Tag: everglades
Florida Gov. Scott Clueless In Lake Crisis

Florida Gov. Scott Clueless In Lake Crisis

As a devastating deluge of polluted water darkens two coasts of Florida and threatens their tourist economies, Gov. Rick Scott is once again a flaky phantom.

Billions of gallons spiked with agricultural waste is being pumped daily from Lake Okeechobee toward the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, browning the blue coastal waters, choking sea grass beds and crippling small businesses that depend on a healthy marine ecology.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the discharges are necessary because the water in Lake Okeechobee is too high and the old Hoover dike is too weak. Gov. Scott says it’s all President Obama’s fault for not rebuilding the dike, which is absurd.

Scott, who aspires to be a U.S. senator, either has no clue how the appropriations process works, or he’ll simply say any brainless thing to duck responsibility.

A brief civics lesson for Florida’s dim and furtive governor: The president cannot write a check for major capital projects. Congress is in charge of funding, and Congress happens to be controlled by the Republicans.

Being a Republican himself, Scott should fly straight to Washington and persuade his colleagues to rebuild the lake dike and fund a flow-way to the Everglades for the excess water.

Why hasn’t that happened? One reason is that Scott has even less clout with Congress than he does in Tallahassee.

Currently, the state Legislature is gutting or discarding basically all of the governor’s major budget proposals, including a goofball request for a $250 million honey pot to lure private companies to the state.

Scott is the emptiest of suits. He’ll pop up whenever a new business opens, count the jobs and take credit for them. In times of crisis, though, he’s a spectral presence.

Privately, the governor is busy muscling special interests to bankroll his Senate run in 2018. Some of his biggest donors are the worst polluters of Lake O and the Everglades, so you can understand why he’s been hard to find lately.

Scott’s pals in Big Sugar have been back-pumping dirty water from their cane fields into the lake, which through Friday was being emptied into the St. Lucie River at a rate exceeding 2 billion gallons a day. The Army Corps says it will soon drop the daily flow to 1.2 billion gallons.

So far this year, more than 72 billion gallons has been expelled toward the Treasure Coast, ruining the salinity of the St. Lucie Estuary, chasing sea life from the Indian River Lagoon and creating a foul brown plume miles into the Atlantic.

The visual is repelling tourists who might otherwise be interested in fishing, swimming or paddle-boarding. This is also happening along the Gulf coast, where Lake O discharges gush from the Caloosahatchee River.

Under pressure from exasperated business owners and officials, Scott last week declared a state of emergency for St. Lucie, Martin and Lee counties, citing “extensive environmental harm” and “severe economic losses.”

The governor used the opportunity to bash Obama, calling out the president six times in a five-paragraph press release from his feeble Department of Environmental Protection.

Never once did Scott mention the Republican leaders of Congress, who have the power but not the enthusiasm to allocate the $800 million needed to repair the Lake O dike. If they put that item in a budget, Obama would sign it in a heartbeat.

The same is true for Everglades restoration. Showing zero sense of urgency, Congress continues to lag far behind on its commitment to share the costs 50-50 with the state.

Every year when it rains hard, an algae-spawning tide from Lake O is flushed toward the coastal bays and beaches. No president yet has stepped in to stop corporate farms from using the lake as their toilet, or stopped the Army Corps from opening the pump valves.

If Obama tried that, Big Sugar (and Scott) would scream bloody murder.

As for the governor’s “state of emergency,” it’s barely just a piece of paper. The agencies in charge are officially in “observation mode.” I’m not kidding.

TC Palm newspapers reported that the head of the state Division of Emergency Management was attending a conference in New Orleans last week. What better place than Bourbon Street from which to ponder Florida’s coastal pollution crisis?

Scott himself would benefit from spending time at the marinas or waterfront motels in Stuart, meeting the working people whose dreams are drowning in a flood of silt.

But this governor prefers upbeat media opportunities where he can talk about new jobs — not dying jobs. He’d much rather cut a ribbon at a gas station than hear from a boat captain who can no longer find any fish.

