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Scott guts water protection funding, endangering lagoon

Governor Rick Scott’s draconian cuts to water protection budgets might seem halfway reasonable if not for a majority of first-born dolphins dying from toxic overload, if not for last summer’s deadly Indian River Lagoon algae bloom – the worst ever in extent, severity and longevity – and if not for the near doubling of polluted waterways in Florida between 2008 and 2010.

In action the Miami Herald called “foolhardy” and dangerous to the state in a December editorial, Scott in 2011 slashed Florida water management district budgets by 40 percent, cutting more than $700 million from the amount available to monitor and clean-up pollution in groundwater, rivers, lakes, stream and estuaries, including the lagoon that is Vero Beach’s aesthetic and economic centerpiece.

“We cannot afford to continue ignoring water quality,” says Vero Beach Mayor Pilar Turner. “The lagoon is responsible for $800 million a year in revenue for our community.”

“I think the cuts are insane, and you can quote me on that,” says Richard Baker, president of the Pelican Island Audubon Society.

“Scott’s cuts to water quality protection dwarf all of the cuts made over the past 20 years by all local and state agencies,” says Jim Egan, executive director of the Marine Resources Council.

“No one can understand it,” says Warren Falls, managing director of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association (ORCA) in Fort Pierce. “The waterways are why people move to Florida. Governor Scott is tearing down the very thing the tourism industry and the towns along the waterway are built on. I think the long-term ramifications of the state cutbacks will have a devastating effect on the waters and economy of Florida.”

Click here to read the full story.

Illuminating the Perils of Pollution, Nature’s Way

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Edith Widder presented a handful of greenish muck that had been pulled from the shallows of the Indian River Lagoon and cupped it in her palm.

Collecting mud is a new calling for Dr. Widder, a marine biologist who is known around the world for her work in much larger bodies of water.

...Now, Dr. Widder has found a way to put bioluminescence to work to fight pollution in the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile estuary that scientists say is one of Florida’s most precious and threatened ecosystems.

...Scientists have long been aware of problems in the lagoon, where residential and commercial development has led to declining water quality and loss of habitat. But Dr. Widder’s work adds a visual element to what is already known, allowing people to see the hot spots most in need of immediate attention.

“It’s my belief if we can make pollution visible, and let people know what small things they are doing are actually making an improvement in this incredible environment,” she said, “I think it could make a huge difference. It can be a game-changer.”

Click here to read the full story.

New Conservation Coalition issues proposals that deserve the attention of Florida's elected leaders

Treasure Coast resident Nat Reed said he's ready to "raise Cain" with Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature over the last legislative session — in which lawmakers slashed programs and projects that support the state's water and other natural resources — and to encourage them to do better in the upcoming session.

"The developers paid for and got what they wanted," said Reed, the Jupiter Island resident who served as assistant secretary of the interior under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and is chairman emeritus of 1000 Friends of Florida. "And it's a disgrace to the state of Florida."

Reed is not alone in his outrage over budget cuts and policy decisions that threaten bipartisan efforts to protect the state's environment. Reed spoke in Tallahassee at a rally organized by the new Florida Conservation Coalition, founded by former Florida governor and U.S. senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, and whose members include representatives of the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, Everglades Foundation, Audubon of Florida, Sierra Club, the Trust for Public Land and the League of Women Voters.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Florida's big water polluters win again

Why is the federal government continuing to reward Florida for dragging its feet on cleaning up dirty waters? The latest gift to the state's big polluters and their enablers in Tallahassee came this week when the Environmental Protection Agency gave tentative approval to new state pollution standards. The rules are far short of what Florida waterways need — a testament to politics winning out over science.

The EPA is backing off a long-running fight at the expense of public health, the environment and tourism. In 1998, the federal government told the states to limit nutrient pollution in lakes, rivers and coastal areas by 2004 or it would do the job for them. But the deadline came and went. Environmental groups sued in 2008 seeking to compel the EPA to intervene under the Clean Water Act. The agency settled the case in 2009 under an agreement that it would draft the standards for Florida. After 11 years of stalling, new rules were on the way and expected this year.

