090731-1
Cabinet: Hold the Line on Urban Development Boundary
Public News Service
July 31, 2009
Miami, FL - Environmentalists are applauding the decision by Governor Crist's cabinet ordering Miami Dade County not to expand the urban development boundary into wetlands near the Everglades National Park. The final order, recently issued in the lawsuit over a proposal to build a Lowe's shopping plaza near Everglades National Park, found development would threaten the environment, the water supply, and the economy.
Kahlil Kettering, Biscayne restoration program analyst for the National Parks Conservation Association, says the cabinet agreed the project violated state growth management policies and threatened the environment.
"That was a momentous decision. We're glad the Governor's cabinet has sent a message to the county that we need to continue to hold the line. It's important to protecting the Everglades, protecting our economy, and protecting our quality of life."
Kettering's group argued development further west isn't needed due to the large number of empty homes and office buildings in Miami Dade County already. That type of boundary push, he says, adds to urban sprawl and places a heavy burden on taxpayers.
"It requires services and infrastructure to be pushed further and further west, such as roads and water pipelines, and this creates an economic tax burden on the residents of Miami Dade County."
Most importantly, Kettering adds, holding the line is critical to efforts to restore the Everglades, which help protect the water supply, make agriculture viable, and stimulate the south Florida economy.
"When you're allowing development to expand west and encroach on lands which are important for the vitality of the Everglades, you're, in essence, biting the hand that feeds you, as it is so important to our economy."
Developers argued the Lowe's was needed to provide for the people moving west of the urban development boundary.
Gina Presson , Public News Service - FL

090731-2
UDB Upheld
The Miami Herald
July 31, 2009
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Score one for good planning. Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet rejected the Miami-Dade County Commission's approval of a Lowe's Superstore to be built on 52 acres outside the Urban Development Boundary.
The 3-1 vote Tuesday mirrored a ruling by Judge Bram D.E. Canter in an administrative hearing. Two environmental groups challenged commission approval of the Lowe's. The judge agreed with county planners' data, which show plenty of developable land inside the UDB.
On a second development outside the UDB the governor and Cabinet abided by Judge Canter's decision that it was allowable because it set no new precedents and was surrounded by roads and other development. We would rather the state officials had disagreed with the judge on this one, to maintain the UDB's integrity. But this project is far less intrusive than the Lowe's would be.
County Mayor Carlos Alvarez twice vetoed the Lowe's project only to be overriden by the pro-development commission majority. Gov. Crist and the Cabinet sent the right message to commissioners wishing to move the UDB by precedent-setting dimensions: Don't.

090731-3
Water conservation's the loser
Orlando Sentinel - Opinion
July 31, 2009
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Call it the South Florida Water Giveaway District. That's because any pretense on the water management district's part that it's carefully watching over its 16-county water supply is now gone.
It's truly astonishing what the South Florida Water Management District is now planning to do with its share of the state's limited water supply. For all intents and purposes, it's giving those with an insatiable thirst all they could possibly want.
It apparently doesn't matter to the district that the aquifer no longer can accommodate Florida's runaway growth. Come 2013, new developments won't be able to tap the underground water supply.
It apparently doesn't matter that even the St. Johns River Water Management District, notorious for letting the thirstiest developer and utility dip their snouts in nearly any water source they desire, has imposed twice-weekly irrigation limits. So did the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
And so, even, did the South Florida district. When drought conditions hit the region a few years ago, it imposed twice-weekly restrictions. They're still in effect, but the district never made them permanent.
Water shortages even forced the South Florida District to impose seasonal, once-weekly watering rules which, by the way, didn't harm lawns. They didn't need more water. Meanwhile, to the west, water shortages compelled City of Tampa Utilities to ban lawn irrigation for two months this spring.
No, what apparently matters to South Florida's water district is that because several utilities now are threatening to sue it if it makes the twice-weekly irrigation rule permanent, the district's willing to give up.
Utilities in Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Highland Beach, Pompano Beach and Sunrise want water hogs to wet their lawns like nobody's business. Why? They claim that they can't make a go of things because the weakening economy has diluted revenues and existing water restrictions have cut demand by nearly 25 percent. So the district's ready to give them more, always more.
This is inexcusable.
South Floridians already use an average of 179 gallons per person per day — the most in the state.
Before the utilities' attorneys entered the fray, district staff actually had proposed making its twice-weekly rule permanent. But now with the utilities, as well as nurseries and lawn companies, breathing down their necks, the district's board members are expected to soon approve the thrice-weekly watering restrictions. Restrictions? Who'd water their lawns more than three times weekly, if given the opportunity?
The board needs to do what stewards of the region's limited water supply should do: Stare down the utilities, and stand up for conservation.
Board member Jerry Montgomery makes his home in metro Orlando, and like the rest of the board is expected to vote for the new "restriction." He says the district "needs to advance the cause of conservation," and will follow up the new rule — should they approve it — with education efforts on conservation and other "rules that are enforceable."
If this board were earnest about conserving water, it would require stringent conservation measures now, not later. It could mandate installing cheap soil moisture sensors in existing homes and almost-as-cheap low-flow toilets in new homes.
The district notes that if local governments in its jurisdiction want to restrict irrigating lawns to twice a week, they can. Orange and Osceola counties do. So do Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Lee.
But if they can manage with twice-a-week watering, so can everyone else. Managing the water supply, however, just isn't something South Florida is up to doing.

090730-1
Is the python hunt all hype ? Scientists try to squeeze some truth into snake search
Palm Beach Post - PAUL QUINLAN, Staff Writer
July 30, 2009
One week after a pet python escaped its terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in Sumter County, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson unfurled a 16-foot python skin at a congressional hearing and warned, "It's just a matter of time before one of these things gets to a visitor in the Florida Everglades."
The next week, he called for forming a python posse to hunt and kill the beasts, citing the "estimated 100,000 or more pythons now roaming the 'Glades." So began the Great Florida Python Hunt, with a special media kickoff in the Everglades during which, miraculously, hunters captured one of the elusive snakes.
Afterward Nelson told The Associated Press: "One down, 99,999 to go." And as recently as this morning, NBC reporter Kerry Sanders - reporting hip-deep from a swamp west of Boynton Beach - announced on the Today Show that "it's estimated there are more than 150,000 wild Burmese pythons on the loose."
Well, not exactly.
The idea that scientists estimate the number of pythons living in the Everglades at 100,000 - or 150,000, according to a news release from U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Tequesta - is one of several questionable facts and statistics that have helped propel the Everglades' five-year-old python problem into headlines around the world this month.
Other claims include the fear that pythons, if ignored, will come to dominate the Everglades food chain, wiping out whole species, and eventually spread across the Southern third of the United States and into our back yards.
In fact, the number of pythons in Everglades National Park is probably closer to around 30,000, park biologists say.
What's more, pythons face numerous predators in the Everglades, raising the possibility that the population growth could plateau well before significant numbers of the snakes find their way into our back yards. And new research has cast doubt on an oft-cited government study that says pythons could spread well beyond South Florida latitudes.
Nobody disputes that pythons pose a threat to the ecosystem - in particular, to wading birds and the dozens of other threatened or endangered species that live in the Everglades.
What is debatable is how much damage they could do. Biologists and snake experts note that some facts have been skewed in the fun-house mirror of sensational politics and news coverage.
"We've got a lot of politicians that are looking to get elected, and in this type of story, things get exaggerated," said Greg Graziani, one of the original licensed python hunters and a professional breeder from Venus, in Highlands County.
Most scientists agree that the non-native pythons arrived in the Everglades when careless pet owners released them or allowed them to escape as they grew too large. Another suspect is breeders whose cages were destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Estimates that 150,000 pythons live in the Everglades are loosely based on "guesstimates" by Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park wildlife biologist and resident python expert, of how many could live in the Everglades, based on available habitat. In fact, Snow offers a wide range: 5,000 to 138,000.
"We don't know how many are out there," said Snow, who estimates the true number at around 30,000. "We know that it's not hundreds, and clearly, everyone is comfortable saying there are thousands."
Experts, including researchers at the University of Florida, cite the exponential rise in the number of pythons caught as evidence of population growth. But those statistics may be skewed by improved intelligence and intensified efforts to locate and track the stealthy reptiles, concedes David Hallac, the park's chief of biological resources.
From 1979 through 2001, park biologists never saw more than three snakes captured in any given year. Since then, captures have risen sharply, jumping from 14 in 2002 to 343 last year - for a cumulative total of 1,074 as of early July.
The numbers "really took off in 2003 and 2004, where we started to do road surveys and get the word out," Snow said. The park has also run a trapping program with help from volunteers and begun researching techniques, including attracting pythons using pheromones.
Consider the "Judas snakes."
In 2005, the park began implanting snakes with $250 radio transmitters, each the size of a lipstick tube with a foot-long wire antenna. They released the snakes and tracked them back to the first python "nest," the existence of which confirmed the reptiles were breeding. In its first two years, the program led to the capture of at least 25 snakes.
Dissections have turned up all manner of wildlife in the bellies of pythons, including the remains of white-tailed deer, alligators and even a bobcat. But that's not to say that pythons are not themselves prey - to raccoons, wild pigs, birds and, of course, bobcats and alligators, say experts and scientists.
Graziani, the python breeder, said he suspects that large animal remains found in the stomachs of pythons may have belonged to critters already dead when the pythons came upon them.
"The fact that one of these things was found with a bobcat claw doesn't mean these things are out killing bobcats," he said.
Some say predictions that pythons will overrun the Everglades ignore another, equally likely outcome: the population plateaus.
"I cant imagine that it won't," said Harry Greene, an ecology professor and snake expert at Cornell University. "At some point, every population reaches its carrying capacity and it levels off or crashes."
Of course, that point may not be reached until the Key Largo wood rat or some other endangered species has been gobbled out of existence.
But what of the danger to humans?
Pet pythons of various types have killed 12 people in the United States since 1980, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Documented cases of wild pythons killing humans exist, although they are rare. None has occurred in this country.
The Miami Herald has cited two cases: One in Indonesia, in which a teenager was devoured by a 31-foot reticulated python, and another in the mid-1990s in which a 23-foot python killed and tried to swallow a rubber plantation worker in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Some Web sites show photos of humans being cut out of the stomachs of snakes, although some experts believe the photos were faked.
In February 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey released a study warning that the python invasion of South Florida could spread far north - even across the entire Southern third of the United States, in part because of projected global warming.
But the USGS "didn't do a very good analysis," said Cornell's Greene. Frank Burbrink, an associate professor of biology at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island, examined a much wider range of ecological factors in his own study released six months later, concluding that pythons could roost only in South Florida and the southern tip of Texas.

090730-2
There is no need to drill off Florida's Gulf Coast
Pensacola News Journal - Editorial
July 30, 2009
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Why would senators from Alaska and Louisiana lead the latest congressional effort to end legislative protection for Florida's coastline from offshore drilling?
Here's a guess: lobbying by big oil companies.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson says he will oppose the bill, which would reverse 2006 legislation that keeps drilling at least 125 miles off Panhandle beaches, and 235 miles off Gulf Coast beaches from Tampa southward. He should.
Meanwhile, another senator is leading an effort to open up drilling for natural gas about 25 miles south of Santa Rosa Island, in the Destin Dome.
The bill by Sens. Lisa Murkoski, R-Alaska, and Mary Landrieu, D-La., holds out the carrot of federal revenues to Florida. And no question, the revenue would be welcome in the state's tight budget.
But Florida long ago made it clear that it has assets it values more than a little extra revenue, which is what drilling royalties would amount to compared to Florida's $65 billion budget. Those assets include clean beaches and healthy coastal waters.
There are several realities drilling proponents don't like to talk about when they launch new schemes to put our coastal waters at risk.
First, there is no shortage of natural gas. In fact, a Wall Street Journal article this week referenced "skyrocketing" domestic natural gas production; "spot" prices for natural gas are down 70 percent from last year. Huge new discoveries in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Pennsylvania have produced a natural gas bonanza. Similar discoveries in Canada promise more abundance. In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States "is now swimming in natural gas."
Last year, industry analyst Navigant Consulting estimated that new discoveries of onshore "shale" gas — the source of the boom — alone contained enough supplies for 40 years at current U.S. consumption rates. More discoveries have been announced since then.
Natural gas is so abundant that it is increasingly proposed as an alternative to gasoline. Yet industry estimates are that converting 10 percent of U.S. cars from gasoline to natural gas would raise consumption only 1 percent.
So there is no "need" to risk our beaches for the gas off the Panhandle, other than from production companies that hope to profit from it. Especially since given falling prices, they will have a strong incentive to do it as cheaply as possible.
That leads to a second reality: Oil spills are not the only pollution risk.
Offshore drilling and production are industrial activities with a myriad of environmental impacts throughout their life cycles. That includes seismic exploration that kills marine life to the placement of rigs and pipelines to the use of explosives for removing rigs.
A recent News Journal viewpoint noted that "Even with the newest technologies, oil companies still legally pollute by dumping drilling muds, cuttings, produced waters, drainage and workover fluids into the water every day. These toxic wastes contain heavy metals, carcinogens, solids, sanitary wastes, biocides, radioactive material and more.
"Each platform also legally spews tons of nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulates yearly, which pollute the air and contribute to climate change."
Someday we might truly need the oil and natural gas close to Florida's shorelines. Today we do not, and getting them is not worth the risks involved.

090730-3
Time for Obama to squelch offshore drilling
Bradenton Herald - Editorial
July 30, 2009
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Once again, we’re engulfed in a battle over drilling off Florida’s Gulf coast. Must the Sunshine State fend off drilling proposals on a monthly basis?
Two senators from the big oil-producing states of Alaska and Louisiana introduced a bill this week to permit drilling in the Gulf as close as 45 miles to our shores.
This follows an amendment attached to the Senate energy bill that would allow oil and gas platforms not only 45 miles from our coast but only 10 miles in stretches of the Panhandle. This onerous amendment could become attached to climate legislation, a deliberate strategy to make drilling palatable to the Democrats in favor of the massive climate package.
Our beaches and waters are vital to our tourism and fishing industries. We should never trade those for the dubious dreams of energy independence and cheaper fuel. The environmental threat that is offshore drilling is far too great.
This week in the major tourist destination of South Padre Island, Texas, giant, gooey tar-like blobs are washing up on the sandy beaches.
Further north, Galveston’s Gulf waters are known for the murky discoloration from oil rig pollution. Beachgoers scrape tar off their feet.
Drilling proponents claim today’s technology will prevent environmental devastation. But there can never be a guarantee.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita rained ecological disaster across four states by causing 595 spills of oil, natural gas and other chemicals both offshore and inland, according to a 2005 Houston Chronicle investigation. Oil spill estimates of 9 million gallons put the catastrophe on par with the Exxon Valdez wreck, the newspaper reported.
Even the oil industry admitted that structures and drilling platforms can be built to withstand strong winds and storm surges but nature can always breach the best engineering.
With strong hurricanes always a threat in the Gulf, the gamble is unacceptable.
The proposal by Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, holds out a golden carrot — a bribe, if you will — giving states a 37.5 percent portion of the revenue from the oil and gas exploration in coastal waters.
In these budget-busting times, that considerable temptation must be resisted.
Both the bill and the amendment, the latter passed last week by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would void the 2006 law that bans drilling within 230 miles of Tampa Bay and 100 miles of the Pandhandle through 2022.
Thankfully, Sen. Bill Nelson pledges to filibuster drilling measures.
He also stands against drilling in the eastern Gulf because rigs would threaten an important military training zone. This, too, provides additional grounds for rejecting Gulf drilling.
Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, and Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, also oppose drilling off Florida’s coasts.
It comes as no small matter that Big Oil, fortified by billions in profits, is speeding up spending on lobbying, pumping $44.5 million into influencing Congress and federal agencies in the first three months of this year alone. At that pace, oil and gas companies will break last year’s record of $129 million, which itself represents a 73 percent increase in lobbying from two years earlier.
It’s not too difficult to connect the dots between all that Big Oil money and the endless series of measures introduced in Congress that call for opening up offshore drilling.
Will offshore oil drilling off Florida drop prices at the pump? Not anytime soon, according to the federal government.
The Energy Information Administration estimates that additional drilling in the Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf would not significantly impact either domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices until 2030.
Drilling proponents’ promise of energy independence and cheaper fuel is false.
With President Obama’s stated pursuit of alternative energy sources, concern over the environment and call for more fuel-efficient vehicles — and with billions in stimulus money aimed at all three policies — the administration appears to want to steer the country away from fossil fuels. That’s clearly a threat to Big Oil.
The administration should fend off this ceaseless effort by taking an unbending stand and vowing vetoes on all measures that open up offshore drilling.
Spare our tourism and fishing industries from this threat. Let us be free of this recurring nightmare.
Contacting President Obama:
President Barak Obama
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Phone: (202) 456-1111
E-mail: comments@whitehouse.gov

090730-4
Why shouldn’t Florida cash in on oil drilling?
COMMENTARY - Mike Thomas
July 30, 2009
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Proposal to cut Florida in on profits from offshore oil drilling is worth considering
Some in Congress now want to bribe Florida into accepting offshore oil and gas rigs.
I’m good with that.
Energy companies get drilling rights by leasing tracts of submerged land from the federal government. They also pay royalties on what they pull up.
The proposal would cut us in on 37.5 percent of this booty. It could be worth billions of dollars for a state in desperate need of billions of dollars.
The new plan fixes a glaring glitch in a plan unveiled last month. That one brought the rigs closer to our shores and gave us zip for it.
Now that some serious dollars are on the table, we simply need to fine-tune the details because, sooner or later, the rigs are coming.
They are inevitable, no matter how shrill and misleading the bleating from politicians, environmentalists and editorial boards.
We need the oil, we need the gas and the reasons not to get it are losing credibility.
There will be no environmental Armageddon, no oil-coated shores, no fouled waters, no fleeing tourists.
Let’s put the threat of oil drilling into perspective.
Every year, from one source or another, 76 million gallons of petroleum enter the waters of the United States. Of that amount, only about 584,000 gallons comes from offshore oil extraction, which amounts to about seven-tenths of 1 percent.
Where does most of the other oil come from?
Almost 47 million gallons of it, about 62 percent, seeps up naturally from the ocean bottom.
This seepage occurs, of course, in areas where there is a lot of oil under the surface, which happens to be where the drilling rigs are situated.
The result is that oil rigs get blamed for tar balls on beaches, particularly in Texas. The tar balls were there well before the first rig set up shop. The Indians used them to waterproof their canoes.
Almost 16 million gallons of the petroleum entering our waters comes from runoff. Rain falls on cities and roads, picks up all the oil we spill, and then flushes it into the ocean. This pollution source is 27 times greater than offshore oil extraction.
Boat engines, particularly two-stroke outboards, dump double the amount of oil in the water as drilling does.
These numbers, by the way, do not come from the oil companies. They come from a report published by the National Research Council in 2003.
You might think such information would be relevant to the ongoing debate about offshore oil drilling. But I’ve never seen it in any of the endless stories written about drilling by the state’s major newspapers, which are pretty much lined up against drilling.
I hear dire warnings about the pollution these rigs will dump into the Gulf of Mexico.
Drilling is the least of the Gulf’s problems. The primary polluter of the Gulf is the Mississippi River, which unloads a massive slug of nutrients daily. They feed massive outbreaks of algae, which die, sink to the bottom, rot, drain oxygen from the water and create massive dead zones in the northern Gulf that grow up to 18,000 square miles.
In Florida, a large canal that drains polluted runoff from the Everglades feeds huge outbreaks of toxic algae that have killed manatees.
I’ve read stories in which the dismal state of some Texas beaches has been blamed on drilling. These beaches are the victims of Gulf currents and silt and pollution from the Mississippi River.
Drilling critics point to spills caused by Hurricane Katrina. Despite the magnitude of the storm, it didn’t cause one well blowout. It did knock stored oil loose from some rigs. But none of the spills was serious enough to reach shore. And as a result of lessons learned, future spills from storms will be minimal.
That’s the thing about drilling. The safety record keeps improving as the technology gets better.
Florida is a major consumer of gasoline. We soon will get half our electrical energy from natural gas. If plans for nuclear plants collapse, that number will grow considerably.
To exempt ourselves from contributing to the energy supply, when we use so much of it, is neither fair nor credible, particularly given that opposition is based on boogeymen that do not exist.
Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@ orlandosentinel.com.

090729-1
Florida Cabinet thwarts plan to alter Miami-Dade development boundary
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau - MARY ELLEN KLAS
July 29,2009
Infill development will help hold line
Last month's court ruling halting the planned development of a Lowes superstore outside Miami-Dade County's
Urban Development Boundary was an important victory in the ongoing battle against westward sprawl in our community. But the more pressing issue going forward is whether residential development outside the boundary should proceed.
The answer to this question is a resounding ``No.''
TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Charlie Crist and Cabinet members sent Miami-Dade and other urban counties a message Tuesday when they rejected the county's attempt to move the development line west to accommodate a Lowe's Superstore.
Crist and the Cabinet, voting 3-1, agreed with an administrative law judge that the county violated the state's Growth Management Act when it expanded the urban development boundary for the home improvement center.
Environmentalists and urban planners hailed the decision, saying it sets a precedent for dealing with counties that attempt to bend state growth management laws and allow sprawl. They hope the ruling will halt attempts by politically powerful developers who are seeking to move development boundaries in other counties, including the creation of a new suburb on the Everglades' doorstep in Miami-Dade called Parkland.
``You can't hire a consultant to sort of gerrymander a needs analysis to determine the outcome,'' said Richard Grosso, a lawyer who represented the National Parks Conservation Association and 1000 Friends of Florida in the case.
He said counties like Miami-Dade can't ``justify moving the boundary for the next parcel'' just because it's next to farmland. ``It's a boundary for a reason.''
In Miami-Dade, the Urban Development Boundary, or UDB, is a demarcation line that runs along the western and southern edges of the county and limits development to one dwelling per five acres outside its borders. Lowe's sought the boundary change in order to build a store at the intersection of Tamiami Trail and Southwest 137th Avenue on a 52-acre parcel.
The Cabinet decision was a blow to county commissioners who twice overrode a veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez and pushed through the changes based on a consultant's analysis that said there was a need for the Lowe's store in the region. Alvarez had argued that the county had enough commercial space and the expansion wasn't needed.
APPEAL BY LOWE'S?
The county will now live with the decision, said Assistant County Attorney Dennis Kerbel. But Martha Harrell Chumbler, the lawyer who represented Lowe's, said that her client will decide in the next 30 days whether to appeal the ruling.
`WRONG STANDARD'
Chumbler told the governor and Cabinet that the judge's ruling was flawed because he failed to consider an analysis that showed the community needed general commercial development. ``The wrong standard of review has been applied,'' she said.
In a separate case, the panel also agreed with Judge Bram D.E. Canter that the county was within the law when it approved another amendment for a 42-acre commercial development at the western end of Kendall Drive, known as the Brown tract.
Miami-Dade's Department of Planning and Zoning had urged denial of that change as well, saying there was plenty of available space inside the boundary lines. But Canter said the exception was justified because of the unusual configuration and location of the parcel and because it set no precedent for future developers wishing to move the UDB line.
Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson was the lone no vote.
But Attorney General Bill McCollum also seemed to waver. When he was first asked his vote, he responded: ``I didn't say no.'' Twenty minutes later, he amended his vote to ``yes'' and explained that he still had questions about the issue.
`I'M NOT SURE'
``I'm not sure which side is correct on it,'' McCollum said after the meeting. ``It seems to me there is an argument and it may go to court to challenge it.''
He said that because he was in doubt, he voted to approve the staff recommendation to reject the Lowe's amendment and approve the Brown amendment.
Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@MiamiHerald.com

090729-2
Sam Poole: Editorial wrong about chief source of Lake O pollution
News-Press.com:  Sam Poole - Guest Opinion
July 29, 2009
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You are right to warn your readers about the pollution of Lake Okeechobee with phosphorus-enriched stormwater; the rapidly declining condition of the Lake is one of Florida's critical environmental problems. However, your June 23 editorial and cartoon attributing the pollution to backpumping of farm fields seriously misinforms your readers.
South Florida Water Management District records for 2003-08 show an average of 97 percent of the annual phosphorus load to Lake Okeechobee came from the watersheds north of the Lake. The toilet in your cartoon is actually flushing into the Lake the polluted stormwater from developments all the way to Orlando.
The only part of Everglades restoration that has been completed and is meeting targets is the cleanup of stormwater runoff from the Everglades Agricultural Area into the Everglades. Ironically, the success of the EAA stormwater treatment areas is now threatened by the increasing pollution of Lake Okeechobee.
Your readers should be seriously concerned for the health of the lake and river because the amount of pollution flowing into Lake Okeechobee from the northern basins is increasing, and there are no projects in any phase of design or construction that will reduce the pollution to the levels required by Florida Law in 2015. The continued pollution of Lake Okeechobee combined with a hurricane could quickly push the lake over the edge into massive algal blooms and fish kills.
Unfortunately, you make it even more difficult to solve the lake's problems when you misunderstand where the pollution is coming from.
The pollution of Lake Okeechobee is one of the most critical problems facing Florida. Your readers can help mobilize the resources to avoid the looming catastrophe only if they are well informed. Please call the South Florida Water Management District, Florida DEP and other sources you trust to verify the sources of the lake's pollution and make your readers effective advocates.
- Samuel E. Poole is an attorney for Berger Singermen, which has represented the sugar industry in Lake Okeechobee issues, and is a former executive director of the South Florida Water Management District.
- EDITOR'S NOTE: The News-Press agrees that pollution from the north is a bigger lake and Caloosahatchee River pollution problem than backpumping from sugar cane fields.