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)

(c) 2016, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Florida Gov. Rick Scott addresses an economic summit in Orlando, Florida, June 2, 2015.  REUTERS/Steve Nesius

Obama To Visit Everglades On Wednesday, Highlight Climate Change Threat

Obama To Visit Everglades On Wednesday, Highlight Climate Change Threat

By Jenny Staletovich and Patricia Mazzei, Miami Herald (TNS)

MIAMI — In his first ever visit to Florida’s Everglades on Wednesday — Earth Day — President Barack Obama hopes to connect climate change impacts already unfolding in the imperiled wetland to wider risks across the nation.

Obama plans to tour the Everglades, as long as it doesn’t rain, and make a speech about the importance of protecting the environment — not just for the planet’s sake, but also to boost the economy, protect national security, and guard public health.

The president will tout his administration’s record on tackling environmental problems, including imposing a historic cap on carbon pollution and spending $2.2 billion on Everglades restoration projects. He further plans to unveil new ways to assess the value of the country’s national parks, including a study that shows protected wild lands play a major role in keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. Visitors to parks also poured $15.7 billion into surrounding communities, the administration said.

Obama will also reveal new conservation efforts in four areas of the country, including Southwest Florida. And in a move some say is long overdue, the National Park Service will designate as a national historic landmark the Marjory Stoneman Douglas house in Coconut Grove, Florida, which several years ago sparked a contentious fight between preservationists and neighbors. The pioneering preservationist is largely credited with sparking Everglades restoration.

In addition to highlighting his environmental record, Obama’s trip is intended to pressure Republicans into a more robust climate-change debate. Voters will elect Obama’s successor in 18 months, and the GOP field so far is teeming with would-be candidates who question whether climate change is man-made, despite significant scientific scholarship concluding that it is largely a result of carbon emissions.

Among those skeptics are U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and, to a lesser extent, former Governor Jeb Bush, both of Miami. While Obama is not expected to single out any presidential contender, a trip to Bush’s and Rubio’s backyard will hardly go unnoticed in the early days of the 2016 campaign.

“This is not an effort necessarily to go to anybody’s home state,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday. “This is an effort to raise this debate, and the truth is those Republicans that choose to deny the reality of climate change, they do that to the detriment of the people that they’re elected to represent.”

Presidential candidates won’t be the only target. Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott has come under fire for avoiding the term “climate change.” The governor has denied such a mandate exists.

Scott on Tuesday called on the federal government to speed up funding to Everglades restoration, which the White House admits has been slow from the outset, before Obama took office. The state has invested $1.9 billion in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project, nearly a billion more than the feds.

“President Obama needs to live up to his commitment on the Everglades and find a way to fund the $58 million in backlog funding Everglades National Park hasn’t received from the federal government,” Scott said in a statement. “This has caused critical maintenance delays in the Everglades to linger for over a year.”

Earnest suggested Scott make the funding request to the GOP-controlled Congress — and referred to the governor’s criticism as “a little rich” given the Scott administration’s aversion to the term “climate change.”

The White House invited Scott, per protocol, to greet Obama at Miami International Airport when Air Force One lands around one p.m. Wednesday afternoon — but Scott won’t be there, the governor’s office said. Scott did meet the president on the tarmac when he last visited in February, to tape a television interview on immigration reform. (Obama will travel Wednesday with Bill Nye, of TV’s “The Science Guy” fame.)

Obama’s visit comes at a critical time for Everglades restoration, which has dragged on for nearly 15 years.

Last November, voters overwhelmingly approved a land conservation amendment to buy land for restoration projects, yet state lawmakers have balked at using the money to buy about 46,000 acres on a deal that expires in the fall.

Restoration work is also becoming more critical as impacts from rising seas begin taking a toll on the wetlands. This week, scores of scientists meeting in Broward County, Florida, revealed new research that showed even more dramatic changes in store under climate change projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that predicts increases in temperature, sea level, and ocean salinity.

Protective mangrove coasts could disappear, studies found, and soils collapse under increasingly salty conditions, allowing Florida Bay to grow and the Everglades to shrink. The wetlands, which provide much of South Florida’s freshwater, are already half their original size.

“We’re at this key moment where there’s crucial public recognition,” said Florida International University ecologist Evelyn Gaiser, who has been invited to meet with Obama after his speech. “The exposure in South Florida is an opportunity to provide a global model.”