But the agency backtracked after industry groups and newly elected Republican leaders made wild and inflammatory charges about what the cleanup would cost. In June, the EPA said it would give the state another chance to write new standards on its own. This week, the agency said in a preliminary review that Florida was headed in the right direction.

Click here to read the full editorial.

For Florida, Water Quality an Increasing Challenge

Florida has 1,700 streams and rivers, 7,800 freshwater lakes, 700 springs, 11 million acres of wetlands, not to speak of 1,350 miles of coastline and more than 8,000 miles of tidal shoreline. And some of the largest population increases in United States history.

It’s a prospering recipe that lacks just one ingredient: water. Fresh, clean water. And lots of it. In 2005, Floridians used almost 7 billion gallons of freshwater a day. And there were almost a million fewer people in the state in 2005.

Water is the single most important resource in the Sunshine State. Which is why the state legislature passed the Florida Water Resources Act in 1972, creating six regional water management districts in 1972 (in 1975, two southern districts merged to become the South Florida Water Management District).

Now, 39 years later, the state is bursting at the population seams and facing unprecedented water-related challenges, such as the restoration of the entire Everglades ecosystem and the rehabilitation of other polluted freshwater supplies, mostly from agricultural runoff (agriculture also uses more freshwater than humans). In 2010, Florida had 1,918 miles of “impaired” or polluted rivers (that number almost doubled from 2008 to 2010), and 378,000 acres of impaired lakes.

CLick here to read the full article.

State environmental chief, Gov. Rick Scott shaking up water management districts

Six months ago, Gov. Rick Scott's newly appointed Department of Environmental Protection secretary, Herschel Vinyard, sat down for lunch at Tallahassee's Governor's Club with four of his predecessors. They offered to answer any questions about the job.

Vinyard, a Jacksonville shipbuilding executive, made it clear he didn't know much about the state's environmental agency, but he did have one thing on his mind: the state's water management districts, which are nominally under the DEP but have long functioned independently of Tallahassee.

"He talked about the water districts, that that was something he wanted to take a hard look at," recalled Jake Varn, who served as the state's top environmental regulator from 1979 to 1981 under then-Gov. Bob Graham, a Democrat.

"It was his first week in Tallahassee, and he was talking about all their money and their taxing authority," agreed Victoria Tschinkel, who headed the environmental agency for the remaining six years of Graham's term.

Now Scott and Vinyard have shaken up the water districts — cutting millions from their budgets, capping executive salaries, pushing for layoffs and freezing land buying — and Scott says that's only his first step.

Click here to read the full story.

Gov, DEP praises water management cuts, then says “Cut more”

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott and the Department of Environmental Protection announced the state’s water management districts will see $700 million in budget cuts, but the governor is looking for even more.

DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard in a press conference Wednesday said the cuts would force the water management districts to focus in on their core missions, while saving taxpayer money. Scott is looking for another $2.4 million to cut statewide on top of the $700 million.

“Where can the environment get the most bang for its buck?. We need to prioritize this process,” he said.

The budget cuts have led to massive layoffs around the state, which Vinyard acknowledged were difficult, but also a part of focusing in on the districts’ biggest priorities.

“The water management district budgets that have been presented, along with my additional calls for further savings, are just the first steps in ensuring that Florida’s precious water resources are protected and managed in the most fiscally responsible way possible,” Scott said in a prepared statement following the press conference.”

Jane Graham, Everglades Policy Associate for the Audubon Society, said via e-mail that the DEP’s press conference was an attempt to “put lipstick on a pig.”

“The water management district budget cuts Gov. Scott and the Legislature have orchestrated are devastating to the environment and natural resources,” she said. “The impacts will be felt for years to come.”

Click here to read this blog and the comments posted online.

WATER POLLUTION: Greens furious over GOP field hearing on EPA rules for Fla.

Florida environmentalists are accusing Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) of stacking the witness panel of his congressional hearing on EPA water pollution rules with representatives of polluting industries.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight, which Stearns chairs, will meet tomorrow at the University of Central Florida to hold the sixth in a series of hearings meant to broadcast the message that Obama administration regulations are overly burdensome job killers that are stifling economic recovery.