090729-3
US Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District Change of Command - Colonel Paul Grosskruger
Speech of Hon. Kendrick B. Meek of Florida in the House of Representatives (Extensions of Remarks)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Mr. MEEK of Florida:  Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the service and contributions of Colonel Paul Grosskruger of the United States Army Corps of Engineers--Jacksonville District as he passes Command to Colonel Pantano and prepares to retire from military service. He has had a long and admirable career, worthy of distinction and worthy of our gratitude.
Colonel Grosskruger assumed command of the Jacksonville District on July 25, 2006 and it has been my distinct pleasure to work closely with him for these past several years. Most notably, I have worked with Colonel Grosskruger on the Merrill-Stevens Expansion Project and was also fortunate to assist the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as they completed the restoration of Virginia Key Beach. Each time, Colonel Grosskruger impressed us with his clarity, candor and fairness. Colonel Al Pantano has large new responsibilities to fill, but from reading his resume and noting his experiences, I am confident that he will be more than up to the task.
Below is a brief biographical sketch of Colonel Grosskruger's long and distinguished career. We have come to expect nothing less than great things of this career officer and we look forward to hearing from Colonel Grosskruger again, though as a private citizen. I know that many members of Florida's delegation join me in wishing him the best as he enters this new stage of life and we have every confidence that Colonel Pantano will continue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers--Jacksonville District's fine tradition.
Born and raised in eastern Iowa, Colonel Grosskruger was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1983. Colonel Grosskruger is a graduate of the U.S. Army Engineer Basic and Advance Courses, the Combined Arms and Services Staff School, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering mechanics from the United States Military Academy and a Master of Science degree in civil engineering from Iowa State University. He is a registered professional engineer in the both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Florida.
His assignments include platoon leader, battalion S2 officer and company executive officer in the 317th Engineer Battalion, Eschborn, Germany; company commander and battalion S4 officer in the 82d Engineer Battalion, Bamberg, Germany; company commander of the 535th Engineer Company (Combat Support Equipment), Grafenwoehr, Germany; project officer and deputy resident engineer in the Omaha Engineer District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Colorado Springs, Colorado; battalion executive officer, 317th Engineer Battalion, Fort Benning, Georgia; group operations officer, 36th Engineer Group, Fort Benning, Georgia; Instructor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Chief of Engineer Operations and Assistant Corps Engineer, V Corps, Heidelberg, Germany; Commander of the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion, Vilseck, Germany, where he planned and conducted operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His prior assignment was as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Engineer School, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Colonel Grosskruger's awards include the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal (seventh award); the Army Commendation Medal (three awards and the ``V'' device); the Joint Commendation Medal; the Army Achievement Medal (fifth award); the NATO Medal; the Joint Meritorious Unit award; and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He has earned medals from Nicaragua and Poland. He has the U.S. and German parachutist badge and the air assault badge. His battalion earned the Presidential Unit Citation for service with the 3d Infantry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I.would be remiss if I did not also take this opportunity to thank Colonel Grosskruger's wife and family for their support and dedication. It is a well known fact that the hardest job in the military is that of the military spouse; our service men and women would not be able to do what our country asks of them without the backbone of a loving family. Claudia Grosskruger is to be commended as much as Colonel Grosskruger for their work in service to this country and for their efforts in raising Jerry, 20 and Jennifer, 18.

090729-4
What the Netherlands can teach Florida
Court rejects Lake Okeechobee backpumping ban
Florida Earth Foundation,  STAN BRONSON        https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ef62d40d53a34661bac0d8c233c3a4ca&URL=mailto%3a%2520stan%40floridearth.org
July 29, 2009
A federal appeals court on Thursday reversed a Miami judge's ruling that Florida water managers violated the Clean Water Act by pumping contaminated water from farmland into Lake Okeechobee.
The decision hinged on what a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals termed the ''ambiguous'' language of the federal anti-pollution law. The judges said they had no choice but to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's interpretation that transferring polluted water from one navigable body to another does not require a permit.
The decision overturned a 2006 ruling by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of Miami, who concluded that the South Florida Water Management District had failed to obtain the necessary permits for backpumping operations.
Living with water -- whether it is enduring the wettest month on record in May, experiencing one of the most severe droughts to affect our water supply or preparing for this year's hurricane season -- is something with which Floridians grapple.
Storm-water runoff and the intrusion of saltwater into fresh water areas have clearly affected Florida's agriculture industry, water capacity, infrastructure and environmental and ecological landscape. The impact of climate change adds yet another layer of complexity, resulting in less fresh water for Floridians and more intense periods of rainfall that will likely overtax drainage systems.
Reconciling these divergent water issues is a complex task, but one that can be achieved if Floridians are open to innovation and collaboration in our water management policies.
Among the most critical and effective first steps we've taken has been forging an alliance with water experts in the Netherlands. The Dutch not only have learned to live with water -- they have embraced the water that surrounds them and used it to strengthen the country's infrastructure.
Complicated issues
After the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, the work done by the Dutch in New Orleans to manage water issues has sparked the interest of many people in Florida. Our Dutch counterparts also have become increasingly fascinated by Florida and its complicated water issues. They have helped us create a vehicle for innovation and the exchange of information called the Florida-Holland Connection that will benefit both Florida and the Netherlands.
The Dutch live with the constant threat to their low-lying nation from the North Sea and flooding from the European highlands.
The Dutch understand the threats and costs of hurricanes and the long-term ramifications of subsiding lands and rising seas.
They understand the threats and costs of hurricanes striking Florida and the long-term ramifications of subsiding lands and rising seas that we face in the future. The Dutch have managed to master living with water through world-class scientific and technological advancements in water management -- making them primed for partnership with Florida.
Dutch experts visiting Florida have proven to be very willing to share their knowledge with The Florida Earth Foundation, the state, the South Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and several universities.
The sharing of best practices in water management between Dutch and U.S. experts could, in fact, prove invaluable in key projects, including the Central and South Florida Flood Control Project, which helps increase storage and capacity of drinking water, control hurricane and rainfall flooding and critical water flows to the Everglades; the Herbert Hoover Dike, to which Dutch experts have suggested ways to improve the stability of the Dike; and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project, to which the Dutch hopefully will lend and gain relevant ecological expertise in restoring vital water flow to the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee, while revitalizing plant and wildlife.
As Floridians evolve our approach to living with water, it is imperative that we continue to develop and enhance our partnership with our Dutch friends. Water management is not only a priority for Florida and the United States; it is a global issue of tremendous consequence, especially as climate change and its effects increase in importance.
Recognizing this urgency, the Netherlands is hosting water experts from around the world at an H209 Forum in New York City Sept. 9-10 as a platform to share expertise and discuss innovative and sustainable solutions in water management.
Sharing resources
I plan to be there and to share what I learn with Floridians. Because water affects each region differently, there is much to be gained if we collaborate and share resources and thinking. Our friendship with the Dutch has and will continue to lead to innovation if we stand shoulder to shoulder.
Stan Bronson is executive director of the Florida Earth Foundation.

090727-1
And the bucks keep flowing in
Miami Herald - CARL HIAASEN  https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ef62d40d53a34661bac0d8c233c3a4ca&URL=mailto%3achiaasen%40miamiherald.com
July 27,2009
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Unlike Sarah Palin, Charlie Crist has chosen not to quit his governorship early. Florida's own one-term wonder is using his remaining time to ingratiate himself with as many deep-pocket interest groups as possible.
The governor's unseemly burst of groveling is directly connected to his upcoming run for the U.S. Senate. Sucking up to the National Rifle Association and the Christian right, Crist last week declared his opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation is already a done deal.
Many of Crist's longtime supporters were surprised, but they shouldn't have been. Charlie has no problem with timely pandering.
Take Senate Bill 360, which he signed into law last month. Authored by lobbyists for developers, it's one of the worst pieces of legislation to come out of one of the country's most buyable legislatures.
The law emaciates Florida's Growth Management Act by removing state oversight of massive residential and commercial projects known as Developments of Regional Impact, which put enormous stress on neighboring communities.
More outrageously, the new law will stick taxpayers -- not developers -- with most of the high costs for roads and other infrastructure that housing subdivisions require.
It's a recipe for more reckless sprawl, which is the last thing Florida needs, and the last thing a self-baptized environmentalist like Crist should be endorsing.
Lobbyists for the building industry say SB 360 will jump-start many stalled construction projects, a dubious claim in a state with a pandemic housing glut and practically zero demand for new units. The real motive is to gut land-use regulations before the next boom.
Republican lawmakers who lovingly embraced the bill named it the ``Community Renewal Act,'' which is more digestible than the ``Developers' Relief Act.'' Here's all you really need to know: The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Association of Realtors love it.
Guess who doesn't: Cash-strapped cities and counties that will be saddled with the fiscal burden of supporting the new projects. They say the law wrongly restricts a local community's ability to plan and regulate its own development. One way or another, the tab for roads and sewers must be passed along to a public that's already fed up with how overbuilding has damaged the quality of life. Passed 25 years ago, the original Growth Management Act was porous and too easily subverted. The new bill is a toothless farce.
Crist was well aware how strongly local governments opposed it. Officials from Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and several other counties urged the governor to use his veto. His own growth-management guru, Tom Pelham, thought the bill was lousy.
The governor signed his name anyway, saying, ``It's probably one of those bills where nobody's going to be overly happy on either side of the argument.''
Really, Charlie? The developers were beyond overly happy; they were turning cartwheels.
That wasn't the reaction in most city and county halls. So far, at least 16 municipalities have joined a lawsuit seeking to have SB 360 declared unconstitutional.
Lawyers for Homestead, Weston, Miami Gardens, Key Biscayne and other cities say the measure is an ``unfunded mandate'' that unlawfully heaps costs on local governments without providing necessary sources of revenue.
They also contend that the bill, which is cluttered with provisions unrelated to development, violates a constitutional requirement that statutes must deal with a single subject.
Like his stance against Sotomayor, Crist's unexpected support for the lax development law disappointed those still clinging to the notion that he's a different breed.
The same fellow who fancies himself a crusader for the Everglades has -- if SB 360 is allowed to stand -- essentially guaranteed that the remaining wetlands of western Miami-Dade will be paved, dooming any hope for reviving the Everglades.
Only as craven political strategy does Crist's latest cave-in makes sense. You can't win a U.S. Senate seat without a war chest, and developers, builders and banks are among Florida's most prolific campaign donors.
As of mid-July, the governor had already raised $4.3 million for his 2010 Senate race, a record-breaking sum. He seems in no hurry to reveal who gave what. He won't even identify his ``bundlers'' -- the major players who solicit and collect campaign checks on his behalf.
Late last week, the Federal Election Commission began posting Crist's donor information. Nobody will be shocked when big money starts rolling in from those who stand to benefit from the Developers' Relief Act.
Obviously Charlie would rather be a plump turkey than a lame duck.

090727-2
Outlaw ownership of pythons throughout Florida
Palm Beach Post - Letters to the Editor
July 27, 2009
Re: "Nelson puts squeeze on giant snakes," good for Sen. Bill Nelson, Gov. Crist and the others who have taken a stand against keeping these dangerous reptiles.
They serve no purpose being a captive pet. How many more tragic deaths will happen? Nature has a place for all of its creatures, and Florida is not one of them for pythons. Never mind permits to keep a python. They should be made illegal, plain and simple. We know they have entered the Everglades, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Martin counties and are taking a toll on native wildlife.
People cannot take care of giant reptiles properly. I suggest a state committee to be chosen to decide how to handle this growing, dangerous problem. As for the mother of the child killed and her boyfriend, who owned the snake, they should be charged with child endangerment and child neglect and put on trial. That poor child must have been screaming and crying while being bitten and crushed. This was a sickening and tragic death that most certainly could have been avoided.

090727-3
Expert says fish kill not that significant
Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon - KEVIN WADLOW
Jul. 27, 2009
A combination of natural summer conditions likely triggered a localized fish kill in northern Florida Bay last week, says a researcher with Audubon of Florida.
 “It’s not a great thing, but it’s probably ecologically insignificant,” said Peter Frezza, research coordinator at Audubon’s Tavernier Science Center. “It occurred in a very confined area of a large bay.”
Frezza said most of the dead fish he saw while boating through the area were mullet.
“There were thousands of dead fish, but I’d estimate 95 percent were mullet,” he said. “When you think about how many mullet are in Florida Bay, it’s not anything to worry about.”
There have been scattered reports of anglers spotting redfish or snook among the floating bodies.
The first reports of dead fish were received Tuesday and Wednesday.
 “These things happen,” Everglades National Park biologist David Hallac told the Miami Herald. “It’s just the size of it that was concerning.”
Hallac said the park collected water samples and is working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to pinpoint the problem.
This report was supplemented with material from the Miami Herald.

090727-4
Work out Everglades glitch
Palm Beach Post Editorial
July 17, 2009
Despite complaints that Gov. Crist's buyout of U.S. Sugar is slowing Everglades restoration, the truth is just the opposite: Federal money is beginning to flow and projects stalled for years are moving. Only now a bureaucratic snafu threatens to stop the work before it begins.
As The Post reported, a master agreement to govern how costs are shared between the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is on hold after one side, the water district, thought that the work was done. Talks began seven years ago and, both sides agree, were completed in April. The water district board signed off last month. Yet at a meeting last week, the board learned that corps' lawyers not involved in negotiations had made significant changes to the document.
To the board, it looked like bureaucratic overkill with real-life consequences. "These people," board member Shannon Estenoz said, referring to lawyers who changed the document, "are like the fourth branch of government. These people cannot tell President Obama, 'Don't restore the Everglades.' They can't tell the Congress, 'Don't restore the Everglades.' They can't tell the Florida governor not to restore the Everglades. But they don't have to. Because you know what they do? They sit in their offices and wait for stuff like this to hit them. Then when it hits them, that's when they exercise their power."
All a big misunderstanding, said Stuart Appelbaum, the corps' Everglades program manager. Both sides will go point-by-point over the changes next week. Despite the water district's claim, he said, terms were not changed. It was standard practice, he said, to have "another set of eyes" look at the document. "The intent," he said, "was not to go back on things that had been negotiated."
In his presentation to the board, district Deputy Executive Director Ken Ammon listed three areas where terms were changed, calling for the district to pick up costs assigned to its federal partners. Working out the differences, he said, could delay federal projects, such as restoring natural water flow in the Picayune Strand in Collier County, part of a recent and long-awaited $82 million congressional authorization.
The corps is under the interim command of Terrence "Rock" Salt, a former Jacksonville corps commander and Department of Interior Everglades official. So Washington understands the unique nature of the Everglades partnership and how difficult it has been to get federal money flowing. With Mr. Salt's help, this ridiculous disruption can get resolved quickly so the work of Everglades restoration finally can begin.

090726-1
Martin's improving future ?
Palm Beach Post - Sally Swartz, Columnist
July 26, 2009
Chalk up another win for residents fighting to save Martin County from overdevelopment. On Tuesday, the county commission decided not to allow small towns in rural western Martin.
The marathon meeting was the latest skirmish in this long summer war over the efforts of the Future Group to change the rules that have made Martin so livable. Still, while commissioners sided with residents, they didn't make it easy for them. They refused to set a specific time to hear four hours of comments from more than 25 residents, most opposed to changing the county's growth plan. Many waited all day to speak, then saw the commission postpone action on other major changes until Aug. 11.

But a St. Lucie County commissioner made the most eloquent case. Recalling his entry into public life 15 years ago, Charles Grande said that developers who couldn't get their way in Martin or Indian River counties "could get it in St. Lucie." But he, along with Doug Coward and former Commissioner Cliff Barnes, redid St. Lucie's growth plan "based on Martin County's."
Though St. Lucie tightened growth rules and "followed the Martin County template," Commissioner Grande said, "We're not as good as you are now. I ask that you think how much your (growth) plan has meant to other counties."
Commissioner Grande's plea, more than 1,200 e-mails and comments from dozens of residents made a difference. All the commissioners except Doug Smith rejected the Future Group's push to allow small towns in western Martin. Sarah Heard always has been opposed, but Patrick Hayes, Susan Valliere and Ed Ciampi, a Future Group member, joined her. I hope they continue to listen. And I hope none of them tries to sneak in Future Group proposals at the last minute, as happened at a recent Local Planning Agency meeting.
Other changes still are in play, as weary residents learned at the end of Tuesday's meeting. Those changes could allow clustering homes, apartments and condos in western Martin. The only development now allowed is one house per 20 acres. The existing growth plan aims to keep western areas rural and development closer to the coast.
Other proposed changes could allow grocery stores and businesses at rural intersections, which opponents say destroys the urban boundary, beyond which the county won't provide water, sewer and other services.
Future Group spokesman Ken Natoli showed slides and complained about growth rules in Stuart that allowed an ugly six-laning of U.S. 1. But Jim Egan of the Marine Resources Council warned that new rules for western land could drive up land values, making it harder to buy land for Everglades restoration. Residents said they are worried about the costs of providing roads, water and sewer service if rules change to allow more development on western land.
Stay tuned. This drama has more twists and turns ahead before the county sends final plans to the state for approval in December. But battle lines are drawn. Last week, the Future Group got a taste of present reality. Residents won't give up Martin County without a fight.

090726-2
More good than bad in water management bill
Star-Banner (special) - Michael W. Sole
Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
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On June 30, Gov. Charlie Crist signed Senate Bill 2080, relating to water resources, into law. Although the bill is not perfect, it is my firm belief - a belief that I expressed to the governor - that this bill should be signed for the many benefits it provides to both to the environment and the people of Florida.
Although the new law requires the Governing Boards of the state's five water management districts to delegate authority to approve permits to their executive directors, each of the water management districts have been - and will continue to be - committed to open government and transparency. The simple fact is nothing in Senate Bill 2080 diminishes, alters or limits the ability of the public from inquiring or obtaining information about a permit application or objecting to an application.
While much attention has focused on delegation, many other aspects of the bill offer greater protection for Florida's water resources that have gone largely unnoticed. However, these changes will help ensure the protection and conservation of Florida's water resources. They include:
Changes to Florida law regarding environmentally friendly landscaping. The use of Florida-friendly landscaping and other measures by homeowners is an effort to conserve Florida's water resources, which is in the best interest of all Floridians.
Expands lands eligible to receive compensation to local governments. This provision puts into Florida law a commitment of the South Florida Water Management District to ensure the smaller Glades communities are not adversely impacted by the U.S. Sugar land acquisition.
Streamlines government and saves taxpayer dollars - allowing meetings to be conducted via technology and authorizing the use of certain long-term permits.
Provides fiscally sound policies that ensure the water management districts do not overextend their financial commitments.
Every drop of water makes a difference to Florida's future, and we must continue to protect and wisely manage our water resources. There is no doubt that Florida's environment is better protected when all stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. As a result, I am committed to preserving the public process throughout this next year.
I will continue working with the executive directors of the state's five water management districts to ensure openness and transparency. In addition, I look forward to working with the 2010 Legislature to develop a process that sustains transparency and stakeholder participation.
Michael W. Sole is secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

090726-3
Water managers may offer Everglades restoration land, other tracts as collateral to finance U.S. Sugar deal
Palm Beach Post - PAUL QUINLAN, Staff Writer
July 14, 2009
South Florida water managers may offer Wall Street more than a quarter-million acres of state-owned lands, including thousands of acres of Everglades restoration tracts, as collateral to finance Gov. Charlie Crist's land deal with U.S. Sugar Corp. and future environmental projects, records show.
The South Florida Water Management District has identified 283,000 acres worth $1.5 billion — including preserve lands, filter marshes and Everglades-area wetlands — that could be used to guarantee some of the $2.2 billion they intend to borrow to buy the U.S. Sugar land and recreate the historic flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades.
The collateral might also include 2.8 acres under the Herbert Hoover Dike.
The proposal, which water managers say remains under consideration, emerged in internal agency e-mails and other documents that opponents of the U.S. Sugar deal have cited in their legal battle to block financing for what would be the state's most expensive conservation land purchase ever.
Water managers say using the land as collateral would, at little risk to taxpayers, enable the district to obtain tax-free financing, which would translate to savings of tens of millions of dollars over the 30-year loan.
"We're pursuing this as an option," said Paul Dumars, the water district's chief financial officer. "At the end of the day, we would save taxpayer dollars."
But opponents of the U.S. Sugar deal say the proposal is reckless and illustrates the extraordinary financial strain that the deal would place on the South Florida water agency and its taxpayers in all or part of 16 South and Central Florida counties.
"It would be stupid to do it," said Joseph Klock, who represents chief U.S. Sugar competitor Florida Crystals, one of the deal's opponents. "It would be political suicide."
The complex financing scheme would involve what are called certificates of participation, which are similar to bonds but circumvent the need for voter approval. The water agency would use property taxes collected in its 16 counties to make 30 years of annual debt payments to trustee Deutsche Bank, which would in turn repay investors in the certificates.
If the district defaulted on the loan, Deutsche Bank could use the land to generate a return for investors — for example, by leasing some of the land to farmers.
The state would not risk losing the lands entirely, because everything would revert to state ownership and control at the end of the 30-year term, according to agency officials.
The collateral lands are listed in a three-page spreadsheet that Ruth Clements, the district's land acquisition director, sent agency administrators, noting it includes only properties owned outright by the district.
Among them: the 38,000-acre Kissimmee Prairie Ecosystem, 17,000 acres of East Everglades and even 2.8-acres of the Herbert Hoover Dike footprint.
Most are lands that the state plans to use for Everglades restoration and other environmental repair efforts. Clements wrote that the vast Everglades water conservation areas, along with lands bought with federal money and the agency's headquarters property, had been cut from the list.
Dumars said the agency would structure any collateral agreement in a way that would allow the district to "correct" any potential default and resume control of the land within a year or two.
Crist's $536 million, 73,000-acre deal with U.S. Sugar is expected to close in early 2010, provided Florida Crystals and the Miccosukee Indian tribe, whose members live in the Everglades, do not succeed in blocking the financing.

090726-4
Prevent political stall-ball
Palm Beach Post - Editorial
July 26, 2009
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There was a lot right about the people Gov. Crist picked last week for the South Florida Water Management District board. But there was something terribly wrong about when the governor chose them.
Joe Collins, engineering manager for Tampa-based conglomerate Lykes Bros., fills the seat vacated 13 months ago by Malcolm "Bubba" Wade Jr., a vice president of U.S. Sugar. Mr. Wade resigned when Gov. Crist announced that the water district was buying U.S. Sugar, a deal that now has the district buying just some of the company's land.
Mr. Wade lives in U.S. Sugar's hometown of Clewiston. For more than a year, while the district debated a transaction that would profoundly affect that area, the residents had no representation. They had no advocate to jawbone the state into developing a plan to replace the jobs. There was no shortage of qualified applicants. Gov. Crist just didn't want to risk picking someone who might oppose the sale.
Gov. Crist waited four months to fill the other two vacancies. Gladys Perez, a lawyer who worked for Gov. Crist and Gov. Jeb Bush, takes a Miami-Dade County seat that has been vacant since March. Indiantown developer Kevin Powers fills the Treasure Coast seat of Melissa Meeker, who stayed on after announcing that she didn't want another four-year term after hers expired in March.
Mr. Collins attended the district's first "water summit" in 2007 and has served on other committees examining ways to preserve Florida's most valuable resource. Lykes Bros. also wants to stake out a future in the renewable energy business. Ms. Perez worked on Everglades issues in Tallahassee. Mr. Powers is the son of former board member Timer Powers. It's incredible to think that barely two years after Mr. Bush left office the board needs a development perspective. If Mr. Powers follows his father's example, the district will get a balanced, sensible viewpoint.
Still, the 16-county South Florida Water Management District is the most important public agency in this part of the state. What the governing board positions lack in compensation - they're unpaid - they make up for in power. But the governor has no deadline for filling board vacancies. Governors must appoint judges within 60 days of receiving names from the screening committee, but the thousands of other appointments are on the governor's timetable.
That should change, at least for appointments to the five water district boards. Just as the shot clock in college basketball keeps coaches from stalling and ruining the game, a deadline would keep governors from refusing to fill vacancies for political reasons. If 90 days is too short - applicants need time to apply and be screened by the governor's staff - the Legislature could make it 120 days or 180 days.
Only confirmation by the Senate is required for water district board members. With the Legislature having finished its annual session, even that won't be an issue until March. Judging by Gov. Crist's work schedule, pressing business didn't delay these appointments. Politics did.

090726-5
With the Everglades, it's never easy
Palm Beach Post – Editorial Commentary
Sunday, July 26, 2009
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Nine days ago, reptile experts and camera-toting news crews traipsed out into western Broward County for a photo-op to kick off Gov. Crist's war against invasive snakes. The governor had authorized a python hunt to eradicate the creatures after a Burmese python escaped from its cage and killed a 2-year-old girl in central Florida. Though that gruesome episode didn't happen in the wild, it renewed interest in wiping out escaped or released pythons from the Everglades, where their hunting habits are upsetting the balance of nature.
As the photo-op group explored a tree island west of Fort Lauderdale, snake expert Greg Graziani actually spotted a python in the shallow water. With help from others, he captured it. The first casualty in Gov. Crist's war was taken away and killed.

But if that event gave the impression that clearing Burmese pythons from the River of Grass would be a cakewalk, it was a false impression. Estimates of the snake population range from 10,000 to 150,000. Though the snakes grow up to 20 feet in length and can weigh as much as 250 pounds, they still aren't all that easy to find. A few night later, when Post reporter Paul Quinlan accompanied hunters on a python search, the group found a lot of muck, mud, water and tough going, but no pythons.
Are estimates of their population overblown? Or is the habitat so friendly that they have little to fear? The pythons are just the latest example of how much humans can degrade the environment and how difficult it is to fix the problems that we cause. Elaborate plans to restore the World Heritage site are gaining momentum but will cost billions. A war against pythons seems simple by comparison. That war is worth fighting, but it's one more battle in a frustrating wider war to save the Everglades.

090724-
Hold the line on development
The Miami Herald – Opinion
July 24,2009
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Crist and Cabinet should reject both plans to expand the UDB
With empty land available to build stores and homes in Miami-Dade County's designated urban area and with thousands of vacant homes waiting to be bought in this recession why would commissioners push for development out in the western fringes?
And why would Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet back such a lame-brain idea?
They will have a chance to stand up for county taxpayers and stop the sprawl next week when they consider two irresponsible amendments to the county's Comprehensive Development Plan that would expand the Urban Development Boundary. On Tuesday, the National Parks Conservation Association and 1,000 Friends of Florida will ask the governor and Cabinet to declare those two amendments in violation of the state's Growth Management Act.
The two environmental groups won a partial victory in a state administrative hearing in May. Administrative law Judge Bram D.E. Canter ruled that the Miami-Dade County Commission wrongly expanded the UDB to allow a Lowe's Superstore but was within the law in approving another amendment for a commercial development at the western end of Kendall Drive.
Leave out politics
The governor and Cabinet have final say over whether cities' and counties' changes to their growth plans violate the law. In these two cases, Mr. Crist and the Cabinet should find both amendments noncompliant. Given that two Cabinet members -- Attorney General Bill McCollum and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink -- are running for governor and Mr. Crist is running for the U.S. Senate, their decision could be fraught with politics.
It shouldn't be. Mr. McCollum, Ms. Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson can rise above the urge to pander to development interests and support smart planning and the environment, specifically Everglades National Park, as well as Miami-Dade's agricultural interests.
This would also be a chance for Mr. Crist to redeem himself, somewhat, after signing into law SB 360, which would gut the state's growth management laws. Using the recession as an excuse, the Legislature approved SB 360 to ``jump-start'' growth by removing state oversight of Developments of Regional Impact and making cities and counties, rather than builders, liable for the costs of new infrastructure. Several cities are suing to get the law overturned.
Rejecting the two amendments also would vindicate Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez and the county's planning staff. The planners vigorously opposed the two amendments, using convincing numbers to show the county had plenty of in-fill development room inside the UDB. Mr. Alvarez twice vetoed the amendments, only to see the commission's pro-development bloc override him both times.
`No need for store'
Judge Canter said of the Lowe's amendment: There is ``no need for more commercial land, and no need for a home improvement store, in the area of the Lowe's site.''
As to the other amendment, known as the Brown tract, Judge Canter said that while the application to build on 40 acres of farmland did comply with state law it was so unique that it set no precedent for future developers wishing to move the UDB's current line. He described the site as relatively small, odd shaped and squeezed between a big residential development and an arterial roadway. For these reasons the judge said the tract had little agricultural value.
All that may be true, but if the Cabinet and governor approve the Brown amendment it will be seen as a precedent by the County Commission, whose majority is ever willing to oblige developers and pave over more farmland. Of particular concern is Parkland, a proposed suburb of 19,000 residents with homes, shops and offices on 961 acres outside the UDB.
The county already has a backlog of $6 billion in needed roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure. Police and fire departments also are stretched. Yet a majority of commissioners think sprawl is sound public policy.
Given the glut of vacant office space and homes for sale in Miami-Dade in this recession, the time to move the UDB to accommodate new development has become even more distant than it was when the commission approved these amendments last year.
This is the right moment for Mr. Crist and the Cabinet to send a strong message to Miami-Dade commissioners and developers: Moving the Urban Development Boundary is off-limits for the foreseeable future. Stop the sprawl.