Photo: Eric Salard via Flickr

Obama In Fresh Push On Climate Change

Obama In Fresh Push On Climate Change

Obama in fresh push on climate change

Washington (AFP) – U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Florida’s Everglades Wednesday hoping to reframe the debate on climate change ahead of a vital few months that will shape his environmental legacy.

On “Earth Day” Obama will swap Washington’s turbid political waters for gator-infested wetlands, in the hope of putting America’s cherished national parks — and their economic impact — front-and-center of a bitter partisan debate.

Early in Obama’s administration, environmental groups were dismayed that a candidate who had promised to upend George W. Bush’s climate-skeptical stance was forced to spend much of his first term tackling the economy before pivoting to health care reform.

But since then, the White House has notched a string of climate victories, including a landmark bilateral deal that committed China to emissions cuts and new vehicle efficiency standards.

The climate “has definitely emerged as a clear priority in the second term” said Ben Longstreth, a senior attorney at an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Obama is about to embark on a final climate push, before the campaign to succeed him as president occupies all political bandwidth in Washington.

“This is an issue that’s bigger and longer-lasting than my presidency,” Obama said in his latest weekly address.

To win over critics, the White House is looking to augment tried-and-tested arguments about custodianship.

Drum beat to December

Earlier this month Obama stressed the health impact of climate change and in his weekly address he put it in a security context, saying “there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”

In Florida, he is expected to put the focus on the economic benefits.

“He will be showing how tackling climate change means protecting our local businesses and economies,” said senior advisor Brian Deese.

The White House wants to illustrate that Obama’s environmental measures have done nothing to hamper a long period of jobs growth — an effort to undercut arguments that carbon cuts lead to job cuts.

Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio this week stated that scientists cannot definitively say how much efforts to curb emissions would slow climate change.

“But I can tell you with certainty, it would have a devastating impact on our economy,” Rubio said.

In Florida, Rubio’s home state, Obama is also hoping to enlist tourism-revenue-generating national parks to counter that point.

Next year marks centennial of the service that manages the National Parks, which writer Wallace Stegner famously called “the best idea we ever had.”

As if to underscore that point, Obama on Sunday went for a walk with his family to Great Falls Park just outside Washington and has declared this week National Park Week.

It is the beginning of a White House drumbeat that administration officials say will extend through a summer of environmental rulemaking to a major summit in Paris in December.

Obama’s speech in the Everglades comes as his Environmental Protection Agency prepares controversial rules limiting emissions for coal-fired power plants.

The measures, expected to be released in the US summer, face fierce opposition in the courts and Congress, not least from Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who represents the coal-rich state of Kentucky.

But McConnell is not Obama’s only political problem.

According to the Center for American Progress — a White House-allied think tank — 30 percent of roll calls in this Republican-dominated Congress’s first 100 days concerned energy or the environment.

During “74 percent of the energy and environmental votes … a majority of senators supported the anti-environment position,” the think tank asserted.

Environmentalists, and the White House, hope those positions are becoming increasingly untenable, but political opposition may be fierce.

“There are different stages to the denial,” said Longstreth, “going from saying that ‘climate change does not exist’ to saying ‘I’m not a scientist’ reflects the fact that the first position is not tenable anymore.”

The crescendo of White House policy announcements will peak in December when countries of the world will meet in Paris to thrash out a new global climate accord.

Countries are hoping to forge a binding agreement on how to start bringing down emissions and the Obama administration is keen to be seen to lead.

Obama’s success in persuading Americans that climate change is a serious problem may prove vital.

In Paris the White House will try to “use progress in the United States to leverage global action,” according to Pete Ogden, once the director of climate change on Obama’s National Security Council.

“Having a strong, credible domestic plan has been absolutely essential to the ability to help negotiate a really historic agreement with China,” he said.

“I think they have every intention of trying to build on that success and in Paris use their domestic accomplishments to really build that global solution to this challenge.”

Photo: ©afp.com / Joe Raedle

Oil Driller In Everglades Forced Out Of Florida

Oil Driller In Everglades Forced Out Of Florida

By William E. Gibson, Sun Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — State officials have driven a Texas wildcatter out of Florida, signaling tougher restrictions on oil drilling in the Everglades.

