts, can produce a deadly toxin that causes illnesses in aquatic species and humans.
The district put out a press release 22 hours after the pumping started which stated:  “To protect the lives and property of approximately 50,000 people surrounding Lake Okeechobee, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) initiated emergency pumping of water into the lake following the wettest January day in 25 years across the entire SFWMD. Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay and Canal Point received some of the heaviest rainfall, with 6 inches in a 24 hour period. Rising water levels from this intense rain necessitated the rare pumping event, which began about 6 p.m. on January 27. Pumping operations, in coordination and accordance with permits issued by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, will continue as needed.”
The release mentioned nothing about removing water from the farms around the lake, for the benefit of those farms, which have been badly affected by the rain.
Judy Sanchez, spokeswoman for U.S. Sugar, said Thursday that sugar crops in the Everglades Agricultural Area are being hurt by the rain, as is the sugar industry in general.
"The extraordinarily wet 'El Nino' winter weather thus far has negatively impacted all EAA sugarcane planting, harvesting and processing operations.  The weather impacts on the Florida sugarcane industry reach from field preparation all the way through the harvesting and milling functions and could cost the industry millions," she said in a statement.
Also, the statement says, "all four sugar mills have been forced to shut down for an average of 16 days each (based on lost time) due to the severe weather."
Sanchez also said that, to date, sweet corn and green bean crops are 50 percent lost.
Realated:         To ease South Florida flood risk, Lake Okeechobee draining to resume       Sun Sentinel
Heavy rain causes early discharges into Lake Okechobee      Fox 4
Polluted Lake O water to be sent Saturday    The News-Press
Lake Okeechobee draining to double; aim is to ease South Florida ...           Sun Sentinel

160129-c
Water crisis is in Flint and America
SFLtimes.com – by Roger Caldwell
January 29, 2016
There is no quick fix for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and no quick fix in the water problem in America. All across America, there are over 50 cities which have similar conditions as bad as Flint, and no one knows who to talk to about a resolution of these issues. Many of these citizens have poisonous, brown water coming out of their tap, and the EPA is telling them their water is safe.
The Flint water crisis has called attention to the contamination of poisonous drinking water where the pipes under the ground are corrosive, and making children and citizens sick. This situation started in April 2014 when the city switched its drinking water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. Flint residents began complaining about the taste, color, and odor of their tap water as well as side effects like rashes and hair loss within a month after the city switched its water supply.
The back story of the Flint water crisis starts in April 2013 when a bankrupted city was under the control of a state appointed emergency manager, and the governor was looking for ways to save money. Many believe that the state was deliberately ignoring the basic needs of the city because sixty percent of the residents are black.
“We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. I’ll tell you what—if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action” says Hillary Clinton.
For two years, Governor Snyder, his administration, and the EPA acted as if the residents, mostly black and poor, were not telling the truth about poison lead water coming out of their taps. The treatment of these residents is a racial crime, and the governor and his administration should be fired and prosecuted for breaking the law.
Also, the EPA, the state environmental officials, and the federal government must be held responsible for not doing their job, and putting budgets ahead of peoples’ health and needs. The residents’ problems in Flint were not treated as significant because they had no political power, and they were primarily black.
Consumer advocate and environmental activist, Erin Brockovich, says “the water crisis in Flint is the tip of the iceberg because water contamination is a national problem in America. We can’t politicize water. It shouldn’t be independent, Republican, or Democrat. This is everybody’s issue. This is what sustains our life.”
Erin Brockovich’s company is working in 20 cities across the country with similar problems as bad as Flint. Some of the cities are Tyler, Texas, Hannibal, Missouri, Saint Bernard Parrish, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and Stockholm, California. Many of the water infrastructures are 70 years old, and it will take $1.5 trillion to improve and modernize these systems.
As the mayors and the governors fight over budgets, the water utilities are changing the disinfectants, and destroying the quality of the water. It is ridiculous when regulators stand up at a public meeting and tell residents their water is safe to drink, even though the color is brown with a bad odor.
Also, many city water systems are being contaminated by unregulated chemical spills. In Charleston, a chemical called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol leaked into the Elk River, and 400 people came down with rashes, nausea, and vomiting. In the Dan River near the border of North Carolina and Virginia, 82,000 tons of toxic coal spilled into the river.
As more water is contaminated, there is less safe usable water in the country. The federal government must identify and work with the states to improve the water crisis in the country. The national infrastructure must be modernized with a new piping system, and Flint Michigan must become a model of what can be done when the federal government and state are transparent, partnering, and telling the truth.

160128-a
Are we the next Flint ?
TheBlade.com – by Keith C. Burris, Columnist for The Blade
January 28, 2016 - First of two parts
Someone asked me the other day when I was going to write about the water crisis in Flint, Mich. I have to confess I have put it off because it is just such a sad, sad story.
Flint is a city that has been mugged by the globalized economy — over and over again.
We cannot deglobalize the world economy, and we don’t seem to be easily able to reinvent cities like Flint.
And now this: Toxic levels of lead in the water that have poisoned a generation of kids. One source claims every child under the age of 6 in that city of about 100,000 people must now be considered lead-poisoned. That means a generation with learning disorders as well as physical vulnerabilities and immunity deficiencies.
All because someone thought it would be smart to take the water supply from the Flint River instead of Lake Huron and pipe it through pipes that should have been replaced decades ago. The city could save a million dollars a year.
It will cost many more millions to deal with the damage, which cannot be reversed in the kids — it is neurological. And no one knows when or exactly how the water supply can be restored to relative purity.
But the real mystery is not all that went wrong systemically. The real mystery is the stubbornness of the people in charge — mostly the governor and his state government. The political failure. The reality failure.
“Inexplicable and inexcusable,” said President Obama.
Like all social tragedies, from the war in Iraq, to defenseless kids getting shot in the streets, to the real estate and banking fraud that crashed the economy in 2008, the real scandal was the refusal to see what was in plain sight — long after the early danger signs were evident.
That’s the other reason I hesitated to start reading more deeply about Flint: I don’t want Toledo to be the next Flint.
Look, our own water crisis in August, 2014, I am convinced, was a false alarm. We were never in danger from drinking the water. But the crisis DID underline what was already known and what no one was doing anything about — what the New York Times called “a long-troubled Lake Erie.”
In the recent mayoral race, two of the candidates — Mike Ferner and Sandy Collins — in slightly different ways, made the lake a key to their campaigns. Not that a mayor can clean up the lake. But a mayor can press for federal action.
The failure of Toledo City Council on Tuesday to join the Lucas County commissioners in seeking a federal designation of the Lake Erie watershed as an impaired watershed was not only a political failure (and where, oh where is our mayor?) but a moral and human one. For this is the only practical avenue available for restoration of the lake.
If the U.S. EPA rules our watershed officially “impaired,” we get an inventory of polluters and a mandatory cleanup plan.
If the President issues an executive order “for protection and restoration,” as he did for the Everglades and the Chesapeake Bay, there would be funding and action.
Without federal action, what is Plan B ? Hope the problem goes away ? That the lake heals itself somehow, magically ?
Mr. Ferner did not get many votes for mayor. But he was supremely right about one thing: If we fail to heal Lake Erie, patching Toledo streets will be an academic question. No one will want to live here.
Flint is now a federal emergency. About $80 million has been pledged, and doubtless more will be spent.
Would it not be better if the cities and towns bordering Lake Erie did not wait for a Flint-level emergency for an entire Great Lake?
Would that not be inexplicable and inexcusable?
There should not be a “next” Flint.
And it should not be us.

160128-b
Everglades restoration bill unanimously passes House committee
Florida Politics – by Drew Wilson
January 28, 2016
A bill that would fund Everglades restoration efforts with up to $200 million a year cleared the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Thursday with a unanimous vote.
“Today we are making great strides toward finishing a task that is important to all Floridians,” committee chairman and Bartow Republican Rep. Ben Albritton said. “By protecting the Everglades, we not only improve one of our greatest resources, we also secure the water resources needed to provide for Florida’s expanding population.”
HB 989, sponsored by Republican Reps. Gayle Harrell and Matt Caldwell, would get the money from the Land Acquisition Trust Fund, the destination for the 2014 land conservation amendment funds. The bill caps the Everglades’ share at 25 percent of the fund’s annual collections or $200 million, whichever is less.
“With the implementation of this legislation, we will ensure the state’s future funding for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and the Long-Term Plan, as well as provide significant funding for the Northern Everglades,” Caldwell said.
Under the bill, dubbed the “Legacy Florida” program, the South Florida Water Management District would get $32 million each year off the top to use for its Long Term Plan and the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program. The bulk of the rest would head to projects in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
“By creating the ‘Legacy Florida’ program, we are taking the necessary steps to complete the decades-long restoration that will ensure Florida’s River of Grass will be enjoyed by generations to come,” Harrell said.
The bill now moves to the House Appropriations Committee, its last scheduled stop before the chamber floor. The Senate version, SB 1168 by Republican Sen. Joe Negron, has yet to be heard in committee.
Related:           House advances bill to give $200 million carve for Everglades repairs          Tampabay.com (blog)
Legislators draw up rival spending plans        Florida Politics (blog)

160128-c
Is there hope for South Florida’s water ?
Miami Herald – by Maggy Hurchalla, former Martin County Commissioner
January 28, 2016
Much of the solution for the Everglades lies in sending more water south from Lake Okeechobee
Don’t divert Amendment 1 funds. Use the money to help the Everglades
S. Florida legislative delegation key to finding a solution
The annual Everglades Coalition meeting came away with some hopeful ideas after facing up to some grim realities.
▪ Florida Bay hasn’t fully recovered from the 1990’s crash where sea grass died and the bay turned to pea soup. The bonefish are gone. Scientists say it’s about to happen again. The effect on the Florida Keys and everyone who lives and works there is immeasurable. No one benefits from a dead Florida Bay.
The solution: Send more water south from Lake Okeechobee.
▪ Sea level is rising. The Biscayne Aquifer — the source of all of South Florida’s fresh water — is suffering from salt intrusion. Not having drinking water for millions of people is a more immediate and serious threat than Miami Beach going underwater.
The solution: Send more water south from Lake Okeechobee.
▪ Last spring Everglades National Park was in extreme drought while a 30,000-acre wildfire was burning in Big Cypress. Lake Okeechobee was too full and was being dumped on the coastal estuaries.
The solution: Send more water south from Lake Okeechobee.
▪ The Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries are “in imminent danger of collapse” from Lake O discharges. Those are the words of the Corps of Engineers, not some wild-eyed environmentalist.
The solution: send more water south.
No amount of water storage north or east or west of the lake can send more water south. What needs to be done can only happen when we have new conveyance and dam removal — along with storage and treatment — in the agricultural area south of the lake.
Throughout 2015 there was absolute refusal of state politicians at all levels to consider buying land south of the lake.
They insisted we didn’t need to buy any more land anywhere in the state. They raided Amendment 1 revenues and canceled the option to buy land for a reservoir south of the lake.
The battle over the U.S. Sugar option is over. The only way out now is to bring the players together to decide how and where to construct the missing link south of the lake.
▪ If anyone can find a scientifically defensible way to save Florida Bay, the Everglades, Dade’s water supply, and the coastal estuaries, we need to keep an open mind. We’re not starting from scratch. Existing plans call for storage south of Lake O. If there is a new practical idea to send water south, let’s look at it and model it. We know that without sending water south, Everglades restoration won’t work.
▪ If sending water south from the lake is the only way we can restore South Florida’s hydrology for both people and critters, then we need to find the right storage place and the right plan and we need to start doing that now. The Corps and the Water Management District need to work together to update plans and better define the key features.
▪ If we want to save South Florida, we need to commit to the initiative to use $300 million a year of Amendment 1 revenues to buy environmental lands. We can’t demand money for the Everglades and ignore the springs and rivers and beautiful wild places outside the Everglades ecosystem. Some 75 percent of Florida voters said to use Amendment 1 money to buy land. We need to get the legislature to listen to them.
How do we make that happen? It needs to come from the grass roots of every community in South Florida by getting everyone to call their state representatives and by getting every city and county to invite their legislative delegation to discuss using Amendment 1 revenues to buy land in the rest of Florida as well as the Everglades.
Together we can turn around our state politicians and find workable solutions.
And if we can’t, it’s an election year. We can get new state politicians.

160128-d
Lawmakers want up to $200 million annually for 20 years to clean Everglades
McClatchyDC.com - Herald/Times - by Mary Ellen Klas
Tallahassee Bureau
Plan would earmark funds for next 20 years
Money would come from a carve-out of Amendment 1 money
South Florida would get at least $32 million a year more for projects
TALLAHASSEE  - - After Florida lawmakers drew two lawsuits and bad publicity last year for diverting Amendment 1 money to salaries and expenses instead of devoting it exclusively to land and water conservation, a House committee approved a measure Thursday that not only attempts to repair their record but aims to repair decades of damage to the Everglades.
The Legacy Florida Act, proposed by incoming Senate President Joe Negron and Rep. Gayle Harrell requires the state to set aside 25 percent of Amendment 1 funds — up to $200 million a year — to fund Everglades restoration projects over the next 20 years.
The carve out, HB 989, was approved unanimously by the House Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee, and is expected to win easy passage in the Senate and be included in the Legislature’s final budget.
It will supply a stable funding source to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program, a 30-year partnership with the federal government to spend $13.5 billion on restoration projects to clean up the ecosystem that is central to the state’s water supply.
Although the CERP program was established in 2000, both state and federal governments have struggled to provide the funds necessary to finance the planning and construction needed for the elaborate restoration projects.
Harrell, R-Stuart, said by dedicating the money each year to the restoration efforts, legislators can avoid “the food fight every year” as they scramble for the money.
“This is an opportunity for us to really move the ball,” said Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Fort Myers, a co-sponsor of the bill at a press conference with members of the Everglades Coalition, which is backing the plan. “We love our federal partners, but we know they’re going to have challenges and continue to have challenges meeting all of the needs we are obligated to.”
Celeste De Palma, Everglades Policy Association for Audubon of Florida, said the bill will help jumpstart the lagging efforts to complete the projects needed to improve water quality and repair the system that supplies water to millions of Floridians.
If the bill passes, the Legislature will be required to spend up to $200 million for the restoration projects, including sending $32 million to the South Florida Water Management District.
Another $100 million will go to planning, design, engineering, and construction of the restoration projects. The bill requires that projects that reduce harmful discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie or Caloosahatchee estuaries be given a priority.
“The faster we are able to complete these projects, the faster we will see this ecosystem come back to life,” De Palma said.
The earmark not only provides a consistent funding stream for repairing the state’s preeminent ecosystem, it also subdues the criticism from some of the most powerful environmental groups, such as the Everglades Coalition, a consortium of more than 50 environmental groups from all parts of Florida.
“There’s a lot of groups up here that advocate for certain positions, and when they feel they get they’ve gotten the best deal they hand without biting the hand that feeds them they tend to accept a victory,” said Rep. Mark Pafford, the House Democratic leader from West Palm Beach.
He said, however, that “$200 million is a victory and a great, positive step forward” but he expects the legislative leadership to continue to steer money into programs that will anger environmentalists instead of using all the Amendment 1 funds for land purchases to improve water quality.
“There’s a lot of special interests that don’t want to see land used in a way that doesn’t have a [commercial] purpose,” he said.
Legislative leaders in the Republican-controlled House and Senate uniformly opposed Amendment 1 when it was placed on the ballot by initiative petition in 2014. But after voters approved it by a 75 percent margin, lawmakers were obligated to devote one-third of the revenue from the documentary stamp tax on real estate transactions to the Land Acquisition Trust fund to pay for land and water conservation programs.
Two different environmental groups filed lawsuits last year, accusing lawmakers of steering millions of the nearly $750 million in the last fiscal year from the trust fund into state programs that they argued should have been paid for by general revenue funds. They said that the shift helped legislators finance pet projects and tax cuts at the expense of environmental programs.
Caldwell said he opposed Amendment 1 because he doesn’t like “budget by constitution” but now that the money is there carving out 25 percent of it for the Everglades “certainly does provide an opportunity.”
Members of the Everglades Coalition, who gathered in Tallahassee Thursday to promote the bill, said they hope the Legacy Florida Act will set a precedent for future legislatures to earmark Amendment 1 funds to other programs to protect the state’s ecosystem.
“If anything, this paves the way to show these funds can be directed to what they were intended to be,” said Jennifer Hecker, director of natural resource policy for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. “We hope this sets a precedent to allow other Amendment 1 funds to be dedicated to restore funding to land acquisition programs, for critical waterways like our springs.”
Related:           Senate recommends $3.6 billion for environmental agencies in 2016-17 budget

160128-e
On Everglades Action Day, environmental groups to urge lawmakers to set aside money for restoration projects
FloridaPolitics - by Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster
January 28, 2016
The River of Grass needs a steady flow of funding.
That’s the message environmental and conservation activists are hoping to send to lawmakers on Thursday during the annual Everglades Action Day.
“The focus this year is a funding mechanism,” said Jason Totoiu, the co-chairman of the Everglades Coalition, made up of 61 environmental and conservation organizations. “It’s been inconsistent.”
Everglades restoration is paid for using a combination of state and federal dollars. But Totoiu said the money set aside each year has varied, which may have hampered restoration projects. Totoiu said the coalition aims to persuade lawmakers to set aside some of the Amendment 1 money for restoration projects.
They aren’t alone in that plight. This year, two Treasure Coast lawmakers filed legislation (HB 989/SB 1168) to secure funding for Everglades restoration. The proposals — sponsored by Republicans Rep. Gayle Harrell and Sen. Joe Negron — call on the state to set aside 25 percent or $200 million, whichever is the smallest, a year for Everglades projects.
That proposal also requires the Department of Environmental Protection and the South Florida Water Management District to give preference to projects that reduce discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries.
“I grew up fishing and playing as a kid in the Indian River,” Totoiu said. “That’s one component of this, to help fund projects to reduce those discharges. There’s not going to be a silver bullet, but through (the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan) we can really start making a difference.”
Harrell’s bill is expected to be heard during Thursday’s agriculture and natural resources appropriations subcommittee meeting. Totoiu said the bill appears to have support in the Legislature.
Harrell is among the lawmakers expected to speak at the Everglades Action Day rally, Thursday. The bill’s co-sponsors, Reps. Matt Caldwell and Jose Javier Rodriguez, are also expected to speak at the rally.
Totoiu said the coalition also plans to call on lawmakers to take steps to protect Florida’s water and address Floridians concerns about the oil and gas exploration.
The rally is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. in the courtyard by the Historic Capitol.

160127-a
Broward outlaws fracking
Sun Sentinel – by Brittany Wallman and Dan Sweeney
January 27, 2015
Broward County commissioners outlawed fracking Tuesday, even as a fracking friendly bill continued forward progress in the state Legislature.
The new county law was prompted by a proposal last fall for an exploratory oil well on Florida Everglades land in Broward, where Kanter Real Estate LLC has an application pending with the state.
Fracking is a method of extracting underground oil by shooting liquids into the ground under high pressure. It's currently unregulated in Florida.
Environmental activists said at a rally outside the meeting Tuesday that fracking in the Everglades would threaten South Florida's water supply and the wildlife habitat there.
They summarized their passions into a few words on poster boards: "Frack Off!'' and "No Fracking Way!''
Megan Sorbo, a 9-year-old who is home-schooled in Orlando, stood on a stool to reach the microphone Tuesday, telling county commissioners that "exploratory drilling and fracking are not good stewardship of such unique, diverse and vital habitat. These activities are the exact opposite!''
John Kanter of Kanter Real Estate LLC said in an email Wednesday that he's a second-generation Floridian raising his family in this state.
"This is our home and it has always been our family's intention to ensure this project provides maximum public benefit, which include possible solutions for water storage and treatment in South Florida," he told the Sun Sentinel in his email. "Our aim is to responsibly exercise our rights as landowners, create a public benefit for all South Floridians and protect our environment."
Broward's new law could be superceded by the state's move to prevent local governments from banning fracking.
A bill in the Florida House that would eventually allow fracking in the state is now up for a vote after Democrats tried and failed to attach more than two dozen separate amendments to the bill.
The bill would preempt all local fracking laws, making them null and void. It would also require the state Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a study on fracking, after which the process could be approved for use in the state. The bill places a moratorium on fracking until that time.
Democrats have filed a bill that would ban fracking in the state, but the bill has not been given a committee hearing in either chamber.
A similar bill in the Florida Senate has been through two of three committees and awaits review by the Senate Appropriations Committee before going to the Senate floor for a vote.
On the House floor Tuesday, Democrats spoke out against the bill.
"Can you name me one specific study that's not funded by the oil and gas industry that supports this?" asked state Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Hollywood, kicking off a lengthy list of questions that became more a diatribe against fracking than a direct question-and-answer session.
One amendment, proposed by Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, tried to maintain local control over fracking. It was voted down by the overwhelmingly Republican House.
Now through the amendment process, the fracking bill is ready for a final vote in the House.
Even still, Broward Commissioner Beam Furr said the county's new ban could aid it in a legal effort to prevent the Kanter well from using fracking.
"We're not saying no to drilling, period. That would constitute a taking,'' Furr said. He said the county is only outlawing the "most egregious'' and "most damaging'' methods of extracting oil.
Some, including Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam, predicted a lengthy legal slog and urged county commissioners not to back down.
"Gird your loins for a big fight,'' Lake Worth Commissioner Christopher McVoy warned.
Pembroke Pines Commissioner Iris Siple said the effects of hydraulic fracking aren't limited to the environment. She said deep well stimulation, using unknown chemicals, could harm people's health.
Dee Ann Miller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the Kanter application is pending. She said the state asked for additional information in November and December and is still waiting for it.
Related:           South Florida Democrats seek state fracking ban
Florida County With No Fracking In It Bans All Fracking   Daily Caller

160127-b
Clewiston folks concerned about Army Corps, menacing dike
News-Press.com – by Chad Gillis
January 27, 2016
Clewiston is among America's most dangerous cities when it comes to potential catastrophic natural disasters, and some residents there say a $1.5 billion Lake Okeechobee project could further harm this area's already-fragile economy.
The Army Corps of Engineers is in the middle of a rehabilitation of the ailing Herbert Hoover Dike, a 143-mile earth, concrete and steel that stands between billions of gallons of potential flood waters and thousands of lower-income working families.
Florida International University's International Hurricane Research Center lists Lake Okeechobee as the No. 2 threat of catastrophic flooding from a natural disaster, behind only New Orleans.
"A person that lives downstream of a dam shouldn't have to bear any more of the risk than anyone in any other part of the state," Tom Willadsen, with the Army Corps, told a crowd of about 30 gathered at the Clewiston High School. "If you're living in a high-risk zone, we need to take action."
The Army Corps keeps lake levels at 12.5 to 15.5 feet above sea level. The lake has been kept higher in past decades, but water levels of 17 or 18 feet can destroy vegetation in the lake and kill fishery. Higher water levels also mean more pressure on the dike. More pressure, in turn, leads to seepage, leaks, and, eventually, a breach.
"It’s not anybody’s fault but the Corps," said Clewiston Mayor Phillip Roland. "The lake can't get rid of what you put into it, and the lake can't survive that way."
Flows coming into the Lake can be eight times the volumes the Corps is able to release, a fact that came into the forefront during 2013 record rains.
Roland pointed out that the Army Corps environmental assessment shows the lake levels at 20 feet or more, which could cause flood insurance prices to skyrocket for homeowners around the lake.
Others said the project is making a mess of bicycle and hiking trails along the dike, and that access is being restricted.
"People come to this town because they want to see the lake, they want to exercise and they can’t do it," said Clewiston resident Terence Gardner. "There’s restraints for us to be able to use our facilities."
It's not just Clewiston residents who are worried. Lloyd's of London issued in 2014 a firm warning to companies that insure homes and property in South Florida.
"The dike was built from uncompacted earth, made up of naturally porous materials such as peat, gravel, sand and shell and is therefore prone to leaks," Lloyd's forecasters wrote. "Since the construction of the dike, the land outside of the dike has been eroding, particularly on the south side of the lake."
Repairing the dam and preventing a future breach is the most expensive project in Army Corps history at $1.5 billion.
The Army Corps released an environmental statement last year that says the stretch of dike between Clewiston and Belle Glade is most at risk, followed by lands between Moore Haven and Fisheating Creek. Lake Okeechobee is drained mostly through the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers. Both were connected to the lake as a way to drain the Everglades for development.
One past alternative was for the government to purchase lands south of the lake and restore the area to historic conditions. That process would basically involve a controlled breach and would be too costly, the report says, at $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion.
People in the Fort Myers area want fewer releases from the lake during high-water periods, mostly late summer. Lake releases from 2013 were blamed, partly, for algal blooms in the Caloosahatchee River. Some swimming beaches were closed, and freshwater plumes were flushed 15 miles or more into the Gulf of Mexico.
The current project is aimed at improving the structural integrity of water release points, sometimes called culverts.

160127-d
Water polluters will police themselves thanks to new 'Honor Code' bill
WLRN.org
January 27, 2016
Critics of a water bill that passed the Florida Legislature last week say it doesn’t do enough to protect our state’s freshwater.
The new law allows farms and agriculture companies to voluntarily report their waste releases and runoff into Lake Okeechobee and surrounding watersheds.
If they choose not to, they’ll have to pay for water testing.
Lake Worth Democratic Rep. Dave Kerner opposes the bill.
“Any time we have a system in place where we self-police ourselves it’s not a good idea," he says. "This was an industry-driven bill. I’m surprised that there were not more 'no' votes against it. I find it very unfortunate to be honest with you.”
The law also includes a provision to use taxpayer money in clean-up efforts in Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.
Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill last week.
Related:           Water Polluters Will Police Themselves Thanks to New 'Honor Code ...      Miami Sun Times

160127-e
Wildlife refuges on front line of land and water wars
Sun Sentinel – by Martha Musgrove, Columnist
January 27, 2016
going out to buy a "Duck Stamp" — just to show support for National Wildlife Refuges and the concept of public lands.
All money from the sale of the $25 Duck Stamps goes directly to the underfunded refuge system that's under attack and needs support right now. I'm outraged that armed thugs could invade, take over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, declare themselves "the owners" and set about destroying refuge equipment, impoundments, fences and records. These guys aren't protesting federal government overreach. They're trying to steal public land for themselves — land you and I own.
I'm not happy either that Congress didn't come up the money that South Florida's Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge needs to halt an invasion of Melaleuca (Melaleuca quinquenervia), a resurgent enemy, and Old World climbing fern (Lygodium microphyllum), a frilly vine with a lethal ability to smother Everglades tree-islands.
The Loxahatchee refuge needs $5 million per year to pay for the labor, herbicides, bio-controls and helicopter air-time over five years just to "knock 'em down," then $3 million annually to maintain control of these plants. Refuge Project Leader Rolf Olson will get just $3.6 million this year, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission kicked in $2 million of that.
The "best" Congress could do is increase the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's base budget by $500,000, half of which went to Loxahatchee. Sadly, that's right in keeping with fiscal year 2015, when FWS' total budget for dealing with invasive plants and animals on the nation's 563 refuges was a ridiculously low $10 million.
A surprising number of politicians in Washington and Tallahassee (appalling, really) are contemptuous of public lands. They're the ones complaining "the government owns too much land." Yet what would New York be without Central Park ? Boston without its Commons ? Washington, D.C., without the National Mall ? South Florida without the Everglades and public beaches ? Probably unlivable.
Open spaces, public lands are part-and-parcel of our natural heritage and culture.
Nonetheless, in Tallahassee, Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature studiously ignore the 75 percent majority vote in 2014 to amend the state Constitution to dedicate 33 percent — about $600 million annually — of the documentary stamp taxes to be used to acquire land to protect Florida's water resources and wildlife. In Washington, reauthorizations of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, were blocked for months by a House committee chairman from Utah. Eventually the reauthorizations were slipped into the just-passed 2016 budget bill.
The Loxahatchee refuge is located on state-owned land leased to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Terms of the lease, last-renewed in 2002, set out 13 "performance measures" for the feds. FWS met 12 of those measures but last month Dan Ashe, director of the service, wrote the South Florida Water Management District that FWS would not meet the 2017 deadline for reaching "maintenance control" for two of four invasive plants: Melaleuca and Lygodium.
Melaleuca can be controlled using a known combination of herbicides and an insect that munches on new growth. Controlling Lygodium still requires hand-to-hand combat, a sharp machete and the kind of stamina glorified in gritty-movie fantasies. Both are expensive but costs would drop if a "bio-control" were found. Researchers at the U.S.D.A. center in Davie recently reported good results testing a moth that attacks Lygodium.
What happens next with the lease is uncertain. Two district governing board members appear ready to void the lease, but doing so could put district taxpayers on the hook to pay the costs of control. Other board members have asked for "options."
As the district's executive director, Peter Antonacci, points out, the federal government has been suing the district since 1988 to enforce water-quality standards the district can't quite meet. The irony is obvious — weirdly humorous but maddening. Until water-quality standards are met and invasive species are "under control," no one "wins."
Postscript:  The Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge holds its annual Everglades Day celebration on Feb. 20, with guided tours, canoe trips, animals, live music, fishing and archery lessons. All but the food is free. The refuge is on U.S. 441, between Atlantic Avenue and Boynton Beach Boulevard. Buses run frequently from off-site parking to the visitor center.