090723-
EPA recommends denying Lake Belt mining
Pit & Quarry
Jul 23, 2009
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends denying nine mining applications affecting 6,800 additional acres of wetlands in Miami’s Lake Belt region.
In a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in early July, EPA expresses concerns about the environmental impacts associated with the proposed limestone mining. This includes the potential to “significantly degrade aquatic resources,” EPA said in the letter. The region forms the buffer between the Everglades Ecosystem and the urban development of Miami.
According to the EPA letter, the nine applications would expand mining activities of APAC-Southeast Inc., Florida Rock Industries Inc., Kendall Properties and Investments, Rinker Materials of Florida Inc., Sawgrass Rock Quarry Inc., Tarmac America LLC, White Rock Quarries and Opa-Locka West Airport.
The latest decision in the ongoing legal battle came in January, when a judge ruled against the Corps of Engineers and the mining companies, setting aside 10 of the existing mining permits covering hundreds of acres. The industry appealed the judge’s partial mining ban, with oral arguments scheduled in October. 
Lake Belt mining permits were originally issued for 5,400 acres in 2002.

090722-
Heat may have killed fish in Florida Bay
The Miami Herald
CURTIS MORGAN         https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ef62d40d53a34661bac0d8c233c3a4ca&URL=mailto%3acmorgan%40MiamiHerald.com
July 22, 2009
Thousands of fish popped up dead this week in Florida Bay -- possible victims of what might be described as a marine version of heat stroke.
The fish kill was unusually large for the waters of Everglades National Park, with floating redfish, snook and other species covering nearly 20 acres in between Buoy Key and the coast, said Dave Hallac, the park's chief of biological resources.
``These things happen,'' Hallac said.
``It's just the size of it that was concerning.''
Some fish kills happen almost every year in Florida Bay. Because much of the bay is shallow, with vast flats only a few feet deep, water conditions can change rapidly with the weather.
Cold snaps can kill temperature-sensitive fish such as snook. Extended hot, dry spells can raise salinity and kill sea grass, with a sometimes fatal effect on other life as the decaying plants suck oxygen from the water.
While low oxygen is suspected, Hallac said, levels must have dropped quickly. He fished the area over the weekend and caught sea trout.
There was no visible evidence of the green algae blooms that have plagued the waters of Florida Bay and the Keys in past summers.
Hallac said the park collected water samples and is working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to pinpoint the problem.
Until results are in, the cause will remain officially unresolved.

090721-
Money still well spent
Palm Beach Post - Editorial
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ae8ded616a0f455883c0f3431a88fe61&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.palmbeachpost.com%2fopinion%2fcontent%2fopinion%2fepaper%2f2009%2f07%2f21%2fa6a_talisman_edit_0722.html
July 21, 2009
It’s hard to throw away as much as $40 million in public money and call it a cost savings. But that’s essentially what the South Florida Water Management District is saying about its decision to halt construction in western Palm Beach County of the world’s largest above-ground reservoir.
As The Post reported on July 12, the district stopped construction of the A1 Reservoir last year at a pivotal point. The district had spent $272 million preparing the site, particularly by carving out a 22-mile perimeter. The next stage, at a cost of $330 million, called for building 12-foot-high walls along the perimeter to turn the former sugar cane field into a humongous bathtub.
After a lawsuit challenged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit the district obtained for the project, district officials stopped work before erecting the walls. If the permit had been ruled invalid, the district would have had to dismantle the walls. So, on behalf of the public, the district swallowed $2 million a month - the total could be as much as $40 million - in fees to suspend the contract.
One month later, Gov. Crist announced plans for the water management district to buy U.S. Sugar. That deal - now just for part of the company’s land - was a show-stopper. It changed everything about how the A1 Reservoir, on the former Talisman cane fields, would fit into the new picture of Everglades restoration. Since then, the district has stopped the contract on the A1 Reservoir and shelved the project.
But the completed work is not worthless. It could prove invaluable.
To preserve the Everglades, the district needs to store and clean water. With the U.S. Sugar purchase, the district no longer would need to store water on the Talisman land because it would be more practical to store water farther north, next to Lake Okeechobee. Instead of a reservoir with 12-foot walls, the Talisman lands would be converted more productively into a marsh that would cleanse polluted water before it is released into the Everglades. The construction that has been done could prove useful in creating the marsh.
Palm Beach County wasted millions by ignoring lawsuits and starting to build a Scripps Florida campus at Mecca Farms. The water district came dangerously close to a similar mistake with the A1 Reservoir, but pulled back before reaching the point of no return. There may be reason for the public to be a little frustrated, but there is no reason for the public to be angry.

090720-1
Bell Museum in Mpls. to feature national parks
Associated Press
July 20, 2009
MINNEAPOLIS - The Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota will feature the national park system with an exhibit including panoramic photographs starting next month.
The exhibit called “America’s Best Idea: A Photographic Journey Through Our National Parks” opens Aug. 8 at the natural history museum.
The exhibit features color prints of America’s national parks taken by Stan Jorstad, one of the few professional photographers to capture all of the parks.
The exhibit features the vivid landscapes of the Grand Canyon, Denali and Yellowstone, and the quieter beauty of the Badlands, the Everglades and Isle Royale.
In addition to the photos, the exhibit will include park-specific plant specimens from the museum’s garden.

090720-2
Charlie Crist appointees could shape U.S. Sugar deal
Miami Herald
CURTIS MORGAN          https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ae8ded616a0f455883c0f3431a88fe61&URL=mailto%3acmorgan%40MiamiHerald.com
July 20,20009
Three new appointees could be key to fate of governor’s controversial land deal with U.S. Sugar.
A Miami attorney is among three people Gov. Charlie Crist named Monday to the board of the South Florida Water Management District.
Gladys Perez, who has worked for Crist as a civil rights and environmental counsel, will join a Treasure Coast real estate agent and manager for the agricultural giant Lykes Brothers as members of a board overseeing a powerful, often controversial, agency that manages the water supply for 16 counties and directs Everglades restoration.
Kirk Fordham, chief executive officer for the Everglades Foundation, praised the appointments and predicted they would bolster sometimes shaky board support for Crist’s $536 million land deal with the U.S. Sugar Corp.
“It’s my understanding these appointees all share the governor’s vision,” he said.
Significant financing obstacles and board votes remain before June 2010 closing date for the district to buy 72,800 acres of sugar fields and groves for Everglades restoration projects.
The governor also named Kevin Powers, 42, a real estate agent from Indiantown, and Joe Collins, 41, of Sebring, an engineering manager with Lykes Brothers. They can immediately take seats but face Senate confirmation.
Perez, 38, who opened her law office in Miami in December, said she was not given any political litmus tests. “I imagine I was just somebody who had the background they wanted.”
Perez previously worked as an assistant attorney general when Crist held that post, focusing on civil rights. In the governor’s office, she was assistant general counsel over environmental issues, tackling Everglades cases and the complex water rights dispute between Florida and Georgia over the Apalachicola River.
Perez said she intended to approach often-contentious board issues with “fresh eyes.”
The Miami native will fill the seat of Miami attorney Paul Huck Jr. Huck resigned in April, citing a conflict because his firm was involved in a lawsuit against U.S. Sugar.

090720-3
Fertilizer Nutrient Restrictions Aim to Protect Florida Waterways
Florida Sportsman
August 2009 Web Xtra Coverage
Mike Conner
July 20, 2009
In the August issue, Mike Conner’s Conservation Front story, “Fish Kill, CSI,” reports on a serious fish kill on the Myakka River this past spring, and also on the latest developments in studies of pollutant-caused fish kills statewide. Here’s more news on the matter.
As green space disappears in Florida, more and more storm water runoff enters the state’s lakes, canals, rivers and ultimately coastal salt waters.
And phosphorus, along with nitrogen and other organics, rides the flow, and directly fuels algal blooms which often trigger fish kills. In an attempt to begin stemming this nutrient overload, in 2007 the Florida Department of Agriculture And Consumer Services (DACS) adopted a statewide Urban Turf Fertilizer Rule. The rule limits the phosphorus and nitrogen content in those “super greening” fertilizers for lawns. It is no secret that much of the nutrients in fertilizers are never absorbed by plants, in this case, turf grass. This is especially true of commercial brands that are not “slow release.”
The truth is Florida turf grasses do not need much in the way of nutrients for either greening, or overall health. Minute amounts are sufficient. And in the winter when many turf grasses are dormant, too many residents, in their quest for a lawn that is the pride of the neighborhood, pile on the fertilizers when grasses can not use them. The old belief that “more is better” still has a stranglehold on many residents. And more of what is already nutrient over-loaded fertilizers does more harm than good.
 “By establishing responsible nitrogen and phosphorus use rates statewide, Florida citizens can care for their lawns and landscaping without sacrificing water quality,” said Charles Bronson, DACS Commissioner.
DACS set a 20 to 25 percent reduction in nitrogen and a 15 percent in phosphorus in every bag of fertilizer sold to the public. These limiting guidelines were set with input from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the state’s five water management districts, the Florida League of Cities, Florida Association of Counties, fertilizer manufacturers and the public at large.
 “Implementation of stricter fertilizer guidelines is vital to Florida’s continuous efforts to protect our water and will be especially beneficial to Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries’ water quality through source control, “said DEP Secretary Michael Sole. “The new rule will enhance land management practices, improve water quality and protect the health of the Everglades.”

090720-4
Finally, Crist names three to fill vacant board seats at South Florida Water Management District
Palm Beach Post
TONY DORIS, Staff Writer
July 20, 2009
With his massive sugar land purchase in the balance, Gov. Charlie Crist today named three relative unknowns to fill seats on the water board overseeing the Everglades restoration and South Florida’s faucets.
The nominees, to the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District, are:
- Joe Collins, 41, a Sebring engineering manager with agricultural giant Lykes Bros. He takes the seat vacated in June 2008 by Malcolm “Bubba” Wade, a senior vice president at U.S. Sugar Corp.
- Gladys Perez, 38, a Miami lawyer who worked as an assistant general counsel under Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush. She succeeds Paul Huck Jr., a former top adviser to Crist, who resigned in March.
- Indiantown real estate firm partner Kevin Powers. He succeeds Melissa Meeker, a Stuart environmental consultant, whose term expired in March.
The appointees take office immediately but will require Senate confirmation when the legislature returns to session next spring.
Eric Draper, policy director for Audubon of Florida, said his group recommended Collins for Wade’s old seat.
“We have always found him to be a very straight shooter,” said Draper, who is running for state agriculture commissioner. “There needs to be a representative of the agricultural community on the district governing board, and we think he forms a good bridge between the environmental and agricultural communities.”
A spokeswoman for the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida also lauded the choice, saying he would bring an understanding of the district’s need to balance water supply, agricultural and lake management issues.
The spokeswoman, Barbara Miedema, also lamented the governor’s 13-month-long delay in replacing Wade.
Wade stepped down immediately after Crist announced the state’s huge land deal with U.S. Sugar, which in its current version would cost the district $536 million for 73,000 acres aimed at helping restore the Everglades. The deal has drawn criticism from some lawmakers, who say it would destroy farming-related jobs in the rural counties around Lake Okeechobee.
Some suggested the delay was “curious,” as Draper put it, or political, as the attorney for the Miccosukee Indian tribe asserted.
“Some of these vacancies were there during the (legislative) session, and he just didn’t want to have to face confirmation hearings,” said tribal attorney Dexter Lehtinen. “He waited until after the session, and they’ll be able to vote his way until they face Senate confirmation.”
With Wade’s seat vacant, and Huck unable to vote on the land deal because of a conflict of interest, the U.S. Sugar transaction squeaked to approval in a 4-3 vote of the district’s board last year. The deal faces further votes by the board.
Collins, an engineer, has experience in design, permitting and operation of large drainage systems for agriculture, mainly for production of cattle, citrus, sugar cane and timber. He served on the district’s Water Resources Advisory Commission and the Lake Okeechobee Advisory Committee.
Powers, a partner at Indiantown Realty, also has been a citrus grove owner and produce company sales manager. He has been active in community organizations, including the Stuart/Martin County Chamber of Commerce, Martin County Taxpayer Association, Economic Council of Martin County and United Way of Martin County.
Neither Collins nor Powers could be reached for comment this evening.
Perez, based in Miami since January 2008, was assistant general counsel in the Executive Office of the Governor under Crist and Bush, where she handled Everglades and other environmental matters. She also was counsel to the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission.
“From the perspective of environment, water issues and the Everglades, I’m somebody who has familiarity with the issues coming in,” she said.

090720-5
Rescuing the Everglades
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/22814/                      
July/August, 2009         
Tom Nugent,  Technology Review - MIT
Don DeAngelis '66 builds mathematical models of Florida wetland habitats in a bid to save threatened species.
Leading the way along the Anhinga Trail, an elevated boardwalk that twists and turns for half a mile through the Florida Everglades National Park, Don DeAngelis '66 stops suddenly and points out a full-grown alligator sunning itself 20 yards ahead. When the gator's jaws groan open in what appears to be a monster-sized yawn, he chuckles with delight.
"I think it's pretty clear that the alligator population of the Everglades is doing okay," says DeAngelis, a theoretical ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who has spent two decades building complex mathematical models to evaluate the viability of south Florida's threatened animal species. "In recent years, I've counted up to 50 alligators during a single walk along this trail."
That's a welcome change. As two more gators emerge from a murky creek, DeAngelis recalls that the alligators of the Everglades were on the federal endangered-species list from the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s. Today their survival is no longer at issue.
"Unfortunately, that can't be said about some other Everglades species, such as the Florida panther and the wood stork," he says. "Right now, we've got at least a dozen species that are very much in peril because of continuing pressure from agriculture, development, and sometimes ineffective water management policies."
DeAngelis's computer-generated simulation models of animal habitats are playing a critical role in the effort to save Florida's endangered species through the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), a 30-year, $9.5 billion federal program. "The state and the federal government are making progress in restoring some parts of the Everglades since CERP began in 2000," he says. "But I'm still concerned about the long-term future of this ecosystem. We've made important gains, but I'd say the jury is still out on how healthy the Everglades will be in 50 years."
As DeAngelis treks along the trail through a vast freshwater region of shallow saw-grass marshlands and areas of deeper water known as sloughs, he finds himself eyeball to eyeball with at least a dozen alligators (he guesses that perhaps 35,000 now roam the 2,000 square miles of Everglades National Park's wetlands, which stretch from Miami south to Florida Bay), as well as other creatures whose habitats he studies. Finally, he leads the way to a swampy tract covered with three inches of "sheet flow," the barely moving surface water that typifies the great saw-grass marsh.
"The deeper areas of this sheet flow provide a habitat for apple snails, which are the only food source for the snail kite," he says, referring to a threatened bird species. Drought, faulty water management, and surging development have reduced water levels, depriving them of their food supply. "Right now the total Everglades population of snail kites is way down, and that's disturbing," he says.In fact, DeAngelis notes, the hydrology of the entire Everglades has changed significantly during the past four or five decades. Nearby sugarcane farming and other forms of agriculture have encroached on the area as the population of south Florida has soared from about 1.3 million to nearly 4.5 million people. "There's been relentless pressure from population growth, which has led to building numerous dikes and canals that can interfere with normal water flow," he says. As a result, the 5,000-year-old Everglades have shrunk from an original 8,000 square miles to slightly less than half that today.
Since the early 1990s, DeAngelis has coördinated the building of habitat and population models that the environmental agencies involved in CERP can use to evaluate how various water management scenarios might affect threatened species such as the snail kite. An international team of scientists and students works on the project, known as Across Trophic Level System Simulation (ATLSS).
To build the USGS-sponsored models of Everglades habitats, DeAngelis and his team first gather huge amounts of empirical data on day-to-day water levels, vegetation, temperatures, and the life cycles and behavioral characteristics of different animal species. (This information has been collected over the years by biologists in the field.) Then, with the help of advanced modeling techniques and specialized computational software, they use the data to create a habitat suitability index for threatened species in each of 70,000 500-by-500-meter "cells" in their specialized map of the Everglades.
"What we do, essentially, is to translate the empirical data into algorithms and then calculate how suitable each particular cell will be for a particular threatened species under various conditions in the future," DeAngelis explains. Some of the models are so detailed that they simulate populations individual by individual, projecting what would happen to each one under different CERP hydrology plans and other ecological scenarios. The goal is to help regional land-use planners make decisions that will better protect the hundreds of animal species in the complex Everglades ecosystem.
"We successfully simulated the observed increase in snail kites from near extinction in the 1970s to a high population of about 3,000 some years ago," DeAngelis says, "and now we're using the model to try to understand the more recent declines of these threatened birds." His team has also used its models to simulate population change in about a dozen other endangered species, including the Florida panther, the wood stork, and the Cape Sable seaside sparrow.
"Don is known worldwide for his mathematical modeling in ecology," says Douglas Donalson, an ecologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Florida. "He's a meticulous scientist, and I don't think there's any doubt his work is having a significant impact on the effort to restore the Everglades."
Adds Leo Sternberg, a professor of biology at the University of Miami and an expert on Florida vegetation: "Don's models are an indispensable component of any discussion of Everglades restoration. They're also extremely elegant. Somehow, he has this ability to take extremely complex data and reduce it to a few key factors. What Don does is like taking a very complicated story and translating it into a beautiful haiku."
Raised in the Washington, DC, suburbs as the son of a project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, DeAngelis chose plasma physics over quantum theory at MIT after surviving what he calls his toughest course: fourth-year classical mechanics. "I struggled pretty hard," he says, "but by the end of the semester, I realized I wanted to do classical physics as a career."
After earning a PhD in engineering and applied physics at Yale, however, DeAngelis discovered that there "weren't any jobs" in his specialty. So he applied for--and won--a presidential internship in environmental science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. To his surprise, he discovered that he liked ecology even better than physics. For most of the next 22 years, he worked as a staff ecologist at Oak Ridge, where he began to develop the habitat models that he makes for the USGS today. During the late 1980s, while still at Oak Ridge, DeAngelis and colleagues started developing a series of Everglades models for Everglades National Park. The National Biological Service (now part of the USGS) recognized the importance of the modeling for its own continuing assessment of the wetlands and recruited him to Florida in 1994.
DeAngelis, who teaches ecology and conducts related research at the University of Miami, also serves as editor of the American Naturalist. Though he has an active family life (his wife of 12 years, Lie Lo, is a south Florida real-estate agent with four grown sons), he often puts in 12-hour days. "Working in Everglades restoration is an enormously complicated and time-consuming job," he says.
Still, he's convinced that it's worth the effort. "The Everglades are still threatened by runaway development, and they face real danger if we don't make the correct choices up ahead," he says. "I've spent a lot of years working on these habitat models, because I think the stakes are very high. We absolutely have to get this right."

090720-6
Moth may be the secret to curbing fern’s growth
Bradenton Herald
CURTIS MORGAN - Miami Herald
Jul. 20, 2009
MIAMI — Compared to kudzu, the infamous vine that ate The South, Old World climbing fern may be an obscure pest plant. But they’re a lot alike.
The fern just has a slightly smaller appetite. It’s only eating South Florida.
It’s been doing it at an alarming pace, smothering more than 130,000 acres from cypress forests to Everglades tree islands to coastal mangroves in dense cloaks of death — despite millions spent trying to halt it with sprays, spades and machetes.
But a new weapon — in development for a dozen years by federal researchers in Fort Lauderdale — shows significant promise to beat back an invader so aggressive it would cover a third of the wetlands between Orlando and Naples if left unchecked.
It’s a nondescript moth, a “bio-control” dubbed “Neo,” a nickname considerably catchier than Neomusotima conspurcatalis.
Discovered near Hong Kong in 1997 by Bob Pemberton, an entomologist with the U.S. Agricultural Research Service, Neo has produced millions of hungry larvae that have chewed through thick fern blankets with stunning gusto in three field tests.
“I have never, in all my career, seen a biological control that looks as promising as this one,” said Dan Thayer, who directs invasive-plant control for the South Florida Water Management District.
“My jaw dropped,” he said, when he saw how Neo colonies in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County stripped ferns naked.
Though they stress it’s still early, Pemberton and fellow entomologist Anthony Boughton, both based at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Fort Lauderdale, agree Neo is a ray of hope for what seemed an almost impossible task: stopping an exotic fern, formally known as Lygodium microphyllium, considered among the most serious threats to the Everglades.
“The Lygodium is strangling the Everglades in a more profound way than Burmese python would ever be able to do,” said Pemberton.
“The difference is Lygodium completely transforms the environment. It turns healthy native populations into completely artificial, greatly diminished environments.”
Much like kudzu, the fern can trellis up trees 90 feet high. The mat, up to a yard thick, blots sunlight and slowly kills everything beneath them.
Though found mostly in small scattered patches back home in tropical Africa, Asia and Australia, it has exploded in South Florida.
Cold weather likely limits any march north of Orlando, but with nothing that eats it here, it has spread west and south since being found in Martin County in the 1960s. The pace picked up exponentially in the 1990s.
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge alone, Pemberton said, spent some $5 million last year on aerial spraying to try to rescue enveloped tree islands. So far, the fern is less established in Everglades National Park but has infested 10,000 acres of mangroves on the southwest coast.
Thayer puts the fern at No. 1 on Florida’s most unwanted plant list. It also ranks among the most difficult and expensive to combat. Herbicides can knock it back but are costly and hard to safely apply in wetlands. Killing it requires labor-intensive root cutting and removal.
Fire, normally a natural exotic control in the Glades, can snuff it. But the thick ferns also carry flames high into the canopy, killing native trees that would normally survive.
“I’d say it was worse than kudzu,” said Thayer.
The district is among a number of state and federal agencies that have helped bankroll the USDA search for a bio-control — meaning something from back home that feeds on it.
Information about the fern was so scant when Pemberton began his search that he had no idea what, if any, candidates he might find. Just locating plants can be a challenge, he said. “In the native range, these weeds that are dominant here are often uncommon.”
He found Neo larvae munching a patch outside of Hong Kong and the little moth joined a few dozen possibilities.
Though Florida has a long history of misguided imports — melaleuca to drain the Everglades, for instance, and blue tilapia to clear weeds in canals — the screening is far more rigorous nowadays. The USDA process takes years.
Counterparts in Australia first ran Neo, and other bugs, through tests to ensure its appetite was isolated to the fern. In 2001, it was brought to a USDA lab in Gainesville to breed a population for more testing and, after environmental and biological assessments and approvals from more than 20 state and federal agencies, Pemberton and Boughton released Neo in January 2008 in Jonathan Dickinson.
They weren’t particularly optimistic — in part because it was actually choice No. 2. Another moth, easier to find and common in Australia along the same latitude as South Florida, went first in 2005 but did not take.
Lab testing, Pemberton said, can pinpoint insect diets but is far less successful predicting how species will do in the wild. In the first months, Neo also looked nil.
“We were actually having some difficulty in relocating the insects in some of the locations,” Boughton said.
By summer, though, Neo heated up. At one point, Pemberton said, moths were “flying like snowflakes” among the cypress.
Boughton, charged with tallying population, had no problem. Larvae were thick — 600 to 800 caterpillars per square meter — and they left squiggly telltale trails of “frass,” as in frass happens.
“They’re little sausage makers,” Boughton said. Fern in, frass out. Like that.
In a soon-to-be-published research paper, the scientists reported Neo numbers rocketing from 31,091 releases to 1.6 million to 8.2 million larvae at site.
Neo had stripped some 3.5 acres of fern and expanded its range, moving to adjacent areas a third of a mile away.
Now, researchers are working with state and federal park and land managers to expand releases, starting in fern-choked Loxahatchee.

090720-7
Stem-Destroying Insect May Help Conquer Climbing Fern
Science Daily
July 20, 2009
Throughout much of Florida’s famed Everglades, an invasive, light-green vine called Old World climbing fern now cloaks the forest floor. Besides smothering shrubs and even small trees with its dense, spongy mats, the intrusive fern, known to scientists as Lygodium microphyllum, also forms soft, twining stems that climb tree trunks. Underneath this layer of living fern, dry, dead lygodium stems accumulate, boosting the wildfire hazard.
To help stop the fern’s vertical and horizontal advance, Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists at the Australian Biological Control Laboratory in Brisbane, and their ARS colleagues in Florida, have found and studied a coterie of insects that are natural enemies of the fern in its homelands—the tropics and subtropics of the Old World, including Australia.
Some of these beneficial insects have already been put to work in Florida. In the coming years, they may be joined by stem-boring moths, according to research entomologist Matthew Purcell. He’s director of the Brisbane laboratory, which is operated by ARS and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
The female stem-boring moth—less than a half-inch from wingtip to wingtip—lays eggs that hatch into unusually long, cream-colored larvae. These slender caterpillars bore into the fern’s stems to eat the pith.
For the fern, the invasion is catastrophic. A tunnel-boring larva has the potential to kill 40 feet or more of the fern, even if the tunnel itself is only a few feet in length. That’s a strong punch for a half-inch-long caterpillar to deliver.
ARS-funded research overseas pinpointed stem borers’ potential to control the fern in 1999. Subsequent expeditions—by Purcell; CSIRO colleagues Tony Wright, Jeff Makinson, Bradley Brown and Ryan Zonneveld; former Brisbane director John Goolsby, now with ARS in Weslaco, Texas; and Ted Center, with ARS in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.—have yielded stem borers from several climbing fern species in Southeast Asia.
Among the most promising of these new candidates is a stem borer from Hong Kong. Importantly, the Brisbane scientists have been able to rear it in captivity, an essential step for completing requisite tests of its biology.

090719-1
Big-time developers control Martin County’s Future Group
TC Palm - Guest Column: Nathaniel Reed
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Nathaniel Reed
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Having spent my 76 years of life in Martin County, I have an abiding love of our communities and the land that supports so much sustainable agriculture. We are so lucky to have a comprehensive plan that insures slow, wise growth and keeps large areas forever green.
Many promises have been made, and many broken, as south Florida rapidly developed. A drive south along Interstate 95 or the Florida Turnpike through Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties proves that their elected officials have given into the development industry repetitively.
I have been privileged to have been selected by a number of our state’s governors to work for the state’s Comprehensive Planning Act. I was one of the founders of 1000 Friends of Florida, a statewide organization that is deeply concerned about the proper controls on growth and the absolute necessity of requiring new growth to pay the full cost of its impacts on existing communities.  Regrettably, developers and homebuilders have found ways to convince compliant county and city officials to push the costs of their developments onto the existing taxpayers and the environment.
The Legislature has fallen into hands that are irresponsible and have come close to crippling the Department of Community Affairs.  That once great organization had the assignment of overruling really bad local decisions and guiding development where needed.  At the behest of developers, Florida is changing all too quickly despite every effort to seek “balance” and use common sense.  The protection of our very best natural resources is in question.  Proposed new developments are being rushed through even in the midst of a deep recession in an apparent attempt to beat the Hometown Democracy amendment.
Martin County is the target of a powerful group of developers who have fronted the so-called Martin County Future Group.  Make no mistake about it; this is the infamous camel’s nose under the tent !
Stop, look, listen and beware:  this long hot summer is being used by insiders fronting for the big-time developers who seek to change Martin County forever.  This is not a future that the vast majority of our residents and visitors want or expect. It is timely for our county commissioners to clearly and unequivocally say “no” to major changes in our county’s acclaimed comprehensive plan and mean it.
Reed is a businessman and conservationist whose family founded Jupiter Island.  He formerly served on the board of the South Florida Water Management District.