Tomorrow's hearing will focus on the numeric water pollution limits EPA proposed to replace Florida's descriptive, verbal standards, which environmentalists argue are too vague. EPA proposed the new limits in accordance with a settlement agreement reached with environmental groups after they sued the agency in 2009, alleging it had failed to properly enforce the Clean Water Act.

Defending the agency will be EPA Regional Administrator Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, the first scheduled witness. Criticizing the agency's efforts will be everyone else invited to testify: a state agriculture official and representatives of utilities, the county government, the building industry and the dairy industry, according to a committee memo.

Earthjustice attorney David Guest called the hearing a "sham" and an "embarrassment."

"This is not a public hearing. This is a chance to offer, publicly, reasons on why the polluters should be exempt from the law," Guest said. "It's so obviously contrary to the law, to the facts, and to good public policy that Representative Stearns is not willing to take the risk that someone might tell the truth in front of everyone."

"This is a surprising and disappointing about-face for Rep. Stearns," Sierra Club Florida staff director Frank Jackalone said in a statement, noting that Stearns was the only Florida Republican to vote against an amendment by Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) earlier this year that would have blocked EPA from moving forward with the limits.

The meeting comes as industry and state officials continue to battle EPA and environmentalists in court over the rules, which take effect next March. Last week, an appeals court dismissed a challenge brought by water utilities (Greenwire, Aug. 4).

The biggest disagreement between the two sides of the debate centers on costs. EPA estimated the statewide cost of compliance with the new limits at $135 million to $206 million annually, or between $40 and $71 a year per household. Industry puts the annual cost at between $5.7 billion and $8.4 billion, extrapolating that individual water and sewer rates would rise by hundreds of dollars.

Environmentalists say those figures are scare tactics based on the deliberately false assumption that sewage would have to be treated to drinking water standards by expensive, "reverse-osmosis" filtration technology. Richard Budell, director of the office of agricultural water policy at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, testified to as much before another House committee in June. He will appear again at tomorrow's hearing, testifying alongside EPA's Fleming.

"Florida wastewater utilities believe that expensive reverse-osmosis technologies will have to be employed in order for them to comply with the requirements," Budell testified in June. "These technologies are not only costly to implement and maintain, but they require an enormous amount of energy to operate."

A spokesman for Stearns did not respond to a request for comment on the hearing.

Last week, the congressman issued a statement that said "numerous studies in Florida indicate that the Washington-imposed standards will have a devastating impact on Florida's job creation, economy, and certain agencies."

"On Tuesday, we will hear from witnesses how these EPA standards will affect Florida and from the EPA on why it is imposing its standards," Stearns said in the statement.

Our views: Every precious drop

Legislature, Scott are putting state's water resources in peril

Water shortages loom on the horizon, but state lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott are aggressively and wrongly undermining the very agencies that protect Florida's increasingly inadequate water supplies.

First, the Legislature passed and Scott signed a bill that slashes Florida's five water district budgets by $210 million.

The St. Johns River Water Management District, which includes Brevard and all or part of 17 other East-Central Florida counties, will see its budget cut 26 percent next year.

That loss of as much as $30 million will force 100 or more layoffs and put projects critical to safeguarding drinking water resources on life support.

That includes completion of the St. Johns River Upper Basin project in South Brevard, one of the largest wetland restorations in the world, that's scheduled to be finished in two years.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Sebastian man honored as national Volunteer of Year for Audubon Society

SEBASTIAN - Yes, Richard Baker enjoys bird watching and bird photography, but there is much more to his passion for full-time volunteer work with the Pelican Island Audubon Society.

Last week, Mr. Baker, retired director of the Florida Medical Entomology Lab at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences and current president of the Pelican Island Audubon Society, was awarded the Charles H. Callison national volunteer award from the National Audubon Society for his conservation and education work here in Indian River County.

The Charles H. Callison award was established to give special recognition to an individual or group whose continued diligence has achieved significant success in environmental policy, creativity, coalition-building or education and/ or outreach.