Prodded by environmentalists and community activists, the state yanked all drilling permits held by the Dan A. Hughes Co. seven months after it was caught using fracking-like methods to blast open rock near underground aquifers.

The company’s banishment was a victory for protesters across the state trying to quell an intense search for oil near wildlife refuges and water supplies. It also indicates an increasingly tough stance by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, apparently in response to public pressure and criticism that it lacks the willingness and enforcement power to rein in new methods of drilling. At the least, the Hughes episode indicates strong resistance in Florida to fracking-like methods — high-pressure injections of water and chemicals to extract oil deposits.

“Fracking in Florida is dead,” said Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon Florida. “It’s a toxic issue now. There’s nothing like a company making a mess of things to help educate the public about how you can’t trust these drilling technologies.”

While celebrating their success, drilling opponents now are taking aim at plans by other companies to conduct seismic tests and explore energy supplies under hundreds of thousands of acres in southwest Florida. Opponents also hope to block offshore energy exploration along Florida’s east coast.

The Obama administration this month opened the way to offshore seismic testing from Delaware to Florida. Federal officials said they will consider applications from companies that want to send ships along the coast to blast sound waves underwater to help identify deposits of oil and natural gas.

“We would hate to see that part of the ocean opened for oil drilling,” Draper said. “Tests lead to leases, and leases lead to wells. The BP spill (in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010) taught us that where you have wells, you have spills. And where you have spills, you have destruction of the economy and environment.”

The rush to drill near the Everglades and to test along the East Coast show ongoing pressure to boost energy supplies and make Americans less dependent on unstable foreign sources, such as Venezuela and Iraq. Proponents see exciting prospects for bringing in jobs, tax revenue and royalties to Florida.

The seismic testing “will give naysayers exactly what they say they want by identifying places where we are not going to go, if the science tells us the oil’s not there,” said David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council, an industry group in Tallahassee that lobbies for expanded drilling. “The reality is that by doing this kind of science, we may be reducing our footprint. But we are hoping that it just blows up and shows lots and lots of potential (deposits).”

Mica doubted that the Hughes Co.’s retreat will chill the rush for black gold in Florida. He called it an exceptional case that shows the need for energy companies to engage communities near well sites and to communicate effectively with state regulators.

Hughes is one of several smaller, independent out-of-state energy companies — often called wildcatters — bent on using horizontal drilling methods to tap a band of deposits near and under the Big Cypress National Preserve in the western Everglades. At one production well near Naples, the company got caught around New Year’s Day using high-pressure injections of acid and water to blast open limestone, a practice critics call fracking.

The Department of Environmental Protection stopped the acidic fracturing but allowed the company to continue pumping oil. Four months later, the state agency fined Hughes $25,000 as part of a settlement, known as a consent order. Community activists and Collier County commissioners, already wary of expanded drilling near neighborhoods and refuges, challenged the order, saying it did not go far enough. And opponents began rounding up support statewide for new regulations to ban fracking.

On July 18, the agency revoked all permits held by Hughes and filed a lawsuit seeking more than $100,000 in penalties. DEP Secretary Herschel T. Vinyard Jr. accused the company of alarming the community and said “revocation of their permits is the only option that offers the assurance that Hughes will not cause damage to our treasured natural resources.”

Stunned by the agency’s escalating complaints, the Hughes Co. pulled out of Florida, saying it would shift its resources to projects in other states. Spokesman David Blackmon said the company had cooperated with the agency and that the turnabout came suddenly despite “constant and open dialogue.”

Drilling opponents expect the state agency to scrutinize future permit requests more carefully, especially any plans akin to fracking. But they are pushing state leaders to go much further by banning fracking in Florida, limiting drilling in the Everglades and imposing new regulations on the industry.

“This new oil drilling now is on everyone’s radar,” said Karen Dwyer, a community activist in Naples who led the opposition.

“I hope that what happened down here will give people on the East Coast hope and motivation to stop the offshore drilling that Obama opened up,” she said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

Photo: rickz via Flickr