090719-2
Corps needs to get moving
The Times – Picayune, Editorial
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July 19, 2009
The Army Corps of Engineers should have gotten the message that its draft Category 5 hurricane protection study has glaring deficiencies—Louisiana officials have been saying so for some time.
But now the National Academy of Sciences has published its final peer review of the study, and it echoes and amplifies those criticisms.
The National Research Council peer review committee concluded that the corps’ draft study—a menu of alternatives for each of five regions along Louisiana’s coast—does not offer a comprehensive long-term plan nor does it include projects that could be started immediately.
The review calls those “substantial shortcomings.” They certainly are, and unless they’re rectified, Congress won’t get what it sought and what South Louisiana urgently needs—a real plan for protection from nature’s most intense storms that we can begin to build now. The work currently under way only offers protection from a 100-year storm—which is not even as strong as Hurricane Katrina.
The peer review committee says that by the end of this year the state and the corps should agree on a single comprehensive plan for hurricane protection and coastal restoration that includes a number of high-priority projects that can be implemented immediately.
Corps and state officials should strive to do so. And that means the corps must not repeat bad decisions like the one officials made in January, when they chose not to attend a joint meeting of five state legislative committees to talk about so-called Category 5 protection. Corps officials said then that they wanted to brief legislators after the technical report had undergone the final reviews required by law.
But the draft study still has to be sent to the corps’ chief, which will happen in mid-August, and then to the White House. It will be delivered to Congress by year’s end, according to the agency. That’s two years after the December 2007 deadline set by Congress.
“Now that we’ve laid out all the options, we’ll be working with the state, public stakeholders and local government officials to refine the alternatives and reach general agreement on them,” said Tim Axtman, corps project manager.
But that doesn’t sound like a process that’s likely to result in a concrete plan with ready-to-implement projects by December.
Mr. Axtman blamed the task’s complexity for the amount of time it has taken. But the delay also stems from the corps’ bad decision to create a new process for decision-making. The peer review team said there were flaws in how the corps applied the results of its computer-based “Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis,” which the agency used to reduce thousands of potential projects into five sets of projects for each of the state’s five coastal regions.
But that decision-making matrix didn’t identify a preferred alternative plan for any of the areas, the review said, and the rankings of the multiple alternatives in the draft aren’t supported.
The corps says that its own internal review of the process also was critical, and the agency is now using more traditional methods to measure cost vs. benefits and figure out the best combination of projects. While that’s frustrating, at least the corps recognized the problem and made changes.
But the corps doesn’t seem to see the problem with its plan to use congressional authorizations that are already in place for levee system and coastal restoration programs to build the higher level of hurricane protection.
The peer review committee says that is likely to result in a “piecemeal approach” and recommends that the corps instead ask Congress for broad authorization, similar to what the corps and the state of Florida are using in restoring the Everglades. That needs to happen
Louisiana officials have been talking to the Obama administration about their concerns for the corps’ direction on Category 5 protection in recent weeks. This peer review should bolster the state’s argument that a more concrete approach is needed.
“We remain very concerned that the corps’ current project development and implementation process is incapable of executing projects with any urgency,” said Garret Graves, chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “The corps hasn’t the ability to act immediately.”
But Louisiana can’t wait for the corps to change its culture. We need protection from storms even stronger than Hurricane Katrina—and we need to get started now.

090719-3
Martin’s watershed moment
Palm Beach Post - Opinion
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Sally Swartz
July 19, 2009
Every once in a while, politicians listen to the people. Martin County had such a moment last week.
Environmentalists stood beside developers and Realtors to plead for a common cause: Clean river water. County commissioners voted 4-1, with only Doug Smith dissenting, to join 38 waterfront property owners suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop discharges of Lake Okeechobee’s polluted water into the St. Lucie River. The county joins Stuart and Sewall’s Point in filing a brief supporting the property owners’ quest for $50”million in property damages the discharges caused.
In 1998, Henry Caimotto of the Snook Nook Bait & Tackle Shop in Jensen Beach gathered 30,000 petition signatures demanding an end to discharges that degrade the rivers. That year, lake discharges sickened and killed fish and water birds and chased away tourists. The lawsuit has been ongoing since 2005. Why pressure the county to join in now? Because with Lake Okeechobee at more than 13 feet and a wetter-than-usual forecast for the summer, water managers are poised to open the gates again.
“Enough is enough,” Florida Sportsman founder and editor Karl Wickstrom said. “Remember the green slime of 2005 ?  It’s coming back.” On Thursday, the corps started “pulse” releases from the St. Lucie Locks of water drained from local lands. Next week, water managers again talk about lake discharges.
Four years ago, hurricanes stirred up pollution from Lake O’s bottom and the overflow went to the rivers, turning the water brown and coating the surface in neon green algae. Health officials posted signs warning residents not to touch the water. While Florida plans to buy U.S. Sugar lands so that more excess lake water can slide south on a slow, cleansing journey before it gets to the Everglades, those plans won’t help this year.
Several speakers pointed out that $4 million in federal stimulus money, planned for a project to use oysters to clean the St. Lucie, will be wasted if discharges resume. If too much fresh water hits the estuary, where fresh and salt water mix, oysters die.
Commissioner Patrick Hayes said residents’ concern made him decide to support the lawsuit. Residents who also worry about the commission accepting Future Group’s rewrite of the county’s growth plan hope the commissioners are just as responsive Tuesday, when the commission decides whether to accept the group’s proposals. They would allow as many as 300,000 homes in western Martin instead of the 10,000 possible under existing rules. Other proposals remove protections for residential neighborhoods.
The Local Planning Agency approved several Future Group items at the end of a long public hearing July 9, acting after most residents had left. After a meeting that dragged on past 7 p.m. five days ago, commissioners listened to residents who urged them to postpone action until Tuesday.
More than 1,000 residents have written and e-mailed commissioners, urging them to reject Future Group’s ideas. That concern made a difference on protecting the river. It must make a difference in protecting the growth plan.

090719-4
Miami-Dade’s parks’ green space highlights Kendall Community Council meeting
Miami Herald
BRITON ALONSO          https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=ae8ded616a0f455883c0f3431a88fe61&URL=mailto%3abalonso%40MiamiHerald.com
July 19, 2009
Two presentations concerning park and green space additions and proposed alternative transportation methods took up much of Wednesday’s council non-zoning meeting.
The Kendall Community Council focused on quality of life issues at Wednesday’s non-zoning meeting with two presentations, one from the Miami-Dade Parks and Recreation Department and the other from the Metropolitan Planning Organization.
Eric Hansen from the parks department explained the county’s Parks and Open Space System Master Plan, which aims to “create a seamless, sustainable system of parks, recreation and conservation open spaces . . .,” according to the parks’ website.
Five components make up the plan: parks, public spaces, natural and cultural places, greenways and water trails and streets.
Using photographs of local areas and computer-generated designs of the same location, Hansen displayed ways to “incorporate green space and park space in areas that are already developed,” he said. He showed the audience of 25 what sections of Snapper Creek or Snake Creek could look like by adding wide sidewalks, bike paths and trees.
Creating public spaces for recreational opportunities, fairs, concerts and other activities that “bring the community together,” Hansen said, is another layer of the plan.
Transit stations, such as Tri-Rail park and ride areas, were great opportunities for public spaces, Hansen said, by replacing the large parking lots with a plaza and landscaping and keeping cars in a garage.
Hansen showed how streets could be transformed to become aesthetically pleasing and invite other modes of transportation such as bicycles or walking.
“Could streets not be linear parks or opportunities to provide recreation?” Hansen asked. “Right now, they don’t. They just move cars.”
The other piece of the plan that promotes walking and bicycling is the construction of 150 miles of greenways and water trails throughout the county.
“These are opportunities to connect parks to parks, parks to schools, schools to businesses or schools to libraries,” Hansen said. “The opportunity for someone to ride a bike, walk or push a stroller instead of getting in their car.”
Hansen added that several projects were already partially funded and under construction. One of those is a 42-mile loop that will eventually connect Biscayne Park to Everglades National Park.
The second presentation highlighted the attempts being made by the MPO to alleviate traffic problems.
Fred Silverman, a senior manager at Parsons Corp., gave the presentation, which further explained the plans to create a Bus Rapid Transit line that would serve the Kendall community.
Negotiations with CSX concerning land sales and extensive funding is needed before the Bus Rapid Transit proposal can move forward.
The next non-zoning meeting will be Oct. 21 at the Kendall Branch Library, 9101 SW 97th Ave

090719-5
Oneliners
Miami Herald - Letters to the Editor
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July 19, 2009
It is good to know that Bernard Madoff will not appeal his prison sentence. The 150-year sentence is sure to include his afterlife.
CONNIE GOODMAN-MILONE, Miami
I used to think we could never have a county manager more inept than Steve Shiver; I was wrong.
KEN DUBBIN, Pinecrest
What stimulus package ?  The only thing “shovel ready” is the B.S. flowing from Congress and the administration.
DAVE FIELD, Miami
The creature to be feared in the Everglades isn’t the python; it’s the Crist-U.S. Sugar-South Florida Water Management District deal.
ELIZABETH CLARK, Fort Lauderdale

090717-1
1St Day Of Fla. Hunt Nets Nearly 10-Foot Python
Associated Press
BRIAN SKOLOFF, Writer
July 17, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) A program to eradicate invasive pythons from Florida’s Everglades began Friday with a slithering success: Trappers caught a nearly 10-footer within about an hour of setting out, a shock to even the experts.
“It surprised us,” said Shawn Heflick, a herpetologist who helped capture the snake Friday. “If you would have told me yesterday I was going to go out there today and that quickly find one, I would have called you a liar.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced just this week the state would allow a few permitted snake experts to begin hunting, trapping and killing the nonnative pythons in an effort to eradicate them from hundreds of thousands of acres in South Florida.
Gov. Charlie Crist had asked for the program two weeks after a central Florida child was strangled in her bed by a pet python that escaped its enclosure.
The number of pythons in South Florida and throughout Everglades National Park has exploded in the past decade to potentially tens of thousands, though wildlife officials aren’t sure exactly how many are slinking around South Florida. Scientists believe pet owners have freed their snakes into the wild once they became too big to keep. They also think some Burmese pythons may have escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing ever since.
Officials say the constrictors can produce up to 100 eggs at a time.
The FWC held a news conference in the Everglades on Friday morning, explaining to anxious reporters that it would be highly unlikely to catch a glimpse of the giant snakes.
Then they climbed aboard several airboats and headed to a hunting camp on a tree island in the wetlands about 30 miles west of downtown Fort Lauderdale.
“We wanted to show everyone the habitat,” said FWC spokeswoman Pat Behnke.
The reporters saw more than habitat: They witnessed the first capture in the state’s fledgling python hunt program.
“We’re walking along a boardwalk and one of the experts looks down, and there’s a python!” Behnke said.
One of the experts spotted it slithering from a dense cover area. Heflick, along with another trapper, “jumped on it and hauled it out.”
After measuring the snake and collecting data, the trappers severed its brain from its spinal column, he said.
Pythons have no natural predators in Florida, so their populations grow unchecked as they feed on birds, small rodents and other native species, disrupting the ecosystem’s natural balance.
The first phase of the hunting program will last several months. Depending on the results, officials may license more trappers.
Earlier this week, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, both from Florida, sought the federal government’s blessing for python hunts in the Everglades.
“One down, 99,999 to go,” Nelson said Friday after hearing of the python capture.
Nelson also wants Congress to ban importing the snakes.
On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would expand existing programs and may provide additional funding to eliminate the snakes from the Everglades.
Experts in Everglades National Park have been tracking and capturing pythons for several years. Hundreds have been removed, said park biologist David Hallac.
“Once these snakes are out in the open Everglades, they’re very hard to find,” Hallac said. “It’s a big challenge for Everglades National Park, where we have a million acres of potential habitat.”

090717-2
Crist put control of Florida’s water in the hands of 5 people
Madfloridian’s Journal in General Discussion
Democratic Underground.com
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Jul 17th 2009
What a sneaky way to do things. Florida Senator J.D. Alexander added an amendment secretly to SB 2080 which even the sponsors did not know about.
Crist signed the bill before people really knew what had happened.
Several years ago a group called The Council of 100 had plans to move water around the state via pipe lines...but the public shouted them down and said no very emphatically.
The bill just signed gives that power to 5 people. It is an awesome power, and Charlie Crist really sold out the state on this signing.
Water District Chiefs Are Getting Unwanted Power
 With a stroke of his pen last week, Gov. Charlie Crist put the future of Florida’s water resources in the hands of five people. Now the five - four men and one woman - are trying to figure out how to wield their significant new power over development and water-use permits, yet still give the public a chance to be heard.
...”Until this week, if a bottling company wanted to slurp millions of gallons of water out of the aquifer or a developer wanted to pave over thousands of acres of swamps, the state permits had to be approved by one of five water management district boards appointed by the governor. The board’s vote took place in a public meeting where residents could stand up and give their opinion.
But on the next-to-last day of the session, Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, added an amendment to SB 2080 that even the bill’s sponsor says he didn’t know about. The bill - originally just aimed at promoting water conservation - passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously.
Only afterward did the public discover that Alexander’s amendment shifted the power over permitting away from the boards and open meetings. It said that “the governing board shall delegate to the executive director all of its authority to take final action on permit applications.”
Charlie Crist is so concerned about running for Senate that he is trading off Florida’s resources.
Here is more about the history of how this came to be. Shouted down 5 years ago in public hearings....now it is law done secretly.
Cross-Florida Water Pipelines: Water-Transfer End Run
That was five years ago. Dockery and her colleagues on the state Senate Natural Resources Committee were pressed into giving the citizenry an outlet to vent after the Florida Council of 100 - a group of wealthy, influential business leaders that advises the governor - issued a report calling for a dramatic overhaul in Florida’s water policy. The pillars of the Council of 100 proposal were massive cross-state water transfers, i.e. pipelines, and the creation of an all-powerful state water board with ultimate say over water disbursements and policy.
The power of wetlands in the now lies in the hands of 5 people.
The governing boards’ authority on permitting and wetland destruction now rests solely in the hands of the five district executive directors - for all practical purposes, a unelected statewide water board. Even better for the developers, builders and other growth-industry interests, the executive directors are not required to conduct their business in public.
The emasculation of the water district boards is just the half of it. Despite the lawmakers’ assurances that no water transfers would take place, the water management districts - led by the executive directors - are feverishly developing plans to pipe water from where they have it to where they don’t. The St. Johns River Water Management District has been the most aggressive, with Executive Director Kirby Green ramrodding through a highly unpopular plan for 500 miles of pipeline that would carry water from the Ocklawaha River in Marion County and the St. Johns River to the thirsting Orlando metropolitan area.
To ease up the criticism Charlie recommended that the water management districts keep talking about it together, even though the power now lies with the top person on each one.
Crist is asking governing boards and executive directors of the districts to continue to include surface water and consumptive use permits on all board meeting and other public meeting agendas, despite a measure in the bill that delegates final agency action on such permits solely to the executive directors.
Florida is broken up into five water management districts. The Southwest Florida Water Management District, or Swiftmud, covers Tampa Bay. Others are the Northwest Florida Water Management District, Suwannee River Management District, St. Johns River Water Management District and the South Florida Water Management District.
Crist urges that management districts still continue to discuss important issues
Developers have been getting more perks than ever lately. Having just 5 people able to more the water around the state should be an advantage to them.
Just a few weeks ago, Charlie gave developers vast new powers by signing SB 360.
.”The new law is designed to make it easier to build new residential housing, even as Florida wallows in a glut of housing caused by the foreclosure crisis.Crist signed the bill in private with no public ceremony. His press office issued a terse news release that attributed no quotations to Crist endorsing the legislation.
St. Pete Times columnist, Howard Troxler, called S.B.360 “the “Katie Bar the Door and Strip Mall Act of 2009.”
I can only imagine what he thinks of the new powers over water given to just 5 people.

090717-3
Environmentalists to protest nuclear projects in Palm Beach Gardens on Friday
Energy Central
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Julie Patel Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, FL
July 17,2007
Environmental activists will protest Friday the new nuclear reactors proposed for FPL’s Turkey Point plant near Miami and a Progress Energy project in Levy County.
Members of Everglades Earth First! and other activists will be at the Florida Municipal Power Agency’s board meeting in Palm Beach Gardens. The agency is considering investing in the Turkey Point and Levy County projects and will allow public comment at the meeting.
Building the Turkey Point reactors is estimated to cost $12 billion to $18 billion. FPL cleared its first hurdle with approval from the Florida Public Service Commission and recently submitted an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is also required to approve it.
The meeting is at 9 a.m., and the protest is at 10 a.m., at 400 Avenue of the Champions.

090717-4
Everglades land swap may be key to FPL plans to expand in West Miami-Dade
Miami Herald
TANIA VALDEMORO & CURTIS MORGAN
July 17, 2009
Everglades and FPL managers are evaluating a compromise so the power company can add much-needed transmission lines in West Miami-Dade.
Florida Power & Light bought a ribbon of Everglades marl prairie 40 years ago, envisioning it as an isolated place to some day run power lines.
Some day has come. FPL has filed for state permits to run three high-voltage power lines along the 7.4-mile strip.
But the surrounding land has long since been absorbed by an expansion of Everglades National Park, a federally protected wilderness where towers topping 140 feet and lines buzzing with 500 kilovolts are officially frowned upon.
Under orders from Congress, park managers are now evaluating a compromise: a land swap with FPL that would push the power corridor, now three miles west of Krome Avenue in the footprint of a critical park restoration project, to the park’s eastern boundary.
For FPL, securing a western corridor for power lines is crucial, not only to handle projected population growth in Miami-Dade but also to move additional juice from the utility’s planned expansion of its Turkey Point nuclear power plant. The company, already battling concerns from residents and politicians from Cutler Bay to Coconut Grove over a second proposed 230-kilovolt route up a long swath of U.S. 1, supports the swap.
“For FPL, it provides the necessary land, albeit smaller and closer to developed areas, in which to expand its electrical facilities to meet its obligation to provide reliable electric service to its customers in South Florida,” said FPL spokesman Mayco Villafaña in an e-mail.
For the park, the existing corridor would complicate and potentially hinder a critical part of the massive Everglades restoration effort—bridging Tamiami Trail to flow more water down the Northeast Shark River Slough, the park’s historic and long parched headwaters.
“As long as those lands are there, there is a problem in terms of moving water to the south,” said Dan Kimball, superintendent of Everglades National Park.
The land, only as wide as a football field, amounts to just 320 acres in the 1.5 million-acre park. But FPL would have to fill in wetlands to build bases to anchor the towers and an access road for maintainence. Towers and power lines stretching more than seven miles wouldn’t exactly add to the vista, either.
CONCERNS ABOUT SWAP
Some environmentalists argue the massive transmissions lines don’t belong in or along the border of a national park.
Sara Fain, Everglades program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said cutting a deal with the utility would set a bad precedent for handling disputes over private holdings in national parks.
“There isn’t one solution, swap the land or not,” she said. “There is another solution. Buy the land.”
One potential alternative the park is considering is to acquire the land, by buying or condemning it, said Brien Culhane, the park’s chief of planning and environmental compliance for the National Park Service.
But either option could be expensive and require time-consuming legal wrangling. FPL had discussed a land purchase for more than a decade, Kimball said. “We couldn’t agree on the terms of acquisition.”
FPL, which contends it must add power lines to improve the electrical grid and get power to growing areas, is seeking four new routes in Miami-Dade between 2012 and 2016. It has already filed permit requests for both Glades routes with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Villafaña said the trade would benefit the park and utility, adding 60 acres to the park and removing a restoration concern. In exchange for its 320-acre strip, FPL would take over a 230-acre strip with a 90-foot easement along L31-North canal, making for easier worker access.
If the park accepts the swap, it would clear the way for easy state approval for FPL. A decision, Culhane said, is expected by January. If it rejects it, the utility could be facing another difficult fight to run lines closer to suburbia in western Dade—perhaps along Krome Avenue.
CONGRESS’ STAND
The land swap was added to a massive spending bill Congress approved in March and was supported by both Florida senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez.
But the clause, which passed through no committee reviews, explicitly left the final call to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who oversees federal land.
It also conflicts with the congressional language supporting the park’s 1989 expansion, which explicitly called power lines an incompatible use.
This time, said the park’s Culhane, “Congress authorized but did not mandate that we do an exchange. It’s not a directive.”

090717-5
More than $300 million could be coming for Indian River, Everglades restoration
TC Palm
Jim Turner (Contact)
July 17, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House Fiscal Year 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill approved Friday includes $342 million for projects directed at the Treasure Coast, ranging from the St. Lucie River and Hutchinson Island shoreline restoration to repairing the Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Everglades restoration effort.
 “These projects will help create jobs and restore the Indian River Lagoon and the Everglades which are both vital to South Florida,” said Congressman Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, who had requested the projects directed at Martin and St. Lucie counties.
The Senate still must approve its version of the bill.
The Treasure Coast projects:
$130 million: Herbert Hoover Dike rehabilitation: The earthen dike which surrounds Lake Okeechobee has been damaged by decades of storms and erosion.
$210.24 million: South Florida Everglades Ecosystem Restoration: Of the total, approximately $22 million will go to the Indian River Lagoon — South plan, which consists of a series of water treatment and storage structures aimed at cleaning and restoring the lagoon.
$350,000: St. Lucie Inlet in Martin County: The money will be used to dredge the inlet for safety and navigation.
$350,000: Hutchinson Island shore protection project in Martin County: The money will be used by the county and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to find a new sand source for shore protection projects.
$1 million: St. Lucie County Beach Renourishment Feasibility Study: The money would pay for an ongoing study of the eroded beaches in the county.

090717-6
New law takes South Florida, state two steps back in water protection
TC Palm – Opinion – Letter by reader submitted
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Friday, July 17, 2009
Having Michael Sole, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, tell us it is a good idea to have Carol Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, make all final decisions regarding water permits is about as credible as having the Security and Exchange Commission tell us Bernard Madoff should be B’nai Brith’s Man of the Year.
Senate Bill 2080 is the horrible bill Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law that will take us two steps back in water protection by removing the decision-making process from governing board members and placing it with one person. Complaints and recommendations can continue on permits, but one person (Wehle) will make the final decision. It’s like having the wolf take over with the chickens.
Wehle is the director of a wasteful, bloated bureaucracy, with a resume full of bad decisions, and has yet to complete one project to protect our estuary or the Everglades. Not one. The latest debacle under her mismanagement is the $300 million in taxpayer funds squandered on the aborted start of the A1 reservoir below Lake Okeechobee on U.S. 27. Go take a look.
In his recent column, Sole goes on to state: “I look forward to working with the 2010 Legislature to develop a process that sustains transparency and shareholder participation.”
Alas, the only word he conveniently left out was “accountability.” No one is ever to blame and no one ever goes to jail for squandering taxpayer money, especially when it comes to the Everglades.
Apathy is the root of bad government, and our wallets, estuary and the Everglades will suffer the consequences.
Charles de Garmo,  Sewall’s Point

090717-7
Python Hunt Begins in the Everglades
The Associated Press
Skip Snow, Theresa Walters
Friday, July 17, 2009
TALLAHASSEE - Today begins a permitted hunt of Burmese pythons by herpetology experts in the Florida Everglades. A program to eradicate pythons from the Florida Everglades is beginning.
Today is the first day herpetology experts with a permit will be allowed to search for and kill the pythons, which are not native to the Everglades.
Permit holders are required to provide a photo and the location of each captured python.
Wildlife officials will then study that information as well as the snake’s size and stomach contents. They hope to learn more about the spread of the species. The initial program runs through Oct. 31.
Officials had previously said that about 10 hunters would have a permit. They will not be able to use firearms or traps to catch the pythons.

090717-8
Water bill not perfect, but does benefit environment
Palm Beach Post.com - Opinion
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Friday, July 17, 2009
On June 30, Gov. Crist signed Senate Bill 2080, which The Post had editorialized against. Although the bill is not perfect, I expressed to the governor that this bill should be signed for the many benefits it will provide to the environment and the people of Florida.
Although the new law requires the governing boards of the state’s five water management districts to delegate authority to approve permits to their executive directors, each district will continue to be committed to open government and transparency. Nothing in SB 2080 alters or limits the ability of the public to inquire or obtain information about a permit application or to object to an application. And many other aspects of the bill offer greater protection for Florida’s water resources. They include:
·  Changes to Florida law to promote environment-friendly landscaping.
·  The expansion of lands eligible to serve as compensation to local governments. This provision puts into Florida law a commitment of the South Florida Water Management District to ensure that the smaller Glades communities are not adversely impacted by the U.S. Sugar land acquisition.
·  Establishment of policies that ensure that the water management districts do not overextend their financial commitments.
We must continue to protect and wisely manage our water resources. Florida’s environment is better protected when all stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process, and I am committed to preserving the public process throughout this next year.
MICHAEL W. SOLE  - Secretary, Florida Department of Environmental Protection,  Tallahassee, FL

090717-9
Work out Everglades glitch
Palm Beach Post - Editorial
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July 17, 2009
Despite complaints that Gov. Crist’s buyout of U.S. Sugar is slowing Everglades restoration, the truth is just the opposite: Federal money is beginning to flow and projects stalled for years are moving. Only now a bureaucratic snafu threatens to stop the work before it begins.
As The Post reported, a master agreement to govern how costs are shared between the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is on hold after one side, the water district, thought that the work was done. Talks began seven years ago and, both sides agree, were completed in April. The water district board signed off last month. Yet at a meeting last week, the board learned that corps’ lawyers not involved in negotiations had made significant changes to the document.
To the board, it looked like bureaucratic overkill with real-life consequences. “These people,” board member Shannon Estenoz said, referring to lawyers who changed the document, “are like the fourth branch of government. These people cannot tell President Obama, ‘Don’t restore the Everglades.’ They can’t tell the Congress, ‘Don’t restore the Everglades.’ They can’t tell the Florida governor not to restore the Everglades. But they don’t have to. Because you know what they do? They sit in their offices and wait for stuff like this to hit them. Then when it hits them, that’s when they exercise their power.”
All a big misunderstanding, said Stuart Appelbaum, the corps’ Everglades program manager. Both sides will go point-by-point over the changes next week. Despite the water district’s claim, he said, terms were not changed. It was standard practice, he said, to have “another set of eyes” look at the document. “The intent,” he said, “was not to go back on things that had been negotiated.”
In his presentation to the board, district Deputy Executive Director Ken Ammon listed three areas where terms were changed, calling for the district to pick up costs assigned to its federal partners. Working out the differences, he said, could delay federal projects, such as restoring natural water flow in the Picayune Strand in Collier County, part of a recent and long-awaited $82 million congressional authorization.
The corps is under the interim command of Terrence “Rock” Salt, a former Jacksonville corps commander and Department of Interior Everglades official. So Washington understands the unique nature of the Everglades partnership and how difficult it has been to get federal money flowing. With Mr. Salt’s help, this ridiculous disruption can get resolved quickly so the work of Everglades restoration finally can begin.