Mr. Baker will be only the second volunteer from Florida to achieve this award, according to the National Audubon Society's website.

Click here to read the full story.

Florida Loses Its Mind. Again.

If you think that Snooki has relationship problems because of overly strict drinking laws, or that the Bernie Madoff story is a cautionary tale about overly intrusive financial regulation, you're probably a Florida politician. Because the geniuses who run the state have decided that its economic distress is the result of overly strict growth management. So they're wiping out three decades of growth management laws and making it even easier for developers to build, the legislative equivalent of making it even easier for Kirstie Alley to eat.

This is so insane I don't even know what to say about it, except that I assume Carl Hiaasen has found the subject of his next novel. It's hard to imagine how any sentient being who's visited Homestead or Cape Coral or any of Florida's other boarded-up foreclosurevilles and seen all the vacant homes with unmowed lawns and mosquito-infested pools could conclude that the housing boom was insufficiently robust.

Click here to read the full story.

Land developer Billy Buzzett to oversee Florida's growth management agency

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Rick Scott has appointed an executive of one of Florida's largest land development companies to oversee the state department charged with managing growth.

Billy Buzzett, vice president of the St. Joe Co., will take over the Department of Community Affairs, the state's land planning and community development agency that Scott is eager to overhaul.

Environmentalists see the appointment of Buzzett as another sign that Scott -- in his quest to create jobs and spur Florida's economy -- will allow developers to run rampant over the state's natural resources. On Monday, Scott appointed a shipbuilding executive as his top environmental regulator.

Buzzett led the master planning of more than 100,000 acres and titled more than 30,000 residential units during his eight years at St. Joe. The North Florida real estate company gave the maximum $25,000 contribution to Scott's inauguration.

"I can't think of anyone who would be less appropriate for that job," said Linda Young, director of the Clean Water Network of Florida, who has sparred with Buzzett and St. Joe for years. "To put it mildly, it's troubling to know that he's in charge of steering the growth and development of the state. He has been at the heart and soul of some of the most destructive developments that the Florida Panhandle has seen."

Click here to read the full story.

Scott names development exec. as top Fla. planner

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Rick Scott named a development company executive as Florida's next planning chief Wednesday and brought Kurt Browning out of retirement to again serve as secretary of state.

A day after taking office, the new Republican governor appointed Billy Buzzett as secretary of the Department of Community Affairs. He comes from The St. Joe Company, one of Florida's largest private landowners, where he was vice president of strategic planning.

Buzzett's appointment predictably won applause from the business sector, but it also drew praise from an environmental leader.

"That's actually a good thing," said Audubon of Florida executive director Eric Draper. "I've walked the woods with him. I know he has a personal feeling for the specialness of Florida's environment."

Buzzett's marching orders include advising Scott on how to align the planning agency's functions with those of other state agencies. Scott noted in a news release that Buzzett served on a transition team that recommended merging Community Affairs with the departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection.

It's an idea environmentalists oppose because they fear it would dilute protection of Florida's natural resources, but Draper predicted it would be a nonstarter in the Legislature.

During his campaign, Scott accused Community Affairs, which is responsible for enforcing Florida's growth management laws, of inhibiting development and being a job-killer.

"Billy is focused on helping me make government smaller, less intrusive and consistent with efforts to increase investments in Florida and spur job creation," Scott said in a news release.

Buzzett will replace Tom Pelham, who fired a parting shot at Scott and other critics Monday by saying it'll take decades to use up development capacity the department has approved over the last four years under ex-Gov. Charlie Crist.

Pelham's final report shows the department has approved planning amendments that will permit more than a million new housing units and 2.7 billion square feet of nonresidential construction. Pelham said some local plans were revised because they failed to provide for roads, utilities and other infrastructure or allowed construction in inappropriate places.

Florida Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Mark Wilson said Buzzett's appointment is "fantastic news for us." He said it'll encourage major developers who shunned Florida because of the department's policies to take another look at the state.