160126-a
Brown tide returns to Indian River Lagoon
ClickOrlando.com
January 26, 2016
COCOA BEACH, Fla. - Brown tide is back in the Indian River Lagoon on Tuesday after the algae bloomed earlier this year, but in the same stretches of northern lagoon, News 6 partner Florida Today reports.
The algae, Aureoumbra lagunensis, is so small that it would take 200 of its cells to stretch across the period at the end of this sentence.
But biologists warn the damage this minuscule algae could inflict on the lagoon is huge. Brown-tide blooms block sunlight vital to the seagrass that supports much of the lagoon's marine life. It also kills shellfish such as oysters and scallops.
Brown tide's resurgence puts yet another stress on Florida's most biologically diverse and ecologically vulnerable estuary.
The same brown tide organism appeared in samples back to 2005, but it first reached bloom levels in the lagoon in August 2012, spreading from Mosquito Lagoon into the northern Indian River Lagoon near Titusville. The algae bloomed again in 2013, although less intensely.
This year's brown tide arrived much earlier in the year and now is prominent in most of the Banana River and Indian River lagoons, from Cocoa south to near Rockledge, according to Charles Jacoby, a supervising environmental scientist  with the St. Johns River Water Management District.
Chlorophyll levels — an indicator of algae blooms — remain high in Mosquito Lagoon due to a mix of single-celled algae, including the organism responsible for brown tides, Jacoby said in a release.
In the summer of 2012, brown tide began in Mosquito Lagoon and moved west to the northern Indian River lagoon. It was the first bloom of the species documented in Florida. It never spread south of Titusville. But as much as 50 square miles of lagoon seagrass had already died a year earlier, after another type of algae bloomed from Titusville to Eau Gallie and a separate, concurrent bloom stretched from Eau Gallie to south of Vero Beach.
District officials hope as water temperatures dip, the brown tide will die off. But if the bloom lasts into spring, it could further thwart seagrass recovery, this time during a crucial period for the lagoon's most important plant.
Seagrass is the linchpin of the lagoon food web. It's the manatee's main diet. Mutton snapper, lane snapper, gag and red grouper, spotted sea trout, blue crabs and other marine life depend on the grass for habitat. Studies have shown one acre of seagrass can support as many as 10,000 fish.
Biologists aren't sure how brown tide got here, whether the species always resided in the lagoon or was introduced from the ballast water of a boat. 
Water management district officials did not have test results available on Monday. But when levels reach 1 billion cells per liter of water, the water typically appears brown. 
Related;           Brown tide identified in portions of Indian River Lagoon    Florida Water Daily

160126-b
Fracking legislation threatens Florida’s source of fresh water – NGO
SputnikNews.com
January 26, 2015
Food and Water Watch Florida Director Jorge Aguilar says that the Florida House of Representatives is expected to vote tomorrow on a measure that could open the Everglades to oil and gas exploration by fracking and threaten the source of fresh water.
WASHINGTON — The Florida House of Representatives is expected to vote tomorrow on a measure that could open the Everglades to oil and gas exploration by fracking and threaten the source of fresh water, Food and Water Watch Florida Director Jorge Aguilar told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"It’s a Trojan Horse," Aguilar said. "The oil and gas industry has been pushing this for years. They’re making it sound like a study."
Aguilar’s comments referred to a provision in the legislation for a one-year window in which the state would study fracking before issuing permits to use the procedure.
He explained that two parts of the pending bill being debated are particularly troubling. One would prevent local communities from banning fracking by placing all regulation in the hands of state officials. A second part would allow energy firms to treat as "trade secrets" the chemicals they use in fracking.
Should the measure pass, he stated, the entire Everglades ecosystem would likely be targeted by oil and gas companies, including the nearby Big Cypress National Preserve. Chemicals could contaminate two underground aquafers that supply fresh water to much of the state, he added.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process in which liquid is injected into wells at high pressure to break up rock formations that tend to clog underground reservoirs of oil and natural gas.
Aguilar noted that after the Florida House of Representatives debates the bill on Tuesday, it has scheduled a vote on the measure on Wednesday.
Related:           House Members Denounce Bill That Would Allow Fracking in ...    eNews Park Forest
Senate fracking proposal moves forward despite some concerns       Florida Politics (blog)
It's shameful to use taxpayer money to settle ...         Florida Times-Union
House Members Denounce Bill That Would Allow Fracking in ...    eNews Park Forest
Florida This Week; New bill threatens to overrule local anti-fracking ...       WMNF
Pennsylvania Homeowner Warns Florida Not To Frack        WFSU

160126-c
Important Ag Reserve vote imminent
BocaMag.com – by Randy Schultz
January 16, 2015
On Wednesday, the Palm Beach County Commission gets another chance to do what is best for the Agricultural Reserve Area: nothing.
       In 1999, voters taxed themselves $100 million for a plan to make the reserve’s 22,000 acres more farm-friendly. Part of the approach involved buying land for preservation. Part of the approach involved buying farmland and then leasing it back to the former owners to be farmed. Part of the approach involved setting aside just two parcels for commercial development, to keep non-agriculture businesses from encroaching onto farmland.
       Yet three landowners want the county to change their land use from agricultural to commercial, so they could make more money by selling for development. They could make millions under the current system, but they want to make more millions. Another proposal would increase development rights for some small landowners.
       Conservation groups correctly argue that there is no need for more commercial development in the Agricultural Reserve. In addition, some of the proposals would put that development west of State Road 7, beyond which all land is in farming or preservation. Another proposal initially would have threatened the reserve with more development, supposedly to increase the supply of affordable housing.
       The landowners who seek this favor want to have it both ways. For years, they have paid low property taxes because the land is zoned for agricultural use. Now, they want to sell the land for a much higher use without having to repay any of that tax revenue.
       Some landowners try to argue that this is a property rights issue. Lisa Interlandi, a staff attorney with the Everglades Law Center, responds that no owner is entitled to a land-use change. Those voters who taxed themselves, however, are entitled to consideration from the commission. The commission should be promoting and encouraging agriculture in the agricultural reserve.

160126-d
Palm Beach County sets federal legislative priorities
Sun Sentinel – by Skyler Swisher
January 26, 2015
Palm Beach County sets Washington lobbying priorities.
Stopping offshore oil drilling, keeping heavier rigs off highways, ensuring clean water and limiting sober homes are among the top federal legislative priorities for Palm Beach County.
County commissioners unanimously approved a 27-page document Tuesday that will steer lobbying efforts in Washington.
The county remains firm in its opposition to offshore oil drilling and drilling on federal lands, including the Everglades. In 2006, commissioners adopted a resolution urging Congress to permanently ban oil drilling on Florida's outer continental shelf.
President Barack Obama's administration is exploring opening the Atlantic to drilling off four Southeastern states — Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia.
A moratorium on oil drilling off Florida's coast expires in 2022.
Commissioner Hal Valeche voted to approve the list of legislative priorities, but he said some items, such as oil drilling, were too partisan. He went on record as not supporting a ban on oil drilling.
"This is a job creator, and that's why I object to an outright ban on it," he said.
Commissioner Paulette Burdick said oil drilling has led to problems in other communities. She referenced earthquakes in Oklahoma believed to be caused by fracking, a technique used by the energy industry to extract oil from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand, gravel or chemicals.
"I do feel bad for businesses that are closing, but that's not my problem," Burdick said. "My problem is the public welfare."
The county also has concerns about federal lawmakers loosening transportation rules to allow bigger trucks on highways. Heavier trucks accelerate the deterioration of roads and bridges, putting added pressure on cash-strapped local governments, according to the document approved by commissioners.
Referencing a crisis of contaminated water in Flint, Mich., commissioners discussed the need for a stronger focus on clean water. Aging pipes are causing significant issues in Belle Glade and other rural communities in western Palm Beach County, Commissioner Priscilla Taylor said.
"To me it is almost an emergency need for action," she said.
Sober homes have been a top lobbying issue both in Tallahassee and Washington. The largely unregulated industry provides temporary housing for people who have recently completed drug rehabilitation, but city officials say the homes cause crime to rise.
Commissioners are asking Congress to clarify the Fair Housing Amendments Act to provide for limitations of sober homes within neighborhoods.
Specific projects mentioned in the list include funding to extend State Road 7 from Okeechobee Boulevard to Northlake Boulevard and rehabilitating the Everglades and the Herbert Hoover Dike that surrounds Lake Okeechobee.

160126-e
When it comes to clean water or big bucks, the Legislature always chooses the cash
Jacksonville.com - by Ron Littlepage
January 26, 2016
Here’s a question that deserves reflection:
Why do we even bother sending legislators to Tallahassee?
Powerful business interests make all of the important decisions. That’s especially true when one of their cronies is occupying the governor’s chair.
Take the water bill, for example.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
And that’s what the water bill is.
The House and Senate quickly passed it, and Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law last week despite having the bill’s weaknesses pointed out to him.
The bill was touted as providing protections for our dying springs and dwindling water supplies. It doesn’t.
Water conservation, the best way to reverse what’s happening in Florida, was left out, pollution reduction goals were pushed off far into the future, by which time Florida could be out of clean water and our springs dead, and Big Ag will get to act as its own watchdog with no penalties for failing to do what’s right.
But agriculture interests and big business wanted the bill, so it became law. They were the ones pushing the voting buttons in the House and Senate chambers with every confidence they also had control of the pen in the governor’s hand.
It’s likely the same scenario will play out with another bill that also could mean environmental disaster for Florida.
The oil and gas industry, which sends copious amounts of cash to the campaign accounts of legislators, is in favor of fracking.
Never mind that with Florida ground zero for sea-level rise, we should be looking for completely clean alternative energy sources to reduce greenhouse gases.
And never mind that when fracking runs awry, which will surely happen sometime, Florida’s water supply and environment will absorb another damaging blow.
The bill is promoted as a way to set statewide standards for fracking. See above about lipstick and pigs.
What the bill does is take away the rights of local governments to control what goes on in their backyards.
This is what happens when money is so intertwined with the legislative process. It’s cheaper to buy a finite number of legislators than it is to deal with hundreds of local officials statewide.
Republicans are firmly in control in Tallahassee, so most of the big bucks go their way.
But Democrats, who are generally relegated to the back bench and just along for the ride during the session, aren’t beyond taking the scraps that come their way, as Florida Times-Union Tallahassee reporter Tia Mitchell wrote in Sunday’s newspaper.
Five Democratic legislators received a freebie, up-close-and-personal tour of the Wind Creek Casino & Hotel in Atmore, Ala.
The owners of that establishment, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, want to expand operations in Gadsden County in rural North Florida, and they are lobbying legislators to include them in any gambling deal the session comes up with this year.
Mitchell reported that there was nothing illegal in taking the trip but that it could cause a perception problem.
Let’s be a little more blunt: It stinks.
Why is an overnight stay at a hotel with dinner and breakfast thrown in while securing campaign contribution checks necessary to know what goes on at a casino?
If legislators have been living in a cave, they should at least know how to do Internet research.
While this particular freebie didn’t rival the lavish hunting trips Republican legislative leaders and Scott took to the King Ranch in Texas provided by Big Sugar, Democrats can’t expect to be treated as well as the ruling party until they are the ones in power.
I’m not even going to go into the lips that are being licked over Scott’s proposed $1 billion in tax cuts and the $250 million in business “incentives” he wants to hand out.
But, as I said, we could cut out the middlemen no matter who the majority is, save the cost of sending legislators to Tallahassee every year and recognize who the real lawmakers are — to Florida’s detriment.

160125-a
Can Florida’s looming water crisis be averted ?
Naples Daily News – Guest commentary by John Cassani, Chairman of the Southwest Florida Watershed Council, resides in Alva
January 25, 2015
The growing water crisis in Florida resembles a term coined by William Forster Lloyd, "tragedy of the commons."
The term was used by economist Lloyd and perhaps more famously by the human ecologist Garrett Hardin and described as "individuals acting independently and rationally according to each other's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource."
In Florida, policy makers at all levels are involved, frequently acting in their own political self-interest unwilling to recognize or act on the politically difficult root causes. The end result leads to cumulative resource decline or depletion. Often, the public develops the perception that funding traditional water storage and treatment projects is the only solution. Many policy makers would have you believe this and are quick to take credit for their role in acquiring project funding.
Yes, some level of restoration can and should be attained by these projects but the problem with only that approach is that it fails to adequately recognize the cumulative rate at which water resources are being diminished and the role of public policy in this process.
It's a head in the sand approach that is a growing trend and ultimately leads to tragedy where the scale of incremental progress is inadequate and overwhelmed by the cumulative causes of water pollution and consumption. These problems stem largely from the lack of political will to address policy reform that balances competing uses including the environment.
Locally, a favorite justification by some policy makers for overlooking the root problem is by diverting the focus to water system constraints developed nearly a century ago. Certainly the unintended consequences of water diversion from that era in Florida are still in play to some extent today and one reason there are no easy answers now.
However, by ignoring the current and ongoing underlying policy issues mired in special interest influence, they maintain the illusion that costly water projects are the ultimate solution. The illusion is manifested where competing interests for water promote their self-interests to abiding politicians, resulting in pollution and depletion of the public resource. This scenario ultimately leads to the "tragedy of the commons."
Climate change and another Florida population explosion currently under way are two growing and potentially overwhelming drivers that are impacting Florida's waters in many insidious ways.
Without systemic reform these drivers will limit future options on water sustainability even further. The visionary framers of Amendment 1, the recent Florida constitutional amendment designed to sustain our land and water resources and passed with an overwhelming majority, was a landmark event that gave many hope that Florida could regain the vision and accomplishments of past leaders on both sides of the aisle that were clearly in the best interests of the whole.
So far we have only seen deceptive commitments and weakening of resource protection from Tallahassee on growth and water issues and a sad retreat from the will of the people on Amendment 1.
For the "commons," time is running out.

160125-b
Lake Okeechobee discharges now could help Indian River Lagoon this summer
TCPalm.com – by Tyler Treadway
January 25, 2015
What a difference a year makes.
On Jan. 16, 2015, the Army Corps of Engineers started dumping polluted Lake Okeechobee water into the St. Lucie River, claiming small releases in the winter would help stave off huge, environmentally devastating releases in the spring and summer. Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart, was among about 200 people who gathered at the St. Lucie Lock and Dam to protest.
In a reversal, Perry on Monday said the corps should begin to discharge small amounts to the river like it did last year.
"Yeah, it sounds weird for me to say, 'Start the releases,' " Perry said. "But this is an unusual year."
The lake level — 15.3 feet Monday — is higher than it was a year ago and forecasts are calling for February and March to be wetter than normal.
"A lot wetter," Perry said. "The lake could jump from 15 to 16 or even 17 feet in pretty short order, and that would force the corps to release huge amounts of water in the spring."
Large, prolonged discharges in March and April could be "devastating," Perry said, because that's spawning season for oysters and the start of growing season for sea grass — both species that form the backbone of the estuary ecosystem.
"I'm not saying we want discharges," Perry said. "We never want discharges. And I'm not guaranteeing that if we get small discharges now we won't get bigger ones later. We just think small discharges now could help the estuary in the long run."
DRY SEASON DROP
During South Florida's traditional dry season in the winter and spring, the corps tries to drop the lake level to 12 feet, 6 inches so it can safely take on water during the summer rainy season, including extra rainfall from any tropical storms and hurricanes.
The lake was dropping slowly until heavy rains in the Kissimmee River Valley, which drains into Lake O, about two weeks ago, said corps spokesman John Campbell.
Now, recent rains in Martin County mean the corps couldn't send much Lake O water east into the St. Lucie River if it wanted to, Campbell said. There's too much rainwater draining off farmland on both sides of the C-44 Canal, which connects Lake O and the river.
All that runoff water going through the St. Lucie Lock and Dam "doesn't give us room to release very much, if any, lake water," Campbell said.
The corps already is releasing Lake O water west to the Caloosahatchee River, which needs the water to hold back saltwater intrusion in its estuary near Fort Myers. If the lake continues to rise, the guidelines — known as the Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule — will allow the corps to release more water east and west.
Corps officials are expected to announce Thursday whether discharges to the St. Lucie will begin soon.
"It's too early at this point to say what the decision will be," Campbell said. "But we're listening to what the scientists like Mr. Perry are saying. It's a very challenging, very delicate balancing act."
 Could Lake O discharges be coming?

160124-a
Greenland ice melt putting global ocean circulation at risk
ANI – by Deccan Chronicle
January 24, 2016
Researchers say it could impact the future climate in places such as portions of Europe and North America.
WASHINGTON - - Washington: Due to melting ice caps caused by global warming, the world saw a rise in sea levels and now, a new study revealed that those glaciers in Greenland can also affect the global ocean circulation and the future climate.
The University of South Florida scientists, along with colleagues in Canada and the Netherlands, have determined that the influx of fresh water from the Greenland ice sheet is "freshening" the North Atlantic Ocean and could disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), an important component of global ocean circulation that could have a global effect.
Researchers say it could impact the future climate in places such as portions of Europe and North America.
Researcher Tim Dixon said that they derived a new estimate of recent freshwater flux from Greenland using updated GRACE satellite data and the data suggest that the influx of freshwater from Greenland is accelerating and has changed the Labrador Sea in ways that could lead to a weakening of the AMOC.
Focused freshwater flux into the Labrador Sea has the potential to increase the buoyancy of surface waters and reduce formation of dense, deep water that helps drive the overturning circulation, said co-author Don Chambers.
According to Dixon, the global impacts are less certain, but potentially more consequential.
The study appears in the journal Nature Communications

160124-b
Water policy fails Floridians
Ocala.com - Editorial
January 24, 2016
If we didn’t know better, we would have thought the Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott had achieved a major milestone for our state this week with the governor’s signing of Florida’s new water policy on Thursday. Because the celebration that took place in Tallahassee suggested this was a game-changer, the long-awaited “policy” that Florida desperately needs to clean up and preserve its water supply.
But Senate Bill 552 falls far short of any semblance of serious water policy. It is so flawed that former Gov. Bob Graham, in a letter to Scott, said the water bill “represents a purposeful effort to weaken protection and management of Florida’s water resources.”
Four years in the making, it took two legislative sessions to pass this policy failure. Graham is right — the bill does nothing to curb water consumption and little to slow the flow of pollutants into our rivers, lakes and springs.
Maybe worse, it is a outright gift to big business, especially agriculture. Not only does it loosen pollution enforcement standards, it actually allows Big Ag to monitor itself. The bill relies on so-called “best management practices” that set goals for large water users — but they have decades to meet the goals, there are no penalties or fines written into the law and no provisions are in place to add inspectors to make sure farmers and industry are adhering to the best practices.
To add insult to injury, our lawmakers included a “cost sharing” program that actually requires water management districts to subsidize Big Ag’s pollution control efforts. Yes, the taxpayers of Florida will pay so Big Ag can clean up the mess it created.
Maybe most disturbing to our region is that the bill allows, indeed encourages, massive cross-state water transfers from one water district to another to meet demands of growth. The long-discussed threats to tap the Ocklawaha and St. Johns rivers to quench South Florida’s thirst are ever closer to reality. It’s a disaster waiting to happen for our region.
SB 552 started out with five state senators, led by Sen. Charlie Dean, who represents part of western Marion County, looking to create “a legacy” water policy that would preserve and clean up our waterways and aquifer — and seriously fund the undertaking. But the legislation was hijacked by special interests led by Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Chamber and the Florida Farm Bureau, which collectively virtually wrote this legislation. Then they relied on their politically ambitious lackeys in the statehouse — House Speaker Steve Cristafulli, Senate President Andy Gardner and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, specifically — to railroad this through both chambers, with only two our 160 legislators voting no.
The excuse many lawmakers and environmental backers gave for not opposing SB 552 was that it was better than last year’s awful bill, and they hope it will be improved over time.
That is what passes for important policy-making in the Florida Legislature. It is better than awful.
Florida had a chance to seriously address its water quantity and quality crisis into the 21st century. Instead, they passed a business-friendly bill that does too little to save water or stop the pollution that is ruining our water bodies.
It is unsettling that our elected leadership in Tallahassee is so self-serving and so out of touch with the realities of Florida in 2016 that they would squander a chance to take meaningful long-term steps to save our water supply. Instead, once again the people of Florida were sold out. And that’s certainly no reason to celebrate.
Related:           New Water Law Will Affect Everyone Who Uses Water in Florida JD Supra

160124-c
What's bad about fracking? Count the ways
StAugustine.com - Guest Column by Jim Tatum and Merrilee Malwitz-Jipson
January 24, 2016
Fort White
What wrong with fracking? Aside from leaking methane under and above ground, which makes people sick (ask Los Angeles), wasting millions of gallons of valuable water (ask California), causing earthquakes (ask Oklahoma), roads and infrastructure broken by heavy trucks, contaminated waste water no one wants, explosions which kill people (ask lots of places) there is one more big one: undisclosed toxic chemicals put into our earth.
Yes, the oil companies are allowed to inject proven carcinogens into or adjacent to our underground drinking water resources. How can the EPA allow this? Witness the power of money and politics. Before Dick Cheney became vice president he was CEO of Halliburton Company, which patented fracking in the l940s and which, today, continues to be one of the three largest manufacturers of fracking fluids.
The EPA is supposed to protect our drinking water as per the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974. In 1997 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ordered regulation specific to fracking. The EPA immediately began a study of fracking and drinking water pollution.
Enter Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001 who convened a special task force on energy, which dutifully recommended to Congress that fracking be exempt from the SDWA. Due to political influence from Halliburton and the infamous Enron founder Kenneth Lay, the study found no dangers from fracking.
Then the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 wrote in an exemption which we now call the “Halliburton Loophole,” which releases the industry from requirements in the underground injection control (UIC) program of the SDWA and other EPA protections, namely the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.
Some states have regulations on fracking, but almost never do they require companies to disclose the chemicals, or whether the poisons remain in the ground or return to the surface. Neither do companies have to monitor water quality when they drill near drinking water resources.
The only toxin still regulated under the Energy Policy Act is diesel fuel, since it is considered to be especially damaging to drinking water. Yet, a recent congressional investigation found that 32 million gallons of diesel fuel have been illegally injected into the ground as a fracking chemical in 19 states.
The current bills (HB 191 and SB 318) in our Florida legislature purport to “regulate” fracking. But, as one representative stated, they are nothing more than a “welcome mat” to promote fracking. And yes, the current bills continue the disclosure exemption under the guise of “trade secrets. ” They go one step farther and preempt local governments from banning fracking in their own jurisdictions.
It is now abundantly apparent that the fracking industry refuses to disclose the dangers it thrusts upon us, and that both it and our government place profits above the well-being of the people.

160124-d
Who needs safe environment?
Providence Journal - by Ann McFeatters
January. 24, 2016
Imagine a governor of a large state deciding to cut costs and appointing a staff of bureaucrats who change the water supply for 100,000 people to save money but don't bother to have it treated properly for contaminants. For more than a year the people drink dangerous water without knowing it.
When doctors start seeing signs of lead poisoning, which causes behavioral problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney disease in adults, questions begin to be asked. At first, the state officials ignore the results and deny there's a problem.
Local churches and charities trying to supply bottled water to terrified parents who can't afford it run out. People who can afford it can't find it. For a while the governor hopes it will just all go away.
But then the national media swoops in and finds chaos. Finally, the National Guard begins distributing free water and filters. And finally, the governor takes his head out of the sand, requests aid from the federal government he despises and admits the state, which caused the problem, can't fix it. And even then, people are having a hard time finding and getting the water, filters and lead test kits they need.
Michigan. Flint. Gov. Rick Snyder. Ongoing crisis.
The cows were acting crazy, losing hair, showing grotesque malformations and dying, and nobody could figure out why. And then people began putting two and two together and realized a huge chemical company had bought land nearby for a landfill for its factory. The company and government studies said the farmers didn't know how to take care of cows. Only after a courageous lawyer pursued the case did he learn that a little-known and dangerous chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, often called C8, had been dumped in the landfill and was being improperly dumped into local water tables providing drinking water for 70,000 people. For 40 years secret research had shown damage to and cancer in animals and that high levels of C8 infected local factory workers.
Parkersburg, W.Va. DuPont. Lawyer Rob Bilott. The Environmental Protection Agency charged DuPont with concealing knowledge of C8's toxicity and presence in the environment. DuPont was fined $16.5 million but did not admit liability. Eventually, the EPA learned that C8 was showing up in the general public through Teflon-coated pans and in the air and water. C8 is now found all over the world, and 60,000 similar chemicals remain unregulated.
Every state and nearly every community confronts controversies over environmental protection and jobs and dangers to health and habitat. Sometimes the hysteria is unfounded. But environmental activists are no longer widely ridiculed as "tree huggers."
Nonetheless, Republican presidential candidates are on a different page.
Donald Trump wants to cut the EPA. He says climate change is a hoax

160123-
39 pythons caught so far in Florida's public snake hunt
Statesman – by Jennifer Kay
January 23, 2016
MIAMI — A cold snap may be giving humans an edge early in a state-sanctioned hunt for elusive Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades.
Since the second Python Challenge began a week ago, hunters have turned in 39 of the invasive snakes, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The first monthlong python hunt on state lands in 2013 netted 68 of the snakes, the longest measuring over 14 feet long.
The beginning of this year's hunt coincided with a dip in temperatures. Chilly weather can drive the tan, splotchy snakes from the wetlands where they extremely hard to spot into the open as they seek warmth.
"Cooler temperatures on sunny days is kind of a good situation for finding pythons because they're more likely to be on levies and roads sunning themselves," commission spokeswoman Carli Segelson said Friday.
A cold front over the last week pushed temperatures across South Florida into the lower 50s at night, which is below normal, said Chuck Caracozza, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.
Another cold front that is driving a blizzard toward much of the East Coast will cause temperatures here to plunge into the 40s, with a wind chill in some inland areas in the upper 30s, he said.
Over 800 people have registered for this year's python hunt, which ends Feb. 14.
No additional information about the pythons caught so far was immediately available, Segelson said.
During the hunt's opening weekend, a wildlife commission officer caught a 16-foot-10-inch python in a narrow stretch of state land just west of Homestead, in the Miami suburbs, that is open for the competition.
"I'm sure some of the people registered for the Python Challenge were disappointed that one of our officers took such a big one, but obviously he had to take advantage of the situation and remove an invasive snake," Segelson said.
Individuals and teams registered for the hunt are competing for cash prizes, while they snakes they catch are turned over to researchers.
In an average year, only about 200 pythons are caught in Florida, even though tens of thousands may be slithering through the wetlands. The pythons' natural camouflage makes them difficult to find, even for researchers who blame them for enormous losses in native mammal populations.
The population of Burmese pythons likely developed from pets released into the wild, either intentionally or in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. They can grow to be more than 20 feet long and have no natural enemies in Florida other than very large alligators, humans or cold weather.
Record cold temperatures killed hundreds of pythons in the Everglades in January 2010 but, to researchers' dismay, large numbers of the snakes still thrived.

160122-a
Burmese pythons caught so far in Florida's public hunt
PopHerald.com – by Glen Mclaughlin
January 22, 2016
Three officers hold a almost 17-foot python caught in the Florida Everglades.
Although Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials can't win prizes during the 2016 Florida Python Challenge, an FWC officer has certainly earned some bragging rights after hauling in a monster, 16-foot python while out on patrol Monday. The men and women paid a $25 fee and came from 24 states just for the hunt.
Seventeen Burmese pythons were submitted for the contest during the first two days. Since then, pythons have flourished in Florida's conditions and have quickly become a threat to the native animal and plant species in the area, according to the New York Times. Some say they were brought back in 1992 by the Andrew Hurricane, while others believe that people are simply releasing them intentionally into the wild. Some experts, however, have expressed hopelessness at the scale of the task, with Linda Friar of Everglades National Park claiming that the python cannot be eradicated and that the cost of containment is more than resources can allow, according to USA Today. The pythons can strangle and eat anything from rabbits to panthers and bears. Their mottled skin blends perfectly with the terrain of Florida's wetlands.
Only certain areas are approved for python removal, and participants must register for the event. The victor of the challenge that lasts for one full month is the one who catches the most pythons. The victor will get $3.500.
The state's second public hunt for the exotic snakes started Saturday and ends February 14, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.