090716-1
Clam calamity in Caloosahatchee has scientists baffled
NewPress.com
Kevin Lollar        klollar@news-press.com •
July 16, 2009
It’s a molluskan mystery: What’s killing thousands of clams in the Caloosahatchee River?
In June, Rick Bartleson, a research scientist at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Marine Laboratory, discovered piles of dead clams along the shoreline near Beautiful Island; Sunday, he saw them floating at the river’s surface and washing ashore farther downstream.
 “The list of things that could be killing them is pretty long,” Bartleson said Wednesday. “We need a crime scene investigation team to tell us how long they’ve been dead, where they came from. They could do all kinds of tests to tell us what’s going on.
Jose Leal, director of the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum on Sanibel, and Ernie Estevez, director of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Center for Coastal Ecology, identified the dead bivalves as Carolina marsh clams.
They’re pretty hardy,” Estevez said. “They like medium to low salinity, and they live abundantly in marshes, hence the name. They’re really popular with the raccoons.
 “Rick is seeing some interesting movement of the dead animals: They’re floating. I’ve seen clam mortalities, and I have no experience of that. I don’t know what’s causing this. I defer to Rick. He’s the man on the scene.”
Typically, the Carolina marsh clam is found along the coast of South Carolina, the lower mid-Atlantic states and the northern Gulf of Mexico.
They were first identified in the Caloosahatchee in 2007 by a Florida Gulf Coast University graduate student, though Estevez has seen them in other rivers along Florida’s west coast.
 “Those things are really dying en masse,” Leal said. “What is curious is they didn’t used to be here, and now they’re dying off. That complicates the issue.”
One possible cause of death is water temperature: Because the clam is from slightly cooler latitudes, the river’s current 91-degree temperature might be killing it — Bartleson has seen no dead specimens of the more common local species, the Southern marsh clam and rangia clam, which might be better able to tolerate high temperatures than the Carolina marsh clam. On the other hand, Bartleson said, Carolina marsh clams bury themselves in the intertidal zone (the area along the shoreline that’s covered at high tide and exposed at low tide), and the mud might keep them cooler than the water temperature.
Another possible culprit is hypoxia — low dissolved oxygen in the water.
During the wet season, the Caloosahatchee can be like a two-layer cake, with a layer of fresh water on top and a layer of heavier salt water on the bottom.
If the layers don’t mix, oxygen doesn’t work its way through the top layer to the bottom; then, bottom-dwelling organisms use up what oxygen is in the lower layer. If an algal bloom is present, dead algae sink to the bottom, where they rot and use even more oxygen.
Dissolved oxygen levels below 3 milligrams per liter are hypoxic; in June, oxygen levels in the river off Fort Myers dropped below 2 several times but haven’t been below 3.5 in July.
On Wednesday, Bartleson and SCCF volunteer Cristie Carr continued the investigation by collecting dead clams and water samples to test for toxic algae.
For now, the death of the Carolina marsh clams remains a mystery, but Leal said people shouldn’t automatically panic over the health of the river.
“I don’t want to jump the gun,” he said. “Just because you see something dying doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a problem.”

090716-2
Estenoz: Bureaucrats blocking Obama from funding Everglades
Palm Beach Post Blog
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fblogs.palmbeachpost.com%2fseeinggreen%2f2009%2f07%2f16%2festenoz-bureaucrats-blocking-obama-from-funding-everglades%2f
Paul Quinlan
July 16,2009
Break out the Twizzlers and popcorn !  It’s South Florida Water Management District movie night!
Tonight’s film: Nameless, faceless Washington bureaucrats are blocking President Barack Obama and his administration from getting money to the Everglades. That’s according to longtime Everglades activist and South Florida Management District board member Shannon Estenoz.
She’s ticked off, and she let it be known last week. “I am completely furious about it - spitting nails about it,” Estenoz said in an extended tirade directed at Army Corps of Engineers and Office and Management and Budget bureaucrats who are holding up federal funding. This must rank as one of the more passionate monologues ever to be delivered from a water management district dais. (I know that’s not saying much…but really, this is worth watching. Read on for some important backstory…)
Essential background: Florida and the feds agreed to split 50-50 the $10.9 billion cost of a massive Everglades restoration plan that Congress passed in 2000.
Since then, the state has chipped in $2.4 billion, outspending the feds 6-to-1. Among the many problems, the Army Corps of Engineers, the White House Office of Management and Budget and the state argued for more than 7 years about how exactly to account for the money spent. (i.e. Should land bought for restoration be valued at the purchase price or at its present value?)
Then Obama got elected on promises to save the Everglades. His administration pledges $344 million for Everglades projects, one of the largest single-year federal contributions to the effort.
And just when the differences on the “Master Agreement,” the contract that details the cost-sharing terms, the feds returned another draft of the agreement (pictured in the video), covered in markings and corrections.
This makes negotiating Arab-Israeli peace look like buying a new television at Brandsmart.
Afterward, the board’s chairman, Eric Buermann, called Estenoz “Joan of Arc.” Board member Mike Collins raised the idea that the state ditch the feds altogether, and go it alone on Everglades restoration.
“The federal system is going to allow this to happen because it always has,” Collins said.
Tags: Everglades, Obama, South Florida Water Management District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Everglades, Federal government, South Florida Water Management District, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

090716-3
'Glades OKs given, so what's the delay?
Keysnet.com
July 16, 2009
After years of delays in the vaunted Everglades restoration effort, it's time to speed things up.
The new federal stimulus package promises to ramp up needed projects throughout the nation. An allocation to help coral nurseries -- a technique pioneered in the Florida Keys -- was welcome news.
Now we need to keep the momentum going.
In mid-June, a federal district judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could proceed with building the Tamiami Trail Bridge, a one-mile-long, $212 million bridge intended to restore a more natural flow of fresh water to the southern Everglades and Florida Bay.
Great. Now get it started. October has been mentioned for groundbreaking. Make it happen.
"This is a huge step in the right direction and we look forward to seeing the first shovel hit the ground on this project in the months ahead," said Kirk Fordham, chief of the Everglades Foundation.
Then there's the C-111 Canal project. The western portion of the two-phase system is inching closer to a start date.
But no date has been set for the start of the long-delayed eastern C-111 project, critical to northeast Florida Bay.
Move it up. Just move. It's been long enough.

090716-4
New bill includes $210M for Everglades
South Florida Business Journal
Paul Brinkmann
July 16, 2009
The latest round of renewed federal funding for Everglades restoration includes $210 million and has been approved by the House Appropriations Committee.
A massive $8 billion federal plan to restore the Everglades was originally approved in 2000, but getting the money has proven difficult. This year, the logjam is breaking up, and almost $500 million has been approved for the Everglades as part of the 2009 budget bill and federal stimulus package.
Kathleen Shanahan, CEO of Tampa-based WRS Compass, an environmental and construction company, said such funding is helping her company employ people on worthwhile projects.
 “Right now, we are working on the Kissimmee River restoration, and we have 35 employees on that project currently. In the past, it’s been as high as 75 people with our subcontractors,” Shanahan said Thursday in a conference call coordinated by the nonprofit advocacy group Everglades Foundation.
Shanahan thanked U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, for helping to shepherd the latest funding package through the House committee.
 “This new influx of Everglades funding will allow long-awaited restoration projects to move forward and put Floridians back to work in good-paying jobs," Everglades Foundation CEO Kirk Fordham said. “Florida has double-digit unemployment, and there are hundreds of people who would be happy to punch a time-clock for companies that would be hiring to work on these projects.”
According to the foundation, the approved bill provides funding through Sept. 30, 2011, fully funding President Barack Obama’s request and prioritizing Everglades restoration in the fiscal year 2011 budget.
The bill would lead to speedy allocation of $210 million in funds for Everglades restoration, including critical projects such as the C-111 Canal in Miami-Dade County, Kissimmee River, Indian River Lagoon and Picayune Strand.
During Thursday’s conference call, Wasserman Schultz said the money “will help provide construction-related jobs for Floridians at a time of real economic need,” in addition to restoring a national treasure.
The foundation has been trying to keep attention focused on the job opportunities Everglades restoration provides, in addition to the fact that the Everglades attracts tourism dollars and provides a sustainable water source for South Florida.

090716-5
Restored Everglades and Kissimmee River lands as Wall Street collateral ?
Palm Beach Post Blog
Paul Quinlan
July 16, 2009
Several people including Carol Wehle, executive director at the South Florida Water Management District, reacted to this week’s story about a quarter-million acres of state-owned lands being offered to Wall Street as collateral to finance Gov. Charlie Crist’s land deal with U.S. Sugar and other environmental restoration projects.
The story originated from an internal district e-mail and attached spreadsheet passed among administrators that listed $1.5 billion in restored Everglades, Kissimmee River lands and other property that could be used to secure a $2.2 billion loan for the deal and future projects.
Wehle said Thursday that SFWMD was in the “very early stages of exploring whether something might be feasible” when the document was generated. By a computer. When no one was looking. (See the internal district e-mail and spreadsheet here.)
“We haven’t sat down to go through that list,” Wehle said. “But now that I’m aware the list existed…I don’t see anything on that list that I’d recommend to the governing board” be used as collateral.
But Wehle also said she would not rule out using any specific properties listed, except maybe the state’s stormwater treatment areas — filter marshes the state built to meet court-ordered deadlines to cut pollution flowing to the Everglades.
Others don’t think it’s such a bad idea, such as Thom Rumberger, general counsel for the powerful Everglades Foundation. After all, as the story says, it would save taxpayer dollars and the state would not risk losing the lands, according to district officials.
“Good business requires that,” Rumberger said of the collateral plan. “You try to diminish the debt.”
Audubon lobbyist Eric Draper (and candidate for for state agricultural commissioner) said the plan made “tremendously good sense and is a common business practice.”
See Draper’s full comments:
Audubon: Revenue Bonds Will Save Money Everglades Restoration
To benefit the environment and the economy of Florida, the South Florida Water Management District (District) has made a major commitment to fund Everglades restoration. Everglades projects are public works that require land and construction. It is common for government agencies to issue bonds to pay for public works projects. Bonds allow costs to be spread over many budget cycles, reducing impacts to current budgets and allowing future beneficiaries, as taxpayers, to help with the costs.
For the Everglades the District is committing ad valorem or property tax revenue. In order to get better bond ratings and rates, the District may use some existing land and built projects as collateral to secure the restoration bonds. Using them as collateral does not put those lands and projects at risk, as the main guarantor of revenue bonds is revenue and no responsible lender would lend without a commitment of revenue for repayment.
Using collateral makes tremendously good sense and is a common business practice. Banks rarely loan money without collateral, and when they do rates are usually higher. The District is operating in a business-like way when it uses land and built projects as collateral to secure and save interest costs on bonds.
The Legislature anticipated that the District would use existing assets as collateral when 373.584 was amended this year. In setting specific limits on the use of revenue bonds the Legislature expected that the District would use certificates of participation, which typically require collateral.
Since Governor Jeb Bush first proposed the use of bonds to finance Everglades restoration projects Audubon has applauded this useful financial tool. Florida has strict laws limiting government agencies from borrowing money and those rules protect Florida taxpayers and save dollars.
Everglades restoration, with its huge costs for land acquisition and construction could not proceed without the use of bonds. Government is obligated to get the best rates it can for taxpayers. That means using collateral.
Tags: Audubon, Carol Wehle, Everglades, Everglades Foundation, South Florida Water Management District
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Charlie Crist, Everglades, Everglades Foundation, South Florida Water Management District, U.S. Sugar, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

090715-1
Conference set for discussion of Everglades bill
TC Palm - staff report
July 15, 2009
TREASURE COAST — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20), along with Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, Kathleen Shanahan, CEO of WRScompass and John Adornato, Regional Director, National Parks Conservation Association, will be available via media conference call on Thursday to discuss the amended Energy and Water Bill approved this week by the House Appropriations Committee.
The approved bill provides funding through Sept. 30, 2011, fully funding President Barack Obama’s request and prioritizing Everglades restoration in the fiscal year 2011 budget.
Participants will discuss the importance of these environmental projects and what they see as the crucial next steps needed to move the process forward quickly to benefit the people of Florida, America’s Everglades, job growth and an economy which relies on a sustainable water source.

090715-2
Palm Beach County hones in on Fanjul-owned site as potential home for proposed 'inland port'
Palm Beach Post
JENNIFER SORENTRUE, Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH — Palm Beach County planners should not spend any more time working on a proposal that would have allowed an "inland port" to be built in a broad swath of land near Lake Okeechobee, commissioners agreed this morning.
Instead, after months of work, the only Palm Beach County site near the lake that will be considered for the facility is a 318-acre tract owned by Florida Crystals Corp., county officials said.
The sugar giant was the only landowner in the county's designated swath to submit its site for consideration by the Port of Palm Beach.
Port officials will ultimately decide where the inland center will go, choosing between Crystals' site and a handful of competitors elsewhere in the region.
In April, commissioners had signed off on a change to their long-term growth plan that would have designated any site within about 100,000 acres near the Glades cities as their preferred location for the port, a hub of warehouses linked by railroads to the coast. County planners now said there is no reason to continue to pursue the change, which has yet to be approved by state officials.
Florida Crystals, owned by the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, has been vying to develop the project near its mill south of South Bay. Meanwhile, a handful of sites elsewhere in the region are in contention, including one that rival grower U.S. Sugar Corp. and rancher Hilliard Brothers are proposing in Hendry County.
Environmental groups have opposed the Fanjul site, saying it would interfere with the state's plans to build Everglades-related reservoirs and filter marshes on nearby land south of the lake.

090715-3
South Florida congresswoman, environmental groups praise vote on federal Everglades money
Palm Beach Post Blog
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fblogs.palmbeachpost.com%2fseeinggreen%2f2009%2f07%2f15%2fdemocratic-congresswoman-environmental-groups-praise-congressional-vote-on-everglades-money%2f
Bob King
July 16,2009
A lot of the news about the Everglades has been less than glowing lately, what with the revelations that it might cost the state $17 billion to make use of the land it’s buying from U.S. Sugar Corp; yesterday’s news that water managers might need to offer $1.5 billion of restoration land as collateral to finance the purchase; and Palm Beach Post reporter Paul Quinlan’s account this Sunday on the demise of an $800 million reservoir project.
But some folks still see some things worth cheering about — most recently, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee’s approval of an amended energy and water bill containing $210 million for Everglades restoration projects, including assistance for the Indian River Lagoon.
According to a statement today:
 “This new influx of Everglades funding will allow long-awaited restoration projects to move forward and put Floridians back to work in good-paying jobs,” said Kirk Fordham, CEO, Everglades Foundation. “Florida has double-digit unemployment and there are hundreds of people who would be happy to punch a time-clock for companies that would be hiring to work on these projects.”
It’s unclear how many of those jobs would go to the 200 reservoir workers who found themselves laid off last year.
In any case, Fordham’s group, other environmental organizations and Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Broward County are supposed to have more to say on this topic tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Tags: budget, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Everglades Foundation, Everglades restoration
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Congress, Everglades. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

090715-4
Water managers shaking up staff, reducing number of senior employees
Palm Beach Post
PAUL QUINLAN, Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
South Florida's largest and most powerful environmental agency is thinning its management ranks in its largest staff shake-up in years.
The South Florida Water Management District — the largest of Florida's five water management agencies and the one charged with leading the multibillion-dollar Everglades restoration for the state — will merge two of its five major departments, combining water resources and regulation with government and public affairs.

That will cut from five to four the number of deputy executive directors who report to the top executive, Carol Wehle, and her assistant, Tom Olliff.
Those whose jobs are eliminated could wind up being demoted, but Wehle promised her staff in an e-mail last week that "this is not a reduction in workforce."
The number of lower-level management jobs that would be eliminated would be in the single-digits, said Olliff, who could not give an exact figure. But he said 39 management and professional-level jobs that will "change significantly" under the new structure will be opened to applicants from within the agency. Current job holders must reapply.
Wehle announced the changes in an e-mail to staff Friday, saying they would take effect Oct. 8 and "ensure that we remain light on our feet."
"Let me assure you that this is not a reduction in workforce," Wehle wrote. "It's an opportunity to refine our operations; every one of our employees has an important role to plan and everyone has a seat on the bus."
The changes will place Deputy Executive Director Deena Reppen in charge of the combined regulatory and public affairs department.
Facing demotion, Chip Merriam, the previous deputy executive director in water resources and regulation, said he would resign, according to Olliff, who said "he will surely be missed."
Of the other deputy executive directors, George Horne will lead operations and maintenance, Ken Ammon will head Everglades restoration and capital projects, and Sandra Turnquest will oversee corporate resources.
Olliff said district leaders did not see the total number of positions at the agency shrinking as a result.
"If anything, we believe the district is a little understaffed," said Olliff. "We're continuing to try to do more with less."

090713-1
Alligator Alley swamp may open to hunters
Herald Tribune The Associated Press
July 13, 2009
FORT LAUDERDALE - A federal proposal would open a vast sweep of forest and swamp on both sides of Alligator Alley to hunting and off-road vehicles.
The National Park Service has proposed establishing more than 85,000 acres of wilderness beginning on the western border of Broward County, as part of a plan for managing 146,000 acres added to Big Cypress National Preserve in 1988.
The wilderness acres would be cut by non-wilderness corridors allowing hunters to access remote areas on swamp buggies and all-terrain vehicles, which are currently barred from the area.
An environmental review released with the proposal Friday found that the plan would have a "moderate adverse" impact on the endangered Florida panther living there because the cats avoid areas with increased numbers of hunters and hikers.
The park service will prepare a final plan after a public comment period ends Sept. 30.
The wilderness designation must be authorized by Congress.
John Adornato, South Florida director of the National Parks Conservation Association, criticized the plan for allowing any off-road trails in wetland areas south of Alligator Alley, the highway that stretches across the Florida Everglades.
"I'm disappointed that the preserve has chosen to disregard wetlands protection by putting these trails through sensitive habitat," he said. "They would segment panther habitat."
Big Cypress, created by Congress in 1974, was designated a national preserve to allow hunting, off-road vehicles, oil drilling and other activities that ordinarily would not take place in a national park.
In wilderness areas, hunting is allowed but not vehicles. The park service's proposal gets around that by creating non-wilderness corridors that, along with the non-wilderness areas, would provide up to 140 miles of off-road vehicle trails. It also would establish new trails and entry points off Alligator Alley for off-road vehicles, hikers, cyclists and horseback riders.
"It allows a good variety of uses," said Pedro Ramos, the preserve's superintendent. "There's going to be opportunities for people to get off the highway so they can learn about this magnificent resource. We feel the plan is representative of the diversity of the people of Florida, and it's representative of the mandate from Congress."
Matthew Schwartz, Everglades chairman of the Broward Sierra Club, said motorized vehicles would diminish the wilderness experience.
"Six million people live within an hour and a half of this," he said. "People need a place to get away to, to really experience wild Florida. And we're going to lose that quality."

090713-2
Everglades restoration plan could cost as much as $17 billion, records show
Palm Beach Post Blog
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fblogs.palmbeachpost.com%2fseeinggreen%2f2009%2f07%2f13%2feverglades-restoration-plan-could-cost-as-much-as-17-billion-records-show%2f
Paul Quinlan
July 13, 2009
The Everglades restoration that Gov. Charlie Crist articulated when he struck his monumental land deal with U.S. Sugar Corp. could cost as much as $17 billion to carry out, according to water agency records.
That’s more than 30 times the cost of the land alone, which Crist and environmentalists want to use to restore the historic flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south into the Everglades.
The 73,000-acre, $536 million deal, downsized twice by Crist as the economy tumbled, is expected to close in early 2010 and would rank as Florida’s most expensive conservation land purchase.
But opponents returned to court Monday to block the South Florida Water Management District, the agency Crist tapped to finance the deal, from borrowing $2.2 billion to buy the land and begin restoration.
Attorneys for Florida Crystals, U.S. Sugar’s chief rival, and the Miccosukee Indian Tribe, which lives in the Everglades, produced internal water management agency records estimating the cost to construct the necessary reservoirs and filter marshes at between $8 billion and $17 billion.
 “The fact of the matter is, they do not have the money to do what they say they are doing,” said Joseph Klock, attorney for Florida Crystals.
Executive Director Carol Wehle testified that she had not seen the documents and could not comment on their accuracy. She said she vaguely recalled briefing district leaders that the cost could run between $3 billion and $12 billion.
But Wehle emphasized that the full cost of the overall restoration project would be spread over 30 or 40 years be paid for by a combination of local, state and federal agencies.
 “I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball to project how we are going to pay for Everglades restoration,” Wehle said. “We are doing the best we can as the years go by.”
Even so, at those prices, the restoration on U.S. Sugar lands would cost as much as or more than the sweeping, $10.9 billion Everglades restoration plan that Congress passed in 2000 and agreed to split 50-50 with the state. Although work has begun, not one of the 2000 plan’s 68 pieces have been completed. It is unclear how the two projects would overlap.
The water district plans to finance the land deal with $2.2 billion in certificates of participation, which are similar to bonds but circumvent the requirement for voter approval.
But Klock pointed out that 2000 restoration plan produced reams of planning materials and engineering documents, while documented plans for the U.S. Sugar land amount to little more than a handful of overhead presentations given at agency board meetings.
Klock said identifying a clear plan on the agency’s part was all but impossible. “It’s like trying to chase a piece of mercury across the floor with a hammer,” he said.

090713-3
Martin County residents named to Everglades Foundation board
TC Palm - staff report
July 13, 2009
The Everglades Foundation, an organization working to educate, advocate and litigate for Everglades restoration, named three Martin County residents to its board, and two others to its advisory committee.
The new board members are:
Joseph “Joe” Zachary Duke III, president of Jacksonville-based Off Road Holdings. Duke, who has residences in Ponte Vedra Beach, Hobe Sound and Oldwick, N.J., is an industrial designer and entrepreneur involved with manufacturing and an advertising agency.
Robert F. “Tadd” Carr III of Jupiter Island and Chicago. Carr most recently was senior managing director of Chicago-based Fiduciary Management Associates, an investment firm he founded in 1980.
John P. Keller of Hobe Sound and Chicago. Keller is chairman of the Keller Group Inc., an iron and steel manufacturing company based in Northfield, Ill.
New co-chairwoman of the advisory committee are:
Barbara Carr, wife of Robert F. Carr III and former officer with the Lincoln Park Zoological Society and the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Judy Keller, wife of John P. Keller and former officer with the Lincoln Park Zoological Society, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The foundation provides grants to organizations and collaborates with business, civic and environmental groups involved with Everglades restoration.

090713-4
Watering rule: No surrender
Palm Beach Post Editorial
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.palmbeachpost.com%2fopinion%2fcontent%2fopinion%2fepaper%2f2009%2f07%2f13%2fa10a_water_leadedit_0714.html
Monday, July 13, 2009
At the risk of annoying those who believe that the media have become obsessed with Michael Jackson, the South Florida Water Management District Board has moonwalked away from a good idea in a way that the King of Pop would have admired.
That good idea is a permanent rule that would restrict lawn watering to two days a week. In May 2008, before the drought had broken, the nine-member board heard a staff recommendation to do just that. That was a year after Lake Okeechobee, the backup water system for much of South Florida, had dropped to a near-record low level. The vote didn't happen. Last December, after Tropical Storm Fay had helped to rehydrate the region, the board again was poised to impose the twice-a-week rule, to preserve the underground aquifers from which most counties and cities draw their water. Again, the vote didn't happen.
The reason was strong resistance, particularly from utilities but also from nurseries and other water-dependent industries. Utility officials argued at hearing after hearing that they need revenue to service bonds and water restrictions would decrease that revenue. They could raise rates, of course, but they didn't want to hear complaints from customers who were using less but paying more. There was talk of law firms soliciting municipalities for a class-action lawsuit if the board approved the year-round restrictions.
So last week, the idea began to disappear. Board members are giving in to the pressure. There's one more hearing on July 30, but district staff now will work up "several options," according to a district spokesman, and there is a "good chance" that the board will consider a weaker rule at its Aug. 12-13 meeting.
Based on the comments by at least one board member, the district may allow watering three times a week, and if that happened it wouldn't be a surrender at all. Mike Collins claimed that since homeowners at one time were able to water every day, the district would be going from seven days to three days.
See? Conservation.
In fact, Mr. Collins' reference point is outdated. In December 2007, the water district board unanimously restricted watering to one day per week in most of the district's 16 counties. Five months later, the limit went back to twice per week for most of the district, but only last month did the board finally relax the once-a-week rule for Miami-Dade County. The only breaks have been for users who get their water from alternative sources. Even though rainfall for 2009 has been normal, Lake Okeechobee remains almost a foot below its optimum level for this time of year.
The twice-a-week rule would encourage development of alternative sources. It would encourage drought-resistant landscaping. It would make the next drought easier to get through. And it probably could be successfully defended in court, if it came to that, though flexibility in the right areas could stave off a lawsuit. A weaker rule would be a mistake and an abdication of the board's responsibility for managing this area's most precious resource.

090712-1
Boca Raton: State and stimulus money to fund trail
News - Palm Beach County
John Johnston
Sunday, 12 July 2009 03:00
Palm Beach County Commissioners have approved a $1.25 million agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation for reimbursement to the county of construction costs of Bluegill Trail from Riverbend Park to Sandhill Crane Park.
Commissioners said $750,000 will come from Florida Stimulus Scenic Enhancement funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $500,000 from the FDOT enhancement program fund. No county match is required, said commissioners.
Constructed will be the bicycle/pedestrian portion of the Northeast Everglades Natural Area (NENA) Bluegill Trail. The project includes a 5.5 mile-long, ten-foot wide crushed concrete trail, a steel and concrete bridge over the canal C-18E, a chickee shade shelter and informational signs.
Commissioners said the NENA program seeks to link 165,000 acres of conservation lands and a dozen visitor centers in southern Martin County and northern Palm Beach County by ``unique trail and information systems. This portion of the multi-use (pedestrian, bicycle and equestrian) Bluegill Trail was selected by the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) as a priority transportation enhancement project and found eligible in 2007 to receive $500,000 in FDOT Local Agency Program funds available in 2009.
The MPO also selected this project as its number one priority to receive stimulus funds through FDOT. Commisisoners said it's the additional stimulus dollars that will allow completion of the trail and addition of a bridge over the C-18E to carry trail traffic.
The trail connects the City of Palm Beach Gardens Sandhill Crane Access Park to Riverbend Park utilizing the eastern levee of the South Florida Water Management District canal C-18E to traverse the Loxahatchee Slough Natural Area, commissioners said.