Wilson said he anticipates a reversal of the focus on funneling growth into urban areas and open rural areas to development needed to accommodate a predicted growth in Florida's population by two million people over the next decade.

Click here to read the full story.

Stunting growth oversight

Florida's leaders place state's future at risk with their assault on DCA.

It's appalling how Gov.-elect Rick Scott and legislative leaders have vilified the Department of Community Affairs - the state's invaluable growth management arm - as a prelude to dismantling it.

They rail about how the department's become an unwieldy, impervious impediment to "good growth" and the jobs that come with it. But the men and women at DCA who review the amendments to local growth plans hatched by developers number all of 58.

They do what they do - checking whether housing communities or industrial parks adhere to local and state rules - because Florida's lawmakers placed that responsibility squarely on their shoulders. Critics like House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos voted for bills that require local growth plans to address energy efficiency and the stress that developments place on water resources, transportation and schools.

Should DCA employees have ignored them?

The reality is that the DCA approves most amendments that come before it; since 2008, more than 90 percent, creating the potential to build more than 600,000 residential units and 2.3 billion square feet of non-residential space.

Villainous, indeed. If Florida's government leaders are chafed because DCA rejected a few projects - projects that defy state and local development rules - why aren't they citing them to discredit DCA? Perhaps because the projects weren't in the state's best interests.

For example, DCA rejected plans for the remote 23,000-home Farmton colossus in Volusia and Brevard counties, which didn't adequately address its impact on roads, utilities, schools, water and protected wildlife. It stiff-armed a developer's plan to build an oversized marina in an aquatic preserve frequented by manatees on the St. Johns River.

But more appalling than the campaign to assassinate the character of DCA and that of its principled secretary, Tom Pelham, who's exiting his post in January, is what the enemies of sensible growth management have in store as replacements. Last week, a task force formed by Mr. Scott recommended that a dramatically weakened DCA join - or get swallowed up - by the much larger departments of transportation and environmental protection.

`The Real Florida' a moneymaker

Buying land for parks, refuges solid investment

What do Humphrey Bogart and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park have in common?

The famous actor starred in the 1948 movie Key Largo, which, despite its depiction of a fierce hurricane, drew new visitors to the Florida Keys' northern-most island, according to the Florida Parks System.

Trouble was, many visitors wanted to collect saltwater mementos -- colorful corals, sea fans, sponges -- and that took a terrible toll on the only living coral formation in the continental United States. In 1957, Dr. Gilbert Voss of the Marine Institute of Miami joined other scientists and South Florida preservationists, including The Miami Herald's then-associate editor, John Pennekamp, to urge the state to designate the beautiful reef area a preserve that would be off-limits to coral collecting and the like.

In 1959, activists got their wish when a 75-square-mile reef tract was declared a state preserve, the first underwater park in the United States. The next year, the federal government kicked in more sea bottom, and on Dec. 10, 1960, the park was named for Mr. Pennekamp.

Now Pennekamp park is having a 50th-anniversary celebration with a series of events to please new and frequent visitors alike. The park's anniversary is actually the culmination of a year-long 75th-anniversary celebration of the Florida Parks System, which includes magnificent beaches, forests, bayous, caverns, historic sites and more. The state Parks Service likes to brag that it manages ``The Real Florida.'' It serves as steward to more than 700,000 acres of parklands.

Many state parks were established by the same kind of local activism that saved Pennekamp. We owe a debt of gratitude to the John Pennekamps and Dr. Vosses. They saw wilderness threatened by the state's relentless growth throughout much of the 20th century and spoke up to protect tracts for future generations.

But it isn't just beachgoers, campers, hikers and other nature lovers who can truly appreciate Florida's parks system. So can economists. Our parks and refuges are moneymakers.

A 2009-10 fiscal-impact assessment by the Parks Service found that the state's 160 parks had a direct impact of nearly $950 million on local economies throughout the state and accounted for 18,900 new local-area jobs. Last year the state park system contributed more than $66 million to the general revenue fund via state sales taxes.

Beyond the parks system, a 2009 Nature Conservancy study found that hunting and fishing on Florida's conserved lands and waters had an $8 billion economic impact in 2006 alone.