160122-b
Florida to vote on high-stakes fracking bill that won’t allow banning oil exploration
RT.com
January 22, 2016
Despite concerns from environmentalists, a fracking bill will be voted on by the Florida House of Representatives. The bill seeks to establish a framework for fracking companies and prevent local governments from banning the practice.
The proposal would increase regulation of hydraulic fracturing by requiring groundwater inspections at each site before and after fracking takes place, the Miami Herald reported. However, the bill also bans local governments from passing ordinances to prevent the practice.
CBS Miami reports that oil and gas drilling has taken place in parts of Southwest and Northwest Florida, and that there are no laws against fracking in the state. However, one issue with fracking is the location energy companies seek to use.
The Florida Everglades are home to 30 endangered and threatened species, according to the National Park Services. Populations of iconic Floridian wildlife, such as the Florida Panther, depend on the delicate ecosystem for their species’ survival. But it is not just wildlife that relies on the Everglades. According to a 2013 Florida International University study, over 5 million people depend on Everglade aquifers for fresh water. Therefore, many environmentalists are concerned about the impacts of fracking.
The BBC explains that the process of fracking involves “drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.” This creates a well that gas flows out of after a combination of “water, sand and chemicals are injected into the rock at high pressure.”
The problem comes from the aforementioned chemicals and water. Due to the porous limestone of the Biscayne Aquifer and the dependence on it for drinking water, the risk of contamination from the chemicals used is high.
“For every barrel of oil produced, 10 barrels of permanently hazardous, toxic water is produced [and] there is no safe or approved method to treat the potentially millions of gallons of backflow waste water,” Amy Datz, an environmental scientist with the Florida Climate Institute, told the Guardian.
Opponents of the bill fear the repercussions of chemicals seeping into the Biscayne Aquifer, a water system that is located “just below the surface of the land in South Florida,” according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEPA). The Biscayne Aquifer System runs below the Everglades and is the primary source of water for Dade and Broward Counties, Palm Beach, and also provides water to the Florida Keys.
The Florida DEPA explains that the Biscayne Aquifer consists of “highly permeable limestones and less permeable sand and sandstone.” In the location where the limestone is at its most porous, the absorbent rocks are covered by “a thin veneer of porous soil.” In addition, the water within the Biscayne Aquifer is free flowing and “generally flows toward streams, the ocean, and the extensive system of canals in south Florida.”
The state seeks to determine the impact on groundwater by conducting a one-year, $1 million study on the chemicals used in fracking, the Miami Herald reports. Regulations regarding disposal of contaminated water and chemicals would be written as a result of the study in 2017.
However, the chemicals in question would remain unregulated. Todd Sack, a Tallahassee physician, expressed concerns to the Miami Herald that the bill “allows drillers to hide any disclosure of chemicals used in the process by calling them a trade secret.”
Counties opposed to the practice are also concerned about their rights. The Broward County Commission proposed a county-wide ban on fracking earlier this month when Kanter Real Estate, LLC applied for a permit to begin drilling on the 20,000 undeveloped Everglade acres under their ownership, the Broward Palm Beach New Times reports. Sponsored by Commissioner Beam Furr, the ordinance claims that “Florida’s water supplies and resources are better protected through the prevention of contamination and environmental degradation, rather than the cleanup of contamination and restoration of degraded environments after the fact.”
Proposed Broward Anti Fracking Ordinance
However, both fracking bills in the Florida House and Senate would remove the ability of a county to ban fracking. As the Broward Palm Beach New Times explains, the bill would place the power to regulate the fracking industry exclusively in the hands of the state.
Related:           Activists Rally to Stop Fracking in Florida    Famuan
House committee passes fracking and keeps language stripping ...    Naples Daily News
Environment unfriendly Florida moves fracking regulation Bill forward      Port St. Joe Star
Florida Lawmakers Drilling the Way for Fracking Even as Need Is ...         FlaglerLive.com
Fracking endangers drinking water    Miami Herald

160122-c
Water-policy disappointment and Harrell enters the District 18 fray
TCPalm.com – by Eve Samples
January 22, 2016
Two weeks into the legislative session, we already have fallout to assess.
Lawmakers passed, and Gov. Rick Scott signed, a far-reaching water bill that was opposed by more than 50 environmental groups — including the Florida Conservation Coalition, Indian Riverkeeper and Friends of the St. Sebastian River.
Bob Graham, former Florida governor and U.S. senator, led the groups in calling for a veto of Senate Bill 552, saying it failed to reverse pollution and over-pumping of the state's estuaries, rivers, springs, aquifers and the Everglades.
"This 134 page bill represents a purposeful effort to weaken protection and management of Florida's water resources. It will result in further corrosion of what was once hailed as the water management standard of the nation," Graham wrote Wednesday in a letter to Scott.
The governor signed the bill the following day.
For its part, Audubon Florida didn't oppose the law — nor would it applaud it. Among those publicly cheering the new water law: the Florida Farm Bureau, Associated Industries of Florida and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative.
"It signals that the process is working in Tallahassee and things are getting done for the benefit of all Floridians," Barbara Miedema, spokeswoman for the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative said in a statement.
Almost every member of the Florida Legislature supported the bill, including both senators from the Treasure Coast (Republicans Joe Negron and Thad Altman) and every House member from our region.

State lawmakers often stay neutral in congressional races — particularly primaries, where they have more to lose than gain by picking sides — but that's not the case with state Rep. Gayle Harrell this election cycle.
Harrell, a Republican from Stuart, has endorsed Rebecca Negron in the nine-candidate GOP primary for Congressional District 18, a seat being vacated by U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy. Harrell cited Negron's "conservative values," opposition to All Aboard Florida and objection to Common Core education policies in her announcement Tuesday.
Negron, a Martin County School Board member and wife of state Sen. Joe Negron, had raised $281,000 by the end of the third quarter. Notable donors include: Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies leaders Richard and Pam Houghten ($3,500 combined); Islamorada resident Mary Barley, whose late husband created the Everglades Foundation ($5,400); and Paul Tudor Jones (also $5,400), who serves on the Everglades Foundation's board with Barley.
Joe Negron, who serves in Tallahassee with Harrell, is next in line to be president of the Florida Senate. In that position, he will have huge control over money for Everglades restoration and economic development ventures such as Torrey Pines.

160121-a
Experts on climate change, water shine in ‘Moonlight on the Marsh’
Florida Weekly
January 21, 2016
Some of world’s most distinguished experts on climate change, invasive species and global water issues share their knowledge during the 2016 Bernard and Susan Master “Moonlight on the Marsh” Distinguished Lecture Series presented by Florida Gulf Coast University at Naples Botanical Garden.
All are welcome to attend the fourth annual series sponsored by FGCU’s Everglades Wetland Research Park. Admission is free. Programs take place in the FGCU’s Harvey Kapnick Education and Research Center at the Garden. The Everglades Wetland Research Park is dedicated to research on the wise management of freshwater and coastal ecosystems of Southwest Florida and the Florida Everglades and to the protection and enhancement of wetlands and water resources worldwide.
“The series features the best minds in environmental sciences — some real rock stars in the world of science,” said FGCU Professor William Mitsch, director of the research park. “Because our relationship with freshwater and coastal water environments is so vital in Southwest Florida, these lectures offer valuable insight and solutions to problems we see around us.” Here’s the season’s lineup:
¦ Thursday, Jan. 28: “The Art and Science of Translating Ecological Indicators to Ecosystem Services for Wetlands, Streams and Riparian Corridors,” by Robert Brooks, Ph.D., a professor of geography and ecology at Pennsylvania State University.
¦ Thursday, Feb. 11: “Expecting the Unexpected: Pandora’s Box of Paradox in an Upside-Down Estuary,” by Evelyn Gaiser, Ph.D., executive director of the School of Environment, Arts and Society at Florida International University in Miami. Ms. Gaiser is also the lead principal investigator of the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research Program at FIU.
¦ Thursday, March 3: “When Nature Bites Back: Solving the Budget-Busting Invasive Species Epidemic” by David Lodge, Ph.D., a professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.
¦ Thursday, March 10: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Global Water Issues” by Philippe Van Cappellen, Ph.D., a professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences and the department of biology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.
All lectures start at 7 p.m. Although admission is free, reservations are recommended and can be made by calling 325-1365. ¦

160121-b
Scott signs bills on water resources, disability education
StAugustine.com – by William March, Associated Press
January 21, 2016
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott signed a major overhaul of Florida’s water regulations Thursday, despite objections by environmentalists that the measure was weakened by the influence of agriculture and business interests.
Scott also signed a package of bills increasing educational and career aid for the intellectually disabled.
The water and disability aid bills were the first major bills passed by the Florida Legislature in this year’s session. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, strongly backed the water bill, and Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, who has a son with Down syndrome, has made assistance for those he calls “people with unique abilities” the signature issue of his tenure.
The bills were also a symbol of legislators’ hope for a more harmonious session, after last year’s acrimony.
“These are good bills to sign ... This is a great start to the session,” Scott said at a ceremonial signing in his office.
He then hinted he’d like Crisafulli and Gardiner to enact his own priorities — $1 billion in tax cuts and $250 million for incentives to lure businesses — proposals some legislators view skeptically.
Environmental groups say some enforcement provisions in the water bill to prevent pollution and restore natural flows contain loopholes and would be delayed in taking effect.
“At the end of the day, too many concessions were made to the industry groups,” said Ryan Smart of 1000 Friends of Florida, one of several environmental groups that asked members to send Scott messages urging him to veto the bill.
Former Gov. Bob Graham weighed in on the bill in press interviews.
“This bill doesn’t prepare Florida for the future,” he said, citing estimates that Florida’s population could double or triple this century.
Graham cited Silver Springs, “the largest, most iconic, best-known spring in Florida,” which he said is now down to a third of its historical flow and could dry up. Smart cited tourist draw Wakulla Springs, where he said pollution has cut visibility so the famous glass-bottom boat trips are now rare.
Nonetheless, some environmental activists favored the bill, saying it’s still a step forward, and only two legislators voted against it.
Asked whether he took note of the criticism, Scott responded, “I believe this is a good water bill. You have to be proud of what’s happened in the last five years in this state,” citing money for Everglades and springs restoration. “Our legislature’s doing an outstanding job in regard to water quality.”
Related:           SWFL environmental advocates unhappy with new water bill          Naples Daily News
Scott signs water bill despite veto requests    TCPalm
New Water Law Will Affect Everyone Who Uses Water in Florida Lexology (registration)

160121-c
Scrawny alligators reflect Everglades' many problems
WGCU.org - by Amy Green
January 21, 2016
In the Florida Everglades alligators are in trouble. The reptiles are scrawny, weighing 80 percent of what they should. The alligators grow slower, reproduce less and die younger.
Researchers are trying to understand why the Everglades' iconic species is in decline and what it means for the ailing river of grass.
Laura Brandt’s head swivels, the flashlight on her forehead slicing through the night’s blackness. Two alligator eyes appear in the spotlight, red and gleaming like lonely Christmas lights on the watery prairie. Brandt points the airboat in their direction.
She slows the boat, and Frank Mazzotti reaches over its side, fastening a wire noose around the alligator’s neck. The animal flails among the saw grass of the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in south Florida.
Brandt watches over Mazzotti’s shoulder as the alligator struggles, ready to secure the animal’s snout with electrical tape.
“The idea is to get the animal tired before we bring it into the boat so it’s easier on us.”
The alligator spins in its death roll.
“That’s their natural instinct of both trying to get away, fighting, and when they catch prey that’s one of the things that they do,” Brandt says.
Brandt and Mazzotti are part of a 15-member team of researchers from federal and state agencies and the University of Florida who for more than a decade have ventured into the wilderness of the Everglades to catch and study alligators like this one.
“We’ve seen some alligators in some years that have been basically skin and bones. And when we get concerned is when we see multiple alligators like that,” Brandt says.
Their research is part of the world’s largest environmental restoration, a $17 billion effort spanning a region twice the size of New Jersey. They’re monitoring alligators to see whether the restoration is working.
Alligators are an indicator species of the Everglades, a watershed supporting dozens of federally threatened and endangered animals and the drinking water for more than a third of Floridians. The reptiles are responsive to environmental changes and influential as top predators and ecosystem engineers, forging holes, trails and nests that provide habitat for other plants and animals. They are easy for decisionmakers and the public to understand and identify with.
The researchers’ findings indicate that as the Everglades’ 30-year restoration reaches its midpoint the watershed still needs help. Mazzotti says human interference with the river of grass’ historic flow of water has disrupted the animals’ food supply.
“The Everglades food machine is broken.”
He says draining the Everglades upset the hydrology alligators depend on, and that is why the Everglades’ restoration is aimed at resurrecting a more natural flow of water. The watershed once spanned nearly all of south Florida. Today it is half of its former self, sustained by a complex system of canals, dams, water control points and pump stations.
“We’ve screwed up that pattern that produced and concentrated food, meaning alligators are getting skinnier,” Mazzotti says.
Mazzotti and Brandt hoist the alligator into the airboat. Brandt reaches for a shoebox-sized plastic container labeled, Laura’s Gator Box.
“OK, so in Laura’s catch box the first thing we pull out is the tape measure.”
Brandt has been counting alligators in the Everglades for nearly 20 years. She records the animal’s measurements on a paper data sheet. Mazzotti holds the gator secure.
The alligator stretches six feet long. Next Mazzotti inspects the animal’s tail. He has studied alligators and crocodiles in the Everglades for nearly 40 years. The watershed is the only place on Earth where the reptiles as old as dinosaurs co-exist.
Mazzotti wears a stained khaki shirt and red bandana around his neck, handy for wiping hands soiled by alligators or guarding against chilly evenings like this one. He points to where the animal’s tail begins. This female is in good condition, unlike the many scrawny alligators the researchers have seen.
“This is really the telling thing right here. See how the tail swells out a little bit? That’s where the fat deposits are. You asked what does an animal look like when it’s skinny. There would be no fat. This would all be sunken in, and you would be able to see the tail bone with like just the skin hanging on it and sunken in on the sides.”
Brandt and Mazzotti dangle the alligator from the hand-held scale using a rope.
The alligator weighs 50 pounds. It groans.
Brandt marks the alligator by removing scales from its tail. She gathers some environmental data like water temperature, and then the researchers free the animal.
“So here’s the last step in the safe release. You bring the animal up and put it in the water, and you don’t release the mouth until the animal is out of the boat. So at no time when that animal is in the boat is the mouth unsecured, and as long as the mouth is secured it can’t bite you,” Mazzotti says.
Together the team of researchers catches and releases about 200 alligators a year, each one a reptilian measuring stick of the river of grass’ restoration.

160121-d
The evaporation of Bolivia's second-largest body of water has displaced hundreds if not thousands of people
Associated Press - by Carlos Valdez
January 21, 2016
Disappearance of Bolivia's No. 2 lake - a harbinger.
UNTAVI, Bolivia (AP) — Overturned fishing skiffs lie abandoned on the shores of what was Bolivia's second-largest lake. Beetles dine on bird carcasses and gulls fight for scraps under a glaring sun in what marshes remain.
Lake Poopo was officially declared evaporated last month. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have lost their livelihoods and gone.
High on Bolivia's semi-arid Andean plains at 3,700 meters (more than 12,000 feet) and long subject to climatic whims, the shallow saline lake has essentially dried up before only to rebound to twice the area of Los Angeles.
But recovery may no longer be possible, scientists say.
"This is a picture of the future of climate change," says Dirk Hoffman, a German glaciologist who studies how rising temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels has accelerated glacial melting in Bolivia.
As Andean glaciers disappear so do the sources of Poopo's water. But other factors are in play in the demise of Bolivia's second-largest body of water behind Lake Titicaca.
Drought caused by the recurrent El Nino meteorological phenomenon is considered the main driver. Authorities say another factor is the diversion of water from Poopo's tributaries, mostly for mining but also for agriculture.
More than 100 families have sold their sheep, llamas and alpaca, set aside their fishing nets and quit the former lakeside village of Untavi over the past three years, draining it of well over half its population. Only the elderly remain.
"There's no future here," said 29-year-old Juvenal Gutierrez, who moved to a nearby town where he ekes by as a motorcycle taxi driver.
Record-keeping on the lake's history only goes back a century, and there is no good tally of the people displaced by its disappearance. At least 3,250 people have received humanitarian aid, the governor's office says.
Poopo is now down to 2 percent of its former water level, regional Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez calculates. Its maximum depth once reached 16 feet (5 meters). Field biologists say 75 species of birds are gone from the lake.
While Poopo has suffered El Nino-fueled droughts for millennia, its fragile ecosystem has experienced unprecedented stress in the past three decades. Temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius while mining activity has pinched the flow of tributaries, increasing sediment.
Florida Institute of Technology biologist Mark B. Bush says the long-term trend of warming and drying threatens the entire Andean highlands.
A 2010 study he co-authored for the journal Global Change Biology says Bolivia's capital, La Paz, could face catastrophic drought this century. It predicted "inhospitable arid climates" would lessen available food and water this century for the more than 3 million inhabitants of Bolivia's highlands.
A study by the German consortium Gitec-Cobodes determined that Poopo received 161 billion fewer liters of water in 2013 than required to maintain equilibrium.
"Irreversible changes in ecosystems could occur, causing massive emigration and greater conflicts," said the study commissioned by Bolivia's government.
The head of a local citizens' group that tried to save Poopo, Angel Flores, says authorities ignored warnings.
"Something could have been done to prevent the disaster. Mining companies have been diverting water since 1982," he said.
President Evo Morales has sought to deflect criticism he bears some responsibility, suggesting that Poopo could come back.
"My father told me about crossing the lake on a bicycle once when it dried up," he said last month after returning from the U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Paris.
Environmentalists and local activists say the government mismanaged fragile water resources and ignored rampant pollution from mining, Bolivia's second export earner after natural gas. More than 100 mines are upstream and Huanuni, Bolivia's biggest state-owned tin mine, was among those dumping untreated tailings into Poopo's tributaries.
After thousands of fish died in late 2014, the Universidad Tecnica in the nearby state capital of Oruro found Poopo had unsafe levels of heavy metals, including cadmium and lead.
The president of Bolivia's National Chamber of Mining, Saturnino Ramos, said any blame by the industry is "insignificant compared to climate change." He said most of the sediment shallowing Poopo's tributaries was natural, not from mining.
In hopes of bringing it back, Morales' government has asked the European Union for $140 million for water treatment plants for the Poopo watershed and to dredge tributaries led by the Desaguadero, which flows from Lake Titicaca.
Critics say it may be too late.
"I don't think we'll be seeing the azure mirror of Poopo again," said Milton Perez, a Universidad Tecnica researcher. "I think we've lost it."

160120-
Bob Graham calls for Gov. Rick Scott to veto sweeping water reforms
Miami Herald - by Jenny Staletovich
January 20, 2016
The chorus demanding that Gov. Rick Scott veto a sweeping water policy hastily passed by the Florida Legislature last week just got a little louder.
On Wednesday, Bob Graham, former U.S. senator and Florida governor, called the 134-page bill a “purposeful effort to weaken protection” of state waters increasingly threatened by pollution, waste and rising consumption. In a letter to Scott, Graham said the bill “blatantly” favors special interests, ties the hands of local water management districts and mostly ignores two key measures in protecting water: conservation and rules to stop pollution at its source.
“The guiding light ought to be conservation. We can’t grow ourselves out of the challenge of 40 million people wanting access to the same water quantity that Florida has historically had,” Graham told the Herald, referring to Scott’s aggressive growth policies.
Last week, the Florida House and Senate quickly passed expansive bills to address water issues, from imperiled springs in the central and northern part of the state to cleanup efforts in Lake Okeechobee needed to restore the Everglades. The bills evolved from legislation drafted in 2014. That effort, supported by Graham and his Florida Conservation Commission, narrowly focused changes on restoring the state’s rapidly deteriorating springs. At least 24 springs have been deemed impaired, and while efforts have been under way to stop pollution from septic systems, urban pollution and agriculture, they continue to decline.
Chaos in the Legislature last year prevented any measure from moving forward. But this month, on the eve of the session, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli unveiled a plan he said was crafted with the help of both powerful agricultural and development interests and environmental groups including Audubon Florida, the Everglades Foundation and the Nature Conservancy. Crisafulli said the plan would “modernize” Florida’s water policy with new rules for the springs, uniform permitting, Lake Okeechobee clean-up and better planning.
Some conservationists, however, say the changes largely do the opposite and force taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning up pollution. Last week, a letter signed by more than 100 environmental groups and businesses was sent to Scott also demanding a veto.
The letter writers say the changes weaken rules by more than doubling the duration of permits for massive water withdrawals to between 30 and 40 years. If a local water management district attempts to deny a permit, the changes allow the Department of Environmental Protection to demand districts find a way to approve the request. And in regions where water is scarce, the law allows for the use of other sources including surface water that could further damage supplies.
The law would also hinder long-standing efforts to repair the Everglades by setting up new time lines for cleaning up Lake Okeechobee, where levels of phosphorus from decades of farming and nearby urban runoff continue to rise.
A spokeswoman said Wednesday that Scott intends to sign the bill in his office Thursday.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported that Audubon Florida and the Everglades Foundation backed the bill. The groups worked to write legislation but never endorsed the final bill.
Related:           Former Governor Calls On Scott To Stop Water Bill - CBS Local
Bob Graham calls for Gov. Rick Scott to veto sweeping water reforms       Miami Herald
Former Governor Calls On Scott To Stop Water Bill CBS Local

160119-a
17 pythons caught in Everglades so far
Sun Sentinel – by David Fleshler
January 19, 2016
Seventeen Burmese pythons were caught in the first three days of the 2016 Python Challenge, the month-long contest intended to cut down on the number of the giant constrictors in the Everglades.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced the tally Tuesday but said no details were available on where the snakes were caught or how big they were.
Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the commission, said the hunt appears to be going smoothly so far and is accomplishing its goals, both in catching snakes and bringing attention to the problem of non-native species in the wild.
"Obviously, one of the goals is to remove Burmese pythons from the environment," she said. "But public awareness is a big thing for us, too."
The snakes, some alive, others killed on the spot, are being brought by python hunters to drop-off locations at various points around the Everglades. The area open for python-hunting does not include Everglades National Park, except for a small group of trained hunters, but it does include the area north of the park, as well as state parks and other lands along the fringes of the Everglades.
Hunters are competing for individual and team prizes of up to $1,500 for bagging the most snakes and the longest one. During the last Python Challenge, held in 2013, hunters caught 68 of them, with the longest stretching to 14 feet, three inches.
The number of registered hunters rose to 768 as of Monday, although this remains well short of the nearly 1,600 who registered last time.
Last time, there were few problems aside from a pair of would-be hunters from Tennessee who got lost, suffered heat stroke and had to be rescued by Broward Sheriff's deputies.
Python Challenge official siteOpen link

160119-b
Environmentalists urge Scott to veto water policy bill
BizJournals.com
Jan 19, 2016
Four environmental organizations want Gov. Rick Scott to veto an agriculture industry-friendly water policy bill the governor is expected to sign this week.
In a conference call with reporters, representatives of the Sierra Club, 1000 Friends of Florida, the Florida Springs Council and the St. Johns Riverkeeper said Scott should return the measure (SB 552), unanimously passed by the Senate on Wednesday and backed 110-2 by the House on Thursday, to lawmakers.
"This is a not a water policy bill. It sets no new legal standards to protect Florida's water bodies from the over-pumping we have, the over-use we have, and the chocking nutrients that are in our lakes, estuaries and springs," said Vicki Tschinkel, vice chair of 1000 Friends of Florida. The bill "enumerates complex detailed procedures" and creates "endless reporting" requirements, Tschinkel said. "Reports and rearranging committees clean up absolutely nothing," she said.
The proposal, in part, calls for establishing water-flow levels for springs and setting guidelines for the Central Florida Water Initiative, which is a regional water-supply planning effort that involves the state Department of Environmental Protection, the St. Johns River Water Management District, the South Florida Water Management District, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and regional water utilities.
The bill also would further establish management plans for farming around Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee Estuary and inland portions of the Caloosahatchee River watershed, and the St. Lucie River and Estuary. The package also would require the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research to provide an annual assessment of the state's water resources and conservation lands.
The environmental groups are seeking, among other things, language that would strengthen water-metering provisions to require data on users that draw 100,000 gallons per day or more. Scott's spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said in an email on Thursday that the governor will sign the measure — along with separate proposals aimed at providing job and educational opportunities to people with developmental disabilities — during a ceremony in his office Thursday.

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Point of View
Palm Beach Post – Opinion by Maggy Hurchalla, Stuart, FL
January 19, 2016
In the 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was asked to save the Everglades. They put up a banner in the Jacksonville office: “It’s the Everglades, stupid !”
The Corps and the state of Florida became partners in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). But CERP hit a brick wall in 2015, when, at every level — from the Legislature to the South Florida Water Management District — the state objected to sending Lake Okeechobee water south to the Everglades. They made it clear that we would not buy the land necessary to send the water south.
Then, the week before the 2016 Everglades Coalition Conference, it was announced that the Everglades had been saved by the introduction of a bill in the House that would assign $200 million a year of Amendment 1 revenues to Everglades restoration. Optimists cheered.
Skeptics pointed out that all the money in the world won’t save the Everglades if we don’t send water south from Lake Okeechobee. If it all got spent on reservoirs and farming, north and east and west of the lake, agriculture and urban development would benefit, but the Everglades and the coastal estuaries would still die.
Everglades restoration is supposed to be about the Everglades. “Legacy Florida,” introduced by Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, will not save the Everglades or the St. Lucie River estuary. But it is a start. Some of the money that an overwhelming number of Floridians voted to go into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund would go where it was intended.
To make it mean something, four other things have to happen.
1. It has to be a bill with no crippling amendments.
2. Floridians need to insist that $300 million of the Amendment 1 money goes into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for land acquisition statewide. Last year, the Legislature’s response was to say we already had too much land. They spent the money on vehicles and agency salaries.
3. The bad “Water Bill” has to be fixed. The Legislature passed it in the first week. It doesn’t help Florida’s waters and does help special interests. It’s about privatizing the waters that belong to the people of Florida through 50-year permits. It’s about weakening cleanup standards and leaving us with dirty waterways. Only Gov. Rick Scott can stop it now.
4. The Army Corps of Engineers and the SFWMD need to jump-start a process now to identify how to send the water south. The fight over the U.S. Sugar option is over. Let’s go forward.
It’s an election year. If your representative won’t support those four things, find someone else to vote for who will.

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With water bill passed, focus is on budget and Amendment 1
TCPalm - by Isadora Rangel
January 19, 2016
TALLAHASSEE — With a controversial water policy bill headed to Gov. Rick Scott's desk, some are now focusing on finding enough money in the state budget to enforce the new law and to carry on restoration projects.
Environmentalists and Senate President-elect Joe Negron, R-Stuart, will lobby for more money for Everglades restoration, conservation land acquisitions, water farming and more employees to inspect whether farmers are complying with regulations established in the bill.
After four years in the making, the legislation cleared the House and Senate last week and changes water regulation for the entire state. It also changes how farm runoff pollution into Lake Okeechobee is regulated, from a permitting program requiring farmers meet certain standards to a cleanup up plan that requires them to follow "best management practices," such as reducing fertilizer use and changing irrigation practices. Scott is expected to sign the bill Thursday.
Some environmentalists, led by the Sierra Club, say the bill relaxes the law instead of cracking down on farmers. Others, such as Audubon Florida, say lawmakers made progress compared to last year's version by adding that best management practices must be enforced and changed if they aren't working.
Much of the success of the bill will depend on whether state agencies have enough money to enforce best management practices.
Cleaning up waterways such as the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon also will depend on the implementation of Amendment 1, the water and land conservation measure voters approved in 2014. Environmentalists filed two pending lawsuits that say the Legislature violated voters' will by using more than $200 million of the money available last year to pay for agency overhead costs. The amendment mandates one-third of real estate transaction tax revenue be used to buy, restore and improve land and water resources.
Here's a wish list of environmental projects:
More inspectors: The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is asking the Legislature to allocate money for eight new positions at its agricultural water policy division, which implements the best management practices and performs inspections.
Water farming: Scott vetoed more than $27 million last year to pay farmers to hold water on their land that otherwise would end up polluting estuaries. This year, Negron is seeking about $13 million — $5.5 million of which would be recurring for 10 years — for the Caulkins Citrus Co. farm in Indiantown, which pumps water from the C-44 Canal. The money will expand the project from 414 acres to 3,000 acres and will hold 30 billion gallons of water per year when completed, Negron said.
Everglades: The river of grass could get a guaranteed source of money for the next 19 years through a bill filed by Negron and Rep. Gayle Harrell. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli is backing the legislation that requires $200 million, or 25 percent — whichever is smallest — of Amendment 1 money be used for Everglades restoration with an emphasis on projects that reduce Lake O discharges into the St. Lucie River. The amendment expires in 2035.
Florida Forever: Audubon Florida wants at least $25 million be used to buy land for parks and habitat conservation under the program. The Legislature gave only $17.4 million last year, far from the roughly $300 million the program used to get annually before the economic recession and the $155 million Amendment 1 sponsors asked.
Family Rural Lands: Under this program, the state pays ranchers to not allow their land to be developed, therefore preserving Florida's natural rural landscape. Environmentalists want at least $25 million, an increase from the $15 million allocated in 2015.
Land purchases: The state needs to buy land to implement projects to restore wetlands and the Kissimmee River to slow down water that flows into Lake Okeechobee. Audubon wants $25 million.
Springs: The water bill establishes a cleanup plan for polluted springs, a milestone for lawmaker who have been trying for year to pass legislation to address the issue. Environmentalists want at least $50 million. The Legislature gave $45 million last year.

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Flint, Michigan water crisis spurs GoFundMe page
NBC-2.com
January 18, 2016
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The water supply in Flint, Michigan is so contaminated with lead that it's spewing out of faucets in unnatural yellow and brown colors. Blood tests show increased levels of poisonous lead in children who live there.
It's so bad the city's 100,000 residents have to live off bottled water. But not everyone can afford it.
That's why people such as Flint resident Marseille Allen have launched GoFundMe campaigns to buy bottled water for people with limited resources.
"Every penny donated will be used to purchase water for Flint residents, particularly for families with children," Allen said on the campaign page, which went live Sunday.
Allen's campaign has a goal of $2,000 and had already raised more than that by Monday morning.
"With the funds raised so far, I can purchase more than 3,600 bottles of water!" Allen said as she thanked donors in a campaign update.
President Obama declared a national state of emergency in Flint on Saturday and the National Guard has been deployed to deliver clean water to residents.
Even Cher has gotten involved -- she's teamed with Icelandic Glacial to donate over 181,000 bottles of water.
Most of the bottled water donated to Flint is delivered to distribution centers, but Allen is worried about people who can't get to these locations.
"We're focused on the hardest hit areas," she said. "The elderly can't pick up water so we'll deliver it to them and others in need."
Allen, who lives near the mayor, filters her own water three times but said many of the people in Flint can't even afford filters.
According to the 2010 U.S. census, Flint's population is 56.6% African American and the median household income is less than $25,000. More than 41% of the population is below the poverty level.
Basic filters start at about $12 and a pack of three filter replacements costs about $20. But the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has started giving away a free water filter to clients.
The city's water supply was contaminated with toxic levels of lead, when its source was changed from Lake Huron to the Flint River.
The decision to change the source was made two years ago by the state in an effort to save money. Michigan was in control of the city's budget because of a financial emergency.
After the change, residents complained about the taste, look and smell of the water. State officials repeatedly told concerned residents there was nothing to worry about, but in August 2015 researchers found high levels of lead in the drinking water.
Now residents, businesses and even hospitals are struggling with basic tasks such as preparing food and washing hands.
Allen hopes the campaign will help spread awareness about how dire the situation is for so many.
"This is going to be an ongoing issue," she said. "It's not going to be fixed until the $1.5 billion to replace all of the water pipes is secured. It could take years so really any contribution that people can make -- at any point -- is going to help."
A Detroit-native, Allen moved to Flint in September for work. She's the president of Warriors Trust Fund, an organization that provides emergency funding and support to military veterans.
"I was always raised to give back," she said. "I'm in it for the long haul."