090712-2
Fitch Revises Outlook on Florida Environmental Protection Revs to Stable from Negative; Affirms Rtg
NEW YORK - (BUSINESS WIRE) –
July 12,2009
Fitch Ratings has revised the Rating Outlook on approximately $2.6 billion outstanding Florida Department of Environmental Protection Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever revenue bonds and $200 million outstanding Florida Everglades bonds to Stable from Negative. In addition, the rating is affirmed at 'A-'.
The Outlook revision reflects action take by the legislature to bolster projected coverage levels. State statute was revised to expand revenues available for debt service to include all documentary stamp tax revenues not needed for debt service on other bonds. This boosts minimum projected coverage levels from 1.15 times (x) in fiscal 2010 to 1.9x. Fitch believes that this action results in stabilization of the rating at the 'A-' level.
For more information, see Fitch Research 'Fitch Downgrades Florida Environmental Protection Revs to 'A-' from 'A+'; Outlook Negative' dated March 23, 2009, available on the Fitch web site at https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fcts.businesswire.com%2fct%2fCT%3fid%3dsmartlink%26url%3dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.fitchratings.com%26esheet%3d6004669%26lan%3den_US%26anchor%3dwww.fitchratings.com%26index%3d1.
Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fcts.businesswire.com%2fct%2fCT%3fid%3dsmartlink%26url%3dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.fitchratings.com%26esheet%3d6004669%26lan%3den_US%26anchor%3dwww.fitchratings.com%26index%3d2. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site.

090712-3
Mighty moth may become Everglades' new weed eater
Miami Herald
CURTIS MORGAN         https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=mailto%3acmorgan%40MiamiHerald.com
July 12, 2009
A moth from Hong Kong emerges as a powerful weapon against an exotic fern that threatens the Everglades by draping native plants in a cloak of death.
Compared to kudzu, the infamous vine that ate The South, Old World climbing fern may be an obscure pest plant. But they're a lot alike.
The fern just has a slightly smaller appetite. It's only eating South Florida.
It's been doing it at an alarming pace, smothering more than 130,000 acres from cypress forests to Everglades tree islands to coastal mangroves in dense cloaks of death -- despite millions spent trying to halt it with sprays, spades and machetes.
But a new weapon -- in development for a dozen years by federal researchers in Fort Lauderdale -- shows significant promise to beat back an invader so aggressive it would cover a third of the wetlands between Orlando and Naples if left unchecked.
It's a nondescript moth, a ''bio-control'' dubbed ''Neo,'' a nickname considerably catchier than Neomusotima conspurcatalis.
Discovered near Hong Kong in 1997 by Bob Pemberton, an entomologist with the U.S. Agricultural Research Service, Neo has produced millions of hungry larvae that have chewed through thick fern blankets with stunning gusto in three field tests.
''I have never, in all my career, seen a biological control that looks as promising as this one,'' said Dan Thayer, who directs invasive-plant control for the South Florida Water Management District. ''My jaw dropped,'' he said, when he saw how Neo colonies in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County stripped ferns naked.
Though they stress it's still early, Pemberton and fellow entomologist Anthony Boughton, both based at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Fort Lauderdale, agree Neo is a ray of hope for what seemed an almost impossible task: stopping an exotic fern, formally known as Lygodium microphyllium, considered among the most serious threats to the Everglades.
''The Lygodium is strangling the Everglades in a more profound way than Burmese python would ever be able to do,'' said Pemberton. ``The difference is Lygodium completely transforms the environment. It turns healthy native populations into completely artificial, greatly diminished environments.''
Much like kudzu, the fern can trellis up trees 90 feet high. The mat, up to a yard thick, blots sunlight and slowly kills everything beneath them.
Though found mostly in small scattered patches back home in tropical Africa, Asia and Australia, it has exploded in South Florida.
Cold weather likely limits any march north of Lake Okeechobee, but with nothing that eats it here, it has spread west and south since being found in Martin County in the 1960s. The pace picked up exponentially in the 1990s.
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge alone, Pemberton said, spent some $5 million last year on aerial spraying to try to rescue enveloped tree islands. So far, the fern is less established in Everglades National Park but has infested 10,000 acres of mangroves on the southwest coast.
PUBLIC ENEMY
Thayer puts the fern at No. 1 on Florida's most unwanted plant list. It also ranks among the most difficult and expensive to combat. Herbicides can knock it back but are costly and hard to safely apply in wetlands. Killing it requires labor-intensive root cutting and removal.
Fire, normally a natural exotic control in the Glades, can snuff it. But the thick ferns also carry flames high into the canopy, killing native trees that would normally survive.
''I'd say it was worse than kudzu,'' said Thayer.

090712-4
Study: Seagrass decline severe
Keysnews.com
ROBERT SILK,  Citizen Staff
Jul 12, 2009
Seagrass meadows are declining worldwide at a rate comparable to coral reefs and rainforests.
That's the conclusion of a study published June 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In conducting the study, a team of 14 scientists synthesized data going back to 1879 from 215 sites around the globe. They found that 58 percent of the world's seagrass meadows are in decline.
Causes of the decline are varied, ranging from pollution stemming from coastal development to propeller scars. Global warming is another factor. So is overfishing, which can result in the loss of an ecosystem's top predator and set off a cascade effect down the food chain, eventually reaching herbivores that help keep seagrass clear of algae, the study says.
The authors also found that seagrass loss has accelerated over time, going from less than 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990. Worldwide, 51,000 square kilometers of seagrass meadow have disappeared since 1879. A soccer field worth of seagrass disappears every 30 minutes, according to University of Maryland scientist William Dennison, one of the study's co-authors.
"Our report of mounting seagrass losses reveals a major global environmental crisis in coastal ecosystems, for which seagrasses are sentinels of change," the study concludes.
Despite the overall declines, seagrass isn't going away everywhere, the study says. In a quarter of the sites scientists reviewed, seagrass coverage has increased over the length of the data sets.
In Florida Bay, where seagrass serves as a nursery or feeding ground for everything from manatee and fish to lobster and jellyfish, results have been mixed in recent years.
A wide collapse of the dominant turtle grass population in the late 1980 and early '90s, especially in the western bay, turned 10,000 acres of seagrass meadow into bare bottom, said Michael Durako, a University of North Carolina Wilmington biologist who monitors Florida Bay seagrass health. Another 50,000 acres were damaged.
In addition to serving as food and nursery, Florida Bay's seagrass absorbs nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, thereby controlling algae growth and helping to give the bay its gin-clear appearance.
The collapse two decades ago led to more extensive monitoring of Florida Bay's seagrass beginning in 1995. Since then, seagrass in portions of the bay has flourished. For example, in Johnson Key Basin in the western bay, where the collapse hit hard, turtle grass cover went from about 5 percent in 1995 to more than 25 percent in 2008, data from the state-run Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg show. Populations of the less dominant shoal grass and manatee grass have also increased.
Other areas haven't fared as well. Blackwater Sound, pressed against the coast of Key Largo in the eastern portion of the bay, saw a decrease in turtle grass coverage between 1995 and 2008. Since 2000, turtle grass coverage there has declined from more than 25 percent to about 5 percent.
Some of the drop, occurring since 2005, was likely the result of an algae bloom that took hold in the region, the research institute's Seagrass Administrator Penny Hall said. Scientists blamed that bloom on phosphorus and nitrogen runoff, which entered the northeast bay as result of the harsh 2005 hurricane season and also because of the rebuilding of the 18-Mile Stretch.
Hall said Florida Bay is different from most other bays throughout the world in that it is a series of basins separated by sandbar shelves. As a result, water quality and conditions can vary widely.
Florida Bay also has been a victim of propeller damage. A recent Everglades National Park study found that at least 8,000 acres of bay bottom are marred by prop scars.
Yet the bay has been lucky to avoid some of the nitrogen runoff afflicting other parts of the state, Hall said. Nitrogen acts as a fertilizer for algae, leading to blooms that darken the water and choke out seagrass.
"I think that we are fortunate that Florida Bay is still in the condition that it is in, given what has happened in Florida, around the nation and around the world," Hall said. "But with what we have seen recently in Blackwater Sound, we know that this system can be vulnerable to increased nutrients."

090712-5
Three options for guiding preserve: Big Cypress National Preserve released three proposed management options and is seeking public comment.
The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX
Jul 12, 2009
Big Cypress National Preserve released three proposed management options Friday -- including a preferred alternative -- to guide recreation in the 146,000 acres of "addition lands" for the next 15 to 20 years.
Anglers, off-road vehicle riders, paddlers, bikers, hikers and hunters have until Sept. 30 to register comments. Three public workshops are scheduled for August.
The three alternatives would manage 128,000 acres added northeast of the original preserve and 18,000 acres on the western boundary. Those proposals are: taking no action; offering expanded outdoor recreational opportunities -- including designated ORV trails (the preferred measure); or maintaining most of the preserve as wilderness with no ORV access at all.
The general management plan and its accompanying wilderness study/off-road vehicle management plan and draft environmental impact statement have been in the works since 2001.
Park superintendent Pedro Ramos said in an e-mailed news release that the preferred alternative emerged from comments from a variety of sources.
Alternative B -- the preferred alternative -- would designate 140 miles of ORV trails. It would provide new access points for hiking, bicycling, horseback riding, paddling and hunting -- some with parking and restroom facilities. Boaters and anglers could access canals along U.S. 29.
About 49,000 acres of the preserve would be designated as wilderness.
Alternative F emphasizes resource protection and offers limited visitor facilities. No ORVs would be allowed and most access would be on foot. About 75 percent of lands, or 111,000 acres, would be wilderness.
Public workshops will be held from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Aug. 10 at Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center, 500 SW 177 Ave., Miami; Aug. 11 at Edison State College, 7007 Lely Cultural Parkway, Naples; and Aug 12 at Everglades City Community Center, 205 Buckner Ave., Everglades City.
Those who are unable to attend the meetings are encouraged to submit comments online at www.nps.gov/bicy. For more information, call 239-695-1158.

090712-6
Wood storks breeding season finally a success
News Press
Kevin Lollar        klollar@news-press.com
July 12, 2009
For the first time in three years, Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary's woods storks had a successful breeding season, but biologists say it's not time to change the species' endangered status.
Because of a prolonged drought, wood storks didn't build nests in 2007 and 2008 at the sanctuary, North America's largest wood stork nesting colony.
This year, 1,100 nesting pairs produced about 2,200 fledglings.
"Tropical Storm Fay, which came through in August, brought water levels up to near-record levels in the sanctuary," Corkscrew resources manager Jason Lauritsen said. "If water is high here, it's high everywhere and producing all kinds of food for wading birds."
Wood stork nesting success depends on rain - how much and when.
Here's the ideal wood stork formula:
- During the summer, South Florida gets a lot of rain, which fills wetlands and triggers a breeding frenzy among the small fish storks eat.
- After the rainy season, wetlands dry down, and the fish become highly concentrated and easy to catch in small shallow pools.
But conditions can go wrong, including:
- If the summer season is dry, wetlands don't produce fish, and wood storks don't breed.
- If wetlands dry down late, storks breed late, and chicks are in nests when summer rains start; wetlands fill up; adults can't get enough food to feed themselves and their chicks, so they abandon the colony, and the chicks die.
Corkscrew's 2009 statistics are far below those from before development destroyed much of the wood stork's habitat, particularly feeding areas.
Since 1980, Corkscrew’s best year has been 2002, with 3,162 fledglings; between 1958 and 1979, the sanctuary produced more than 5,000 fledglings seven times, more than 8,000 four times, and more than 13,000 twice. The sanctuary record, set in 1961, is 17,000 fledglings.
Corkscrew wasn’t the only successful wood stork colony in 2009.
“I visited half a dozen colonies in North Florida, and it’s been a mixed bag,” said biologist Jim Rodgers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Two colonies, in St. Johns County and Seminole County, were not active, maybe due to low water levels in the swamp.
“But other colonies, in Leon County and Flagler County, were active. In Flagler, we got twice the number we’d expect. It’s a typical situation, a lot of variability.”
Wood storks had a good breeding season in the Everglades, too, said Dean Powell, director of watershed management for the South Florida Water Management District, which monitors wading birds at the district’s water conservation areas.
“We had 2,500 to 3,000 wood storks fledge, compared to last year when we had zero,” he said. “This is the best we’ve seen since the ’30s, literally a lifetime.
“But in the middle of May it started raining. In three weeks, we got 12 inches of direct rainfall, so the water rose, and the fish scooted off and put an end to it.”
This year’s nesting success will probably add fuel to the debate over the wood stork’s status.
In 2007, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists recommended the wood stork be reclassified as threatened.
Property rights advocates, including the Pacific Legal Foundation, have petitioned the wildlife service to reclassify the species as a step toward paving the way for more development in Florida — if the species were reclassified as threatened, its habitat would still be protected under the Endangered Species Act, but if it were completely removed from the list, development in wood stork habitat would be easier.
Wildlife service officials have said the paperwork involved to reclassify a species costs money that could be better spent on research to help the species.
Good nesting numbers were good news to the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Steven Gieseler, who has called the wood stork’s endangered status “an albatross for Florida’s economy.”
“We’re seeing a rebirth of sorts that’s extra evidence on top of that provided by the feds,” he said. “Those whose primary concern is the well-being of the stork population should be rejoicing.
“Those of us who are also concerned with the wood stork but, to be blunt, who are concerned with constitutional protections and economic well-being are happy, too.
The well-being of the animal means restrictions placed on people’s property can be lifted.”
Lauritsen was not ready to proclaim a wood stork rebirth despite this year’s nesting statistics: 2,200 fledglings at Corkscrew in 2009 doesn’t mean 2,200 storks will reach maturity and start breeding four years from now.
 “Research has shown that survivorship through the first year is really poor,” Lauritsen said. “You can call a bird fledged, but its chances of survival are slim, and you still have decent numbers for nesting statistics that give a false sense of security.”
“But other colonies, in Leon County and Flagler County, were active. In Flagler, we got twice the number we’d expect. It’s a typical situation, a lot of variability.”
Wood storks had a good breeding season in the Everglades, too, said Dean Powell, director of watershed management for the South Florida Water Management District, which monitors wading birds at the district’s water conservation areas.
“We had 2,500 to 3,000 wood storks fledge, compared to last year when we had zero,” he said. “This is the best we’ve seen since the ’30s, literally a lifetime.
“But in the middle of May it started raining. In three weeks, we got 12 inches of direct rainfall, so the water rose, and the fish scooted off and put an end to it.”
This year’s nesting success will probably add fuel to the debate over the wood stork’s status.
In 2007, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists recommended the wood stork be reclassified as threatened.
Property rights advocates, including the Pacific Legal Foundation, have petitioned the wildlife service to reclassify the species as a step toward paving the way for more development in Florida — if the species were reclassified as threatened, its habitat would still be protected under the Endangered Species Act, but if it were completely removed from the list, development in wood stork habitat would be easier.
Wildlife service officials have said the paperwork involved to reclassify a species costs money that could be better spent on research to help the species.
Good nesting numbers were good news to the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Steven Gieseler, who has called the wood stork’s endangered status “an albatross for Florida’s economy.”
“We’re seeing a rebirth of sorts that’s extra evidence on top of that provided by the feds,” he said. “Those whose primary concern is the well-being of the stork population should be rejoicing.
“Those of us who are also concerned with the wood stork but, to be blunt, who are concerned with constitutional protections and economic well-being are happy, too.
The well-being of the animal means restrictions placed on people’s property can be lifted.”
Lauritsen was not ready to proclaim a wood stork rebirth despite this year’s nesting statistics: 2,200 fledglings at Corkscrew in 2009 doesn’t mean 2,200 storks will reach maturity and start breeding four years from now.
 “Research has shown that survivorship through the first year is really poor,” Lauritsen said. “You can call a bird fledged, but its chances of survival are slim, and you still have decent numbers for nesting statistics that give a false sense of security.”

090711-
New law protects water resources
Tampa Tribune   https://exchange.mcgill.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=82e1130761d044039d5a217626d58e1e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww2.tbo.com%2fcontent%2f2009%2fjul%2f11%2fco-new-law-protects-water-resources%2fnews-opinion-commentary%2f
Michael W. Sole
July 11, 2009
On June 30 Gov. Charlie Crist signed Senate Bill 2080, relating to water resources, into law. Although the bill is not perfect, it is my firm belief - a belief I expressed to the governor - that this bill should have been signed for the many benefits it provides to both the environment and the people of Florida.
Although the new law requires the governing boards of the state's five water management districts to delegate authority to approve permits to their executive directors, each of the districts has been - and will continue to be - committed to open government and transparency.
The simple fact is nothing in SB 2080 diminishes, alters or limits the ability of the public from inquiring or obtaining information about a permit application or objecting to an application.
While much attention has focused on delegation, many other aspects of the bill offer greater protection for Florida's water resources that have gone largely unnoticed. However, these changes will help ensure the protection and conservation of Florida's water resources. They include:
•Changes to Florida law regarding environmentally friendly landscaping. The use of Florida-friendly landscaping and other measures by homeowners is an effort to conserve water resources, which is in the best interest of all Floridians.
•Expands lands eligible to receive compensation to local governments. This provision puts into Florida law a commitment of the South Florida Water Management District to ensure the smaller Glades communities are not adversely impacted by the U.S. Sugar land acquisition.
•Streamlines government and saves taxpayer dollars - allowing meetings to be conducted via technology and authorizing the use of certain long-term permits.
•Provides fiscally sound policies that ensure the water management districts do not overextend their financial commitments.
Every drop of water makes a difference to Florida's future, and we must continue to protect and wisely manage our water resources. There is no doubt that Florida's environment is better protected when all stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
I am committed to preserving the public process throughout this next year. I will continue working with the executive directors of the water management districts to ensure openness and transparency. In addition, I look forward to working with the 2010 Legislature to develop a process that sustains transparency and stakeholder participation.
Michael Sole is secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

090710-1
Collier floats flowway plan that could require private property purchases in Estates
Naples News.com
ERIC STAATS (Contact)
Friday, July 10, 2009
NAPLES — Collier County is laying plans to change the way it mitigates for wetlands damage from road building east of Collier Boulevard.
Instead of buying credits at wetlands mitigation banks beyond the county lines, the county would buy up land from willing sellers to recreate wetland flowways in Golden Gate Estates.
The county’s road planners hope the plan will put an environmentally friendly twist on long-range road projects for Oil Well Road, Golden Gate Boulevard, Randall Boulevard and the Vanderbilt Beach Road and Green Boulevard extensions.
“We’re really trying to be innovative,” the county’s transportation planning chief Nick Casalanguida said.
An environmental advocate is skeptical, though, citing the wetlands permitting track record of agencies such as the South Florida Water Management District and the county’s lack of money.
“I have no level of comfort with what might come out of this,” Florida Wildlife Federation field representative Nancy Payton said.
Collier County commissioners took the first step last month when they approved applying for a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to jump-start what the grant application calls the Eastern Collier Wetland Project. The county would put up $150,000.
The grant will “establish a baseline for a comprehensive planning and regulatory program” to support the flowway plan and identify places to put them, according to the application.
The grant application cites Collier County’s ranking as one of the fastest growing parts of the United States until last year’s “economic downturn.”
The county will continue to expand eastward from the coastal area when the economy improves, the grant application says.
“Collier County planners believe the current reduction in growth offers an opportunity to improve long-term planning for the benefit of the wetland resources of Southwest Florida,” according to the application.
Casalanguida said it is too early to say how much the flowway plan will cost but it likely will be more expensive than traditional road building projects.
Those projects generally use stormwater ponds that discharge into canals that send damaging slugs of freshwater into sensitive downstream estuaries.
Under the new plan, flowways would handle road drainage more naturally and do less damage downstream, Casalanguida said.
He said more water would soak into the ground, and plants would soak up pollutants in the water before it gets to the estuaries.
The plan would be worth the additional cost because of the value of the mitigation credits it would generate — Casalanguida called it “super-mitigating” — and the environmental benefit, he said.
“We want to do things people will look back in 20 years and say ‘Wow, that was a good idea,’” Casalanguida said.
“The canal system as its set up in the Estates was a bad idea,” he said.
The flowway plan got a mixed reaction from one Golden Gate Estates Area Civic Association leader.
“In principle, it sounds like a reasonable thing to do,” association vice president Peter Gaddy said.
He said the group favors local mitigation and would welcome any plans that would stem flooding.
But he said he’s concerned that a willing seller program would turn into eminent domain and put a cloud over Estates neighborhoods.

090710-2
Delays, price hikes make a muck of $800 million Everglades project
Palm Beach Post
PAUL QUINLAN, Staff Writer
Friday, July 10, 2009
Deep in the cane fields south of Lake Okeechobee, a massive construction site sits abandoned along U.S. 27, its dreams for the Everglades unfulfilled.
Bulldozers and earthmovers reduced a vast swath of these 25 square miles to a gray moonscape of pooled water and piled rock - traces from what was supposed to have become the world's largest free-standing reservoir.
Officially called the A1 Reservoir, this environmental Stonehenge carried an $800 million price tag and big-name endorsements from the likes of Al Gore and Jeb Bush.
The plan was to build an above-ground lake of colossal dimensions to feed water into the parched Everglades. It would be nearly the size of Boca Raton and hold more water than 100,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Its 22-mile perimeter wall would stand three stories tall. Construction was slated to end next year.
Instead, the project has become one of the most expensive false starts in the largely fruitless effort to restore the Everglades, in which the A1 Reservoir was a crucial element.
Two years and $272 million into construction, the South Florida Water Management District suddenly ordered work on the reservoir halted in May 2008. Six months later, water managers canceled construction altogether, incurring fees and penalties that could add up to another $40 million.
The land may still be used to repair the Everglades, but much of the money spent can never be recaptured - for example, $113 million to build a rock-crushing plant that contractors later dismantled. And about 200 workers who say they were promised at least three years of work were laid off.
The shutdown coincided with Gov. Charlie Crist's announcement of an even bolder and costlier Everglades restoration initiative: a $1.75 billion state buyout of U.S. Sugar Corp. and its 180,000-acre farming empire, land perfectly situated to recreate the historic flows of the Everglades.
Water managers say Crist's U.S. Sugar deal, made public in June 2008, did not influence their decision one month earlier to halt work on the A1 Reservoir. But today, officials concede they cannot afford to pay for both at once, even though Crist has trimmed the U.S. Sugar deal to $536 million for 73,000 acres.
The land deal will require scrapping the reservoir plan, as the larger Everglades restoration blueprint is overhauled to incorporate the new acreage. It's worth it, say the governor and his environmental allies, who view the U.S. Sugar deal as a historic opportunity.
"I think the benefits of doing better in the long run far exceed the costs," said district board member Shannon Estenoz.
But others question whether the change of course was worth the extraordinary expense - not to mention the delay in rescuing an ecosystem on the verge of collapse.
"What the district has done was to walk away from the original Everglades restoration plan," said Mike Collins, a district board member and critic of the U.S. Sugar deal. "We were ready to go, and now we're in limbo."
The A1 Reservoir project grew out of its own celebrated land purchase.
In December 1997, then-Vice President Gore announced that the state and federal governments would buy out the Talisman Sugar Corp. The 63,000 acres acquired in the $152 million deal would be used to store and cleanse billions of gallons of water to help hydrate the Everglades.
Completed in 1999, it was at the time the largest single land deal aimed at Everglades restoration. Years later, the water district carved out a 16,700-acre portion and called it the A1 Reservoir.
The reservoir was to be a keystone of a 68-piece, $10.9 billion Everglades restoration plan that Congress passed in 2000. The deal called for the state and feds to split the costs 50-50, but bickering between the parties and a lack of money from Congress ground the restoration to a crawl.
Estenoz said she's hopeful that the days of inertia are over for the restoration, based on promises from the Obama administration to loosen the flow of dollars from Washington.
"The problem over the last eight or nine years has been one of leadership," she said.
Gov. Bush thought as much in 2004, when he proposed to break through the paralysis with "Acceler8," a $1.5 billion program in which the district would borrow the money to build the 62-billion-gallon A1 Reservoir and other Everglades projects.
New obstacles arose, however. For one, the reservoir's estimated $400 million price tag doubled, which the state blamed on rising construction costs and tougher levee-construction standards set after Hurricane Katrina.
There were other, more questionable expenses that the contractor, Barnard Parsons Joint Venture, tried to add to the bill - about $18 million worth, a district audit reported. For example, the audit found that the company charged wear-and-tear on its pickup trucks that amounted to twice the cost of replacing the entire fleet.
In another cloud over the project, the Natural Resources Defense Council and two other environmental groups sued the Corps of Engineers in May 2007, demanding assurances that the reservoir would serve only the Everglades, not farms or development.
The groups explicitly said they did not want construction halted. But the district did just that one year later, citing uncertainty over the suit's outcome. Environmentalists were dumbfounded.
"We actually wrote them a letter and said, 'This is ridiculous,'" said NRDC attorney Brad Sewell. "It was pretty clear they were going to blame it on us."
A month later, Crist went public with news of the U.S. Sugar deal, which the state had been negotiating for months. The A1 plans would have to change.
Unmentioned was a full accounting of the penalties for shutting down the reservoir project: Six monthly payments of $1.9 million to suspend the project. An additional $1.5 million payment for canceling the contract. And as much as $26 million to break down the construction operation.
Meanwhile, the jobs that the state had repeatedly boasted of disappeared.
"They were tossing 200 onto the job market in Belle Glade," said Troy Mann, one of the workers, who have since filed a class-action suit against the district and contractor. "Most of them couldn't get work. ... It was a terrible disaster."
As for that NRDC lawsuit, a judge in June dismissed the case as moot, noting that the A1 Reservoir has been scrapped.
In the final order, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks quotes former Chief Justice Warren Burger: "It is not the function of the judiciary to provide 'effective leadership' simply because the political branches of government fail to do so."

090710-3
Third day of lawn watering might be added, but not in Miami-Dade
Water managers decided to pursue three-day watering limits instead of the current twice-weekly restrictions. Miami-Dade will keep the twice-weekly limit.
Miami Herald
CURTIS MORGAN         cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
July 10, 2009
Since imposing emergency sprinkling restrictions during a drought two years ago, South Florida water managers have been moving toward making the twice-weekly limits permanent.
On Thursday, they backed away.
Under pressure -- and lawsuit threats -- from utilities worried about rising red ink and health concerns, the South Florida Water Management District's governing board ordered its staff to pursue a plan that would allow lawn sprinkling three days a week for the next five years.
Board member Mike Collins defended the move as a step forward from no permanent restrictions. He also warned that the twice-weekly rule is vulnerable to legal challenges.
''If we're going to try to ram this down people's throats today, we're going to lose,'' he said.
Environmentalists said weakening the rule sent the wrong message in a region regularly hit with droughts, arguing that other areas have twice-weekly rules and South Florida has lived under them since 2007.
Technically, the twice-weekly emergency rules remain in place until the board rescinds them. That could happen as early as next month when members will consider a revised three-day proposal. The change would not affect counties that have enacted tougher restrictions, such as Lee and Miami-Dade, which made twice-weekly irrigation permanent earlier this year.
The district has been working on a year-round policy intended to protect the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, and other systems from frequent drawdowns caused by decades of rising demands and droughts.
But utilities, citing revenue declines as water demand fell region-wide 10 to 24 percent, complained they had to hit customers with surcharges to cover millions in budget shortfalls. Several also warned that the schedule let water sit too long in pipes, compromising health standards and forcing wasteful flushes of the system.
John Fumero -- an attorney representing a landscapers nursery association and utilities in Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Highland Beach -- said his clients understood the need for increased conservation. But he also urged more flexibility. ''There is no research to suggest there is something magical going from three days to two days,'' he said.
Though some board members expressed concerns, the vote was unanimous to drop the two-day target. As part of the proposed rule, the district will also work with utilities and the landscape industry to study ways to cut water use.
''I don't believe the goal is three, two or one,'' said board member Jerry Montgomery. ``I believe the goal is to maximize efficiency.''