The Nature Conservancy's study had a purpose, of course -- to persuade the Legislature to continue funding the state's land-acquisition program Florida Forever -- using hard dollars as an argument. A smart move. Saving ``The Real Florida'' really does pay off. Just ask the owners of Key Largo motels, restaurants and dive shops celebrating this month.

EPA unveils new pollution standards for Florida waters, then delays them

For months, everyone from Florida's new Republican governor to its Democratic senator to its farmers, sewer plant operators and utilities has been trying to get the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back off new water pollution standards for Florida.

Cleaning up the waterways, they warned, would ruin the state's already shaky economy.

On Monday, EPA officials announced they were ready to unveil the new pollution limits for Florida's rivers, lakes and springs - but with a catch.

The federal agency will not implement the 168 pages of new standards, which could cost residents an extra 11 to 20 cents a day per household, for another 15 months.

The delay is necessary to counteract all the "exaggerated, doomsday claims" that opponents have been spreading, explained the EPA's Atlanta regional administrator, Gwen Keyes Fleming.

Click here to read the full story.

Last-Minute Lobbying Over EPA's Water-Quality Rules for Fla. Focuses on Costs

...Florida's current environmental regulations currently include narrative water quality standards that have failed to stop algae blooms and red tides that have turned rivers green, triggered massive fish kills and caused respiratory problems.

Environmentalists sued EPA in 2008 for not enforcing the Clean Water Act in the state. Under the settlement, EPA must replace the state's narrative rules with specific, numeric criteria as to how much phosphorus and nitrogen pollution -- byproducts of fertilizer and sewage treatment that trigger the noxious algae blooms -- can be allowed to enter each of the state's lakes, rivers, streams and springs.

But exactly how much it will cost to upgrade sewage treatment plants and improve farming and industry practices to comply with the new rules has dominated the debate over whether to move forward as planned.

Click here to read the full story.

EPA imposes controversial water-pollution limits on Florida

Industry says limits will be a costly burden but some environmentalists say they are riddled with loopholes

A federal crackdown on Florida's polluted rivers and lakes was spelled out in detail Monday by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, which simultaneously agreed to hold off on enforcing the new regulations for 15 months.

An EPA official, speaking in Tallahassee, said the rules will not cost residents, businesses and local governments nearly as much as opponents have alleged but will, after years of procrastination by state environmental officials, help revive rivers and lakes plagued with a type of pollution that triggers algae blooms and fish kills.

"Anyone who has seen the green slime that coats waters from Lake Munson near Tallahassee to the St. Johns River, to Lake Apopka in Central Florida, has seen the consequences," said Gwen Keyes Fleming, a regional EPA administrator from Atlanta.

Click here to read the full story.

Loss of Indian River Lagoon seagrass beds threatening fish breeding grounds

STUART — The lower Indian River Lagoon is a crossroads at a crossroads, according to R. Grant Gilmore Jr., senior scientist and president of Estuarine, Coastal and Ocean Science Inc. in Vero Beach.

Speaking on Thursday to the Rivers Coalition, Gilmore called the area of the lagoon near the St. Lucie Inlet and the St. Lucie Estuary a “crossroads” of biodiversity because it serves as the nursery for fish species found throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

But the lagoon is at a crossroads, he added, because loss of its seagrass beds threatens the nursery and the fish raised in it.

“Seagrass is a major food source for all kinds of little critters that live in the estuary and the lagoon,” Gilmore said, adding that a study in the 1970s showed 10,000 fish are produced per year on each acre of the lagoon.

“But if there’s no seagrass,” he added, “that drops by 90 percent.”

Click here to read the full story.

Two projects nourish lagoon

Fresh water in canals getting diverted back to St. Johns

PALM BAY — While Indian River Lagoon advocates want us to control stormwater in our own yards, government has two big, long-awaited "replumbings" that could pay huge dividends for the estuary's health.

Officials say the $50 million in new water-control structures and storage areas soon will ease fresh-water shocks during downpours, allowing more seagrass to grow, with fish and clams to follow.