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How to save Silver Springs ? State, environmentalists differ
St.Augustine Record - by Fred Hiers, Ocala Star-Banner
January 18, 2016
SILVER SPRINGS STATE PARK — Environmentalists at odds with the state over how to clean up Silver Springs have turned to the federal government in a long-brewing battle over how to reduce pollutants in the park’s waters.
A rift between the Silver Springs Alliance and Florida Department of Environmental Protection boiled over in November. The alliance had been a local stakeholder and participant in a two-year, state-led process that yielded a report and cleanup recommendations. The alliance said the report ignored its recommendations and was, essentially, a sham, and it asked that its name be taken off the report.
In December, the Florida Springs Council, an umbrella organization for more than 30 environmental groups, upped the ante by asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to intercede, saying the state’s plan falls miserably short of what’s needed to repair the popular spring and river.
The state environmental department, for its part, says that while its plan is not perfect, it’s a start and will help to lower levels of the pollutant nitrogen, which has been seeping into the springs from surrounding septic tanks and agricultural farms.
But the FDEP and environmentalists differ strongly on how to resolve the issue.
“We all want the best for Silver Springs ... and the (Basin Management Action Plan) is the best way to go,” said Drew Bartlett, FDEP’s deputy secretary for water policy and ecosystem restoration.
“This is nothing but political cover,” said Robert Knight, director of the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute in Gainesville and president of the Silver Springs Alliance.
The Basin Management Action Plan, or BMAP, guide Florida agencies on how to repair damaged springs and rivers. The plans are referenced when grants are allotted for environmental projects.
In its December letter to the EPA, the Florida Springs Council asked the federal agency to “exercise your full authority to require the State of Florida to follow the letter of the law with regards to this BMAP.”
The environmental group has not yet received a response from EPA.
Bartlett says the BMAP is a good place to start, and that changes can be phased in for the future — contrary to the pessimistic picture that environmentalists paint.
Bartlett’s problem, and one that environmentalists pin part of their argument to, is that he can’t say whether nitrogen would in fact be reduced 79 percent, even if all of the BMAP’s programs — present and future — get implemented.
But the depth of that dent doesn’t even come close to satisfying Knight. He contends that at FDEP’s current projection levels, nitrogen will be reduced only a measly 6 percent.
This is how Bartlett lays out his argument to support the BMAP as the best available route to cleaning up Silver Springs, which for decades has seen nothing but an increase in its nitrogen levels.
First, the BMAP takes stock of the areas that are contributing to the spring’s nitrogen levels. The BMAP estimates that 38 percent of the nitrogen that makes its way into the springs comes from septic tanks. There are more than 50,000 septic tanks in Marion County. Cattle farms contribute about 17 percent, followed by agricultural fertilization (11 percent), atmospheric deposition (10 percent), horse farms (9 percent), and urban fertilization (8 percent). The remainder comes from wastewater treatment plants and drainage wells.
Bartlett said that if all the agricultural industries follow best management practices, their contribution would diminish by 30 percent in five years.
As for septic tanks: The state needs public buy-in. Bartlett said FDEP is pushing hard to get local governments to partner with the state in funding programs that help property owners make the switch.
One such project partners the city of Ocala with FDEP and the St. Johns River Water Management District. The latter two agencies contributed $2.5 million each to take as many as 850 septic tanks off line and get homes connected to municipal sewer. Ocala’s utilities contributed $5 million to the project.
Bartlett wouldn’t say how many septic tanks would need to be removed or how much nitrogen would be reduced by their removal. There are 24,000 septic tanks in the primary spring recharge zone.
But Bartlett said he thinks local governments will get onboard with plans to get as many septic tanks as possible closed.
But the state has to start somewhere, he said, and getting a written plan in place is the first step.
“It’s good to have a process codified,” he said.
Knight and fellow skeptical environmentalists say the BMAP is too much wishful thinking.
“Not a single degraded first magnitude spring is on track to be restored to health with a BMAP or an MFL (minimum flows and levels),” the Florida Springs Council’s Bob Palmer said in prepared remarks.
The FDEP has allowed Silver Springs to be polluted for the past 40 years, and the government mentality that allowed such degradation hasn’t changed, Knight said. If the agency were serious about reducing nitrogen, it should have each pollution source reduce its contribution by 79 percent and be done with it, he said.
Knight said FDEP scientists, such as Bartlett, mean well. But they work for a Florida government not willing to go against political pressure and mandate significant pollution reductions. Knight said rather than implement a BMAP that at least is a start, FDEP and its scientists should be honest and tell the public this is the best they could get — politically speaking.

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Killer Florida storm also spawned 'meteotsunami'
Orlando Sentinel – by Alexi Cardona, Naples daily News
January 18, 2016
The National Weather Service confirmed that a "meteotsunami" struck the Naples coast early Sunday.
Meteotsunamis, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are caused by air- pressure disturbances often associated with fast-moving weather systems.
They have characteristics similar to earthquake-generated tsunamis, including large, fast-moving waves, but they are not caused by land disturbances.
The storm that caused the meteotsunami also spawned three confirmed tornadoes in Sarasota, Martin and Manatee counties.
Two people were killed.
Three things need to happen for a meteotsunami to take place.
First, there needs to be a meteorological disturbance, like a squall line, a narrow band of high winds and storms associated with a cold front; frontal passages or pressure jumps.
Two people were killed by a tornado in Manatee County. Tornadoes also struck in Sarasota and Martin Counties Sunday. (Video by FOX35)
Two people were killed by a tornado in Manatee County. Tornadoes also struck in Sarasota and Martin Counties Sunday. (Video by FOX35)
See more videos
Then, there needs to be resonance between the disturbance and the underwater wave speed.
The disturbance has to be traveling at about the same speed as the wave. Lastly, there needs to be wave amplification by harbors, inlets or bays.
The meteotsunami and the storm that swept through Naples, Golden Gate and Immokalee are connected.
NWS meteorologists said a large jet stream in the Gulf of Mexico brought in a cold front west to east and created a squall line, a narrow band of storms and high winds associated with a cold front.
"Within that squall line, there were strong cells and thunderstorms that created tornadoes north of Naples," said Kris Mattarochia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.
The area of low pressure and squall line were intense enough that they created a quick difference in pressure that caused the water level to rise at sea, Mattarochia said.
The strong winds over open water helped the water level increase and pushed it onto the coast.
"The storm raced across the Gulf, that's how fast it was moving," said David Ross, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The arrival of the squall line to Southwest Florida at high tide caused flooding in downtown Naples and elsewhere.
At the Naples Municipal Airport, winds were recorded as strong as 85 mph.
Ross said wave height reached 7.36 feet, which was more than 5.5 feet above the predicted level for the day.
Meteotsunamis occur a few times a year and are more common with systems that come across the Gulf, he said.
According to NOAA, in the United States, conditions for destructive meteotsunamis are favorable in the Gulf of Mexico, along the East Coast and in the Great Lakes.
One notable meteotsunami in Florida took place in July 1992 in Daytona Beach.
A 10-foot wave crashed ashore shortly before midnight, causing injuries to 75 people and damaging property and 100 cars.
Related:           The Nuts and Bolts of a Meteotsunami          Wunderground.com (blog)
NWS: Confirmed 'meteotsunami' occurred in Naples            NBC2 News-Jan 17, 2016
El Niño's effect on the US is 'just beginning' forecasters warn          Daily Mail

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Polluters win again in Florida Legislature
NationalMemo - by Carl Hiaasen, columnist for the Miami Herald
January 18, 2016
Touted as an environmental breakthrough, the water policy bill passed last week by the Florida Legislature is actually a major win for polluters and the politicians they own.
Enforcement of clean-water rules is basically being replaced by the honor system. Big Agriculture couldn’t be happier.
Same goes for House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, whose dream of one day becoming state agriculture commissioner is closer to reality. The Brevard Republican has been an obedient little soldier for the special interests that divert and exploit the state’s fresh water supplies.
Current Ag Commissioner Adam Putnam was the political shepherd for the user-friendly new law. It was written by lobbyists for mega-farming and land corporations, and rammed through the GOP-controlled Legislature.
The Senate passed it with nary a single dissenting vote, reluctant Democrats saying this year’s version was better than last year’s awful bill, which didn’t pass. Even some environmental groups went along with the rewrite, asserting that it was the best they could hope for.
Which is just sad.
David Guest, the longtime managing attorney for Earthjustice in Florida, warned that the damaging effects of the new water bill will “come back to haunt us all.” From now on, farms that send polluted runoff into Lake Okeechobee will only need a permit to restrict the quantity being discharged — not the amount of fertilizer crud in it.
The plan allows Big Ag operators to supervise their own waste releases, which is a fantasy come true for those who pollute, including the sugar barons.
Theoretically, farm companies would work on deadlines to minimize the amount of phosphorus and other harmful substances in their outflow using so-called “best management practices.”
But the guidelines are mostly voluntary, and devised by the agriculture lobby, so you can guess how rigorous they are. Not very.
Sympathetic legislators went even farther, inserting in the law a “cost-share” provision that directs water-management districts to use tax dollars to subside Big Ag’s anti-pollution efforts.
In other words, the public will be paying farm corporations to do something they should pay for themselves — clean up their mess.
Supporters of the final water bill say significant enforcement powers were added to the plan, but that’s mainly on paper. The reality will be different.
At the urging of environmentalists, language was put in allowing the state to inspect farmlands to make sure proper clean-up practices are being followed. However, the law conveniently doesn’t state how or when these inspections would be conducted, or what would constitute a violation.
It doesn’t even say what the fines and penalties would be. And, of course, no money is being appropriated for hiring extra inspectors at the hilariously misnamed Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
So, in truth, the new water bill has no real enforcement mechanism. Another cynical move by GOP lawmakers was placing the Department of Environmental Protection in charge of periodically reviewing the water management practices, to see if pollution is actually being reduced.
It’s no secret that Gov. Rick Scott has made a priority of castrating the DEP. Only a sucker would believe the agency will be re-staffed and re-empowered to take on the task of monitoring corporate polluters.
There’s no denying the water bill is ambitious and far-reaching, and Big Agriculture isn’t the only winner. Developers seeking to tap into rivers and waterways, particularly in Central Florida, should send thank you notes along with their campaign checks to Tallahassee.
A water plan with pollution rules set by the polluters is exactly what you’d expect from the same gang that betrayed the 4 million Floridians who voted for Amendment One.
Some Democrats and environmentalists say they’ll strive to toughen the weak phosphorus rules and expedite cleanup actions. That won’t happen without an epic shift in political power.
Meanwhile the crap being pumped from Lake Okeechobee and surrounding farms continues to imperil the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, the Indian River Lagoon, Gulf Coast beaches and, most critically, the Everglades.
Under the new rules, some farmers and landowners will honestly try to improve the water they flush into Florida’s wetlands and drinking supply. Others won’t, because it’s cheaper and easier to dump unfiltered waste.
If voluntary compliance really worked, we wouldn’t need any pollution laws. Corporations would care as much about clean, safe water as ordinary families do. Unfortunately, that’s not the real world. It’s just a fantasy promoted by industry lobbyists and bought politicians.
And now, in Florida, it’s going to be the law.

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State moves fracking regulation bill forward
Florida Politics - Marc J. Yacht M.D., MPH, a retired public health physician
January 18, 2016
The assault on Florida’s environment continues as a Senate committee last week approved a bill that would make it easier for petroleum companies to use fracking technology to extract oil and gas in the state.
Lest we forget, the administration of Gov. Rick Scott has ordered the words “climate change” scrubbed from official speeches and releases. The governor has politicized the Florida Department of Environment Protection (DEP) and weakened its authority to regulate polluters.
Now Scott and his Republican legislators hope to allow drillers to use hydraulic fracturing: fracking. In a state so concerned about protecting its natural resources, does it make any sense?
The bill is would allow blasting deep underground to release more gas and oil. Currently and for some time to come, there is plenty of fossil fuels. Falling prices show the oversupply. The money spent on fracking should be used to research and develop alternative fuels.
Those favoring fracking stress that it cuts our use of coal, which is a particularly dirty fuel. Burning coal generates 29 percent of our nation’s electricity, but it contributes to the death of thousands of people annually. In contrast, natural gas is a relatively clean fuel.
Well-run drilling operations, which extract oil and gas from thousands of feet underground, have a good safety record. But cracks created by the process may release pollutants into groundwater or the atmosphere.
Proponents argue that fracking improves air quality, decreases our dependence on foreign oil, lowers taxes and increases returns on investments.
Opponents contend that air quality improvements are overstated. More research is needed to understand fracking’s potential health impact on people who live near the wells.
Some people who live near fracking sites say that their tap water has been contaminated. Some claim water has become bubbly and flammable. Others just don’t trust the drilling companies. They claim studies are hidden and accidents are covered up. They point to corporate misconduct in the tobacco, pharmacy, and automobile industries.
Fracking requires a huge amount of water and opponents say the process compromises water resources. They also complain that heavy trucks tear up roads and rigs blight the view. They question whether companies will clean up drill sites after the wells are abandoned.
Wise legislators know that gas and oil are in abundance and that alternative fuels are becoming more affordable.
Florida is flat and low and its environment can be damaged easily. Yet the Scott Administration and the Legislature are eager to allow more drilling and development there.
The Florida Senate and Environmental and Conservation Committee approved Senate Bill 318 last week. It now goes to the Appropriations subcommittee on General Government.
There is no need for hydraulic fracturing; there is no need for Florida coastal or inland gas and oil exploration. There is a need to leave the state’s magnificent coast and pristine Everglades alone.
Related:           Environment unfriendly Florida moves fracking bill forward            Suncoast News

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Chinese billionaire to donate millions to restore Florida mangroves
Naples Daily News – by Eric Staats
January 17, 2016
APLES, Fla. (AP) — Wenliang Wang has never seen the leafless dead mangroves that poke into the sky over a flooded mud flat between Goodland and Marco Island.
But the Chinese billionaire wants to restore them anyway.
Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve is counting on as much as $5 million from Wang's international conglomerate Rilin Industrial Group to restore the 225-acre black mangrove forest along San Marco Road and then apply the same fix to die-offs around the world.
Wang's advisers, who visited the site last week, say it's just what he does: "He has no motive other than the environment," said Ted Venners, chairman of China Green, a Las Vegas-based company that brought the Rookery Bay project to Wang.
For project manager Robin Lewis, Wang's involvement means the restoration is getting money that it has been lacking for years.
"It was like a blessing from heaven to have someone interested in our project," said Lewis, president of Coastal Resources Group.
In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 photo, Rilin Group advisor Jack Shi of Beijing, China, left, and Coastal Resources Group President Robin Lewis of Salt Springs, Fla. talk while visiting the site for the Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration Project in the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, Fla. Rilin Group is funding up to $5 million for the resources group to complete the restoration project.
In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 photo, Rilin Group advisor Jack Shi of Beijing, China, left, and Coastal Resources Group President Robin Lewis of Salt Springs, Fla. talk while visiting the site for the Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration Project in the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, Fla. Rilin Group is funding up to $5 million for the resources group to complete the restoration project.
The die-off about a mile west of Goodland has been decades in the making, scientists say. The construction of San Marco Road, also known as State Road 92, in 1938 cut off tidal flow that feeds the mangroves from Fruit Farm Creek. Mangroves depend on that flow to survive — Lewis calls it their heartbeat. When Hurricane Andrew came through in 1992, rains flooded the forest. By 1995, the die-off was apparent.
"Water can get in but it can't get out," Lewis said. "Left alone this problem just gets worse and worse and worse."
Lewis' solution is simple. He plans to install new culverts under San Marco Road and, where needed, dig barely perceptible channels to help water get into the forest. Instead of water standing for months, drowning the mangroves, water will flow in and out.
"It's just what the forest should be doing," said Kevin Cunniff, research coordinator at Rookery Bay.
Frustrated by a lack of funding, Lewis undertook a first phase of the restoration with volunteers, donations and a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Lewis showed off the results, a greening patch of formerly dead mangroves, last week to Wang's advisers.
"It just shows what Mother Nature can do if given the opportunity," Lewis said.
Still, there are doubts about the restoration project from those who say the only way to restore a dead mangrove forest is to replant it with seedlings. That method, which still is more common, also fails more than it succeeds.
Lewis calls his approach Ecological Mangrove Restoration, or EMR, and it is the new spin and the fact that the project has all its permits and is ready to go that got the attention of Wang's advisers.
Wang has undertaken similar projects before, raising similar questions about his motives. He has spent millions to protect one of the largest wetlands in China in Dandong, across the Yalu River from North Korea, and where Wang owns a strategic port. He also is working to stop deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil, where Wang trades soybeans.
In 2013, the secretive Wang made headlines when he pledged $2 million to the Clinton Foundation, raising questions about his motives and about the foundation's ties to foreign governments.
Last year, The New York Times reported that Wang — Forbes lists his net worth at $1.05 billion and ranks him 288th on China's richest list — was the money behind a shell corporation that bought three condos in the Time Warner building in New York City for $25.6 million.
Rilin adviser Jack Shi's phone rang as he walked along the side of San Marco Road looking at the dead mangroves and talking over the project.
"That was Wang," Shi said.

160117-b
They're back at it in Tally
Ocala.com - by Brad Rogers, Columnist
January 17, 2016
Last Modified: Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 8:57 p.m.
It turns out the Florida Senate and House actually can get together on a major issue and get something done.
As one of their first pieces of business this week, the two chambers passed a new water policy for the state of Florida. The Florida Chamber of Commerce hailed it as historic. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam praised it as a step toward guaranteeing Florida’s water future. And Associated Industries of Florida, the state’s biggest business lobby, predicted “future generations of Floridians will remember the 2016 legislative session” because of this “forward-thinking” legisaltion.
And the environmentalists who actually pressed the issue ? Historic ? Forward-thinking ?  Not so much.
The fact is Florida has been here before. Almost a half century ago the Legislature passed the 1972 Florida Water Resources Act. It created the five water management districts; required the establishment of minimum flows and levels for our lakes, rivers and springs; and established protections for our water resources.
It was a good law, a pioneering law. Problem is, too many of its mandates, like setting minimum flows and levels, were ignored — because it inconvenienced the likes of The Florida Chamber, Associated Industries and the agricultural industry.
So here we are, 40-some years later, with our springs on life support, our rivers and lakes turning green with frightening regularity, red tide fouling our beaches and no plan to institute conservation measures on a wide scale.
I hope the new water policy works. I really do. No one seems to want to acknowledge that what is happening to our springs is also happening to our aquifer — that is, our drinking water.
Water advocates say the new bill falls woefully short, but they are trying to be optimistic.
As Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon Florida and a lobbyist on environmental issues, noted, without enforcement and funding, the bill is meaningless.
“The next step is to make sure the agencies do what the bill said they’re going to do, and that is to create clean-up plans for the 39 outstanding Florida springs and to improve the clean-up plan for Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries,” Draper said.
We’ll see. I’m doubtful because, like so many issues in this era of Republican-led government in Florida, policymakers are reluctant to spend money unless there is a crisis or it benefits special interests (see the Florida Chamber and AIF). As a friend of mine likes to say, they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Meanwhile, the Central Florida Water Initiative is a big part of the new water policy. Experts estimate that by 2030 Florida will need another 1.3 billion gallons of water a day, and the Orlando area is going to suck up one-third of that.
So where do water planners expect to find enough water for already-thirsting Orlando? Again, it’s nothing new — the rivers of North Florida, namely the St. Johns and Ocklawaha.
See, there’s nothing really new — especially the Legislature’s politics of denial when it comes to water.
SPEAKING OF TALLAHASSEE: The first order of business when the Legislature starts a new session is the State of the State address by the governor, and Gov. Rick Scott gave a memorable of one on Monday.
Memorable because Scott devoted almost the entire speech to pushing for $1 billion in tax cuts — mostly for businesses — and $250 million to put in a business-recruiting slush fund.
Peter Schorsch, who writes the blog Florida Politics, summarized Scott’s speech:
“His State of the State address was met with polite, sometimes vigorous applause at all the right clap lines, even though he mentioned nothing about most of the pressing issues of the times.
“You know, like education, water policy, gun rights, gambling, health care, transportation problems, ethics reforms, open government, insurance ... well, you get the drift.
“Indeed, the simplest summary of his 27½ minute speech is: $1 billion in tax cuts and $250 million in business incentives equals more jobs, and ISIS is evil. And to be fair, that’s what he cares about.”
Sigh. Yes, it is.

160116-
Water legislation is better, not best
DaytonaBeachNews-Journal
January 16, 2016
The sweeping water-policy legislation rushed through the state House and Senate on the first week of the annual legislative session will strengthen protection of Florida’s rivers, lakes, springs and estuaries.
That doesn’t mean the bill is flawless — which may explain why leaders sailed it through committees and onto the floor with such rapidity, over the protests of environmental groups who say it is too weak. But by moving quickly, leaders also eliminated opportunities for tampering by special interests — and acknowledged the crucial role that affordable, abundant, clean water plays in Florida’s economic future.
The bill, which is on its way to Gov. Rick Scott, has support across a broad coalition of interests, including two of the state’s largest environmental organizations. It includes significant new protections for water bodies and the Floridan Aquifer. And it creates new channels for state funding to flow toward the biggest threats to the state’s water supply.
Among the key provisions in the bill:
n Tougher protections and deadlines for protecting the state’s springs — including several in Volusia County. This isn’t the first time lawmakers have promised better protections for springs, but backers of this bill say the new legislation has more teeth. Clay Henderson, executive director of the Stetson Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience, says the legislation represents “a very focused commitment” to clean up troubled springs like Gemini Springs and DeLeon Springs, which were specifically included in the legislation.
n A new requirement for common rules and coordination in Central Florida. That area doesn’t include Volusia County, but is likely to have an impact on the St. Johns River and other local water bodies — especially if water management districts agree to allow local governments to pull water from the river to meet public-supply demands in Orange and Seminole counties.
n New alternative water supply projects in three water management districts, including the St. Johns River district, which includes Volusia and Flagler counties.
n Annual assessments of significant water bodies and conservation lands. This could help identify troubled spots, focusing more attention where it’s really needed.
n The establishment of a new database of publicly owned land, including information about recreational or other uses that would be compatible with conservation. The bill requires the development of a mobile app to improve access to conservation land.
n A sharper focus on the interplay of water use and agriculture in South Florida, including impacts on the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee.
Without a doubt, this legislation could have been stronger. But legislative leaders made a calculated decision that it was more important to build support from a coalition of affected stakeholders, including agriculture and business interests. And this won’t be the last water-resource bill ever passed, as House sponsor Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers, told The News-Journal’s Dinah Voyles Pulver.
The next step will be funding — with the greatest priority on more money to clean up leaking septic tanks, which pose a major threat to the health of the Indian River Lagoon as well as West Volusia springs. Lawmakers should also put more money toward other efforts to clean up those troubled water bodies, and developing new, affordable sources of clean water.
This bill isn’t perfect, but if its promise is fulfilled, it will put Florida on the right path to a stronger, more coordinated water policy that balances the needs of humans and the environment. That’s worth celebrating.
Related:           Water Policy Bill Ready for Gov. Scott's Signature  WUSF News

160115-a
Everglades Coalition celebrates new hope at Conference
SouthDadeNewsLeader – by Frank Maradiaga
January 15, 2016
For the  31st year a coalition of environmentally aware groups came together to find ways to help the Everglades, the natural Gem of Florida. While plans are decades away from being complete, the ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables was trafficking in hope. Hope that a steady revenue spring may finally fulfill the promise that many Floridians made by voting to fund a massive restoration plan.
Eric Draper of the Audubon of Florida was instrumental in getting Amendment One passed in the state with nearly 75% of the vote. The idea was that the money would go to for land conservation, and to fund Everglades Restoration for two decades.
  "Last year we didn't get much of what we needed to get, but this year we have great hope because of the Legacy Act," said Draper.
  That legislation would give a commitment of up to 200 million dollars a year for about 10 years.
  "Not only is it a commitment of $200 million dollars a year ,a floor of at least $100 million a year to be spent on CERP projects," said Draper.
  CERP stands for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and it refers to a comprehensive plan to restore the South Florida ecosystem including the Everglades.
  "The bill doesn't just commit to the Everglades Restoration Plan, but to the new feature of the plan: the new Central Everglades plan. It is the real solution to moving water south," he said. "We are very confident that at least the excuse of not having enough money will be removed."
  John Adornato of the National Parks Conservation Association said 2016 would be an amazing year for Everglades Restoration.
  "With the Florida Legacy Bill is one step in the right direction. We have the groundbreaking of the C-111 project. We have proposed Earth Day 2016 ground breaking for the second bridge in Tamiami Trail. These projects are going to move water better through the Everglades as Everglades Restoration intended it," said Adornato.
   South Dade was represented by the City of Homestead as the Municipality showed off how their progression to the future is tied to the health of the surrounding National Parks.
  That was highlighted by a day at the EvergladesNational Park sponsored by the City of Homestead. Before conference goers loaded the colorful NPS Trolleys, they were treated to a presentation at the Seminole Theater that highlighted the different phases the city will instill to mutually grow awareness of themselves and the neighboring parks. 

160115-b
Florida gears up for another Everglades python hunt
Sun Sentinel - by David Fleshler
January 15, 2016
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — More than 400 people have registered so far for Florida's second Python Challenge, hoping to win prizes and fleeting fame in the fight against the Burmese pythons that have infested the Everglades.
The snake-catching festival, which runs from Jan. 16 to Feb. 14, attempts to reduce South Florida's population of the giant constrictors, refugees from the exotic pet trade that have established themselves among the top predators of the Everglades..
With its alluring combination of scary snakes, the Everglades and amateur python catchers -- either intrepid or hapless, depending on your perspective -- the event has drawn interest from national media, as well as from television networks in Japan, Germany and France. Ridiculed in some quarters as a publicity stunt that last time achieved remarkably little for the amount of time and effort involved, the Python Challenge is defended by officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission as a valuable exercise to draw attention to the damage being done by non-native species.
"The intent of the Python Challenge is to engage the public in environmental conservation and invasive species removal," said spokeswoman Carli Segelson. "One of the goals is to make people aware of non-natives and how to report them."
The previous challenge, held in 2013, resulted in the capture of 68 snakes. No one knows how many are out there, but estimates have ranged into the tens of thousands. They feed on rabbits, raccoons, alligators and other wildlife, reducing their numbers and competing with native predators.
Although most participants registered so far are from Florida, others will come from Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Ohio and Michigan. Among the people engaged in this scaly, swampy form of ecotourism will be Vincent Romanelli, a retired New York City police officer, who will drive down for the event from his home in suburban Philadelphia.
"It looks very interesting, and there's a bit of excitement to it," he said. "The environmental issue is very serious."
He studied up on pythons and took the online training offered by the wildlife commission but realizes this will be a challenging hunt.
"I know they're very elusive," he said. "I read they only captured 68 snakes, and I read about how they're camouflaged."
Judging by the results of the 2013 challenge, the average participant's chance of seeing a python -- let alone catching one -- is pretty close to zero.
About two thirds of the pythons were caught by trained snake experts. Just 14 of the 1,558 members of the general public who registered for the hunt caught snakes (some catching more than one), for a success rate of .9 percent.
The python's tan, brown-blotched skin turned out to be excellent camouflage for South Florida, allowing the snakes to become practically invisible in the Everglades.
Aware of the difficulty of finding them, the state wildlife commission this year is offering Python Challenge participants more training and more areas are being opened up to the hunt. They include most of the Everglades, with the exception of Everglades National Park, which does not allow hunting, Big Cypress National Preserve, Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, Collier-Seminole State Park and several wildlife management areas.
Participants will compete for individual and team prizes for catching the most pythons and catching the longest one. The pythons are either bagged and taken alive to a drop-off location, where they're killed, or killed in place using a firearm or captive bolt.
The winner of the 2013 event -- master snake-hunter Ruben Ramirez, a Miami reptile enthusiast who caught 18 snakes -- won't be participating this time around. He said he plans to attend the hunt to assist others, but not compete. And based on their performance last time, he said, the average would-be snake catcher can really use some help.
"In the 2013 one, there were a lot of people who came down here who didn't know what a python was," he said. "They came and thought they would be strolling around pythons. It truly does not work like that."
He hopes to teach people how to read the land, looking for places such as rock ledges and rock piles, dry areas with cover that are close to wet areas, and other places more likely to harbor pythons. They need to be aware of the weather and the time of day to know which habitats the pythons are likely to favor, based on their need to maintain their body temperatures.
But he said it's still a difficult business that can't be taught in a few hours and expects most would-be hunters to come away with empty snake bags.
"The detection rate is like 1 percent," he said. "You could step a foot away from a 15-foot python and you wouldn't ever see it."
How to register for the 2016 Python Challenge Register at www.PythonChallenge.org Individual registration fee: $25 Team registration fee: $75 Participants must pass an online training course before registering.
Related:           Far Fewer Hunters To Take Part In Python Challenge           News Talk Florida
Scouting for the Python Challenge     Florida Sportsman Magazine
As 2016 Python Challenge Begins, Wildlife Officers Explain How to ...     New Times Broward-Palm Beach
Florida's second Everglades python hunt expected to bring ...          Tampabay.com
Python Challenge kicks off this weekend      Naples Daily News

160115-c
Florida House passes priority legislation on comprehensive water policy
Space Coast Daily
January 15, 2016
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – The Florida House today passed three priority pieces of legislation relating to comprehensive water policy, educational options, and pathways to economic independence for persons with disabilities with overwhelming bipartisan support.
 “With the passage of these three bills, we have completed a productive first week of session for Florida families,” said Speaker Steve Crisafulli (R-Merritt Island).
“I thank Representative Caldwell, Representative Fresen, Senator Gaetz and President Gardiner for their hard work and dedication to these important issues. By protecting our natural resources, empowering individuals with disabilities and expanding education options for students and schools, we are creating a stronger future for Florida.”
“In passing the comprehensive water bill, we will modernize our existing water policies and use responsible, science-based solutions to tackle water-quality and water-supply challenges across Florida,” said bill sponsor Representative Matt Caldwell (R-North Fort Myers).
“This bill represents years of development and input from stakeholders on every side of this issue. A comprehensive approach to water will result in our ability to protect our state’s most precious resource from crisis.”
Caldwell, who is also the sponsor of CS/HB 7003 said, “I was honored to work with President Gardiner and members of the Senate to strengthen pathways to economic independence for persons with disabilities. By passing this bill, we will make it easier for Floridians with disabilities to achieve economic security and success.”
In addition to these two bills, the House also passed SB 672, which expands educational options for students and schools.
“With the passage of SB 672, we are creating safer, more focused learning environment for students by incenting school districts to adopt uniform policies,” said Representative Erik Fresen (R-Miami).
“The bill will help families of students with disabilities to provide a more customized education experience that meets the unique needs of their children and helps students with disabilities to obtain a college education.”
CS/CS/SB 552 was developed with input by a wide array of environmental, business, and agricultural leaders such as Audubon Florida, the Everglades Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the H20 Coalition, the Florida Land Council, the Florida Agriculture Coalition, Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, the Florida Realtors, the Florida Association of Counties, the Florida League of Cities, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Farm Bureau, the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and a host of Republican and Democratic legislators.
CS/CS/SB 552 makes a number of revisions to Florida’s water policy.
It creates the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act to expedite protection and restoration of the water flow and water quality in the aquifer and Outstanding Florida Springs.
It ensures the appropriate governmental entities continue to develop and implement uniform water supply planning, consumptive water use permitting, and resource protection programs for the area encompassed by the Central Florida Water Initiative.
The bill updates and restructures the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Act to reflect and build upon the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) completion of basin management action plans (BMAP) for Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee Estuary, and the St. Lucie River and Estuary, DEP’s continuing development of a BMAP for the inland portion of the Caloosahatchee River watershed, and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ implementation of best management practices in the three basins.
The bill modifies water supply and resource planning documents and processes in order to provide more robust representations of the state’s water needs and goals.
The Office of Economic and Demographic Research will be required to conduct an annual assessment of water resources and conservation lands. In addition, the bill requires DEP to publish an online publicly accessible database of conservation lands on which public access is compatible with conservation and recreation purposes and requires DEP to conduct a feasibility study for creating and maintaining a web-based, interactive map of the state’s waterbodies as well as regulatory information about each waterbody.