090710-4
Water managers ponder relaxing sprinkler limits for 5 years, despite calls for conservation
Palm Beach Post - PAUL QUINLAN, Staff Writer
July 09, 2009
It may seem strange, but in its effort to promote water conservation, the South Florida Water Management District could move water restrictions from two to three days a week.
The reason: Most of the region has been under an emergency, two-day-a-week restriction order for the past two years because of what was a prolonged drought.
But after recent rains washed away drought conditions, water managers say they face not only pressure to lift the temporary order but also, potentially, litigation from cash-strapped utilities that are losing money because of the sprinkler limits.
On the other hand, lifting the emergency limits entirely would mean homeowners could water any day of the week.
Instead, a new proposal calls for allowing 3-day-a-week limits for the next five years, while officials meet regularly to consider other strategies to reduce water use and conduct annual reviews of progress.
Bottom line, according to board member Mike Collins, who helped broker the compromise option with utility managers: "We're going from seven days to three days."
But environmentalists didn't see his logic. Sara Fain, of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the district was "moving backwards."
Jacquie Weisblum, of the group Audubon of Florida, accused the water district of hypocrisy, citing its motto, "Reduce your water use, no excuse!"
"All I hear with regards to this rule is excuses about why the two-day-a-week rule cannot be implemented," said Weisblum. "Not only can it be implemented, it's been done for over two years."
Water board member and environmentalist Shannon Estenoz reacted to the three-day-a-week suggestion with skepticism and exasperation.
"I sense, just my gut, that we need to change our relationship to water," said Estenoz. "The only thing that's going to change people's relationship to water is if they can't use as much of it."
But Collins and other board members said changing the culture required allies - from utility managers, to plant nursery operators to homeowners across South Florida.
"All of this is just tilting at windmills unless we have buy-in from the people," said board member Charles Dauray, who suggested conservation should even be added to school curriculums. "And you don't get a buy-in with quantitative threats."
Judge allows Crist's Everglades land deal to move forward
But ruling limits money for future deals with U.S. Sugar Corp
A judge's ruling Wednesday kept alive Gov. Charlie Crist's bid for a half-billion-dollar Everglades restoration land deal with U.S. Sugar Corp.
But Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Donald Hafele struck down the proposal to borrow as much as $2.2 billion for additional land buys from U.S. Sugar and to help pay for construction of reservoirs and treatment areas that would be built on the farmland.
The ruling allows the South Florida Water Management District to move forward with its $536 million plan to buy an initial 73,000 acres from U.S. Sugar. However, the ruling also calls into question whether Crist and the district, which leads Everglades restoration, will be able to buy an additional 107,000 acres from U.S. Sugar as proposed.

090709-1
Delays could scrap Everglades deal
Sun Sentinel
July 9, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- South Florida water managers are calling out the Obama administration over long-stalled Everglades restoration and are threatening to scrap a state and federal partnership aimed at saving the famed River of Grass.
The South Florida Water Management District's board on Wednesday reacted angrily to another delay in a seven-year negotiation between the agency and federal government over a plan to split the multibillion-dollar costs for restoring water flows to the Everglades.
The district blames federal bureaucrats for new delays in a 50-50 cost sharing plan that district officials thought was close to completion last month.
Instead, the district learned that federal agencies loaded the proposed agreement with a slew of new changes that threaten to create added delays in getting money flowing to planned water storage and treatment areas.
On Thursday, the board is expected to vote on a resolution laying out the concerns and appealing to President Obama's administration to get the deal he inherited done. The alternative could be ending the partnership, District Chairman Eric Buermann said.
"Nothing seems to have worked," he said. "We got the seven-year itch."
Though President Obama and congressional leaders have signaled support for Everglades restoration, federal agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Office of Management and Budget continue to slow down the cost-sharing deal, district officials said.
"Some nameless, faceless person can stop the whole thing," said a "furious" District Board Member Shannon Estenoz. "The effect of it is to bring restoration to a halt. ... Do I need to chain myself to a tree?"
The time has come to discuss ending the partnership with the federal government and "get it done on our own," Board Member Michael Collins said.
"This is one of those line in the sand times," he said. "I no longer believe [federal officials] are going to come along."
The struggling Everglades restoration plan called for the state to buy land needed to restore the Everglades, with the federal government paying for the reservoirs and other structures needed to store, treat and direct water to what remains of the Everglades.
The state has purchased more than 200,000 acres and appropriated more than $2 billion for Everglades restoration, but the federal government has been slow to deliver its share of the money to get projects built.
Still unresolved is an agreement for the federal government to credit the state for land expenses already incurred. Without that agreement, the district -- which leads Everglades restoration for the state -- may not be able to move forward with projects, district officials said. It also threatens the ability to use federal money Congress has approved for Everglades work.
While still trying to work out an agreement with the federal government, the district is embarking on an additional $536 million land deal to buy another 73,000 acres. The U.S. Sugar Corp. farmland, which is not included in the original restoration deal, is expected to reshape plans for storing and cleaning water for the Everglades.
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to set up a meeting with federal officials and district representatives to try to address the concerns, corps liaison Kim Taplin said.
While applauding the Obama administration's environmental efforts so far, the latest Everglades restoration delay leaves Audubon of Florida "alarmed," group spokeswoman Jacquie Weisblum said.
"The environment can no longer endure these types of delays," she said.
From our news partners at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

090709-2
Water managers ponder relaxing sprinkler limits for 5 years, despite calls for conservation
Palm Beach Post
PAUL QUINLAN,  Staff Writer
July 09, 2009
It may seem strange, but in its effort to promote water conservation, the South Florida Water Management District could move water restrictions from two to three days a week.
The reason: Most of the region has been under an emergency, two-day-a-week restriction order for the past two years because of what was a prolonged drought.
But after recent rains washed away drought conditions, water managers say they face not only pressure to lift the temporary order but also, potentially, litigation from cash-strapped utilities that are losing money because of the sprinkler limits.
On the other hand, lifting the emergency limits entirely would mean homeowners could water any day of the week.
Instead, a new proposal calls for allowing 3-day-a-week limits for the next five years, while officials meet regularly to consider other strategies to reduce water use and conduct annual reviews of progress.
Bottom line, according to board member Mike Collins, who helped broker the compromise option with utility managers: "We're going from seven days to three days."
But environmentalists didn't see his logic. Sara Fain, of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the district was "moving backwards."
Jacquie Weisblum, of the group Audubon of Florida, accused the water district of hypocrisy, citing its motto, "Reduce your water use, no excuse!"
"All I hear with regards to this rule is excuses about why the two-day-a-week rule cannot be implemented," said Weisblum. "Not only can it be implemented, it's been done for over two years."
Water board member and environmentalist Shannon Estenoz reacted to the three-day-a-week suggestion with skepticism and exasperation.
"I sense, just my gut, that we need to change our relationship to water," said Estenoz. "The only thing that's going to change people's relationship to water is if they can't use as much of it."
But Collins and other board members said changing the culture required allies - from utility managers, to plant nursery operators to homeowners across South Florida.
"All of this is just tilting at windmills unless we have buy-in from the people," said board member Charles Dauray, who suggested conservation should even be added to school curriculums. "And you don't get a buy-in with quantitative threats."

090708-1
Water officials say delays could scrap federal Everglades deal
Sun-Sentinel - ANDY REID
July 9, 2009
South Florida water managers are calling out the Obama administration over long-stalled Everglades restoration and are threatening to scrap a state and federal partnership aimed at saving the famed River of Grass.
The South Florida Water Management District’s board on Wednesday reacted angrily to another delay in a seven-year negotiation between the agency and federal government over a plan to split the multibillion-dollar costs for restoring water flows to the Everglades.
The district blames federal bureaucrats for new delays in a 50-50 cost sharing plan that district officials thought was close to completion last month.
Instead, the district learned that federal agencies loaded the proposed agreement with a slew of new changes that threaten to create added delays in getting money flowing to planned water storage and treatment areas.
The alternative could be ending the partnership, District Chairman Eric Buermann said.
“Nothing seems to have worked,” he said. “We got the seven-year itch.”
Though President Obama and congressional leaders have signaled support for Everglades restoration, federal agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Office of Management and Budget continue to slow down the cost-sharing deal, district officials said.
 “Some nameless, faceless person can stop the whole thing,” said a “furious” district Board Member Shannon Estenoz. “The effect of it is to bring restoration to a halt. ... Do I need to chain myself to a tree?”
The time has come to discuss ending the partnership with the federal government and “get it done on our own,” Board Member Michael Collins said.
“This is one of those line in the sand times,” he said. “I no longer believe [federal officials] are going to come along.”
The struggling Everglades restoration plan called for the state to buy land needed to restore the Everglades, with the federal government paying for the reservoirs and other structures needed to store, treat and direct water to what remains of the Everglades.
The state has purchased more than 200,000 acres and appropriated more than $2 billion for Everglades restoration, but the federal government has been slow to deliver its share of the money to get projects built.
Still unresolved is an agreement for the federal government to credit the state for land expenses already incurred. Without that agreement, the district — which leads Everglades restoration for the state — may not be able to move forward with projects, district officials said. It also threatens the ability to use federal money Congress has approved for Everglades work.
While still trying to work out an agreement with the federal government, the district is embarking on an additional $536 million land deal to buy another 73,000 acres. The U.S. Sugar Corp. farmland, which is not included in the original restoration deal, is expected to reshape plans for storing and cleaning water for the Everglades.
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to set up a meeting with federal officials and district representatives to try to address the concerns, corps liaison Kim Taplin said.
While applauding the Obama administration’s environmental efforts so far, the latest Everglades restoration delay leaves Audubon of Florida “alarmed,” group spokeswoman Jacquie Weisblum said.
“The environment can no longer endure these types of delays,” she said.
Andy Reid can be reached at abreid@SunSentinel.com or 561-228-5504.

090708-2
EPA: Deny 9 rock mining permits in Miami-Dade
The Environmental Protection Agency said it isn't looking to block mining in Miami-Dade, but its concerns could force the industry to scale back its plans for new mines.
Miami Herald
CURTIS MORGAN         cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
July 8, 2009
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has waded in against the rock mining industry's plans to expand into 6,800 acres of wetlands bordering Everglades National Park and Miami-Dade County's biggest source of drinking water.
The EPA, in a letter sent last week to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, recommends denying nine requests for new mining permits, saying the rock pits would destroy wildlife habitat, drain water from adjacent Everglades marshes and potentially degrade water quality in a swath of Northwest Miami-Dade that the industry has dubbed the Lake Belt.
The letter echoes concerns raised by Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler, who in February reinstated an earlier overturned order that halted mining in hundreds of acres surrounding a well field that supplies more than 1 million people.
Davina Marraccini, an EPA spokeswoman in Atlanta, stressed the agency ''is not proposing to halt rock mining in the Lake Belt.'' The EPA, in fact, states that it wants to work with miners and the Corps to ``enable continued mining while protecting South Florida's environment.''
CHANGING PLANS
Still, the letter and a new environmental impact analysis from the Corps signals that mining companies may have to scale back, or at least tweak, plans to turn some 20,000 acres of West Miami-Dade into a chain of massive 80-foot-deep rock pits.
The Corps' study, which Hoeveler had ordered revised, lays out nine alternatives for mining, including several that would create 1,500-foot ''exclusion zones'' to protect a strip of wetlands intended to serve as buffer between the Everglades and urban pollution.
The EPA, in its letter, supports that proposal. It also questions plans to control seepage from the Everglades into the quarries and whether miners can adequately offset so much excavation. Under federal ''mitigation'' rules, developers can compensate for destroying wetlands by restoring similar habitat elsewhere but the letter notes there aren't enough mitigation areas left in Miami-Dade to make up for the loss.
Marraccini and Leah Oberlin, the Corps project manager for the Lake Belt, both called the letter routine, but it does serve formal notice for the Corps to consult with the EPA on the mining permits.
Oberlin said the two federal agencies were already discussing the Lake Belt on a weekly basis.
''We have pretty much all the concerns EPA has represented in their letter,'' she said. ``We are working with them to make sure we resolve these as much as possible.''
CAN BE RESOLVED
Kerri Barsh, an attorney for the Miami-Dade Limestone Products Association, a coalition of mining companies, said she was confident the agencies' environmental concerns could be resolved.
''Although not insurmountable, we are sensitive to the issues raised by the EPA and are committed to developing a mining plan that can be supported by all the permitting agencies,'' she said.
The industry also has appealed Hoeveler's partial mining ban decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which overturned his initial 2008 order to rescind a first phase of mining the Corps approved in 2000.  Oral arguments are scheduled in October.
Brad Sewell, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, one of three environmental groups that sued the Corps in 2002 over the initial Lake Belt permits, said the letter could prove significant.
In 2000, the last time the EPA recommended denial, the Corps slashed miners' requests from 14,300 acres over 50 years to 5,400 acres over 10 years.  The new permit request would extend mining to another 6,800 acres
''It's definitely more than protocol and is consistent with what EPA did before,'' Sewell said.

090708-3
Managing Lake Okeechobee means balancing supply and demand
TC Palm, Opinion           Home › Opinion › Guest Columns
Col. Paul Grosskruger
July 8, 2009
There are few topics that generate more interest among south Floridians than flood damage reduction and water supply. Because Lake Okeechobee is the center of the region’s water supply and flood protection systems, the Army Corps of Engineers’ management decisions are often in the news.
For the past several weeks, interest in Lake Okeechobee water levels seemed to be waning, as the lake was on the rise from its lowest point for the year. But now, as we approach the point where releases could be made, newspapers, television and radio are again covering the lake. A few days ago, while traveling back from south Florida, I heard on the radio that the lake was “one-foot below average.” I also read a newspaper article that stated the lake is “nearly four feet above its measured mark on the same date in 2007.” While both of these statements are true, I have to wonder what the public thinks about the condition of the lake. Management of the lake is complicated – it takes into account historical data collected over many years, recent water levels, weather predictions, averages and extremes. As I hear first-hand information that is accurate, yet seems contradictory, I am moved to personally reach out to explain the status of the lake and the way the Corps manages a resource that figures so prominently in the lives of south Floridians.
Public safety first – the 2008 Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule
The Corps manages the lake according to a “regulation schedule,” which strives to balance the needs of the system while taking into consideration a variety of environmental factors including current lake level, time of the year, needs of the estuaries and the Everglades, weather forecasts, water level relative to the Herbert Hoover Dike (HHD), and many others. The schedule we use today, the Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule (LORS), was adopted in 2008. The previous schedule allowed water to rise above levels considered safe for the dike and to levels that caused damage to the naturally shallow lake’s plant and animal communities. When released, these waters often flowed to estuaries that had already received more than enough fresh water from local basin runoff.
The 2008 LORS was developed through an open and collaborative process. Corps experts worked side-by-side with other agency staff to address issues raised by myriad groups, including agriculturalists and environmentalists. The 2008 LORS is a temporary schedule that aims at reducing the frequency and duration of high water levels in the lake. It also allows earlier and lower volume releases, thereby greatly reducing risks to the public, while balancing other needs such as water supply, protection of the Everglades, the lake and the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries, recreation and navigation.
Weather extremes make for difficult decisions
Lake Okeechobee simply doesn’t have the capacity to provide fully and simultaneously for every human purpose and all environmental needs. This is true primarily because south Florida’s natural weather cycle swings between wet and dry seasons, and within each season, extremes occur.
The natural cycle of water levels in Lake Okeechobee corresponds closely to the wet and dry seasons. The dry season typically occurs from December through mid-May, and it’s during the early months of this season that we store water in the lake to carry us through the remainder of the dry season. As the end of the dry season approaches, and if water levels are high, we may begin to release water to the south and to the eastern and western estuaries to free up capacity for upcoming rainfall and subsequent runoff. When the wet season begins, we may continue to release water to maintain capacity for later rainfall. As the wet season progresses, we will stop releases, and begin to store enough water to aid in providing for water supply needs through the dry season. Thus, each year, we generally manage the lake to first build up a supply for the approaching dry season and then we lower levels to create capacity for upcoming rainfall and runoff that if not held back, would flood private property and cause irreparable damage to sensitive estuaries.
The difficult decisions come into play when within this natural cycle of wet and dry, we have severe rainfall events. In an extremely wet season, if there is little to no capacity in the lake, in order to protect the dike, we are compelled to make releases to the Everglades and the estuaries. On the other hand, when the dry season becomes a drought, conserving water in the lake and refraining from making releases to areas such as the Caloosahatchee River can mean the difference between life or death for sensitive organisms that form the foundation of entire the ecosystem.
The Corps is the decision maker
There has been much discussion recently about who should decide when water is released from Lake Okeechobee. To be perfectly clear, the Corps is the ultimate decision maker. Recommendations of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and others are extremely important to us and serve as valuable input to the decision making process. We communicate multiple times each week with SFWMD staff regarding management of Lake Okeechobee.
When water in the lake rises about 15.5 feet (NGVD), the Corps considers the effects of high water levels on the HHD. At this level, the Corps releases water to protect the dike and the public. In the past, the SFWMD staff has given us recommendations regarding timing and volume of releases; we have been in agreement on the majority of these occasions.
At the other end of the water level range, when water levels are low, decisions are equally difficult. We have a tendency to hold water in the lake to protect the lake’s ecosystem and to maintain supplies for urban and agricultural users. At the same time, the Caloosahatchee Estuary and the historic Everglades need releases for their sensitive wetland ecosystems. The competition for a dwindling water supply can become intense. It is at these times that the recommendation of the SFWMD becomes even more important to us – after all, according to the law, we are managing “waters of the state,” and the provision of water supply to agricultural and urban users is charged to the state, and not within the range of Federal government missions.
Our commitments will remain strong
This week you may hear more about Lake Okeechobee and read more about Lake Okeechobee water levels. As the lake begins to rise early in this wet season, the Corps must begin to weigh the risk of holding water in the lake as opposed to releasing water to protect the dike and south Florida residents. We must base our decisions on many uncertainties such as weather predictions and the chance of a storm carrying large amounts of rain. Regardless of those unknowns, I commit to the residents of south Florida that the Corps will consider all factors and we will seek the input of all interested parties, especially the SFWMD. We will strive to make the best decision in balancing the competing needs associated with Lake Okeechobee, and we will always make protecting public health and safety our highest priority.
Grosskruger is commander of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District.

09078-5
Public safety is highest priority
Miami Herald - Other Views
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1133616.html  
Col. P. Grosskuger        https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.saj.usace.army.mil
For the past several weeks, interest in Lake Okeechobee water levels seemed to be waning. But now, as the lake begins to fill, interest is growing. As I hear information that is accurate, yet seems contradictory, I am moved to reach out to explain how the Corps manages this important resource.
The Corps manages the lake according to a ''regulation schedule,'' which strives to balance the needs of the system while considering a variety of environmental factors including lake level, time of year, needs of the estuaries and the Everglades, weather forecasts, water level relative to the Herbert Hoover Dike and many others. The schedule we use today is the 2008 Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule.
This schedule is an improvement over the previous one. It doesn't allow water levels to rise as high -- levels that might threaten the dike and damage the lake's ecosystem.
The current schedule was developed through an open and collaborative process. It aims to reduce the frequency and duration of high-water levels. It also allows earlier and lower volume releases, greatly reducing risks to the public. It does this while balancing other needs, such as water supply, and protection of the Everglades, the lake and the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries.
Lake Okeechobee doesn't have the capacity to provide fully and simultaneously for every human purpose and all environmental needs.
Simply stated, we manage the lake in a cycle that first builds up supply for the approaching dry season and then lowers levels to create capacity for upcoming rainfall and subsequent runoff that if not captured, would flood private property and cause irreparable damage to the estuaries.
The difficult decisions occur when we have severe rainfall events and droughts. In an extremely wet season, we are compelled to make releases to the Everglades and the estuaries to protect the dike. On the other hand, during droughts, conserving water in the lake and refraining from making releases to areas such as the Caloosahatchee River can mean the difference between life or death for sensitive organisms that form the foundation of the entire ecosystem.
The Corps is the ultimate decision maker for Lake Okeechobee water management. Recommendations of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and others are important to us and serve as valuable input to our decision making. We communicate multiple times each week with SFWMD staff on this topic.
When water in the lake rises above 15.5 feet, the Corps considers the effects of high water levels on the dike. In the past, the water-management district staff gave us recommendations regarding timing and volume of releases.
When water levels are low, decisions are also difficult. The competition for a dwindling water supply can become intense. At these times the recommendation of the SFWMD becomes even more important to us, because according to the law we are managing ''waters of the state,'' and the provision of water supply to agricultural and urban users is charged to the state, and not within the range of federal government missions.
You may soon begin to hear and read more about Lake Okeechobee and its water levels. As the lake rises, the Corps must weigh the risk of holding water in the lake. We must base our decisions on predictions. Regardless of the unknowns, I commit to the residents of South Florida that we will consider all factors and we will seek the input of all interested parties, especially the SFWMD. We will strive to make the best decision in balancing competing needs, and we will always make protecting public health and safety our highest priority.
Col. Paul Grosskruger is the District Engineer, Jacksonville District, of the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

090708-6
Watered down authority
Palm Beach Post - Editorial
July 08, 2009
Gov. Crist was wrong to sign a bill that could put decisions about the public's most precious resource out of public view.
That resource is water, and the legislation is Senate Bill 2080. Currently, permits for utilities, developers and farmers to pump in excess of half a million gallons of water are approved by members of the five water management district governing boards. Those meetings are public. SB 2080 puts those decisions in the hands of each water district's executive director. Public scrutiny would be limited.
The bill also allows permits to be granted for 50 years, rather than 20. By extending the term and subjecting permits to review by a single person rather than a nine-member board, the bill aims to streamline permitting. It was slipped into the bill on the session's final day at the request of Rep. Denise Grimsley, R-Lake Placid, and with the blessing of the bill's sponsor, Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales.
But like most last-minute legislation, the law is poorly worded. It mandates any one of four permitting functions to be removed from board control but says "or" instead of "and," meaning any one of the four, but not necessarily all. The South Florida Water Management District accepted that interpretation but still delegated away its powers on Wednesday.
Executive Director Carol Wehle promised to post permit requests on the Internet, hold public meetings about controversial permits and allow the public to bring permitting concerns to the board at any meeting. Those steps may help offset an offensive law. But the board wasted time trying to discern legislative intent. The measure, slipped in to a good bill that encouraged native Florida landscaping, had no hearings. If there was any intent, it was to weaken control over development.
Without board review, the public loses a valuable vehicle for raising challenges that developers prefer would remain at the staff level. Eliminating that scrutiny helps builders proposing new towns in rural Florida, including land in which Sen. Alexander owns a stake.
Signing the bill chips away at Gov. Crist's self-promoted image as the green governor and his stand for open government. It shamed him into issuing a signing statement to urge districts to continue to hold public discussion, as Ms. Wehle has promised. One executive director, David Still, of the Suwannee River Water Management District, told the St. Petersburg Times he would ask his board to continue voting on permits, even if it meant breaking the law.
Ms. Wehle promised "the most open process the public has ever had." Gov. Crist signed a bill that bans the most open process.

090708-7
Water managers bow to legislature, abolish in-the-sunshine board votes on permits
Palm Beach Post
Paul Quinlan, Staff Writer
July 08, 2009
Powers to permit a developer to pave over wetlands or tap the region's water supply will pass from the South Florida Water Management District's governing board to its top administrator, the board voted today.
In doing so, the largest of the state's five water management districts embraced a broad interpretation of the controversial bill Gov. Charlie Crist recently signed into law, which mandates the change. Ambiguities in the bill's language left sorting out the details — in particular, whether the change should apply to both wetland and water-use permits — to the individual agencies.The bill's supporters said they aimed to streamline permitting. But critics fear the law further removes the public from decision-making on some of the state's most precious and increasingly scarce natural resources.
Rather than put permits to a board vote during public meetings, when time is set aside for comment by residents, the district will now let those decisions be made in the office of Executive Director Carol Wehle.
Suburban Lake Worth environmentalist Rosa Durando blasted the change. For three decades, she has combed through water and wetland permit applications from Palm Beach County on her own time, railing against what she perceived as their excesses in fiery speeches to the governing board.
At times, Durando has delayed or derailed permit applications after finding flaws in the applications or the district's staff reports.
"Don't denigrate opinions of the public, who come up here with their own time and money invested simply because they don't want to see Florida go down the tubes," said Durando, an activist from the Audubon Society of the Everglades.
But Wehle pledged to build transparency into the handling of the permits.
All application materials will be posted to the agency's Web site, https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.sfwmd.gov, so that the public may review and comment, she said. (Much of this permitting information was already searchable on the Web site.) The district will also hold monthly meetings without the governing board to allow the public to comment on permit applications.
But the board will no longer vote on the permits, and the new law explicitly prohibits board members from "intervening" in pending permit applications.
Even so, the changes will likely amount to "a much better final product for the environment," Wehle said.
The board, which has always had the power to delegate authority,sidestepped the ambiguities of the bill's language by applying it to water-use permits and delegating its authority on wetland permits to the executive director, essentially handing the office decision-making powers for both.
The district, meanwhile, will seek clarification from the Attorney General's Office.
Board members are appointed by the governor, while the board hires the executive director. Board Chairman Eric Buermann said he remains fundamentally opposed the new law's "wholesale delegation" of permitting authority.
"You're having one person who isn't really answerable to the public versus nine people who are answerable to the public," he said.

090708-8
Water managers revamp permit process
MarcoNews.com
By ERIC STAATS (Contact)
July 8, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH — South Florida water managers have voted to delegate their authority to issue water use and wetlands destruction permits to their executive director and to start a new process for taking public input.
The 4-3 decision by the South Florida Water Management District governing board was marked by extended debate over how much delegation of authority the state Legislature intended to allow when it passed a bill this spring.
Gov. Charlie Crist signed the bill but, in an accompanying letter, asked that the state's five water management boards keep the process open and transparent to the public.
With today's vote, the governing board asked its attorney to submit a request for an opinion from the Attorney General's Office on how much power the board has to delegate its permitting authority.
Under a new process outlined today, South Florida Water Management District Executive Director Carol Wehle would hold monthly public meetings to take input on water use and wetlands permits.
The governing board's monthly agenda would still include a regular agenda item for the public to discuss regulatory policy matters, according to today's vote.