160114-
Water bill one of the first the Legislature passed this session
TCPalm – by Isadora Rangel
January 14, 2016
TALLAHASSEE — The House gave final passage Thursday to a bill that changes how Florida regulates pollution in Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie River.
The Senate passed the bill Wednesday and sponsors were determined not to allow changes that could delay passage or risk one of Republican Speaker Steve Crisafulli's priorities in 2016. This is one of the first bills the Legislature sent for Gov. Rick Scott to sign into law.
The 134-page legislation covers a lot of ground, from water supply to springs. One of its most controversial parts changes the way the state regulates pollution in farm runoff flowing into Lake Okeechobee, from permitting to a cleanup plan that requires farmers to follow so-called "best management practices," such as reducing fertilizer use.
Critics complain the practices aren't strictly enforced. There are cleanup plans following the same guidelines for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.
Several lawmakers who voted against the bill last year supported it this time because sponsors added enforcement to those cleanup plans and now require the Department of Environmental Protection to enforce the best management practices and change them if they aren't reducing pollution. Among those who changed their mind are Rep. Larry Lee Jr., D-Port St. Lucie, and Senate President-elect Joe Negron, R-Stuart.
House Minority Leader Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, proposed four failed amendments, including ones seeking enhanced monitoring on groundwater withdrawals by businesses; requiring water districts to set a maximum allowed amount of groundwater that can be taken out of springs; and requiring a study on water consumption in the state. He voted against SB 552, saying it benefitted farmers and didn't go far enough. Rep. José Javier Rodríguez, D-Miami, also voted against it.
Audubon Florida, which lobbied against the bill last session and worked to improve it, praised the Legislature's work. The next battle will be to lobby lawmakers to add money to the state budget to hire eight full-time employees at the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to enforce the best management practices, Audubon executive Director Eric Draper said. He's also pushing for a bill filed by Negron and Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, to set aside $200 million for Everglades restoration.

160113-a
Environmentalists blast Florida water protection bill
CBS/AP
January 13, 2016
TALLAHASSEE  — Despite objections from environmentalists, the Florida Senate unanimously passed a massive bill on Wednesday aiming to protect and restore the state’s springs, waterways and groundwater.
Opponents of the bill say it has been weakened by the influence of industry and agriculture interests.
Backers of the measure (SB 552) defeated on voice votes several floor amendments offered mostly by Democrats, intended to fix what environmental groups have called the bill’s flaws.
Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said he expects the House to pass a companion bill, House Bill 7005, to send the legislation to Gov. Rick for his signature by Friday.
Critics said despite the bill’s weaknesses, they still considered it a good first step for protecting Florida’s waterways and the northern Everglades.
“You could be waiting a very long time for a bill that does everything you want it to do,” said Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth.
Some environmental groups, including the Audubon Society of Florida, backed the bill in its present form, saying it adds to protection for Florida’s water. Others including the Sierra Club sought to generate grass-roots pressure for the Legislature to amend the bill, and suggested a dozen amendments to tighten its regulations and enforcement provisions.
The bill got support from industry and agriculture groups not usually known for commitment to environmental causes.
Backers, including the sponsor, Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, acknowledged some of the amendments had merit.
But they said so much work and negotiation has gone into reaching agreements on the bill’s provisions they didn’t want to alter it.
“Let’s not let pursuit of the perfect be the enemy of the excellent,” said Sen. David Simmons, R-Longwood.
Backers have sought for nearly three years to pass such a bill, beginning with a much smaller measure by Dean in 2014. It was aimed solely at springs.
An expanded version died last year when the House adjourned early after last year’s fractious legislative session.
Story from CBS MIami.

160113-b
Investigation: Tax cut robs Everglades, saves South Florida businesses millions
TCPalm.com – by Lucas Daprile, TCPalm
January 13, 2016
ABOUT THIS STORY: The state was poised to collect $21 million without raising taxes, money that could have restored the Everglades and Indian River Lagoon.
Then the South Florida Water Management District board unexpectedly reversed its decision, the agency's top two executives resigned and Gov. Rick Scott's former chief attorney took over.
The dramatic change raised a question: Who had the most to gain financially?
We knew the median savings for homeowners would be $3 a year, but what about the water district's top taxpayers?
This Treasure Coast Newspapers exclusive investigation tallied how much South Florida's 15 biggest businesses saved and how much they spent on lobbyists and campaign donations to Scott and the GOP.
A controversial water district tax cut that could have generated $21 million for Everglades restoration will save South Florida businesses millions instead.
The South Florida Water Management District's 15 top taxpayers, for example, will save a combined $1.2 million annually, according to a Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation. The biggest winner is Florida Power & Light Co., which will save an estimated $531,550 annually.
The 15 companies — seven hotels, three utilities, two tourist attractions, two retail stores and one sugar producer — have donated a combined $24 million to Gov. Rick Scott's campaign, his political committee and the Republican Party since 2010. They also spent a combined $1.5 million to lobby the governor and the water district from June 2014-15.

160113-c
Major players react to Senate passage of water legislation
SaintPetersBlog - by Staff
Jan 13, 2016
On Wednesday, the Senate passed a major water bill, a major priority of House Speaker Steve Crisafulli and the object of much interest on the part of environmentalist community as well.
Reactions from significant groups and individuals will continue to flow in as the debate goes forward, but for now here’s a look at what some of the most influential Floridians are saying about the move.
The Senate itself put out a detailed statement breaking down the legislation piece by piece. It heralded the move as a major step forward, one year after disagreement on health care policy ended the Session and sent a similar environmental bill to its demise.
“Passing this legislation today is a win for Floridians,” said President Andy Gardiner. “This legislation increases public access to conservation lands for recreational purposes, protects Florida’s unique environment, and ensures Floridians have quality water for future use through restoration and conservation efforts of our water bodies.”
Gardiner also thanked Sen. Charlie Dean, who chairs the Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation committee.
“Today, the Senate approved legislation to transform the way Florida conserves our most valuable natural resources, making certain that we take a statewide, comprehensive approach on restoring and preserving our water and natural resources,” Dean said. “This bill establishes a systematic and transparent process to ensure taxpayer dollars are allocated to meaningful water quality and restoration projects and implements best management practices to increase our clean water supply.”
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam also relayed his pleasure at the bill moving forward.
“I thank the Senate for the passage of this key legislation,” Putnam said. “This session, we have an opportunity to pass meaningful water policy reform that will help meet the needs of our growing population and thriving economy, while protecting our most precious natural resources.
“This proposed legislation is a much-needed step forward that accounts for a long-term, science-based and strategic approach to protecting our water,” Putnam said.
The Associated Industries of Florida’s affiliated H2O Coalition also had fond words for the legislation Wednesday. The group was formed in part to promote the bill in 2015.
“The Florida Senate’s adoption of SB 552 has been many years in the making. Over the past year, this legislation has been improved to strengthen the protection of Florida’s springs and create stronger water quality standards. Today, a unanimous, bipartisan majority has agreed this comprehensive approach to water policy represents the best path forward for our people and our state,” said AIF VP of State and Federal Affairs, Brewster Bevis.
“We appreciate the leadership of President Gardiner and Senators Dean, Simmons, Hays, Simpson, and Montford.  Their tireless work on this bill has put us one step closer to passing this historic reform.”

160113-d
Poll: Floridians overwhelmingly support improving water quality standards
FloridaPolitics.com - by Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster
January 13, 2016
Floridians overwhelmingly support increased water quality and quantity standards, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
The survey, commissioned by Associated Industries of Florida’s H2O Coalition, found 82 percent of respondents said they support a plan that creates new standards for Florida’s water policy and efforts to improve water quality.
State lawmakers are expected to approve an extensive water policy bill in the coming days. The state Senate is scheduled to take up the measure (SB 552) Wednesday during a floor session.
The proposal, which has been years in the making, would create the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protect Act; updates and restructures the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program; and calls on the state DEP to conduct an assessment of water resources and conservation lands.
“Across the state, Floridians are supportive of ensuring access to an abundant and clean water supply,” said Brewster Bevis, chair of the H20 Coalition, in a statement. “The comprehensive water bill under consideration in the Legislature accomplishes these goals and takes a historic step forward in protecting and preserving Florida’s most natural resource.”
The AIF H2O Coalition poll found that 25 percent of respondents said improving water quality is the state’s greatest environmental concern, while 17 percent of respondents said dealing with climate change and saving freshwater springs were top concerns.
Cleaning up the Everglades and increasing Florida’s water supply each received 15 percent; while 5 percent of respondents said improving air quality was the greatest concern for them.
The poll also found that 38 percent of respondents said they would most like to see Amendment 1 dollars be spent on protecting drinking water. Twelve percent of respondents said they would most like to see the money used to buy land/protect the Everglades.
The poll was conducted by McLaughlin & Associates from Dec. 1 through Dec. 3. The firm surveyed 600 likely 2016 general election voters by phone by professional interviewers. To increase coverage, 294 of the 600 interviews were conducted by cellphones.
The poll has a 4 percent margin of error.

160113-e
Senate passes education, water bills
FloridaPolitics.com - by Jim Rosica
January 13, 2016
The sausage-making began in earnest Wednesday morning, as the Florida Senate teed up nine bills for final approval and passed a sweeping $95 million educational policy bill and a water protection measure desired by House Speaker Steve Crisafulli.
The education bill (SB 672) was sponsored by GOP state Sen. Don Gaetz of Niceville, a former schools superintendent. Among other things, it expands scholarships for students with disabilities and awards public and charter schools $10 per K-8 student if they adopt a dress code or require school uniforms.
The dress-code provision generated the most questions, with Lake Worth Democrat Jeff Clemens even saying he was concerned about “shoving school uniforms down the throats” of constituents. He offered an amendment to delete that language, then withdrew it.
The bill then hit a snag when Gaetz, as a last-minute change, wanted to name the scholarships after Senate President Andy Gardiner. He politely rejected that notion, saying he promised to send the House a “clean bill.” But Crisafulli actually called the Senate, saying the idea was OK by him.
Finally, Gaetz asked for ceremonial co-sponsors from the floor and 38 other senators added their names, missing only state Sen. Denise Grimsley of Sebring, who had an excused absence.
In closing, Gaetz said there wouldn’t be lobbyists or protesters interested in the passage of his bill, “just thousands and thousands of Florida families who are waiting quietly, and prayerfully, to see what we will do today,” he said.
It then passed 39-0 and was sent to the House.
The water protection bill (SB 552) was sponsored by state Sen. Charlie Dean, an Inverness Republican.
According to the Associated Press, it “modifies dozens of areas of Florida law including controlling pollution and restoring natural water flows in springs and rivers; developing alternative water supplies; water-use permitting; and restoring flows and preventing pollution around Lake Okeechobee and the northern Everglades.”
The legislation easily survived several attempts at floor amendments to make it even tougher; environmentalists say it doesn’t go far enough to guard the state’s springs and surface water.
It was supported by the H2O Coalition, an offshoot of the Associated Industries of Florida business lobby, which called the bill “the best path forward for our people and our state.”
Getting a water bill done this session is one of Crisafulli’s top goals before he departs the Legislature: He’s term-limited this year.
The bill passed the Senate 37-0. That makes two priority bills that likely will be the first triumphs the two leaders will advertise as signs of their new harmony after the 2015 regular session that ended in impasse over health care funding.
“What you see is a real trust between the Speaker and me going into this Session that we want to help each other,” Gardiner later told reporters.
Related:           Senate gives water bill a unanimous vote       Tallahassee.com
Commissioner Adam Putnam's Statement on Passage of Senate ...   Southeast AgNet
Senate passes bill designed to protect water quality, supply  Orlando Sentinel

160112-a
'Body bags' haunt my vision at Everglades Conference
Huffington Post – by Audrey Peterman
January 12, 2016
For decades my husband Frank has periodically mentioned the "cultural lag" theory that he first heard in college in the 1960s. It refers to what happens when things change so fast that our culture cannot keep up. I experienced what that meant when I attended the 31st Annual Conference of the Everglades Coalition at the elegant Biltmore Hotel in Miami January 8. The potential consequences are frightening.
Comprising more than 50 leading environmental organizations and federal agencies including the US Army Corps of Engineers, state and local agencies, government leaders, ecological and environmental scientists and planners, the Coalition includes some of the most influential people in the country focused on restoring the Everglades since 1985.
After a hiatus of several years during which we've learned the imminent threat that sea level rise poses to the South Florida peninsula, I returned to the conference to find that the Coalition is still focused almost exclusively on protecting the lands and processes of the western undeveloped Everglades. Plug "South Florida, sea level rise" into any search engine and you will find varying versions of:
"Florida is in the crosshairs of climate change. Rising seas, a population crowded along the coast, porous bedrock, and the relatively common occurrence of tropical storms put more real estate and people at risk from storm surges aggravated by sea level rise in Florida, than any other state by far. Some 2.4 million people and 1.3 million homes, nearly half the risk nationwide, sit within 4 feet of the local high tide line. Sea level rise is more than doubling the risk of a storm surge at this level in South Florida by 2030."
So it was a shock to walk into the Biltmore where in 1999 the Coalition gave us the George Barley Award, and find many of the same people of the same demographic makeup (99% white in one of the most racially diverse areas of the country) having the same conversation about buying land and restoring water flow in the 'Glades.
In this case, "cultural lag" might refer to our inability to respond to the new environmental reality - that we can protect nothing in South Florida without dealing with sea level rise and its well documented consequences in the near-term of 15 years.
Frank and I have a long history with the Coalition, dating back around 1996. Our small company strove to integrate the interests and concerns of people in the urban core who are minorities or socially and economically disadvantaged. We sought funding to help educate urban communities about the restoration and its urban arm, Eastward Ho!, the plan to redevelop the urban core to accommodate more than two million more people in 15 years.
We tried to get the Coalition to support the Environmental Justice Act of 2000 which requires federal agencies to prioritize the fair treatment of these communities, and asked members to press for the safe remediation of Superfund sites in Black communities including Wingate in Fort Lauderdale. At our urging US Rep. Carrie Meek included a section in the 2000 Federal Water Resources Development Act, "Community Outreach and Assistance" requiring outreach and education of the urban population and involvement of the minority business community in the billions of dollars flowing from the restoration.
This process of working to integrate the issues of urban and poor communities in the restoration was so involved that we recorded it in our book, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care, published 2009. Repeatedly we found that the leaders were unable to give equal weight to the human aspects of the restoration. It seems evident now that this tendency will continue, at great detriment to the local population, the national parks and everything in this ecosystem.
It was a shock to find this year's conference jubilantly celebrating the new infusion of federal dollars for restoration projects in the natural Everglades, while seeming to completely overlook the threat from water that surrounds us on three sides. The state and local political leadership appear wholly unprepared to deal with this predicament - one mayor calls for depopulation; another places his hopes on technology, and the governor has forbidden mention of climate change. So I had high hopes that the environmental leadership would be out front on this issue.
The cost of failure to deal with looming environmental problems was illustrated in the most ghastly way for me in 2005. At an environmental meeting in Atlanta, the keynote speaker told the audience he'd just returned from New Orleans. He said he took a helicopter ride over the levees with city and federal officials and they discussed how the dikes would not stand up to a Category 5 storm.
"So, they've bought 1,000 body bags and have them in storage. . ." he said.
Two weeks later Katrina hit. (According to a CNN report dated Sept. 9, 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ordered 25,000 more body bags to accommodate the demand.)
Listening to speakers at the Coalition conference, I couldn't help thinking how few people know what's coming and how little time we have to prepare. On the panel, Ecology and Economy: National Park Restoration for Local Communities, I suggested that the Coalition take the lead in making the case for our economy to be retooled to focus on protecting us from the coming floods. 15 years is very little time to determine what kind of flood control measures will work and to develop and build the required structures, I pointed out.
I don't know if I made a difference, or if former astronaut and longtime Florida US Senator Bill Nelson, who spoke passionately on the same subject at lunchtime, changed any minds. But God forbid that 2030 is the year that our "cultural lag" manifests with the purchase of thousands of body bags for South Florida. It's urgent to act now to present such a catastrophe.
While we're at it, you should probably check what the projections are for your neck of the woods. It's as simple as plugging your zip code in.

160112-b
Energy security strong while protecting SWFla environment
Naples Daily News - Guest commentary by Kevin Doyle, the executive director for Consumer Energy Alliance-Florida and Brewster Bevis, the vice president of Associated Industries of Florida
January 12, 2016
Florida is no stranger to energy production, particularly here in Southwest Florida.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says that production from Florida's Panhandle and the Southwest region around the Everglades once peaked at more than 100,000 barrels per day.
Unfortunately, that was back in 1978. Production statewide has plummeted to approximately 6,000 barrels per day in recent years, and the state has few other areas with proven crude oil reserves.
If we can properly embrace and support a comprehensive, all-of-the-above energy strategy that safely utilizes every yet-to-be-tapped resource available to us, regardless of where it comes from, the potential benefits to Florida would be tremendous.
For Southwest Florida, that includes waters deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
That's because even though more petroleum-fired electricity is generated in Florida than in any other state, the bulk of the petroleum we consume — from motor gasoline and blending components to residual fuel oil, ethanol, and jet fuels — comes from somewhere else.
Florida doesn't have crude oil refineries, nor does it mine for coal or produce much natural gas. And renewables currently account for only a small portion of its electricity. Instead, the state depends largely on petroleum products delivered by tanker and barge to marine terminals throughout the state.
In other words, the energy Florida requires to continue growing its residential, commercial and industrial sectors, and their adjoining industries and must-see tourist attractions — all sectors that drive the Sunshine State's economy — comes from imports bought from other states and countries.
As you may have read, there are efforts underway to start changing that. Companies like Burnett Oil are responsibly seeking the federal and state permits necessary to continue energy exploration.
If we do, the benefits could be endless.
According to various economic studies, Florida stands to gain thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of tax revenue over the next two decades if production off Florida's Southwest coastline commences. How much in particular varies, but the American Petroleum Institute (API) projects that the state would gain 183,000 jobs and $53 billion in tax revenue by 2035. In that time, the state's economy would also get a $440 billion shot in the arm.
The risks, meanwhile, would be far fewer than what the naysayers suggest. Offshore energy producers nowadays must comply with a throng of requirements that Sally Jewell, the secretary of the Department of Interior, deems "the most aggressive and comprehensive offshore oil and gas regulatory reforms in the nation's history."
Producers have also taken voluntary measures to improve the safety of their operations. That includes state-of-the-art technology used for seismic surveys, which have been conducted safely throughout the U.S. and around the world for decades, including onshore in Southwest Florida.
With the University of Florida estimating that the state's population will swell from nearly 20 million at the end of 2014 to almost 29 million by 2040, and the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council reporting that the state will require about 10 more gigawatts by 2035 (one gigawatt powers about 750,000 homes, for example), one must ask: Where is all that additional power going to come from?
The answer could be here, in Southwest Florida, if we can provide the safe, sensible regulatory environment we need to enhance our energy infrastructure today so that we can generate the safe, affordable power we'll need for tomorrow.
We can protect the environment and develop energy. In Florida, it's time we assess our options.

160112-c
To protect Everglades, Broward Proposes ban on fracking
BrowardPalmBeach - by Jerry Iannelli
January 12, 2016
In response to one landowner's request to drill an "exploratory well" in the Everglades, the Broward County Commission has proposed a blanket ban on fracking throughout the county. The ordinance, which was sponsored by Commissioner Beam Furr, moved forward in today's commission meeting and is now set for a public hearing on January 26.
The county's water utilities "rely entirely upon groundwater sources, including the Biscayne and Floridan Aquifers, for potable water supplies," a proposed draft of the ordinance reads. Additionally, "there have been more than one thousand (1,000) documented cases of water contamination near fracking sites" in the United States, the draft says.
Hydraulic fracking is the process by which oil companies inject water, sand, and a host of other chemicals (which energy companies are not legally required to disclose) into the ground to release underground gas and oil. Because companies are not required to disclose what chemicals they are pumping into the ground, it can be hard to trace exactly what effects the technique has on the environment around it. Environmentalists, at least, believe fracking can potentially contaminate groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals.
(Famously, people living in communities near fracking wells have posted videos to YouTube, where they are able to light on fire the water coming from their faucets, ostensibly from chemical contamination.)
Senior County Attorney Michael C. Owens, who wrote the bill on behalf of the county, told New Times the ordinance was drafted in response to Kanter Real Estate LLC's application to drill an exploratory well in Broward's portion of the Everglades.
"As a straightforward and factual matter, there was an application with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to drill an exploratory well," Owens said. "There appears to be no current state regulation that is in place regarding whether or not a production well could use fracking or not."
Kanter reportedly owns 20,000 undeveloped acres in the Everglades, just west of Miramar. A number of Democratic state lawmakers have said they will fight any attempt to drill for oil in the Everglades, and a number of cities within the county, including Tamarac and Sunrise, have passed resolutions against drilling.
The Everglades, which require some of the cleanest water in the world to keep stable, would be particularly vulnerable if fracking chemicals were to leak into the ecosystem.
Furr, in a statement issued to New Times, said the county had discussed what to do about the proposal "over the last year."
"Fracking and extreme well stimulation have revolutionized the oil and gas industry in places like Pennsylvania and North Dakota," he said.  "But we know that these techniques involve drilling through the water table and shooting a mystery fluid into the oil deposit to force the oil out. Never in a million years could I see how it makes sense to let this happen in the Everglades. Not on top of the aquifer where most of South Florida gets its drinking water."
Furr said he was worried about Florida Senate Bill 318, which, if passed, would take away individual counties' power to ban fracking at the local level. The state, instead, would be the only body allowed to regulate the fracking industry, in a move critics say benefits the gas drilling industry.
Read a draft of the ordinance here.

160111-a
2016 Legislative Food Fights: Water policy, money for Everglades could be hot topics
SaintPetersBlog - by Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster
January 11, 2016
Lawmakers may be prepared to pass a massive water bill, but that doesn’t mean the battle over Florida’s water woes is over.
State lawmakers are expected to take up the measure — HB 7005 and SB 552 — shortly after the annual 60-day session convenes this week. The measure, years in the making, is likely to pass both chambers.
Among other things, the proposal creates the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act; updates and restructures the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program; and calls on the Department of Environmental Protection to conduct an annual assessment of water resources and conservation lands.
The proposals have received  widespread support in committee hearings, and Rep. Matt Caldwell, a North Fort Myers Republican and sponsor of the House bill, said it is an effort to clean up state statutes. Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Miami Democrat, thus far is the only state lawmaker to vote against it.
It’s a top priority for Rep. Steve Crisafulli and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and has received support from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Farm Bureau Federation and Associated Industries of Florida.
In recent weeks, however, environmental organizations have come out in opposition.
In December, more than 100 environmental organizations and businesses — including 1000 Friends of Florida, Florida Clean Water Network, the League of Women Voters of Florida and Sierra Club — sent a letter to Crisafulli, Senate President Andy Gardiner and state lawmakers calling for the bill to be amended to address “significant concerns.”
House and Senate Democrats said they would bring up floor amendments to address concerns, but bill sponsors, including Caldwell, have said they would oppose those changes.
Lawmakers may also be prepared set aside additional dollars for projects to restore the Everglades, following a tumultuous 2015 session where they faced criticism for how Amendment 1 dollars were allocated.
Rep. Gayle Harrell, a Stuart Republican, has filed legislation, HB 989, that secures 25 percent or $200 million annually, whichever is smallest, from money available through the land and water conservation amendment. Sen. Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican, is sponsoring similar legislation, SB 1168, in the Senate.
Lawmakers expect to see a significant increase in Amendment 1 dollars this year, and Caldwell said he hopes to spend “as much as we can on land acquisition.”
Several environmental groups, including the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club —  have asked a judge to rule the state Legislature violated the constitution by spending some of the Amendment 1 dollars on to pay for salaries and other agency expenses.

160110-a
Agency proposes removing manatees from endangered list
ABCnews4.com - by Andy Paras
January 10, 2016
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Manatee sightings used to be rare in South Carolina but that's changed over the last 20 years -- and not just here.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week proposed that the West Indian manatee be downlisted from endangered to threatened, citing significant improvements in its population and habitat conditions and a reduction in direct threats.
The manatee would still be protected federally under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The act defines an endangered species as one currently in danger of extinction and defines a threatened species as one that is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.
In South Carolina, only 52 reports of manatees were documented from 1850 to 1992, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
That began to change in 1996. Between 1996 and 2003, an additional 848 manatees were reported, the department says.
The Fish and Wildlife Service attributed the manatee growth to several measures that it says would remain in place. Those include the establishment of protection areas, retrofitted water control structures and Florida counties that developed manatee protection plans. The U.S. Coast Guard has also been working with the agency to enforce manatee protection areas to minimize collisions with high-speed boats.
Federal officials now estimate the manatee population to be about 13,000, with about half in Florida.
"The manatee's recovery is incredibly encouraging and a great testament to the conservation actions of many," said Cindy Dohner, the Service's Southeast Regional Director. "Today's proposal is not only about recognizing this progress, but it's also about recommitting ourselves to ensuring the manatee's long-term success and recovery."
The Service has published its proposal in the Federal Register, beginning a 90-day comment period that invites the public to submit scientific or technical information to help the agency reach a final decision.
The public can comment on the proposal through April 7. More information is available here.
Related:           US set to decide on manatee status petition   Observer-Reporter
Ed Killer: Feds say manatees no longer endangered  TCPalm
Manatees Are No Longer Endangered, US Agency Says      Nature World News

160110-b
A local lesson on state water policy
TheLedger.com - Editorial
January 10, 2016
Amid the gun bills, tax cuts, education initiatives and health care reform proposals to be weighed, sliced and diced over the next two months by the Florida Legislature, a wide-ranging water proposal that attempts to balance environmental protection with users’ needs appears to be the first thing lawmakers will tackle this session.
That’s appropriate. Because water, wherever it’s found, is literally Florida’s lifeblood.
State Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who has been a vocal proponent of a comprehensive overhaul of Florida’s water policy, tells The Ledger that this bill offers “a much-needed step forward that accounts for a long-term, science-based and strategic approach to protecting our water.” Environmentalists counter that they wish some parts of it were stronger, but say they are generally pleased. But one aspect appears to be lacking.
As Bob Palmer, legislative committee chairman for the Florida Springs Council, told The Ledger, “There’s really nothing in there for conservation and nothing to significantly reduce water use or fertilizer use.” Palmer labeled the measure a “huge missed opportunity.”
If Palmer’s right that lawmakers view conservation as an afterthought, then we’re concerned the rest of his observation may prove prophetic.
But then, we would ask, who should be empowered to ensure that we have enough water to go around? That job belongs to state water managers, but could shift to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under this bill. Some state officials should have a process or tool to oversee water users who utilize wells and aren’t on a metered system run by a municipal or private utility.
Yet those local utilities could have the most effect in protecting the water supply.
Take Lake Alfred, for example. Recently, its City Commission approved a $30,000 water-rate study to freshen up its billing system for water and sewer services. City records indicate a water customer now pays $12.95 for the first 6,000 gallons used. That rate has remained the same since 2003. Wastewater customers pay a flat rate of $40.54, with no cap on residential use. That charge is unchanged for 26 years.
But here is the problem, based on a 2014 study of municipal utilities statewide by Raftelis Financial Consultants, the firm hired by the city. Its report, which reviewed rates for water systems servicing 14 million Florida residents, suggests that Lake Alfred has one of the highest rates among Polk County’s nine systems — third in line behind the city of Frostproof and Polk County, based on 4,000 gallons consumed. For that much, Lake Alfred customers pay a total of $53.49.
Yet the Raftelis report indicates that the average bill at 4,000 gallons for all the systems included in its survey is $55.98, meaning Lake Alfred — and most of Polk County — is below average. When consumption is doubled to 8,000 gallons, the water bill in Lake Alfred climbs a whole 20 cents, to $53.69. The average around the state, however, is $86.40 — or 61 percent more than in Lake Alfred.
City Manager Ryan Leavengood told The Ledger the study’s goal is to make the rate structure more equitable. "We want to create a system where a customer pays based on usage,” he said. “The current system does not encourage water conservation and the customers that use the least amount of water are essentially subsiding the utility bill for higher usage consumers by paying that flat rate." Leavengood appears to think that can be done by shaving the base rate and gearing the system more toward consumption.
He’s right. If you live in Lake Alfred and the cost to you for using 8,000 gallons of water is only 20 cents more than if you used 4,000 gallons, where is the incentive to turn off the faucet? The answer is you don’t have one. Maybe some conservation-minded folks would eye their consumption for the greater good. But having to pay for that provides a better incentive that simply hoping for a conscience.
We’re not suggesting Lake Alfred begin to gouge its customers. Yet it’s clear that the city needs a way to incentivize water customers to save water. Although some form of alternative source will likely be needed in the future, state water managers will tell you that at the moment conservation is the cheapest, most effective way to prolong our drinking-water supply, and ensure more for all of us. On its website the Southwest Florida Water Management District observes, “Florida’s water is a precious, limited resource that should be saved whenever possible. Water conservation is a key link between balancing current and future water needs.”
We hope our lawmakers can realize that too. But for now one way to keep water flowing for all users is to make sure we control usage, and Lake Alfred seems to be on the right track.

160110-c
Don't pass a bad water bill
Gainesville.com - Editorial
January, 10, 2016
While last year’s Legislature left plenty of unfinished business, this year’s version plans to swiftly pass priorities such as water policy legislation.
The water bill has been two years in the making but, unlike a fine wine, has only worsened with age. The urgency with which lawmakers expect to approve the measure belies the fact it would delay efforts to reverse the decline of Florida's beleaguered water resources.
The lists of the legislation’s critics and supporters suggest it would represent business as usual for those who have depleted and polluted our groundwater and water bodies. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and groups representing big agriculture and business back its passage, while more than 100 environmental groups have asked lawmakers to put on the brakes.
Those groups sent a letter in early December calling for changes to be made. They include accelerating the timeline to meet water-quality targets from the two decades or more allowed under the current legislation.
As David Guest of Earthjustice suggested in a guest column last month in The Sun, agricultural lobbyists have used the bill to further weaken already weak regulations. The bill would continue the state’s reliance on voluntary measures, known as best management practices, to keep agriculture from polluting water.
“It's as if the Highway Patrol said it was OK for some of us to voluntarily report our speed on Florida highways,” Guest wrote. “Nobody would ever get a speeding ticket.”
The diminished flows and clouded waters of our region's springs demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach. Unfortunately, the bill only puts deadlines on cutting contamination of springs deemed “outstanding.”
The Florida Springs Council, a consortium of 35 environmental groups, recently sent its own letter outlining its concerns. The letter noted some springs-protection provisions in the bill were worthy of support, but the measure would fail to restore the state’s springs for the foreseeable future.
The group called for changes that include metering permitted groundwater withdrawals of 100,000 gallons or more. Another priority of the council would be requiring water management districts to estimate the maximum amount of available groundwater.
The council’s members are under no illusion that lawmakers will listen to their concerns. The group’s legislative chair, Bob Palmer of Gainesville, told the News Service of Florida that he didn’t expect legislative leadership to make changes on their own.
"I think it will be a victory to at least get them considered, debated and voted upon,” he said.
House State Affairs Chairman Matt Caldwell, a North Fort Myers Republican who is the prime sponsor of the water proposal, suggested the measure would pass unchanged. He told the News Service he's willing to discuss additions sought by the springs council, but those issues would likely have to wait for future legislation.
"At this point the water package has been debated and negotiated for two years," he said. "The kind of things they're asking about I'm willing to talk about in a separate venue. This is not going to be the last natural-resources bill ever passed. But I think this one is ready to move forward."
The diminished flows and clouded waters of our region's springs demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach. Unfortunately, the bill only puts deadlines on cutting contamination of springs deemed “outstanding.”
The Florida Springs Council, a consortium of 35 environmental groups, recently sent its own letter outlining its concerns. The letter noted some springs-protection provisions in the bill were worthy of support, but the measure would fail to restore the state’s springs for the foreseeable future.
The group called for changes that include metering permitted groundwater withdrawals of 100,000 gallons or more. Another priority of the council would be requiring water management districts to estimate the maximum amount of available groundwater.
The council’s members are under no illusion that lawmakers will listen to their concerns. The group’s legislative chair, Bob Palmer of Gainesville, told the News Service of Florida that he didn’t expect legislative leadership to make changes on their own.
"I think it will be a victory to at least get them considered, debated and voted upon,” he said.
House State Affairs Chairman Matt Caldwell, a North Fort Myers Republican who is the prime sponsor of the water proposal, suggested the measure would pass unchanged. He told the News Service he's willing to discuss additions sought by the springs council, but those issues would likely have to wait for future legislation.
"At this point the water package has been debated and negotiated for two years," he said. "The kind of things they're asking about I'm willing to talk about in a separate venue. This is not going to be the last natural-resources bill ever passed. But I think this one is ready to move forward."

160110-d
Montford has a big district and a big agenda for 2016
Tallahassee Democrat – by Bill Cotterell
January 10, 2016
When a committee chairman asked state senators to bring him their top three priorities for the 2016 session, Sen. Bill Montford said he submitted 33.
That’s because his district covers 11 counties, more than any other member. That means he hears from 11 sheriffs, county commissions, supervisors of election, property appraisers – not to mention citizens concerned with issues coming up in the Capitol over the next two months.
So Montford told an interviewer he took the top three items on each county’s legislative wish list. And that’s not counting some important business he came up with on his own.
Representing the Big Bend, getting pay raises for state employees is a top priority for Montford. With only one token raise in eight years, and the 3 percent pension charge levied on state salaries four years ago, Montford said “we’re going backward.”
A former teacher, principal and Leon County Schools Superintendent, Montford is executive director of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. That puts education atop his to-do list, and Montford said accountability measures, testing and per-student funding will again be major concerns this year.
Chairing the Senate Agriculture Committee, Montford said he also wants to work on “citrus greening,” a crop-destroying infestation he said causes unripened fruit to fall from trees. He said universities are doing DNA research on healthy trees, hoping to find prevention methods.
“This is worse than citrus canker,” he said.
Several local governments have passed resolutions against the “fracking” oil-exploration method, and Montford said the practice is a threat from the Everglades to Wakulla Springs.
“That’s an issue we have to grapple with quickly and very effectively,” he said.
“We can’t allow any kind of fracking or exploration that’s likely to cause damage. Out of the 50 states, you’d think Florida would be the last place for fracking, because we’re literally sitting on water. Why would we take that risk?”
Here’s a list of Montford’s sponsored bills for the session starting on Tuesday:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/s3/?Tab=Bills

160109-a
House speaker: This is Florida's year of water
Orlando Sentinel – by Steve Crisafulli, Guest columnist
January 9, 2016
Steve Crisafulli gives a preview of how water policy will fare in the Florida Legislature.
Florida's most valuable natural resource is our water. From it flows life for our people, our food supply, our environmental resources and our economic prosperity. Policy choices we make today will greatly impact the future of our state.
As a seventh-generation Floridian, I want to ensure that the quality and quantity of our water resources will serve our state for generations to come. It is why I have worked to shine a spotlight on the need for comprehensive water policy during my term as speaker of the House.
For the past two years, the Florida Legislature has worked to produce a comprehensive bill to protect our water supply and improve our water quality. Our work will culminate later this week when members will vote to turn the natural resource bill into state law.
The credit for this historic legislation goes to a broad coalition of constituent groups who have worked together to find common ground and long-lasting solutions. This was no small task. While comprehensive water legislation has been an often-talked-about goal, infighting and disagreement have prevented the passage of a significant bill for many years.
Thanks to the work of Audubon Florida, the Everglades Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the H20 Coalition, the Florida Land Council, the Florida Agriculture Coalition, Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and a host of Republican and Democratic legislators, we will deliver Florida a true victory.
While the bill covers nearly every aspect of water policy, it can be summarized in four broad categories.
First, it builds off the good work of a group of senators led by Charlie Dean to create the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act, which expedites protection and restoration of the water flow and water quality in the aquifer and Outstanding Florida Springs.
Second, the bill ensures the appropriate governmental entities continue to develop and implement uniform water-supply planning, consumptive water-use permitting, and resource-protection programs for the area encompassed by the Central Florida Water Initiative.
Third, the bill updates and restructures the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Act to reflect and build upon the Department of Environmental Protection's completion of basin management action plans for Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee Estuary, and the St. Lucie River and Estuary; DEP's continuing development of a BMAP for the inland portion of the Caloosahatchee River watershed; and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' implementation of best management practices in the three basins.
Fourth, the bill modifies water-supply and resource-planning documents and processes in order to provide more-robust representations of the state's water needs and goals.
Additionally, the Office of Economic and Demographic Research will be required to conduct an annual assessment of water resources and conservation lands. In addition, the bill requires DEP to publish an online, publicly accessible database of conservation lands on which public access is compatible with conservation and recreation purposes, and requires DEP to conduct a feasibility study for creating and maintaining a web-based, interactive map of the state's waterbodies, as well as regulatory information about each water body.
Once the bill is passed, we will have modernized our existing water policies and used responsible, science-based solutions to tackle water-quality and -supply challenges across Florida.
While working on the water bill with the Everglades Foundation, another significant step was identified that Florida could take to protect our natural resources. Rep. Gayle Harrell and Senator Joe Negron will put forth legislation this year called "Legacy Florida." This bill would result in consistent and predictable funding each year for Everglades-restoration efforts. We expect the annual amount to reach $200 million.
The comprehensive water-policy initiative shepherded by Rep. Matt Caldwell and the "Legacy Florida" bill for the Everglades will ensure that 2016 is a game changer for Florida's natural resources, not only this year, but for generations to come.

160109-b
Sweeping water legislation could pass early
Ocala.com - by Dinah Voyles Pulver, GateHouse Florida
January 9, 2016
After two years of promising legislation to help Florida’s springs, Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, state legislators appear ready to adopt a sweeping environmental resources bill this session.
Both the House and Senate are expected to adopt legislation during the first week of the session that starts Tuesday, with support from two of the state's largest environmental groups but objections from more than 100 others.
The 150-page environmental resource bill — the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act — contains provisions for water resource protection and restoration and directs the state to prepare a comprehensive database of all publicly owned lands in Florida.
If the legislation is adopted, it will make sure the state is working toward preservation of its aquifer, its springs and estuaries, said Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, a key sponsor.
“The environmentalists know this is a major accomplishment, in requiring these standards to clean up water resources within a certain time period,” Simmons said. “This means that cities and counties that are dumping water into the aquifer and rivers are going to have to put together a plan to stop it.”
The legislation, developed during more than two years of negotiations, represents collaborations from a broad array of interest groups. Its 35 sections include elements brought forward by agriculture interests, environmental groups, a council of the state’s largest private landowners, sugar growers and utilities.
That’s generally why the legislation is expected to pass so early in the session, said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon of Florida. For example, Draper said, utilities wanted to see unified practices among the water districts, which happens in the section devoted to the Central Florida Regional Water Initiative. He admits Audubon lost some of its battles, but is happy with new timetables and enforcement measures for cleaning up Lake Okeechobee and the springs. The new legislation will require the state to write rules to show exactly what enforcement measures will be, he said.
Among the key measures found in the bill:
• Sets guidelines for the Central Florida Water Initiative by requiring three water management districts to have common rules, science and projections for future water availability;
• It updates and restructures the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program;
• Sets deadlines for cleaning up springs;
• Establishes enforcement measures if the basin management plans and best management practices aren’t met;
• Requires an annual assessment of water resources and conservation lands;
• Requires the Department of Environmental Protection to publish an online, publicly accessible database of conservation lands where public access is compatible with conservation and recreation;
• Sets up rules and policies governing alternative water supplies and creates pilot programs for alternative water supply and nutrient and sediment reduction.
'Missed opportunity'
The bill is opposed by the Florida Springs Council, as well as a separate coalition of 106 other environmental organizations, who had hoped to convince lawmakers to further amend the bill.
“What I’m hearing from the staffs in Tallahassee is that everybody loves it,” said Bob Palmer, a legislative committee chairman for the Springs Council. “They say: 'We have agreement between the House and the Senate and it’s going to be hard to change.”
That disappoints Palmer and others. “There’s really nothing in there for conservation and nothing to significantly reduce water use or fertilizer use,” said Palmer. “It’s a huge missed opportunity.”
The problem is that the existing measures the state is using for clean up — basin management plans and minimum goals for water flow and levels — don’t work, said Palmer, a marine biologist who spent 25 years on Capitol Hill, before retiring a decade ago as director of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology.
The Council would support the bill if the four following amendments were made, said Palmer: strengthen water metering provisions to include all users over 100,000 gallons per day; require a maximum sustainable groundwater withdrawal for all water districts; include an independent study of water fees and designate one spring as a “restoration focus spring,” to be restored within 15 years.
Sen. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee, said he will try once again, at the request of the other environmental groups, to propose amendments to try to make the bill stronger. Amendments Soto proposed for last year’s proposed legislation made it into the bill over the summer, dealing with some of the enforcement measures.
Soto said he recognizes this is “a real limited opportunity to pass some major policy changes.”
“We have to get something done or we could lose our window of opportunity this year,” he said.
Framework for funding
Simmons insists the new deadlines and enforcement measures will ensure the management plans and minimum flows do the job they’re designed to do. He is particularly pleased about the deadlines and enforcement if the basin management plans and best management practices aren’t met.
The key sponsor of the proposal in the House, Rep. Matt Caldwell, said the issues raised by the group will likely have to wait for future legislation, the News Service of Florida has reported.
"At this point the water package has been debated and negotiated for two years," Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers, told the News Service. "The kind of things they're asking about I'm willing to talk about in a separate venue. This is not going to be the last natural-resources bill ever passed.”
Some opponents, including the Clean Water Network, fear the bill is centralizing authority for water and taking away regional control.
While other opponents also have expressed concern about handing over too much authority for water to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Draper said he’s hopeful they’ll see more progress by the department than they’ve seen from the South Florida Water Management District.
The Nature Conservancy also supports the legislation, in part because it “provides a framework for getting legislators to a point where they’re willing to appropriate significant funding for springs protection,” said Janet Bowman, the Conservancy’s director of legislative policy and strategy.
Some have questioned whether the statewide database of conservation lands is aimed at justifying legislators’ reluctance to buy more conservation land. However, Bowman said the database has been explained as “a gap analysis” to examine land management.
“Generally, more information is useful to legislators and the public in making good policy,” she said.

160108-a
Activists: lawmakers need to fix Everglades spending
Miami Herald - by Jenny Staletovich
January 8, 2016
For environmentalists, the upcoming legislative session is a chance to set things right.
At the annual meeting of the Everglades Coalition this week in Coral Gables, the groups vowed not to let Florida legislators again botch efforts to implement a constitutional amendment voters overwhelmingly backed in 2014. It sets aside a third of taxes from real estate deals to buy, restore and manage lands to protect water supplies and wildlife. If all goes as planned, the session should end with 25 percent of the money, or at least $200 million, spent on Everglades projects.
“The challenge has always been, ‘Show me the money.’ But voters have stood up and said now we’re going to put money aside for all our natural resources,” Everglades Foundation Executive Director Eric Eikenberg told a crowded ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel in an opening session Friday to the three-day event.
For years, the multibillion-dollar effort to restore the Everglades has stalled, bogged down in bureaucracy and fights over funding. Just this week, officials celebrated the groundbreaking on a Miami-Dade project along the C-111 canal authorized more than a decade ago. Congress has still not funded an attempt to speed up work in the central Everglades to get water moving into ailing Florida Bay, which suffered a massive seagrass die-off last summer and fall.
Voters responded to that frustration by embracing the constitutional measure. About 75 percent backed it. But when it came time to spending the money last year, legislators instead used about two-thirds of the money on other expenses including buying cars and paying off other debts.
 “What was done with Amendment 1 wasn’t just a failure to implement it. It was a blatant failure,” said Miami Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, the only Democrat on the Republican-sponsored bill which proposes setting aside $100 million annually to focus on central Everglades projects in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
The biggest hurdle, Rodriguez said, was convincing the Republican-controlled Legislature to agree to buy land.
“We really have to focus on that gut level ideological resistance,” he said. “It’s there. It’s palpable.”
Legislators are also under threat of legal action. After they failed to spend money, four groups including the Florida Wildlife Federation, St. Johns Riverkeeper, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and the Sierra Club sued, demanding a judge declare the money illegally spent and return it to the trust fund.
$200 million
Amount of money bill proposes setting aside for Everglades projects
“It was an extraordinary abuse of power,” said Earthjustice attorney David Guest, who is representing the groups.
If legislators fail to act, environmentalists are also betting on a surprising alley: Gov. Rick Scott.
Department of Environmental Protection deputy secretary Drew Bartlett told the group that Scott — who has been widely criticized for downsizing the agency, slashing its budget and most recently for a plant to open state parks to hunting, cattle grazing and timber harvesting — has vowed to set aside $5 billion in Amendment 1 money over 20 years that would help create the water storage to restore parched marshes.
“The big legacy is getting the dedicated funding stream,” Bartlett said.
With a set amount of money, environmentalists say restoration work should show more improvements to the marshes.
“If you looked at projects that were anticipated to be completed, you would be discouraged that we are not as far along as we’d hoped. That translates to real damage in the estuaries and seagrass die-offs in Florida Bay. The water isn’t getting where it’s supposed to go and that was really the promise of Everglades restoration,” said Dawn Shirreffs, an Everglades Foundation policy advisor. “Now we’re seeing big moving pieces.”

160108-b
A water bill for the special interests
TampaBay.com - Editorial
January 8, 2016
The massive water bill that the Florida Legislature appears poised to ram through this week is unfinished business from last year, but time has not made it any better. It is a wish list from big farmers and developers, puts taxpayers on the hook for new development, weakens protections for natural resources and buries some of the most important environmental projects in a maze of endless deadlines. Lawmakers should apply the brakes rather than speeding this mess on to the governor.
The language in the legislation, HB 7005, is hardly a surprise. This is virtually the same industry-driven bill that the House leadership offered last year. Though it includes some protections for Florida's ailing natural springs and smaller-bore provisions for conservation, the bill largely is a green light for developing Central Florida and for continuing the agricultural degradation in the Everglades basin.
The proposal sets water flows for the springs, seeks a broad strategy for developing water resources in Central Florida and includes plans for cleaning up pollution streaming into Lake Okeechobee, on the northern rim of the Everglades. These are all worthy goals. But the bill is so skewed toward the interests of farmers and builders — with loose permitting, deadline extensions and generous public incentives — that the net effect is putting off what the state should be doing today.
Plans for springs protection won't come to some parts of the state for another decade, and the recovery strategies must include a phased-in approach that could add years. Calling on the five counties in Central Florida to work together on developing new water sources makes sense. But of the 1.1 billion gallons of water per day needed there by 2035 (an increase of 40 percent over today), less than 4 percent would be met by conservation. In the northern Everglades, farmers will effectively self-police their management of the land under the supervision of the state's agriculture commissioner, the industry's public advocate.
The environmental measures are so outweighed by the overt handouts to big business that this year's bill could be worse than the legislation that died last year. Cleanup deadlines from last year are now "milestones." Language has been watered down that draws a connection between a springs' flow and its overall health. And like last year, the bill still sides with farmers by declaring that antipollution steps "must reflect a balance" between improving the water and agricultural production.
The bill also opens the door for spending millions of tax dollars on water development projects with landowners and the private sector, with government paying half the financing in some cases. It gives political appointees in Tallahassee more authority to meddle in local decisions over water use. It puts off for years any meaningful effort to replace leaky septic tanks in the most environmentally sensitive areas. And even the worthiest projects must compete for funding every year, meaning the Legislature might not follow through on the bill's few promising goals.
Half of this legislation has nothing to do with cleaning up Florida's water or producing new resources. It is fuzzy on generating alternative supplies, weak on conservation and open-ended in its obligation to private industry. It lacks any balance or vision for an environmentally sensitive, coastal state with more than 20 million residents and an ever-bigger thirst for more drinking water. Fast-tracking this says plenty about this Legislature's goals: Satisfy the special interests, call the bill environmentally sensitive, pass it quickly, declare victory — and move on before anybody understands the real impact.

160108-c
Florida water bill poised for passage; environmentalists split on Lake Okeechobee impacts
TCPalm.com – Isadora Rangel
January 8, 2016
Some environmentalists say a bill that changes state water regulations will hurt Lake Okeechobee — and inherently the Indian River Lagoon — by allowing farmers to decide how they will reduce pollution with no deadlines and weak enforcement.
Other environmentalists agree the bill isn't perfect, but say the Legislature has made significant progress in adding enforcement measures compared to last year's version.
After two years in the making, the controversial water bill is ready to be heard on the House and Senate floors when the 2016 legislative session starts Tuesday.
This is a legacy issue for Speaker Steve Crisafulli, a Merritt Island Republican who represents the northern end of the lagoon, and is likely to be one of the first pieces of legislation lawmakers send to Gov. Rick Scott's desk in 2016.
That's despite two Hail Mary's in December: protests led by the Sierra Club and a letter 106 environmental and civic organizations signed to convince legislators to make the bill stricter.
RULE CHANGES
SB 552 and HB 7005 cover a lot of ground, from springs and parks to water supply in Central Florida.
The part that matters most to the Treasure Coast has been controversial since lawmakers first introduced similar bill versions last year, when the Legislature adjourned early without addressing them because of an impasse over Medicaid expansion.
That part changes the way the state regulates pollution in farm runoff flowing into Lake Okeechobee. Florida today uses a permitting program that mandates water entering the lake must meet certain maximum levels of phosphorus contained in fertilizers. Under the bill, the South Florida Water Management District still would have permits for the quantity of runoff water that can enter the lake, but not the quality, said Eric Draper, Audubon Florida executive director.
Pollution levels would be regulated instead by a cleanup plan that, among other actions, requires farmers to follow "best management practices" to reduce pollution leaving their land. Those practices are voluntary guidelines farmers themselves developed, such as not fertilizing amid heavy rain forecasts.
HONOR SYSTEM
These practices are at the core of what David Guest, managing attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice, described as a plan where "you take all the speed limits and remove all the traffic lights." That's because as long as farmers implement these measures, they are considered to be in compliance with the law.
After environmentalists raised concerns about the practices last year, the Legislature added new language that specifies the cleanup plans are enforceable. The state can inspect whether farmers are following the practices and subject them to penalties. The bill does not detail why, when or how inspections would be conducted; what would lead to a penalty; and what the penalty would be.
The bill now also requires the Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate whether the practices are working to reduce pollution and change them if necessary.
Yet the bill doesn't ask for additional money for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to hire new employees to perform inspections, making them largely unfeasible to achieve, Sierra Club lobbyist David Cullen said. And even if the state changes the practices, farmers can negotiate with the state to make them as lax as possible, Cullen said.
With a permit in place, on the other hand, farmers either comply or lose it, he said.
NEXT BEST THING
Permits are better, but lawmakers haven't shown any signs they will budge, said Draper, who's a top environmental lobbyist and who worked with lawmakers to strengthen the bill. Having enforceable best management practices is the next best thing.
"Environmental advocacy, like everything else, is the craft of compromise," Draper said. "A permit is better to require a discharger to meet a water quality standard, but we lost that battle."
Republican Senate President-elect Joe Negron of Stuart was the only senator who voted against the water bill last year because of the lack of enforcement. He said he likes the new provisions and supports this year's version — as long as the added enforcement stays in the bill.
The new enforcement will pair well with another bill he and Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, are sponsoring to require at least $200 million be allocated annually for Everglades restoration with an emphasis on projects that reduce lake discharges into the St. Lucie River, he said.
IDEAL BILL
If Draper could write the water bill, he said he would:
Require landowners to hold more water on their land instead of discharging it into Lake Okeechobee;
Restrict fertilizer use around the lake and the Everglades; and
Require local governments to connect septic tanks near troubled waterways to sewer lines. If a sewer line isn't available, local governments should be required to install them, as was done in the Florida Keys after a state mandate in the 1990s.
Guest, the Earthjustice attorney, would revoke farmers' permits if they don't reduce pollution through best management practices within a certain time frame. He also would require farmers to use irrigation methods that use less water to preserve the state's water supply.
"What you have to do is, you have to use water in a way that reflects its real value and the interest of future Floridians," Guest said.

160108-d
Foundation announces new Foundation as partner
Boca Beacon - Tim O’Neil, Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, Tallahassee
January 8, 2016
SUBMITTED BY THE FISH & WILDLIFE FOUNDATION OF FLORIDA – The Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida today announced the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation as a new conservation partner, helping bring national attention to the importance of fishing licenses and their connection to conservation, as well as connecting youth and families with fishing and boating opportunities to create future lifetime participants.
“Florida is doing important work to sustain its fishing and boating resources, and it wouldn’t be possible without participation in the sport,” said RBFF President and CEO Frank Peterson. “We are proud to be a conservation partner of the Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida. And we support their ‘I DO’ buy a fishing license campaign and efforts to engage kids and families through the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s fishing camps for kids and youth conservation camps. They are great ways to recruit, retain and reactivate anglers and boaters in one of our nation’s premiere fishing and boating locations.”
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1.7 million people age 16 and up went fishing in Florida in 2011 (5 percent of the national total), and 1.37 million fishing licenses were purchased in 2013. To capitalize on this impressive fishing and boating audience and continue its ongoing involvement in Florida, RBFF will work with the Foundation to support efforts to recruit, retain and reactivate anglers and boaters. Both organizations are committed to promoting each other’s message and resources. In addition, custom marketing materials including email blasts, TV spots and counter cards will be created to help RBFF meet its mission of increasing participation in the sport and contributing to critical conservation efforts that keep Florida’s aquatic natural resources thriving.
Foundation Chairman Rodney Barreto said, “We are so pleased to partner with RBFF as they help support fishing and boating across the nation and right here in Florida. We thank RBFF for its leadership and its work within the outdoor community as a visionary leader, and for its contribution to the conservation community.”
The Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit started in 1994 as the citizen support group for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Its mission is to partner with FWC to ensure the conservation and enhancement of Florida’s fish and wildlife resources, so they survive and thrive for current and future generations of Florida residents and visitors. Florida is like no other place on earth. Working together, we can keep it that way. For more information on the Foundation, visit FishWildlifeflorida.org
RBFF is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase participation in recreational angling and boating, thereby protecting and restoring the nation’s aquatic natural resources. RBFF developed the award-winning Take Me Fishing™ and Vamos A Pescar™ campaigns to create awareness about boating, fishing and conservation, and to educate people about the benefits of participation. Take Me Fishing and Vamos A Pescar help boaters and anglers of all ages and experience levels learn, plan and equip for a day on the water. The campaign websites, TakeMeFishing.org, and VamosAPescar.org, feature how-to videos, information on how to get a fishing license and boat registration, and an interactive state-by-state map that allows visitors to find local boating and fishing spots.

Story Highlights:

Agricultural and
environmental interests
collide at water policy.

Bill seeks cleaner
runoff by requiring
farmers to follow best
management practices.

Includes a cleanup
program for springs,
including identifying
and eliminating sources
of pollution.

Does not address
consumption.