090708-9
Water-use, wetland permits now decided by South Florida Water Management District administrator
Miami Herald
July 8, 2009
Water-use, wetland permits now decided by South Florida Water Management District administrator.
The largest of the state's five water management districts voted to give authority over wetland, water-use permits to its top administrator.
Miami Herald
Authority to permit a developer to pave over wetlands or tap the region's water supply will pass from the South Florida Water Management District's governing board to its top administrator, the board voted today
In doing so, the largest of the state's five water-management districts embraced a broad interpretation of the controversial bill Gov. Charlie Crist recently signed into law, which mandates the change. Ambiguities in the bill's language left sorting out the details -- in particular, whether the change should apply to both wetland and water-use permits -- to the individual agencies.
The bill's supporters said they intended to streamline the procedure of issuing permits. Critics fear the law further removes the public from decision-making on some of the state's most precious and increasingly scarce natural resources.
Rather than put permits to a board vote during public meetings, when time is set aside for comment by residents, the district will now let those decisions be made in the office of Executive Director Carol Wehle.
Suburban Lake Worth environmentalist Rosa Durando blasted the change.
PUBLIC OPINION
For three decades, she has combed through water and wetland permit applications on her own time, railing against what she perceived as their excesses in her fiery speeches to the governing board.
At times, Durando has delayed or derailed permit applications after finding flaws in the applications or the district's staff reports.
''Don't denigrate opinions of the public, who come up here with their own time and money invested simply because they don't want to see Florida go down the tubes,'' said Durando, an activist with the Audubon Society of the Everglades.
Wehle pledged to build transparency in handling permits.
All application materials will be posted to the agency's website, https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.sfwmd.gov, so the public may review and comment on them, she said. Much of this permitting information was already searchable on the website. The district will also hold monthly meetings without the governing board to allow the public to comment on permit applications.
But the board will no longer vote on the permits, and the law explicitly prohibits board members from ''intervening'' in pending permit applications.
FINAL PRODUCT
The changes will probably amount to ''a much better final product for the environment,'' Wehle said.
The board, which has always had the power to delegate its authority, sidestepped the ambiguities of the bill by applying it to water-use permits and delegating its authority on wetland permits to the executive director, essentially handing Wehle decision-making powers for both. The district will seek clarification from the Florida Attorney General.

090708-10
Working to preserve, enhance water resources
Miami Herald, Letters to the Editor:         https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/letters/story/1131888.html
July 8, 2009
On June 30, Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law Senate bill 2080, relating to water resources. Although the bill is not perfect, it provides many benefits to the environment and people of Florida.
The new law requires the governing boards of the state's five water-management districts to delegate authority to approve permits to their executive directors, but each of the water-management districts have been -- and will continue to be -- committed to open government and transparency.
Nothing in Senate bill 2080 diminishes, alters or limits the ability of the public from inquiring or obtaining information about a permit application or objecting to an application.
While much attention has focused on this permitting delegation, many other aspects of the bill offer greater protection for Florida's water resources that have gone largely unnoticed. These changes will help ensure the protection and conservation of Florida's water resources. They include:
• Revisions to Florida law regarding environmentally friendly landscaping. The use of Florida-friendly landscaping and other measures by homeowners is an effort to conserve water resources.
• Expansion of lands eligible to receive compensation to local governments. This provision puts into law a commitment of the South Florida Water Management District to ensure that smaller Glades communities are not adversely affected by the U.S. Sugar land acquisition.
• Streamlining government and saving taxpayer dollars; allowing meetings to be conducted via technology and authorizing the use of certain long-term permits.
•Providing fiscally sound policies that ensure the water-management districts do not overextend their financial commitments.
Every drop of water makes a difference to Florida's future, and we must continue to protect and wisely manage our water resources. There is no doubt that Florida's environment is better protected when all stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
As a result, I am committed to preserving the public process throughout this next year. I will continue working with the executive directors of the state's five water-management districts to ensure openness and transparency.
In addition, I look forward to working with the 2010 Legislature to develop a process that sustains transparency and stakeholder participation.
MICHAEL W. SOLE, secretary, Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee.

090708-11
World Wildlife Fund shutters Keys office
Harrison resigns seat on Sanctuary advisory council
Keynoter
Kevin Wadlow                kwadlow@keynoter.com
July 08, 2009
One of the most active conservation organizations in the Florida Keys - the South Florida Program of the World Wildlife Fund - has closed its doors.
A spokesman at the international group's headquarters in Washington, D.C., cited the troubled economy as a prime reason.
The Keys-based office had employed Debbie Harrison and Alessandra Score, two of Monroe County's best-known environmentalists.
Score now is affiliated with EcoAdapt, an organization working on climate-change issues.
Harrison has been in the forefront of many Keys conservation issues for decades as a representative of the WWF and other environmental groups.
In June, Harrison resigned her longtime seat on the volunteer advisory council to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, citing uncertain plans.
Harrison, a Lower Keys resident, could not be reached for comment by press time.
"The decision to close the [South Florida] office on June 30 was a tough one, but we had to make some hard decisions during the economic downturn on where to focus our limited resources," Lee Poston, WWF director of conservation and science communications, said in an email.
"After much consideration, we determined that there were numerous other highly qualified groups in the region able to carry out the important work of protecting Florida's biological treasures such as the Everglades, the Keys and the Dry Tortugas," Poston said.
The local World Wildife Fund office was active for more than a decade, and worked on issues including onshore development, population pressures and marine management.
Harrison was an advocate for the national marine sanctuary since its inception, and was among the first people appointed to its advisory board.
The WWF used its national resources to help create a no-discharge zone covering all waters of the Keys sanctuary.
Harrison also served as a member of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's Action Team on Energy and Climate Change.
Score, a Tavernier resident, wrote in an email to the sanctuary council that she will remain in the Keys and continue to work on local marine and environmental issues.
Poston said the WWF "will continue contributing to protecting Florida's environment through our global work on issues such as climate change, fisheries, freshwater conservation and coral reef science."
Jason Bennis of the National Parks Conservation Association will fill Harrison's sanctuary-council seat as a conservation-group representative.

090707-2
Water use limits still 'temporary' after 2 years. Industry, governments fight year-round rules
July 7, 2009
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Andy Reid
"Temporary" turned into two years and counting for South Florida watering restrictions.
Landscape irrigation limits that in the past were imposed as drought-driven emergency actions have remained in place since March 2007.
During that time, the South Florida Water Management District has proposed making the limits permanent, twice-a-week watering restrictions. That would match year-round irrigation rules long in place for southwestern, central and northeastern Florida.
But South Florida cities and counties that make money selling water, as well as the water-dependent landscaping industry, continue to succeed in delaying approval of permanent, year-round watering rules.
Even as the district warns of water shortages, the agency keeps delaying final approval of permanent watering restrictions to try to work out a compromise.
In recent months, the district has even considered watering down its irrigation rules. That potentially could allow communities to return to three-day-a-week restrictions and eventually shift to twice a week.
Enough is enough, according to Audubon of Florida, which supports twice-a- week watering restrictions as a way to conserve South Florida's strained water supply.
Environmental groups like Audubon want to limit the withdrawal of water from the Everglades and other wetlands for South Florida drinking water supplies.
Landscape irrigation already claims about half of South Florida's public water supply.
"The excessive use of water for landscaping irrigation is not something we should tolerate," said Jacquie Weisblum of Audubon. "Water for landscaping is the least of our concerns when it comes to our freshwater resources."
Utilities counter that twice-a-week limits go too far, driving up costs for water users and threatening to create water quality concerns.
The drop in water sales from lingering watering restrictions prompted many city and county utilities to impose surcharges on customers or raise rates to compensate for lost revenue they were counting on to cover the costs of water plants and pipelines.
Also, utilities need to keep water flowing through pipes to maintain water pressure and avoid stagnation that can lead to water quality concerns.
Limited storage capabilities mean water that could be used for landscaping and soaks back into the ground instead ends up getting "flushed" through water lines and out to sea.
"The pipes were designed for higher flows," said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach utilities director and chairman of the Southeast Florida Utility Council. "We are wasting the water. … There is no place to put it."
Working out a year-round rule that utilities accept would allow the district to avoid a potential legal challenge. "We are trying to build a broad consensus,"
district spokesman Gabe Margasak said.
Miami-Dade County this year decided not to wait for the water management district to take action and imposed its own year-round, twice-a-week watering rule. Cities and counties can impose watering rules that are more restrictive than regional standards.
A long-term solution to South Florida's water supply needs would be building more reservoirs and other water storage.
The system of canals and levees that protects development and agriculture on former Everglades land from flooding doesn't have enough storage capability to hold water for times of need. As a result, South Florida dumps about 1.7 billion gallons of water out to sea on a typical summer rainy day.
Utilities have called for building more reservoirs to help stretch supplies. They argue that conservation requires having more places to hold water.
Audubon supports building reservoirs, but contends that conservation through year-round watering rules is a logical start.
"This needs to be about protecting the water resource," Weisblum said.
Most of South Florida remains under the "temporary" twice-a-week watering restrictions.
Year-round watering rules are once again on the agenda for the monthly meeting of the district's appointed board on Thursday. Once again, the decision is expected to be delayed.
Andy Reid can be reached at abreid@SunSentinel.com or 561-228-5504.

0900706-1

0900706-2

090705-1

090705-1
Michael W. Sole: Crist was right to sign water bill
Gainesville Sun
Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 9:40 a.m.
On June 30th, Governor Charlie Crist signed Senate Bill 2080, relating to water resources, into law. Although the bill is not perfect, it is my firm belief – a belief that I expressed to the Governor – that this bill should be signed for the many benefits it provides to both to the environment and the people of Florida.
Although the new law requires the Governing Boards of the state’s five water management districts to delegate authority to approve permits to their executive directors, each of the water management districts have been – and will continue to be – committed to open government and transparency.
The simple fact is nothing in Senate Bill 2080 diminishes, alters, or limits the ability of the public from inquiring or obtaining information about a permit application or objecting to an application.
While much attention has focused on delegation, many other aspects of the
bill offer greater protection for Florida’s water resources that have gone largely unnoticed. However, these changes will help ensure the protection and conservation of Florida’s water resources. They include:
Changes to Florida law regarding environmentally-friendly landscaping. The use of Florida-friendly landscaping and other measures by homeowners is an effort to conserve Florida’s water resources, which is in the best interest of all Floridians.
Expands lands eligible to receive compensation to local governments. This provision puts into Florida law a commitment of the South Florida Water Management District to ensure the smaller Glades communities are not adversely impacted by the U.S. Sugar land acquisition.
Streamlines government and saves taxpayer dollars – allowing meetings to be conducted via technology and authorizing the use of certain long-term permits.
Provides fiscally sound policies that ensure the water management districts do not overextend their financial commitments.
Every drop of water makes a difference to Florida’s future, and we must continue to protect and wisely manage our water resources. There is no doubt that Florida’s environment is better protected when all stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. As a result, I am committed to preserving the public process throughout this next year. I will continue working with the executive directors of the state’s five water management districts to ensure openness and transparency. In addition, I look forward to working with the 2010 Legislature to develop a process
that sustains transparency and stakeholder participation.
Michael W. Sole,
Secretary, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee, FL

090705-2

090705-2
Some Florida water district executives wear uneasily their new power over water-use permits signed into law by Crist
St. Petersburg Times
Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Sunday, July 5, 2009
With a stroke of his pen last week, Gov. Charlie Crist put the future of Florida's water resources in the hands of five people.
Now the five — four men and one woman — are trying to figure out how to wield their significant new power over development and water-use permits, yet still give the public a chance to be heard.
"We're all thinking through how this is going to be done," said Dave Moore of Odessa, who as executive director of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, also known as Swiftmud, is one of the five.
Another of the five says he plans to defy the law. A third promises to make the permitting process more open to the public than ever before.
On Tuesday, Crist signed into law Senate Bill 2080, which gives authority over issuing state permits for wetlands destruction and water consumption to the executive directors of Florida's five water management districts.
Until this week, if a bottling company wanted to slurp millions of gallons of water out of the aquifer or a developer wanted to pave over thousands of acres of swamps, the state permits had to be approved by one of five water management district boards appointed by the governor. The board's vote took place in a public meeting where residents could stand up and give their opinion.
But on the next-to-last day of the session, Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, added an amendment to SB 2080 that even the bill's sponsor says he didn't know about. The bill — originally just aimed at promoting water conservation — passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously.
Only afterward did the public discover that Alexander's amendment shifted the power over permitting away from the boards and open meetings. It said that "the governing board shall delegate to the executive director all of its authority to take final action on permit applications."
That way, one person could make the decision instead of a nine-member board, and thus there would be no need to wait for a monthly meeting, speeding up the approval of permits. The measure was one of several initiatives this year to streamline the permitting process in a bid to revive Florida's moribund construction industry.
But the proposal to put five unelected, largely unknown bureaucrats, all of them white and in their 50s, in charge of handing out the permits without public input sparked a furor.
A host of opponents lined up to call on Crist to veto the bill, including not just environmental groups but also the Hillsborough County Commission and the mayor of Jacksonville. In May, the governor said he was leaning toward a veto but then changed his mind.
Still, in a letter that accompanied his signing of the bill, Crist urged the water districts to "continue to include … permits on all board meeting agendas or other public meetings for discussion and transparency purposes."
Opponents of the bill scoffed at Crist's letter. "It's not a directive, it's a request — and once there's a new governor, it can be rescinded," said Frank Jackalone of the Sierra Club.
But to David Still, executive director of the Suwannee River Water Management District, Crist's letter said to disobey the new law.
"It says continue doing what you've been doing," said Still.
So instead of making the permitting decisions himself, Still plans to continue asking his board to vote on permits in public meetings. That may break the law, he said, but "are you going to sue me for opening up the process to the public? … Go ahead, take me to court. Make my day."
Carol Wehle, an engineer, is the sole woman on the list of five. She's going to obey the law, but says she's also going to go the extra mile in complying with Crist's request.
"We're working to have the most open process the public has ever had," said Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District.
On Wednesday, she will present her board with a plan that calls for posting every single permit application on the agency's Web site "so the public is notified right from the beginning." Every step in the permitting process will be posted on there, too, she said, giving people a chance to comment prior to when she makes the final decision.
"And if any permits seem controversial," she said, "we will hold a public hearing in the affected area, and I will attend."
Several of the five said they weren't all that thrilled to have so much power thrust upon them. "More like a tar baby," complained Kirby Green of the St. Johns River Water Management District. "It's like, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' "
Green and Moore, the Swiftmud executive director, both say they also will use their Web sites to publicize what steps they're taking on permits.
"We're going to bend over backward to assure all the due process is followed," said Moore, who will also post permit information on the board agenda.
A supporter of the bill, Moore said he think it will "save four to six weeks on permit processing time."
Most of the five executive directors pointed out that the Legislature may come back at the issue again next year and take away their power or scale it back. That would be fine with Douglas Barr, executive director of the Northwest Florida Water Management District for 17 years.
"I was perfectly comfortable with the way the permits were approved previously," Barr said.

090705-3
Wood stork bevy stirs hopes for survival
Miami Herald
Curtis Morgan
July 5, 2009
MIAMI - The wood stork, an ungainly duckling among the Everglades' elegant wading birds, has been breeding in numbers unseen in decades.
Rain in the last crucial month of nesting season took a toll, leaving half the weakened fledglings as prey for waiting gators. But even with that loss, preliminary surveys estimate some 3,500 will leave South Florida nests this year.
Compare that with the survivors last year: zero.
"We haven't seen this kind of nesting efforts and eggs laid since the 1930s," said Dean Powell, director of watershed management for the South Florida Water Management District, which compiles an annual population assessment of wading birds.
The breeding surge isn't completely understood - ironically, it may be a ripple effect of a drought that largely turned off their libidos the previous year - but it's clearly an encouraging sign for the only Florida wading bird on the federal list of endangered species.
It's also more fuel for developers and a property-rights advocacy group who argue it is long past time to ease regulations that protect the big birds, sometimes at the expense of builders.
In May, before the nesting numbers were known, the Pacific Legal Foundation and Florida Homebuilders Association petitioned federal wildlife managers to reclassify the birds to the less severe "threatened."
Steven Gieseler, an attorney who leads the foundation's regional office in Stuart, Fla., said the groups are only asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to sign off on its own science. A federal review two years ago, prompted by a lawsuit by the foundation and builders association, recommended downlisting the wood stork, but the service has not started the process.
"I don't pretend to be a scientist, but I can read," Gieseler said. "We're simply looking at the work the government itself did. You need to follow your own recommendations."
Environmentalists don't dispute that the stork has rebounded from a low of about 2,500 pairs in 1978. But they also point out the bird's range and habits have been radically altered. Most notably, the stork largely abandoned the Everglades, once home to more than 20,000 pairs, as bulldozers and flood-control policies destroyed marshes or altered seasonal wet-and-dry cycles.
Because of its feeding method, the stork is particularly vulnerable to water conditions. It hunts in pools no more than 18 inches deep, feeding by feel as it wades, its long beak snapping shut on fish, frogs and other prey with lightning speed.
One of the largest colonies - more than 1,000 pairs - still lives on the fringe of the Glades in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary east of Naples, but more are now in smaller, scattered groups from North Florida to Georgia and South Carolina, two states where the birds were never found before the 1980s.
They've also adapted their foraging to suburban surroundings, hunting in golf courses, retention ponds and farm fields often laced with pesticides and fertilizers.
Bill Brooks, a wildlife service biologist, said the agency is reviewing the Florida Homebuilders Association petition and has 90 days to issue a preliminary decision.
Overall, recent population trends have been positive - with an estimate of 11,000 pairs in 2006, 5,000 from a partial count in 2007, 7,000 last year and perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 this year. Those numbers would meet the "threatened" target - an average of at least 6,000 breeding pairs for three years running - but might fall short on other measures, including the number of fledglings per nest.

090702-1

090702-2

090702-3

090702-3
What we think: Our gray governor
Orlando Sentinel Editorial
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped-crist-environment-070209070209jul02,0,4357473.story
July 2, 2009
Back in the days when he appeared green, Gov. Charlie Crist saw fit to quote our support of his environmental efforts in one of his State of the  State addresses. He won't go quoting us now.
Sporting a new and decidedly gray sensibility toward the environment, Mr. Crist has proved a profound disappointment to those fighting to protect and  preserve Florida's water, air and land.
His latest environmental betrayal came Tuesday, when Mr. Crist signed historically bad legislation that will let five bureaucrats privately judge  major applications for water consumption, replacing the dozens of board  members who now evaluate them in full view of the public.
And because it also will allow some large landowners to get far lengthier water-withdrawal permits, Mr. Crist effectively will have spread fertilizer  on budding developments like Deseret Ranch near Orlando. Watch them grow —  if you have the stomach for it.
This all happened after Mr. Crist buoyed conservationists' hopes by replacing several Jeb Bush-appointed, development-loving water  board-members with trustees who take more measured views on  water-withdrawal applications.
But it's all part of a maddening pattern.
Mr. Crist starts strongly, ends badly, giving up the store along the way to  special interests — especially developers, who always get to step to the  front of the line — when he fears their opposition could pinch his ability  to get votes and contributions for future campaigns.
The governor enticed the author of the state's growth management laws to  return to government to help corral its runaway growth. But then, at the urging of developers, he undercut Tom Pelham and his regulators at the  Department of Community Affairs by signing legislation last month that  severely impairs their ability to restrict growth in rural areas.
The governor came to office opposing expanded drilling off Florida's coast. But once he appeared on John "Drill-Baby-Drill" McCain's short-list  for vice president, Mr. Crist said more offshore drilling intrigued him.
That worked to erode opposition to more drilling among his fellow Republicans representing Florida in Congress. And it emboldened state House speaker-designate Dean Cannon, who this year tried to expand drilling in  the Gulf just three miles offshore.
The governor spoke of the importance of honoring "the Creator's work" as justification for his climate-change initiative. He boldly set a goal to reduce the emissions that cause global warming to 80 percent of 1990 levels  by 2050, and got state agencies to reject applications for new coal-burning  power plants.
But the Legislature knocked him flat on his back when he asked that  utilities generate 20 percent of their energy from clean, renewable sources  by 2020. And he showed little fight in the face of criticism from the Legislature's developer friends to get lawmakers to accept his goals to reduce emissions from utilities.
The governor last year spoke a bit about his support for the environmentally friendly commuter-rail project for Central Florida. But while it got pummeled by trial attorneys and labor unions, Mr. Crist chose  to enter the ring to defend it only in the 15th round, the last day of the  legislative session. He entered the fray earlier this year, but his  marshmallow punches didn't faze SunRail's opponents.
Now the governor wants to go to Washington as our senator, where he says  the problems plaguing Florida can best be addressed. There, we're to believe, he'll consistently show his green stripes when Congress addresses  climate change, offshore drilling and high-speed rail projects.
What a leap that would be on our part, and on the part of all Floridians, for Florida's decidedly gray governor.

090701-1

090701-1
Crist bows down to developers again
TampaBay.com, EditorialOpinion
https://exchange.mcgill.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1014734.ece
In Print: Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Gov. Charlie Crist's sellout to developers is now complete. He signed into law Tuesday a bill that neuters the governing boards of the state's five water management districts, which grant permits for large-scale water pumping and wetlands destruction. Now that authority will rest solely in the hands of the districts' executive directors. Developers and big industry will be able to more easily drain Florida and pave over what's left.
Piece by piece, this governor has systematically dismantled what little protections there are for Floridians fed up with traffic and overdevelopment. First, Crist gutted growth management efforts by signing a law that enables developers to avoid paying for roads to accommodate the traffic their projects generate. Now he has made it easier to destroy wetlands and pump huge quantities of water in a state that faces a drinking water shortage. And Floridians with the gumption to fight will have little recourse.
The authority to grant permits to pump large amounts of water and destroy wetlands has rested with 49 gubernatorial appointees who serve on the governing boards of the water management districts. Decisions on large requests -- more than 500,000 gallons a day of groundwater pumping and destruction of more than an acre of wetlands - had to be made in open meetings. Comment was accepted from all interested parties.
Under Senate Bill 2080, there is no requirement that the executive director accept public comment or make his decisions in public. And the ability to appeal an executive director's decision only works in one direction.
Applicants for permits can appeal to the district board if their permit is rejected. Opponents of permits that are granted, such as environmental groups or the general public, have no similar right to appeal. How's that for tilting the playing field in favor of the powerful and well-connected?
This law effectively muzzles those who would raise their voices in support of protecting natural resources. The only options for citizens who oppose the granting of a permit to pump ground water or destroy wetlands will be to file for an administrative hearing or appeal to the governor and Cabinet.
That will be impractical and expensive for most Floridians.
In a signing statement that carries no legal authority, Crist asked the water management governing boards and executive directors to continue to include these permit applications on public agendas and discuss them in public meetings. Asking them to voluntarily do what they have been legally bound to do is a fig leaf that will be quickly brushed aside by the special interests who prefer to do their dirty work in private.
Now more than ever, this state needs to be smarter about managing growth, conserving water and protecting wetlands. Yet these new laws, SB 360 and SB 2080, do not provide the tools to accomplish those goals. They break the ones Florida has relied upon for decades to at least slow down the destruction of its natural resources.
In Tallahassee, state legislators usually can be expected to do the bidding of the powerful and well-financed. This governor was not expected to let them get away with it. But Crist is running for the U.S. Senate and raising campaign cash from special interests that will benefit from the dismantling of growth management and the water management districts. Perhaps it is best that he has his sights on Washington. He has done more than enough damage in Tallahassee.

090701-2

090701-2
Crist signs new water-policy law that dilutes public voice, critics say
OrlandoSentinel.com
Kevin Spear, Sentinel Staff Writer
July 1, 2009
Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law Tuesday a controversial water bill seen as a gift to developers and a gag on environmentalists and ordinary citizens.
The bill emerged from the Legislature this spring loaded with far-reaching water-management measures that have drawn praise and condemnation. With Crist's signature, one provision strips board members at the state's water districts of significant authority over permits for water consumption and wetland destruction and transfers that power to the top bureaucrat in each district.
Water-district boards consist of residents appointed by the governor. Coupled with their ability to vote on permits are the public hearings they conduct to consider controversial projects.
Crist's signing of the bill swiftly drew widespread condemnation.
Neil Armingeon of the St. Johns Riverkeeper said his environmental group has little faith that Kirby Green, executive director of the St. Johns River Water Management District, will accommodate public comments as effectively as the district's nine board members have.
"Kirby Green has nothing but disdain for public comment, and Crist has just appointed him king," said Armingeon, whose group has been at the forefront of an effort to block Central Florida counties and municipalities from turning to the St. Johns River for water.
Green responded late Tuesday to the governor's action.
"It's important that the public continues to have an opportunity to provide input into the permitting process," he said. "We will ensure that, as part of implementing the law, the public continues to have that opportunity."
Another group, Audubon of Florida, had urged Crist to veto the bill even though it also includes some of the state's most progressive measures for improving water conservation.
"We hope the Legislature reverses this travesty at the earliest opportunity," Audubon's Charles Lee said.
In quietly announcing his signing of the bill into law, Crist included a request that districts continue to conduct public meetings "for discussion and transparency purposes."
Dick Batchelor, a former state legislator and former chairman of the Florida Environmental Regulation Commission, termed the governor's request feeble.
"Any actions by the water-management district staff to orchestrate some type of pseudo-listening process to satisfy the taking of the people's constitutional rights is like replacing the Supreme Court with Judge Judy," Batchelor said.
Transferring authority from the boards to the executive directors has been described as an efficiency measure. But neither lawmakers nor water managers have stepped up to defend the provision.
A majority of members on the St. Johns district board, which is responsible for most of Central Florida's water issues, had opposed the provision. Among them, Hersey "Herky" Huffman echoed a widely shared complaint that the provision was the product of technical committee discussions during a once-a-decade review of water districts' functions.
"We hadn't heard about it or read about it, and all of sudden it's in the newspapers," he said.
The prime sponsor of Senate Bill 2080, state Sen. J.D. Alexander, R- Lake Wales, said he knew little about the controversial provision when it was offered by a Southwest Florida state representative for inclusion in the bill. State Sen. Carey Baker, R-Eustis, said he was not aware of the bill's potential to trigger a backlash when he appended his water-conservation provisions to the legislation.
Baker and state Sen. Lee Constantine, R- Altamonte Springs, said they intend to bring the measure back before the Legislature next year.
"I think there needs to be a lot more discussion about it," Baker said.
Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com<mailto:kspear@orlandosentinel.com> or 407-420-5062.

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Endangered Everglades
Salazar urges U.N. to place Florida's Everglades on list of threatened sites
Back Packer
Ted Alvarez
July 1, 2009
You know a park is in trouble when the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar calls on the United Nations for help. This week, Salazar will petition the U.N. at a World Heritage Committee meeting in Spain to include Everglades National Park on a list of endangered World Heritage sites.
This decision reverses a controversial Bush-era decision to ask that the park be removed from the list, despite the fact that restoration programs hadn't been completed.
''I agree that the park was removed from the list without adequate consultation and without appropriate measures in place to evaluate our efforts,'' Salazar wrote in a June 16 letter.
If Everglades gets added to the list, it could make for two endangered national parks in the U.S. Glacier National Park is also under threat from nearby mining that could pollute the park's Flathead River.

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