160108-e
Spring supporters seek changes in water bill
Tallahassee.com – by James Call, Democrat Capitol Reporter
January 8, 2016
The bill divides environmentalists. Some will work for changes, others say it's the best that they can get and still others say it is just a bad bill.
A massive bill aimed at addressing water quality concerns from Escambia Bay to the Everglades is expected to be one of the first pieces of legislation approved by the Florida Legislature during the 2016 Session.
Supporters of SB 552/HB7005 say it provides the tools to begin the cleanup of 39 first magnitude springs, Lake Okeechobee, the Indian River Lagoon and the Caloosahatchee River’s estuaries, as well as improve conservation efforts in Central Florida.
Environmental groups are divided by the proposal. Some say it doesn’t go far enough to prevent nutrient-filled storm water runoff from fouling lakes, rivers and springs.
“We oppose it,” said Bob Palmer of the Florida Springs Council, a coalition of 35 organizations. “The question we asked was, will this bill restore our degraded springs, and our conclusion is it does not.”
Palmer said his group would support the measure if a series of amendments were adopted. Other environmentalists seemed resigned to the measure passing, and say it is better than the proposal that died last year.
“This is not a perfect bill. It is an improvement over current law and is as much as we can get out of this legislature,” said Eric Draper of the Florida Audubon. “This is a very conservative legislature, which is heavily beholden to the agricultural and business interests. The fact that we are getting any kind of improvement in water policy out of this legislature needs to be acknowledged.”
From the northwest to the southeast, the problem is the same: an abundance of nitrogen and phosphorous produced by a burgeoning human population and the agricultural industry. Fertilizers and sewage choke the life out of water bodies.
More than 100 years ago, the Florida tourism industry began with resorts at places like White Springs in Hamilton County, Silver Springs in Marion County and Wakulla Springs, south of Tallahassee. Fleets of glass bottom boats cruised crystal-clear waters providing visitors stunning views of aquatic life 20-feet below the surface.
But algae blooms clouded the water, destroyed the view and forced the boats into retirement. House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford, D-West Palm, likens Florida springs to canaries in a coal mine, indicators that something is wrong.
He calls the proposal a bad bill.
“It’s a joke,” said Pafford, a former CEO of the Marshall Foundation for the Everglades. “We got a bill that doesn’t even deal with water consumption . . . You still got the septic issue and northern Everglades’ issues and Lake Okeechobee discharging high levels of nutrients into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.”
The proposal would require an action plan for springs like Wakulla. It would designate the spring shed as a focus area where septic tanks would be restricted to one per acre and require any new agriculture activities comply with best management practices to prevent further pollution.
The new restrictions in spring sheds also would include:
●  Prohibiting disposal of sewage sludge
●  Identifying sources of pollution and require they be eliminated
●  Increasing the ability to enforce pollution standards
Downstate, in Central Florida, the bill directs three water management districts within the Central Florida Water Initiative to work together and create conservation plans and new water supplies.
In South Florida, the proposal would begin the cleanup of Lake Okeechobee. More than 4,000 tons of phosphorous (wastewater and septic tanks effluent) and 10,000 tons of nitrogen (fertilizers) flow annually into the giant water body.
When the lake’s water level gets too high, managers discharge the polluted waters into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers and estuaries.
Supporters say the measure begins the cleanup process. It requires farmers to use “best management practices” to reduce runoff filled with fertilizer and pesticides.
“The bill provides a balanced approach to creating a sustainable supply of plentiful, clean water for Florida’s unique environment, growing population and strong agriculture industry,” said John Hoblic, president of the Florida Farm Bureau. “All these aspects are critical to our state and this legislation allows for continued improvements to our natural resources without harming the drivers of the economy.”
Water policy in Florida is an intersection where agricultural and environmental issues collide. Environmentalists say the proposal tilts the regulatory landscape in favor of agricultural and development interests, and they aim to change that. Groups like the Florida Springs Council, Florida Defenders of the Environment and the Sierra Club intend to take the fight to the House and Senate floor with a series of proposed amendments.
In letters to the Senate President and House Speaker, the Florida Springs Council argues the bill would be much better if it would require:
●  Metering groundwater withdrawals of more than 100,000 gallons,
●  A study on establishing water fees for withdrawals
●  Restoring flow and water quality of springs within 15 years.
Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers, chairs the State Affairs Committee, which produced the House bill. He said the legislation has been negotiated and debated for two years and it's teed up for floor votes in the House and Senate during the first week of the session.
“The kind of things they are asking about I’m willing to talk about in a separate venue,” said Caldwell about the environmentalists offer. “This is not going to be the last natural resources bill ever passed and I think it is ready to move forward.”
Draper agrees that it is time to move on. Environmentalists, he said, need to focus on a state lands bill Caldwell’s State Affairs Committee is working on.
That might be the most pragmatic approach for environmental groups. Pafford believes the script is set and he expects the bill to be overwhelmingly approved with only a handful of no votes.
“If you are interested in the Everglades and are interested in the springs, the water bill doesn’t do much,” said Pafford. “I’m not putting my name on that bill because I know better

160107-a
Corps breaks ground on North Detention Area for Everglades project
USACE – by Jenn Miller
January 7, 2016
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, alongside federal, state and local officials, celebrated the start of construction on one of the three remaining contracts for the C-111 South Dade project, an Everglades restoration project in Miami-Dade County today.
The contract, known as Contract 8, involves constructing the North Detention Area, which will connect the C-111 South Dade project to the Modified Water Deliveries to Everglades National Park project. These projects are Foundation Projects, which the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) builds upon to deliver essential restoration benefits to America’s Everglades.
"The Obama Administration has already invested $2.2 billion in the restoration of the Everglades. This is the second groundbreaking in just two months,” said Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. “The C-111 South Dade project is critical to the overall efforts to restore the south Florida ecosystem. Together, we are saving this system and preserving it for future generations."
Once completed, the project will work in concert with the Modified Water Deliveries project to create a hydraulic ridge that will reduce groundwater seeping out of eastern Everglades National Park. As a result, this will enable additional water flow into Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.
“When it comes to water, the entire Everglades ecosystem is interconnected,” said Col. Jason Kirk, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville Commander. “The North Detention Area will connect infrastructure from the C-111 South Dade and Modified Water Deliveries projects together to help ensure that water goes where it needs to go. This is an important step towards getting all of the necessary infrastructure in place, which will enable more flexibility in our water operations.”
The $13.9 million construction contract for Contract 8 was awarded to the Polote Corporation from Savannah, Georgia on Oct. 29. Two construction contracts remain for the C-111 South Dade project and are scheduled to be awarded within the next two years.
"The project exemplifies the collaboration of multiple state and federal agencies, as well as local area stakeholders, to protect America's Everglades and the larger south Florida ecosystem," said Florida Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Secretary for Ecosystem Restoration Drew Bartlett. "I commend the Army Corps and the South Florida Water Management District on advancing this project."
The C-111 South Dade project is being constructed in partnership with the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the local sponsor.
“The C-111 South Dade Project is critical to the ecology, economy and future of this beautiful area of southern Miami-Dade County. That is why our taxpayers have invested so much into this effort,” said South Florida Water Management District Governing Board Member Jim Moran. “I am extremely happy to see the progress we have made enhancing flood protection for the South Dade region and restoring the freshwater wetlands in Everglades National Park and the rest of the region.”
The completed project will restore natural hydrologic conditions in Northeast Shark River Slough, Taylor Slough and the eastern panhandle of Everglades National Park.
“We appreciate the partnership we have with the Army Corps of Engineers and the State of Florida, which is so vital to restoring more natural water flows to Everglades National Park, while also maintaining appropriate flood protection and water supply requirements,” said Pedro Ramos, Superintendent of Everglades National Park. “This ground-breaking signals that our continuing interagency partnerships have led to meaningful progress toward meeting these goals.”
The project will also provide maximum operational flexibility in providing environmental restoration of the area, while providing flood protection for the region.
“The C-111 South Dade South project will deliver long hoped-for benefits to Everglades National Park while protecting urban areas from the effects of moving more freshwater into the natural system,” said Audubon of Florida Executive Director Eric Draper. “Restoration efforts are starting to pay off in America's Everglades. This important foundation project will provide infrastructure needed to increase freshwater flows in the future and will improve hydrology in Taylor Slough. Audubon is proud to be part of the effort to win authorization and funding for more restoration projects.”
Every restoration effort within the Everglades ecosystem directly or indirectly effects each other. Due to the interdependencies of these projects, the ultimate success of restoration efforts are dependent on the completion of others. In order for the southern portion of the Everglades ecosystem to be operated as effectively as possible, the necessary infrastructure needs to be in place, the necessary data to evaluate operational flexibility needs to be known, and the resulting Combined Operating Plan needs to be developed and implemented.
The completed C-111 South Dade and Modified Water Deliveries projects will provide this needed infrastructure and the ongoing G-3273 and S-356 Pump Station Field Test will provide the data needed to refine operations under the Combined Operating Plan. The Combined Operating Plan will enable additional water to flow south into Everglades National Park and provide optimal restoration and operational benefits for the southern Everglades ecosystem.
“Completion of this project will begin a new era in water management in the southern Everglades, which is important to both ecosystem restoration and water sustainability,” said Ramos. “This will improve the hydrologic conditions in the Taylor Slough headwaters, reduce groundwater seepage into the adjacent eastern agricultural areas, while sending additional freshwater into Florida Bay. It is a win-win for both the park and all our neighbors. We are very pleased to see this important component of the C-111 South Dade project moving forward into cons

160107-b
Editorial's criticisms of comprehensive water policy off base
Sun Sentinel - Tom Feeney, president and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida, former speaker of the Florida House, served as a member of Congress from 2003 to 2009
January 7, 2016
As the Florida Legislature considers a historic comprehensive water reform package, Floridians need to have all the facts, including how it will help our state better meet its future water quality and quantity needs. The Sun Sentinel's opinion leadership on the issue is appreciated, but unfortunately, a recent editorial got it wrong and mischaracterized the bill's goals.
The editorial unfairly criticized the very farming practices that are yielding significant improvements in quality, including the Best Management Practices that have been a great success story in the state's Everglades restoration efforts. As the Sun Sentinel reported last August, South Florida farmers "reduced three times as much polluting phosphorus as required from water flowing toward the Everglades." This historic annual reduction of 79 percent continues a 20-year trend. Also last year, Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeals strongly sided with the farmers by ruling that these BMPs are making a difference in achieving water quality in a big way.
Despite the editorial's suggestion to the contrary, BMPs are enforceable by the state. Under the proposed legislation, there are stricter standards for producers that do not implement BMPs. The bill requires that producers must demonstrate that they are meeting water quality standards and will be subject to enforcement by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Additionally, the editorial misrepresents the regulatory changes made by the water policy. In no way does the bill shift power or authority from one agency to another. Instead, it provides statewide consistency by conforming the Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program to the Clean Water Act. This is entirely consistent with the law in the rest of Florida.
There is no disagreement that water conservation is important, but the editorial ignores existing measures. Current law requires that water not be wasted and any water use permit holder knows, this means undertaking feasible water conservation measures.
In Central Florida, state water managers are planning to help meet the long-term water needs with additional conservation measures but they also recognize that the previous success of water conservation in that area makes finding additional meaningful conservation measures challenging. And as a state, Florida leads the country in the use of reclaimed water. Interestingly, the editorial ignores the bill's removal of existing disincentives to water conservation and that local governments were previously given legislative incentives for reclaimed water.
There's been significant progress since this water bill was first proposed in 2015, including compromises on some reasonable concerns raised by critics. The result is a water policy reform that benefits all Floridians. Should this bill become law and Florida begins setting the national standard in how it handles water supply and quality issues, the naysayers of this legislation will realize they were on the wrong side of history.

160107-c

160107-c
Mangroves move inland as seas rise
FIU News – by Evelyn Perez
January 7, 2016
Adapting to the damaging effects of climate change, plants are gradually moving to where temperatures are cooler, rainfall is greater, freshwater is available or other conditions are ideal.
Florida’s mangroves move inland to keep up with salt water intrusion caused by sea level rise.
On a local scale, FIU biology student Sean Charles is examining how mangroves in the Florida Everglades are impacting the ecosystem around them as they gradually move inland from saltwater to freshwater communities. For now, this tactic is helping the plants keep up with salt water intrusion caused by sea level rise.
Wetland ecosystems like the Florida Everglades provide a number of services that benefit people, including flood control, water purification, and carbon accumulation that removes harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Charles’ study specifically looks at how vegetation shifts and sea level rise, combined with ongoing restoration efforts, will impact ecosystem functions, soil elevation and the Everglades’ ability to store carbon. His research project is funded by the Everglades Foundation FIU ForEverglades Scholarship.
“The world’s largest wetland restoration effort is taking place right now in the Everglades,” said Charles, a Ph.D. student in John Kominoski’s Ecosystem Ecology Laboratory. “It’s a very interesting, yet scary, time for this amazing ecosystem, and we have the potential to make a difference. This study will improve our understanding of the risks and opportunities likely to confront the Everglades of the future, as well as coastal wetlands throughout the world.”
In addition to improving what is known about interactions among mangroves and their environment, Charles wants to informing Everglades conservation and restoration. He is also engaging K-12 students in Collier and Miami-Dade counties in a coastal plant restoration project. Known as “Marsh-Mangress,” the public school students will grow mangrove seedlings on school grounds until they are established and ready to be planted at local restoration sites.
“By learning through participating in active restoration projects, students will be engaged in the importance of environmental conservation and will, hopefully, better understand their role in it,” Charles said.

160107-d
Regulators back FPL on new Okeechobee plant
FL Courier - by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
January 7, 2016
Scott and Cabinet still have to give their approval
TALLAHASSEE – Regulators decided Tuesday that a $1.3 billion, natural gas-fired power plant – proposed in rural Okeechobee County by Florida Power & Light – is needed to meet the demands of the state’s growing population.
The decision by the Florida Public Service Commission came after objections from a pair of environmental groups, the state Office of Public Counsel and the Florida Industrial Power Users Group. The Office of Public Counsel represents consumers in utility issues, while the Florida Industrial Power Users Group represents large electricity users.
Opponents questioned the need for the plant and argued it will hinder conservation efforts and slow the growth of renewable energy sources such as solar.
600-plus jobs
Commissioners agreed with a staff conclusion that the proposed 1,633-megawatt plant would increase FPL’s already-heavy reliance on natural gas. But Julie Brown, who formally began a two-year term as chair of the commission Tuesday, said the plant is the “most cost effective option” to bring more power to the state.
“We know there is a need. We know that it’s present. It will continue to grow,” Brown said.
The plant is planned for 250 acres of a 2,842-acre site that FPL owns in northeast Okeechobee County.
FPL has said the plant will be more fuel efficient than other plants, which will save money for customers in fuel costs. The plant, expected to create about 600 construction jobs and some 30 to 40 full-time jobs once opened in mid-2019, must still get approval from Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Cabinet members, who act as a power-plant sitting board.
Earthjustice responds
However, Tuesday’s approval was considered the largest remaining pre-construction hurdle.
Bradley Marshall, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, derided the commission’s decision as “protecting FPL’s bottom line.”
“Today’s decision shows that the Public Service Commission is once again failing to look out for consumers,” Marshall said in a prepared statement. “This plant is unnecessary. The only reason FPL is building this new power plant is because the company gets a guaranteed profit if it builds a new plant.”
FPL, which in recent years has increasingly moved to using natural gas to generate electricity, argued that the Okeechobee plant is part of a series of projects that have helped phase out older oil- and coal-fired plants.
As an example, a new Port Everglades plant is scheduled to begin operating later this year, and FPL has also opened new plants in recent years at Cape Canaveral and Riviera Beach.
No rate hike
FPL also contends construction of the Okeechobee facility won’t impact customers’ rates until after the facility is online, at which time costs will be partially offset by savings on fuel costs.
“The FPL Okeechobee Clean Energy Center represents another major milestone in our successful program of phasing out older power-generating units and investing in new, high-efficiency clean energy centers that reduce emissions and save our customers money on fuel costs,” FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy said in a release.

160106-a
110 years between draining the Everglades & Depopulating S. Florida
Westside Gazette - by: Carma Henry
January 6, 2016
In 1904, the Everglades stretched from Orlando to the Florida Keys. Today a mere sliver remains and development stretches from the Gulf to the Atlantic.
Florida’s Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, for whom Broward County is named, ordered the Everglades swamp drained around 1904, beginning the era of South Florida’s mega-development. He wanted to create an empire in its stead. To look at South Florida now, with wall to wall development from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic surrounding a sliver of remaining Everglades, it’s easy to see how well that era succeeded.
But in the coming years, our descendants might point to Dec. 21, 2015, as the beginning of the opposite era, the one that led to our undevelopment:
“There’s no keeping the water out…ultimately this area (South Florida) has to depopulate,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard is quoted in the article,  “The Siege of Miami,” published Dec. 21, 2015 in The New Yorker. If you are at all interested in the present and future of our region, you should read and study this article, easily accessible on line.
“We can’t let investor confidence, resident confidence and confidence in our economy start to fall away,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine explains his priorities in the same piece. “There’s no textbooks, there’s no ‘How to Protect Your City from Sea Level Rise,’ go to Chapter 4. So the city would have to write its own. We have a team that’s going to get it done, that’s going to protect this city. ..”
So in just a little over 100 years South Florida has moved from the charge to “drain the swamp” and “create an empire” to the possibility of the forced “depopulation” of the area.
Mayor Stoddard’s words made my heart flutter. It isn’t often that someone who relies on votes has the courage to speak such an unpopular and scary truth. Finding that the Mayor is also a scientist made his position more understandable – he deals in facts.
But Mayor Levine’s words made me shudder even more:
“I believe in human innovation. If, 30 or 40 years ago, I’d told you that you were going to be able to communicate with your friends around the world by looking at your watch or with an iPad or an iPhone, you would think I was out of my mind…(Thirty or forty years from now) we’re going to have innovative solutions to fight back against sea-level rise that we cannot even imagine today.”
Mayor Levine should know that there is a huge difference between decades of consistent research and millions if not billions of dollars and effort have gone into the development of tech devices, and our negligence when it comes to climate change. Our response here has been to deny, debate and ridicule the facts even as our beaches disappear and people are highly inconvenienced in flooding neighborhoods. Many of our ‘leaders’ still hide behind the rhetoric of denial while taking huge sums of money from industries that add to the problem.
I hope Mayor Levine is right and we’ll speedily come up with that device that holds back the Atlantic and the Gulf so they don’t continue to rise from the pollution we’re spewing into the atmosphere.
But wouldn’t it be more sane to alert the population to this great challenge, encourage them to conserve energy, reduce waste and pollution, and discuss what we can do together to address this predicament? To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
As a citizen and an environmentalist, I feel a responsibility to share what I know. It’s bizarre to live in a region that the scientific world says will be more affected than nearly all others by sea level rise; to be governed by a politician who forbids the words “climate change;”  to hear one mayor say we have to look at orderly depopulation (compare that to Katrina-like depopulation of New Orleans); to hear another mayor say he’s sure we’ll come up with technology to counteract it; to know that our senator who’s a presidential candidate rejects human-caused climate change,  and to hear friends and relatives tell us with all nonchalance, “It will hit people over on the beach side first, so let them worry about it.”
From that mishmash, it’s up to every citizen to decide whether or not you will educate yourself to be part of the solution. Will the “era of depopulation” give us 100 years to figure things out, as the era of empire gave us ? I think not !

160106-b
Florida commissioners unanimously agree on fracking ban
Orlando Sentinel
January 6, 2016
TAVARES — Lake County commissioners today unanimously voted to oppose bills moving quickly through the Legislature that would strip counties of the right to regulate or ban fracking.
Commissioner Welton Cadwell proposed the measure, which also is supported by the Florida Association of Counties. Lake became the 33rd of Florida’s 67 counties to object to the state’s attempted takeover of fracking, which is supported by state Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora.
Commissioners stopped short, however, of backing a state law banning fracking, which involves drilling into the earth and blasting rock with a high-pressure stream of water and chemicals to release natural gas or oil.
Environmentalists who spoke against fracking said it was too big a risk because the state’s underground waterways are interconnected and easily could be polluted and because the proposed legislation in Senate Bill 318 and House Bill 191 would let the drilling companies keep secret the chemicals being used and then injected deep into the ground for disposal.
“It’s ultimately about the quality of life here in Lake County,” said Daniel Osborn, a Fruitland Park resident and member of the Lake Soil & Water Conservation District. “While there may be short-term economic benefits, in the long-term this is not something that will improve the quality of life for citizens of Lake County.”
Related: Bill to open the door to fracking in Florida moves forward.
Jim Tatum, an environmental supporter from Fort White in Columbia County, traveled to Lake to warn commissioners about the chemical-laced wastewater that is a result of the process.
“It’s so toxic it can’t be reclaimed, and it has to be injected into earth,” he said. “The drilling companies can’t find anybody stupid enough around them to let them dispose of it.”
Commissioner Sean Parks, whose background is in environmental consulting, said allowing the companies to keep secret which chemicals they use is particularly galling.
“Knowing a little about the noise and what happens around the sites, it would be detrimental to what we’re trying to do around Lake County,” Parks said.
Commissioner Leslie Campione, a longtime property-rights advocate, said she is against fracking in Lake and doesn’t believe the Legislature should take away a county’s right to regulate it. However, she wavered on supporting Cadwell’s resolution because its language was too tough on fracking throughout the state.
Cadwell replaced some of the language accusing drilling companies that use fracking of “permanently polluting” millions of gallons of water and using cancer-causing chemicals with less strident claims, and that gesture won Campione’s vote.

160106-c
Florida Regulators OK FPL's Okeechobee NatGas Power Plant
NaturalGasIntel.com – by David Bradley
January 6, 2016
The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday approved Florida Power & Light Co.'s (FPL) proposed Okeechobee Clean Energy Center (OCEC) Unit 1, a 1,600 MW natural gas-fired, combined cycle power plant.
Assuming federal and state approvals, work on the south-central Florida plant would begin in 2017, with an in-service set for June 2019. FPL plans to invest about $1.3 billion in the in Okeechobee County plant.
"FPL's OCEC Unit 1 will ensure continued efficient and reliable energy generation for FPL's customers, which will also translate into millions of dollars of savings for its customers," said PSC Chairman Julie Brown.
The plant is projected to save customers at least $72 million compared to the next best building alternative, according to the PSC. Light oil will be used as a backup fuel.
"The FPL Okeechobee Clean Energy Center represents another major milestone in our successful program of phasing out older power-generating units and investing in new, high-efficiency clean energy centers that reduce emissions and save our customers money on fuel costs," said FLP CEO Eric Silagy.
Since 2001, FPL's investments in natural gas power plants have prevented more than 95 million tons of carbon emissions and saved customers more than $8 billion in fuel costs, the Juno Beach, FL-based utility said.
FPL, the nation's third-largest electric utility, serves 4.8 million customer accounts in Florida, a number that it said is expected to increase to 5 million accounts, representing 10 million people, by 2019. Given that growth, and the need to replace aging facilities, the company has forecast a significant need for additional firm power generation beginning in 2019 (see Daily GPI, July 2, 2015).
FLP is already in the process of constructing the Port Everglades Next Generation Clean Energy Center, another natural gas-fired plant that's expected to enter service in mid-2016. Along with solar and nuclear power, FPL has been focused on natural gas. Last summer, it received approval from state regulators to have ratepayer funds help finance its own natural gas exploration efforts in the United States. (see Daily GPI, June 18, 2015) It is also working through its sister company, NextEra Energy Inc., to get more gas from the Northeast to the Southeast (see Shale Daily, June 12, 2014).
Related:           Flordia Power & Light favors rate-based approach to Clean Power ...          Utility Dive
Regulators Support Need For New FPL Plant           WGCU News

160106-d
Proposed rules would hurt Florida's waterways
Jacksonville.com - Letter by David Guest, Managing Attorney, FL Earthjustice
Jan 6, 2016
As the new year begins, all of us who want to keep polluters from ruining our water supply might end up as the losers.
The threat comes from the Legislature’s massive water policy bill, a major rewrite of hundreds of clean water regulations that Florida has on the books. Politicians and their lobbyist friends talk about how the water policy bill balances competing interests. No, it does not.
This bill was written by lobbyists for agricultural corporations. Big Agriculture is a campaign cash rainmaker for these politicians.
Environmental regulations on Florida agriculture are notoriously weak already.
The changes are artful and subtle, and if the bill passes, the effects are going to come back to haunt us all.
Every day, we already see the damage: dead fish littering closed beaches, tainted drinking water and green slime outbreaks on our rivers, springs and lakes. You’d think that seeing the evidence at hand, that it might be prudent to strengthen clean water rules. But that’s not what’s happening.
For one thing, the legislation would do away with water pollution permits entirely for agricultural corporations around Lake Okeechobee.
Agricultural operations are only asked to do voluntary “Best Management Practices” to keep pollution from fouling our drinking water.
Lake Okeechobee is a drinking water source for several small towns and for West Palm Beach, Fort Myers and the entire Lower East Coast metropolitan area. Getting rid of permits for polluters there is unconscionable and unwise.
One of the other disturbing aspects of the legislation is that it further liberalizes the rules thatspell out how much groundwater private interests can take from our public supplies.
Groundwater withdrawal permits used to expire after five years; now they can last for dozens of years even if circumstances change.
I advise readers to contact their legislators and tell them you want this legislation amended, so it doesn’t loosen the rules for polluting industries.
Related:           Lisa Rinaman: St. Johns River faces major threats     Florida Times-Union

160106-e
What will lawmakers do with environmental funds ?
WUSF.usf.edu - by Steve Newborn
January 6, 2016
One of the most contentious environmental issues facing state lawmakers in the upcoming session is what to do with Amendment 1. That mandated a large pot of tax money be used to buy and protect environmentally-sensitive land. But just how that money should be used is muddying the political waters.
Early in 2015, three adventurers walked, hiked and kayaked 1,000 miles from the headwaters of the Everglades, across the Panhandle to the Alabama state line. Their goal: to bring attention to the need to protect Florida's remaining natural lands before they're paved over.
Tampa photographer Carlton Ward Jr. spoke about the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition's mission while paddling a protected stretch of river near Pensacola.
"While we're out here, state lawmakers are in session," he said, "and I can't help but think there's still not enough appreciation and emphasis on protecting these remaining wild places. Because in the next few years, if we don't make some moves, some of these connections are gone.
Lawmakers are soon back in session, but have they really made any moves to protect those wild areas? Republican David Simmons is a state Senator from Altamonte Springs.
"We don't need to go out and just buy a bunch of land, because there happens to be money available to do that," said Simmons. "What we want to know is 20 years from now, we can tell our children or grandchildren that we solved the problem for the preservation and the restoration of our resources."
What "solving the problem" actually means depends on who you talk to.
Three-quarters of the state's voters approved Amendment 1 in 2014. That mandated one-third of the taxes collected on real estate transactions - known as “doc stamps” - go to the state Land Acquisition Trust Fund. It would be used to “acquire, restore, improve and manage conservation lands.”
That could mean as much as $300 million would be available in the upcoming fiscal year. Gov. Scott has requested a budget that would include only $63 million for the land-acquisition program Florida Forever. But he also wants $50 million to help maintain the state's natural springs, and $10 million to give matching grants to local communities for land buying.
Last year, Simmons said lawmakers are meeting the requirements of Amendment 1.
"I can tell you that the senators with whom I have spoken believe very strongly that we will comply with not only the letter but with the spirit of this Constitutional amendment," he said. "And there will need to be a nexus between the preservation and the improvement of our environment, particularly with our water resources."
Republican Alan Hays of Umatilla, who oversees environmental spending in the Senate, wants to spend $50 million on Florida Forever. He wrote in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:  “We don’t need to be known as the hoarding-land state. We need to be known as good stewards of the resources that the people own, whether it be their cash or whether it be their hard assets.”
Hays declined to return phone calls for comment, but says last year the Legislature appropriated well over $3 billion in funding for environmental programs, Most of that went for projects to protect water resources.
"As you can see," Hays said, "there is a whole lot more to being a conservationist than acquiring property."
Florida Forever and its predecessor, Preservation 2000, has purchased more than 2.5 million acres since its inception in 2001.
In December, State Rep. Gayle Harrell of Stuart and incoming Senate President Joe Negron filed bills to funnel $200 million annually from the Amendment 1 money to restore the Florida Everglades and nearby waterways in central and southern Florida.
That's 25 percent of the money expected to flow from Amendment One. But what about the other 75 percent - for everything north of the Everglades? Environmentalists say the pot of money that voters wanted used to preserve land is being eyed for everything from water projects to beach renourishment.
"We need to have a blueprint for the entire state," says Mallory Lykes Dimmitt, who organized the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition.
"It's not just the Everglades, which are critically important - the largest restoration project in the world - but also it's important in the Suwannee River watershed, it's important in Northwest Florida, it's important in Northeast Florida," she says, "and we can show projects that are on the Florida Forever list that are waiting for approvals in every part of the state."
Dimmitt says there are other options besides outright purchase of land. Florida Forever funds can also purchase what are called conservation easements.
"There's a large number of willing landowners who are looking for this funding to stay as a landowner - they will continue the upkeep, the maintenance of this land - but you're guaranteeing for the future, that doesn't become more intensive development."
Several environmental groups last year sued the state, saying lawmakers used Amendment 1 money for salaries and operating expenses.
A Tallahassee judge in December rejected part of the lawsuit. But he may have the final say on what lawmakers can and cannot do with the money.

160105-a
Lake Okeechobee swells with so much rain
WLRN.org - by Wilson Sayre
January 5, 2015
It will come as no surprise to anyone with a window that it has been raining a lot more than usual this time of year in South Florida. That has a lot to do with El Nino, which has affected weather patterns across the globe.
The result is lots of rainwater in Lake Okeechobee,  where water levels have been higher than usual. In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been draining a larger than normal volume of water from the lake, where the water level usually falls naturally during the dry season, which runs November through May.
The reason this matters is twofold.
One is that the 143-mile Herbert Hoover dike surrounding the lake is ranked as one of the most at risk for failure.
“The dike dates back, portions of it date back to the 1920s and 30s,” says John Campbell with the Army Corps. “We’re in the middle of a massive rehabilitation of that dike right now. But we do try to keep the lake a little lower to try to relieve pressure on it so that it doesn’t catastrophically fail and put citizens in danger.”
He says at this time, there is no immediate danger.
Another consideration with these higher water levels, though, is the environmental impact of the extra water.
As the lake is drained, the fresh water mixes with the saltier surrounding waters, which could impact things like fishing and algae blooms. Additionally, the water levels could drown critical marshes where wading birds nest this time of year.
“We’re doing our best to position ourselves where we can react appropriately for whatever Mother Nature has in store for us,” says Campbell.
The lake fills up quicker than the Army Corps can drain it,  so they’re positioning levels in order to be prepared if there is a sudden heavy rainfall.
For now, the lake is holding steady at a reasonable level.

160105-b
Marshall environmental group: We’ll phase out offices, staff
Palm Beach Post - by Eliot Kleinberg, Staff Writer
January 6, 2016
WEST PALM BEACH — The Arthur R. Marshall Foundation for The Everglades will phase out its suburban West Palm Beach office and staff and work with other groups to continue its environmental outreach, the group said Tuesday.
Art Marshall, a biologist, naturalist, lecturer, writer and philosopher, died at 65 in 1985. He’s hailed as the father of Florida’s environmental movement. The Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Palm Beach County, the northernmost remnant of the Everglades, was named for him. His nephew, John Arthur Marshall, started the Marshall Foundation in 1998.
John Marshall and his wife Nancy had operated the foundation along with Nancy’s daughter, Josette George Kaufman, who joined in 2005 after two decades as a financial analyst. The group was rocked in 2013 when Kaufman died suddenly of an illness at 53. In recent years, John Marshall has been seriously ill and Nancy has had to spend time as a caregiver.
Tuesday’s note called Josette “the machine behind the organization” and Nancy Marshall “the oil, who made it all happen, who championed the programming, rallied supporters and the fundraising efforts.”
The note said that “the attempt to replace (the three) has proven insurmountable. In 2016, the Board of Directors will work with other organizations to continue the key programs of the foundation and create a platform to continue the support of environmental education.
Through the years, the foundation said, it has awarded more than $450,000 in scholarships and internships, planted nearly 100,000 native Florida trees in wetland areas, educated more than 25,000 elementary and high school students and involved more than 5,000 volunteers in hands-on restoration projects.
“We are proud of this legacy and know that the work of preserving and restoring the Everglades is more important today than ever before,” the note said. “However, it is time to let others take the lead and continue the good work of the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation for The Everglades and to preserve its legacy.”
The group expects to phase out three environmental educators by April and also will stay in the office around the same time, depending on the condition of its lease, foundation spokeswoman Elaine Meier told The Palm Beach Post Tuesday.
Meier did not provide financial details. But she stressed that the foundation “is solvent.” She also said it already had been working with other groups on its programs and that it plans to continue its scholarships and tree planting.
Guidestar.org, which monitors non-profits, said the foundation, on 2014 federal tax forms, reported $510,864 in revenue and $532,746 in expenses. It reported $1.1 million in assets and $177,004 in liabilities.
State Rep. Mark S. Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, became the foundation’s Chief Executive Officer in May 2014 but left in October 2015 to be CEO of of Florida CHAIN, the statewide health advocacy organization.
Nat Reed, the former Assistant U.S. Secretary of the Interior and current the vice chair of the Everglades Foundation, said Tuesday that John and Nancy Marshall will be working with his group “on a weekly basis. We consider them valuable partners.”
Reed, 82,, said from Jupiter Island that the Marshall Foundation has highlighted Everglades problems and solutions, keeping alive the memory of Art Marshall, “Florida’s first great ecologist.” He said Marshall was “a pure scientist, and he educated hundreds of young environmentalists, including me.”

160104-a
Florida gears up for python hunt in Everglades
Associated Press – WFTV, Naples Daily News
January 4, 2015
MIAMI — Officials are gearing up for Florida's upcoming public hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's "Python Challenge" will run from Jan. 16 through Feb. 14.
The snake-catching festival attempts to reduce South Florida's population of the giant constrictors. Participants will compete for individual and team prizes for catching the most pythons and catching the longest one
Spokeswoman Carli Segelson says one of the goals of the event is to make people aware of the non-native species and how to report them.
The previous challenge, held in 2013, resulted in the capture of 68 snakes. Scientists say thousands of pythons are to blame for the decline of native wildlife across Florida Everglades.
Related:           Invasive species threaten environment           Timesonline.com

150104-b
FPL water permit for Turkey Point gets boost from judge
Florida Water – Palm Beach Post (Dec. 31, 2015)
January 4, 2015
TALLAHASSEE — Rejecting arguments of an environmental group, an administrative law judge Thursday recommended that the South Florida Water Management District give final approval to a permit that would allow Florida Power & Light Co. to pump large amounts of water out of a canal system.
The permit would allow FPL to use water from what is known as the L-31E Canal to help reduce the temperature and salinity of a water-cooling system at the utility’s Turkey Point power-plant complex, said Thursday’s decision by Administrative Law Judge Bram D.E. Canter.
The cooling system itself is a network of canals designed to dissipate heat from water used in power plants.
The water management district on June 1 gave notice that it planned to issue a permit for the pumping plan, leading to a challenge from Tropical Audubon Society Inc.
The environmental group raised a series of objections, including that the project would harm nearby Biscayne Bay and that the permit would not be limited to the amount of water needed, according to Canter’s decision.
But the judge turned down the group’s arguments on issues such as whether the project would harm Biscayne Bay.
“Tropical Audubon failed to prove the proposed water use would have more than a de minimis (insignificant) effect on the environmental resources of Biscayne Bay,” one section of the 32-page decision said. “Therefore, it failed to prove noncompliance with any district permit requirement applicable to protection of Biscayne Bay and its natural resources.”

160104-c
Is sugar production still wrecking the Everglades ?
Grist.org - by Ask Umbra
January 2016
QUESTION:  Dear Umbra,
Sugar: We like it. We use it. We try to be environmentally friendly and kind of healthy at the same time. We live in Florida, so I know sugar is grown here. Is it better to buy the brand grown in Florida, which is accused of destroying the Everglades, so we’re buying local and not paying fuel prices? Or is it better to buy from a giant company that just claims NY, NY as its distribution point? I know this means it comes from wherever in the world, and is probably destroying their version of the Everglades as well.
Kevin S., Port St. John, Fla.
ANSWER:  Dearest Kevin,
If the world were a just place, cupcakes would prevent heart attacks, M&Ms consumption would be directly linked to a higher IQ, and sugar crops would suck enough carbon out of the atmosphere to halt climate change. At least, that’s the dream of this sweet-toothed advice columnist. Alas, reality isn’t nearly so wonderful.
You and I are far from alone in our affection for the sweet stuff, Kevin: The average American snarfs more than 126 grams of sugar per day, which translates to a rather alarming 30-plus teaspoons. Besides the obvious health implications of our constant nationwide sugar binge, we must also consider the environmental cost of producing those spoonfuls. Preview: It ain’t exactly healthy for the planet, either.
The little white crystals we know as “sugar” (they prefer to go by their formal name, sucrose, at professional conferences and job interviews) come from two plant sources: sugarcane and sugar beets. We had an exciting beet vs. cane smackdown in a column last year, and I encourage you to read that piece after you read this one (or read it now and come back — I’ll wait). Spoiler alert: All sugar production is bad for us and bad for the land, and we should reduce our sugar consumption altogether. Happy New Year!
But let’s look a little closer at this local-or-not quandary of yours, which puts an interesting spin on the sugar question. Sugarcane grows only in warmer climates, with Florida claiming the crown as the top domestic producer (runners-up include Hawaii, Louisiana, and Texas). Florida’s crop is concentrated in several counties around Lake Okeechobee, right at the northern tip of the magnificent wetland ecosystem of the Everglades. That sounds great for Floridians at first — a hyperlocal source of sugar! — but as you’ve noted, Kevin, these two neighbors don’t always get along.
As happens in so many places where agriculture butts up against nature, excess phosphorus in run-off contributes to algal blooms and otherwise mucks up the area’s ecological balance — in this case, feeding weedy plants like cattails and choking out native species like sawgrass. This kind of nutrient pollution can be traced back to several human sources, but a recent analysis by the nonprofit Everglades Foundation found that 76 percent of the phosphorus problem there comes from agriculture — and in that neck of the woods, that primarily means sugarcane.
Another issue is that these plantations alternately hold or flood water according to the crop’s needs, not the Everglades’ needs. Deprived of the historical water flow from Lake Okeechobee, sometimes the wetlands bordering the agricultural area are unnaturally dry, and sometimes they’re too wet, which threatens biodiversity. You may have seen some of these issues in the news recently, as just last year Florida officials killed a deal to buy swathes of sugar company-owned land for Everglades conservation.
As you suspect, sugarcane grown elsewhere is no lighter on the land. Globally, sugarcane production is linked to high water use, water and soil pollution, erosion, and biodiversity loss throughout the tropics, and pre-harvest burning of the fields accounts for sugar’s largest carbon footprint. And with imported sugar, we also have to consider the food miles we’re racking up.
Interestingly, a little more than half of the U.S. sugar crop actually comes from sugar beets, which are grown in the northern states. These sweet tubers spark environmental concerns of their own — namely, the impacts of the herbicides associated with the GMO beets we overwhelmingly raise.
All of which leads us right back to the original question: Should you buy Florida sugar (or whatever your closest local option is)? Well, considering the environmental costs of all sugar production — and it pains my cookie-loving heart to say this — the best thing to do is eat less of the stuff. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though: Honey, maple syrup, stevia, and brown rice syrup are all sweeteners without the wetlands-threatening baggage, and at least some of us can find local sources for them. Make sure to mind the nutritional info on packaged foods, too — plenty of sugar sneaks into our diets that way, even in innocuous-looking snacks like cereal, bread, pasta sauce, and soup.
When we simply must get our fix, then yes, going for the locally grown variety is probably a good bet. Keep in mind that up to 85 percent of the sugar we eat here in the States was grown here in the States, so you’re probably already sweetening your coffee with something local(ish). It can be tough to tell whether that sugar came from sugarcane or sugar beets, but some Team Sugarcane brands do trumpet their “100-percent cane” status on the package.
Really, this is a case where we need to do even more than vote with our dollars. We need to contact sugar brands directly and urge them to take more steps to protect the environment around their plantations and processing mills. And we can get involved with environmental groups fighting to do just that — such as that aforementioned Everglades Foundation locally, or the World Wildlife Fund internationally. There’s plenty of room for improvement here, and stuffing our collective faces with leftover holiday chocolates without doing our part is no way to kick off the new year.
I’m off to munch on a locally grown parsnip, the closest thing I can find to a fruit in January around here. I hear your palate starts to pick right up on the natural sugars in produce as soon as you stop overloading it with the refined stuff. Cheers !
Powerfully,  Umbra

160104-d
The worst of El Nino is still to come
NorthStarNational.com
January 4, 2016
"Now we're preparing to see the flip side of nature's water cycle - the arrival of steady, heavy rains and snowfall".
This year's El Nino is larger than the 1997-98 record event, NASA said. This season's El Nino has yet to peak and will likely bring more turbulent weather, from floods to droughts across the planet as as the jet stream path is altered.
The biggest effects of El Niño's in the USA are expected to appear in early 2016.
Over the next several months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts colder, wetter conditions in the southern USA and relatively warm and dry conditions in the much of the North - although there could be one or two isolated snowstorms.
This year's pattern, dubbed the "Godzilla El Nino", has already been bringing more rainfall and snow to the West Coast. A steady convoy of storms slammed most of California, moved east into the Southwest, drenched Texas and wreaked havoc along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Florida pumped up by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Based on satellite images, NASA says this El Nino is shaping up to be as strong as the one from 1997, which may have contributed to the Great Ice Storm of 1998.
The satellite images revealed similar and unusually high surface heights along the equator of the Pacific Ocean, which are not only indications of warmer water, but "also the signature of a big and powerful El Nino".
"This massive redistribution of heat causes ocean temperatures to rise from the central Pacific to the Americas", NASA said.
The weather phenomenon is set to exacerbate droughts in some areas, while increasing flooding in others.
Agencies including Oxfam, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Care International said the double hit of extreme weather and war had increased the need for assistance and funding and it was critical to get help to vulnerable communities to stop the situation from getting worse.
Related:           What North America can expect from El Niño          The Conversation US

160103-
New water policy to be on tap for lawmakers
TBO.com - by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
January 3, 2016
TALLAHASSEE — Shortly after the 2016 legislative session goes through its opening rituals, the House and Senate will take up a statewide water policy proposal more than two years in the making.
The proposal (SB 552 and HB 7005), which sped through legislative committees, has attracted last-minute opposition from environmental groups that contend it wouldn’t go far enough to ensure clean waterways.
The package, a priority of Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, is expected to quickly win approval from the House and Senate.
The proposal seeks to establish water flow levels for the state’s natural springs and set guidelines for the Central Florida Water Initiative, which is a regional water-supply planning effort that involves the Department of Environmental Protection, the St. Johns River Water Management District, the South Florida Water Management District, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and regional water utilities.
The identical bills also include further management action plans for Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee Estuary and inland portions of the Caloosahatchee River watershed, and the St. Lucie River and Estuary.
The package also would require the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research to provide an annual assessment of the state’s water resources and conservation lands.
Lawmakers will take up the issue during the annual 60-day session, which starts Jan. 12. The House and Senate also put together major water policy bills during the 2015 session but could not reach agreement.
“This bill ... fell apart last year because it is a significant water policy that is comprehensive in nature and statewide in nature,” Putnam said. “If it were easy, it would be sailing through.”
Unlike in the 2015 session, the measure has been given a simpler path.
Many bills go before three committees in each chamber before reaching the floor. The water policy proposal was put before two Senate committees in November — where it received no votes in opposition — and a pair of House committees in October and November.
One of the House panels, the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee, spent less than 30 minutes debating and taking public input on the proposal. Only Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, voted against the measure.
House Minority Leader Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, expects the measure to face a little more scrutiny when it’s heard on the floor.
“It’s geared for ag, and water quality will be looked over,” Pafford, a critic of the package, said. “If you’re in the Apalachicola area, if you’re in Florida Bay, there is no relief coming.”
That is not a view shared by Republican leaders.
Crisafulli said groups such as The Nature Conservancy generally voiced support for the legislation at the committee meetings, as did groups such as the Florida Farm Bureau, the Florida Realtors, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida.
“I think you will find them cherry-picking the things they do like in it, and then finding other things that they don’t,” Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said of the late opposition. “At the end of the day, I think we’ve got a good product in the policy piece.”
The most vocal opposition arose in December, when 106 environmental organizations and businesses — including the Sierra Club, 1000 Friends of Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation and Friends of the Everglades — sought 12 changes to the plan. Among the desired changes were stricter deadlines for cleaning waterways, stronger enforcement language against polluters, wider authority for regional water management districts to review water-use permits and the ability of local governments to impose stronger restrictions on using fertilizer.
In the letter, the groups also raised questions about the Central Florida Water Initiative, which they said plans “surface water withdrawal projects that total nearly $1.8 billion, to be paid for with tax dollars and implemented and operated by private companies. … This represents a massive transfer of public money to private pockets.”
David Guest, managing attorney of the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, argued in a letter to newspaper editors that the water bill — “written by lobbyists for agricultural corporations” — is “a major rewrite of hundreds of clean water regulations that Florida has on the books.”
Guest objected to what he calls the mostly voluntary “best management practices” regulations for Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades and the state’s natural springs.
“The changes are artful and subtle, and — if the bill passes — the effects are going to come back to haunt us all,” Guest said.
Putnam said the package is just a step in Florida meeting future water needs, as demand is expected to grow by more than 1.3 billion gallons a day by 2030. One-third of the growth is expected in the Orlando region.
“This builds on Florida’s strong tradition of water policy that dates back to the early ‘70s,” Putnam said. “And it won’t be the end. I think there are things we need to continue to do, but in that march toward progress. This appears to be moving and I hope it goes all the way, unlike last year.”
Over the summer and fall, the House and Senate resolved differences that scuttled efforts to enact the statewide policies during the 2015 session.
The Senate’s push to include an oversight council to rate potential water projects was one of the sticking points this year. The House agreed to have state economists perform some oversight, easing concerns from the Senate.
The policy doesn’t dictate funding, but provides some direction for spending money from a 2014 voter-approved constitutional amendment that requires 33 percent of an existing real estate tax to go toward land and water preservation and maintenance.
Related:           Matt Caldwell: Legislative Session busy from start   Florida Politics (blog)
Paula Dockery: Resolutions for the Florida Legislature         TCPalm
Legislative session busy from start     The News-Press
Lawmakers to consider new water policy      Tallahassee.com
Lawmakers, try these resolutions on for size  Orlando Sentinel

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Bad advice as usual from South Florida Water Management District
TCPalm.com - Letter by Charles Grande, Hutchinson Island
January 2, 2016
How sad it was to see Tyler Treadway's informative piece on water farming/distributed water storage. This was followed by King Ranch executive and South Florida Water Management District governing board member Mitch Hutchcraft's nonsensical Dec. 24 commentary — an obvious attempt to make the horrible Alico giveaway sound acceptable and prepare the public for more waste of public funds in the future.
Since the numbers make it impossible for anyone to try to justify paying private landowners instead of using existing public land for large volume water storage, Hutchcraft writes: "Unfortunately, that's not feasible because sufficient public lands in the right locations are not available ..."
Isn't he aware the Rotenberger and Holey land tracts comprise 65,000 acres of publicly owned land where it's needed most — south of Lake Okeechobee — with easy access through the existing canal system and ideal outflow to Stormwater Treatment Area 5 to the west and STA 3/4 to the east?
Simply putting only one foot of water on these tracts could take more than 50,000-acre feet out of the lake when necessary and keep that water out of our estuaries.
Normal evaporation and percolation would help restore our normal rain patterns, refresh the aquifer and allow us to keep the STAs hydrated for maximum effectiveness.
Properly cycling lake water through these publicly owned lands could eliminate lake discharges in all but the wettest years and reduce discharges in those years.
All this can be done without any negative impact on agriculture's ability to properly drain the Everglades Agriculture Area.
Isn't it about time the water management district began protecting our environment and our limited resources by concentrating on the projects that can have maximum benefit for minimum cost? Will district officials please stop sending our tax dollars to those who are part of the problem rather than the solution?

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2016 Legislature: Year of reform
News-Press.com - Editorial
January 1, 2016
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, far right, will put $1 billion in tax cuts in front of the Florida Legislature when the 2016 session starts on Jan. 12(Photo: File)
Fresh off a series of missteps that adversely impacted taxpayers, the environment, education, and other important bills, the 2016 Florida legislative session starts in less than two weeks, and we hope it goes far better than the last one.
It seems as if the 2015 session never ended. After an impasse over Medicaid expansion closed the 60-day session early when House members initially walked out early without budget approval and left many important bills to wither and die, a special session led to final passage of a $77 billion budget, but then kicked off a firestorm of controversy over Congressional and state Senate maps, where politicians faltered and fumbled their way into enormous court battles that voters are rightfully winning.
The crippling impact of the last session left many Florida voters, taxpayers and residents weary of the process in Tallahassee. Heading into a crucial election year, when all of the seats in Florida House and half in the Senate will be on the ballot, incumbents seeking another term – including most of the Southwest Florida delegation – can ill afford to chew away much more trust.
But no matter how things turned out for them in 2015, Republicans will still control both chambers once the 2016 election season is completed. They have been in control for the last 20 years - owning 80 of the 120 House seats and 25 of the 40 Senate seats - and there is nothing to indicate that will change anytime soon. In fact, there is no opposition for any of the four local representatives representing Lee County – Dane Eagle, R-Cape Coral; Heather Fitzenhagen, R-Fort Myers; Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero; Matt Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers. House seats will change in Naples as Republican Reps. Kathleen Passidomo and Matt Hudson are both vying for the Senate seat, which will be vacated by Garrett Richter, R-Naples, who can't run again because of term limits.
The legislative session begins at noon Tuesday, Jan 12. Expect fireworks early, as a bill to allow those 21 years of age and older with a concealed weapons permit to carry guns on our college campuses to go before both chambers. College administrators, many teachers and students are against the bill, as is The News-Press. Academic institutions are meant for learning, and although we condemn recent mass shootings on campuses nationwide, we do not believe arming students and teachers will make them safer. This bill could see House action in the first week of session, and we urge our local representatives to vote against it.
Our legislators must make it a priority in 2016 to increase funding for the environment and mental health care, where Florida ranks 49th out of 50 states in per capita funding. They must protect our access to public records and vote against any further exemptions that have been handed out like candy the last two years. They must consider and approve a bill that was authored by Florida papers within the USA Today Network, including The News-Press, that suppresses public corruption. They must approve a bill that protects firefighters and paramedics against harmful chemicals used when battling fires that have resulted in first responders developing cancer.
Water resources
We will hold Gov. Rick Scott accountable for making good on proposals to invest $1.5 billion to protect Florida’s treasured natural resources, with a commitment to improving and sustaining water quality and supplies, including the Caloosahatchee estuary, the still-to-be-built Caloosahatchee reservoir and Everglades. The investment includes $188 million for the Everglades and the C-43 and C-44 reservoirs that could provide almost 100 billion gallons of water storage to protect estuaries from Lake Okeechobee’s harmful discharges, We expect our local legislators to take leadership roles in securing the necessary funding that could amount to more than $5 billion over the next 20 years.
Environmental groups, including the Southwest Florida Conservancy, believe some the measures do not go far enough, and they don’t. The dedication of state funds must be accompanied by matching amounts promised many years ago by the federal government. We expect Congressman Curt Clawson, R-Bonita Springs, to take a lead role from his seat in Washington, D.C., to convince his colleagues and the new president of the importance of living up to their environmental promises to this state. The water policy proposal is further ahead on the legislative calendar than any water bills rolled out prior to the start of the 2015 session. The water policy has already passed through two Senate and two House committees. It will face more scrutiny once it is debated in both chambers and representatives seek their cut of the funds to protect their waterways. The overall enhancement of our water quality must win, not the political will of those in the House and Senate who bogged down the process last year.
Education funds
Scott’s proposed $79.3 billion budget includes about a $1 billion tax cut– mainly to help businesses - but the budget does little to help the enormous capital needs for the state’s educational system, especially grades K-12. Scott is calling for a 2.5 percent increase in money spent on public schools – raising the amount set aside per student to a record $7,221 - but most of that comes from a proposed increase in property taxes. It Scott wants to stimulate the economy – as he trumpets his tax cut plan will do – he should consider using a portion of that $1 billion to address the needs of schools and improving the performances of students who some day will enter the Florida workforce. Capital needs must be addressed locally as Lee County schools seek to build five new schools in five years, with no capital funds to fill that need. At the top of that list is a new school in Bonita Springs and we urge the school board to find a site soon for that school.
Public corruption
We also urge state legislators to move swiftly and decisively on a bill to eliminate public corruption. This bill was part of a statewide effort, originally spearheaded by USA Today Network's Florida Today. As Integrity Florida, a state government watchdog group, noted this week, “Florida has gone too long in neglecting public corruption and ethical abuses” that continue to cost taxpayers, in money and trust. This bill returns urgency to ethics reforms passed by the Legislature in 2013 and 2014 to cut down on corruption. Integrity Florida will have a press conference on Tuesday to discuss a new report, entitled “Florida’s Path to Ethic Reform.”
Highlights of Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed budget
No increase in tuition for state colleges or universities
$250 million to recruit new businesses to Florida.
Cutting 718 positions at the Department of Health, as part of cutting approximately 1,000 government jobs.
No pay increases for government workers
A 10-day back-to-school shopping sales tax holiday
Nine-day sales tax holiday for disaster preparedness.
$1 billion in tax cuts
$1.5 billion for water quality projects.
Key legislative days
Jan. 8:  5 p.m., deadline for approving final drafts of general bills and joint resolutions, including companion bills.
Jan. 12: Noon, regular session convenes, deadline for filing bills for introduction.
Feb. 27: All bills are immediately certified; motion to reconsider made and considered the same day.
March 1: 50th day of session and last day for regularly scheduled committee meetings.
March 11: 60th and final day of regular session.

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In 2016, focus on solutions instead of resolutions
Palm Beach Post - Editorial
January 1, 2016
We don’t want to make the usual New Year’s resolutions this year: Lose weight. Stop drinking so much coffee. Call family more often.
These vows to ourselves are too easily made, too easily broken — and too easily forgotten.
Instead, The Post Editorial Board is resolving to find solutions to some key issues in 2016. Action on these could be quick. And the difference would be lasting.
Amendment 1 money. State Sen. Joe Negron and Rep. Gayle Harrell, both Stuart Republicans, have proposed bills for the upcoming legislative session — SB 1168 and HB 989— to ensure that South Florida water projects receive a quarter of the money that’s intended to go each year into statewide water and land preservation.
The proposal, known as “Legacy Florida,” would designate 25 percent, or $200 million a year, whichever is lower, from a state land-acquisition trust fund for Everglades and Lake Okeechobee projects. The legislation would still fall short of what voters intended when they overwhelmingly passed Amendment 1 in 2014, but at least we’d know that some of the money was actually going toward environmental protection, as opposed to the tangential uses the Legislature found for it last year.
End wage stagnation. This the real culprit in the U.S. economy when it comes to middle-class angst. This is why, even when companies like Apple Inc. are reporting record sales, consumer confidence fell to 90.4 in November from 99.1 in October. Americans are spending cautiously because they’re not only worried they won’t get a raise — much less a bonus — but are unsure whether they will have a job.
Congress needs to wake up to the fact that real wages haven’t risen in nearly 30 years. Lawmakers and businesses need to talk seriously about finding a fix so that a person working 40 hours a week doesn’t need government assistance.
Ease mandatory minimum sentencing like Florida’s “10-20-Life.” For years, judges have complained of having no discretion when it comes to sentencing individuals, particularly for nonviolent crimes. And now both liberals and conservatives — albeit from different perspectives — have come to agree that such harsh sentencing laws need to be reformed.
The Republican-controlled Congress is considering several proposals to reform federal sentencing laws that have done little more than soak state budgets or line the pockets of prison companies that profit from the country’s exceedingly high incarceration rate. Florida legislators should do the same. And they can start by getting behind a bill (CS/HB 135) that creates a narrow exception to otherwise lengthy sentences when a court finds that a defendant had a good-faith belief that using a firearm was justified. We’ve wasted enough lives — and taxpayer money.
But for Palm Beach County, a just resolution to the Oct. 18 shooting death of Corey Jones in 2016 may be issue No. 1 as a community. As we’ve said previously, we have to get this right. The FBI is involved, the state attorney is conducting a “thorough investigation,” and both Palm Beach Gardens police and Palm Beach State College have fired Nouman Raja. Three months in, however, it has become even more clear that no other issue has this tragedy’s potential to divide our community.
There have been prayer vigils for the 31-year-old drummer and Delray Beach Housing Authority employee. There have been fundraising benefits in his name. There have been proposals to move community policing forward.
There also remain questions. What was the reason for an early erroneous text by Palm Beach Gardens City Manager Ron Ferris telling City Council members that Jones had fired at Raja before Raja shot and killed Jones? Did Raja violate Gardens Police policy and procedures when he approached Jones around 3 a.m. on the exit ramp?
Most basically: How does a man whose car had broken down on the side of the road — and apparently does nothing illegal — end up dead at the hands of the police?
Bishop Sylvester Banks, Jones’ grandfather, has said he knows the truth is going to come out and the matter brought to justice. “I’m sure the officials that are working on it are gonna get to the truth about it,” he said last month.
We want to see the bishop’s faith rewarded. That truth needs to come sooner rather than later.

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Water management districts make millions available for local government projects
Gainesville.com - by Chris Curry, Staff writer
January 1, 2016
A combined $4 million in state money is available for local government water conservation projects in north central Florida and the central Florida area near Orlando.
In mid-December, the St. Johns River Water Management District and Suwannee River Water Management District announced the availability of funding for projects within the North Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership region, a 14-county area that includes Alachua County, and the Central Florida Water Initiative region, a five-county area centered around Orlando.
The latest round of funding follows tens of millions of dollars - including $13 million this year in north central Florida alone - that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the water management district have pumped into projects intended to cut water use and reduce pollution from utilities and agricultural businesses.
In statements included in a news release, St. Johns River District Executive Director Ann Shortelle and Suwannee River District Executive Director Noah Valenstein said the projects would leverage state and local government monies to protect water and natural resources.
“Cost-share projects like this are one of the best ways to stretch our dollars to ensure taxpayers are getting the best return on their investment,” Shortelle said in a statement.
On the other hand, representatives of some environmental groups say the state and water management district are not taking significant steps to cap or curb withdrawals and protect the aquifer, rivers and springs.
“Of course, any funding for water conservation is helpful because conservation always seems to play second-fiddle to the more powerful economic interests that typically promote expensive water-supply projects,” Bob Palmer, the legislative chair for the Gainesville-based Florida Springs Council, wrote in an email. “However, in past years, many of these conservation projects have subsidized big water users, allowing them to use (i.e. waste) just a little bit less water.
"There are more efficient approaches to conservation that the state is unwilling to consider. One would be a requirement for the largest water users to pay a moderate fee for the water that they are currently extracting for free. Another would be for the state to buy out, perhaps through conservation easements, some of the most water-intensive agricultural operations. The best method would be to determine, for each water management district, a cap on groundwater withdrawals that would leave sufficient water in the ground to protect the environment. That would be the simplest, cheapest and most effective water-conservation program. But given that the state water managers lack the vision or courage to try these sorts of novel approaches, the taxpayers of Florida will be asked, year after year, to mitigate impacts caused by those consuming the largest quantities of our groundwater.”
In this area of the state, the latest round of funding is focused on springs in the Ichetucknee and Lower Santa Fe river systems. Both of those rivers are already flowing below their adopted minimum flows and levels, the point at which any additional groundwater withdrawals are considered to cause significant environmental harm. Still, agricultural businesses and utilities with existing groundwater pumping permits are not slated to face any potential required steps and permit conditions intended to bring those rivers back to healthy flow for up to four years. Instead, those minimum flows and levels will only be taken into account in water management district reviews of brand new applications for groundwater pumping permits or if any existing users apply to increase their maximum allowable pumping when renewing a permit.
Existing permits will be grandfathered in until after a new computer model shows the groundwater flow in areas of North Florida in the Suwannee River Water Management District and the St. Johns River Water Management District and in south Georgia.
The St. Johns River and Suwannee River districts and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection established the North Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership in early 2012 in order to work more closely in planning and permitting decisions. They formed the partnership to address the fact that groundwater pumping in one district’s jurisdiction affects water bodies and aquifer levels within the neighboring district.
The latest round of funding is for projects that conserve water and improve “efficiency” of use. A list of eligible initiatives included, but was not limited to, the replacement of toilets, faucets and shower heads, planting landscaping that require minimal watering, and more efficient irrigation systems. Similar projects that previously received funding included $66,000 toward a $212,000 Gainesville Regional Utilities project to replace old mechanical water meters with electronic “smart” meters that store downloadable information on usage and are designed to better detect a slow leak in a customer’s system.
Rick Hutton, the GRU supervising engineer for water and wastewater, said utility officials plan to apply for funding for additional smart meters.
In the Lake City area, another project previously funded replaced 600 existing toilet fixtures and 665 faucets with “high efficiency units” designed to use less water. The DEP put $250,000 toward those projects, local governments $70,000 and the water management district $30,000.
The funding now becoming available is intended to be a 50-50 cost split with the local governments and public utilities, with a $1 million cap on any project. Designated Rural Economic Development Initiative communities may be eligible to receive full funding with no local contribution.
The St. Johns River District describes those communities, in general, as “economically disadvantaged with an employment base dominated by traditional agriculture or resource-based industries.” In this area, they include the city of Hawthorne and Gilchrist, Bradford, Columbia and Putnam counties. The deadline to apply for funding is Jan. 29.
Facts - If you go
What: Workshop for local government and public utilities interested in the $4 million available for water conservation projects.
Where: Gateway College Lake City, Wilson S. Rivers Library and Media Center, Building 200, Room 102, 149 S.E. College Place, Lake City.
When: 10 a.m. Jan. 7
Note: Deadline to apply for funding is Jan. 29

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