The two projects -- one in Fellsmere, the other in Palm Bay -- could make the lagoon's next 20 years healthier than its last, officials say, by steering water closer to the way it flowed a century ago.

As the region celebrates the 20th anniversary of the federal government making the lagoon part of the National Estuary Program, St. Johns officials are pointing to the two projects as major milestones in the estuary's recovery.

Too much fresh water, too fast lowers the lagoon's salt content and clouds the water so sunlight can't reach seagrass -- the main nursery ground for fish, crabs and other marine life.

Click here to read the full story.

Fellsmere reservoir project will improve water quality, storage

...The [John Allen] senior project manager for Blue Goose Construction in Fort Pierce is leading the construction on a $30 million, 2.5-mile levee on the eastern flank of the site, the second part of a reservoir system designed to improve the water quality of runoff into the upper basin of the St. Johns River.

The freshwater discharges that ultimately make their way to the Indian River Lagoon can negatively impact aquatic life, and this project is designed to protect the lagoon from pesticides, fertilizers or other agricultural runoff.

Additional benefits to Indian River County residents include increased protection from flooding during storms as well as a potential new source for drinking water in the future, said Ed Garland, spokesman for the St. Johns River Water District, which is coordinating the project.

...And the potential recreation uses of the water district area can’t be ignored. Garland said the reservoir could be used for recreational boating and fishing and the restoration of the wetlands is creating new habitat for migratory birds.

“One of the ancillary benefits is that wildlife is returning,” said Garland. “We’re trying to mimic what nature does.”

Florida sprawl's free-for-all even worse without the DCA

The Florida Department of Community Affairs is good at telling developers how their plans to build subdivisions out in the country — think of Hickory Hill and the Quarry Preserve — can cause sprawl, clog roads and destroy the environment. But it hardly ever says no.

This frustrates a lot of citizen activists, who think that the agency does nothing but push papers.

And they are dead wrong.

Look closely and you'll find that once DCA gets involved, plans change for the better. Developers agree to pay more for roads and schools, add protection for wildlife habitat and groundwater, rewrite plans to make sure projects that are supposed to function like real cities are designed like real cities.

That was true to some degree even under its weakest leadership. It's even more true under current DCA secretary Tom Pelham.

Yes, it would be nice if the DCA flat turned down a few more requests for changes to local comprehensive plans, though this does happen once in a while.

But anyone who knows much about development in this state knows that without the DCA, it would be even more of a chaotic free-for-all.

And maybe because the state Legislature tried to do so much crazy, irresponsible stuff this year — forcing most women seeking abortions to pay and review ultrasounds of their fetuses, stripping tenure from teachers, allowing leading lawmakers to take in even more special interest money (all of which, by the way, received the votes of our own state Rep. Robert Schenck, R-Spring Hill) — we've overlooked an equally wild attack on the DCA.

In the final days of the session, the House of Representatives failed to hear a routine bill to reauthorize the agency.

Legally, this might not mean much. Politically, it's a killer — a vote of no-confidence that is extra significant because it is widely believed to be the work of incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park. (He previously has said he had nothing to do with the lack of reauthorization, and a representative from his office said Thursday this would have no impact.)

Next year, members will have been freshly re-elected and the Hometown Democracy amendment, the threat of which has supposedly forced lawmakers to at least pretend they care about controlling growth, will have been resolved one way or another.

Click here to read the full story.

St. Sebastian River looking healthier, water management officials say

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A year after 1.8 million cubic yards of muck was removed from the St. Sebastian River, officials from the St. Johns Water Management District are encouraged by what they see.

And what they don’t see.

The sediment-filled, dark river water full of silt, clay, sand and organic material is gone, and in its place, sea grass is flourishing, according to water district spokesman Ed Garland.

“Sea grass is the litmus test of the lagoon,” said Garland. “We know that the lagoon is healthy when sea grass flourishes.”

Muck, a gooey brown mix of sediment, consumes oxygen and decreases water clarity, and affects bottom-dwelling organisms. It can also block the sunlight necessary for sea grass growth, Garland said.

Although it is too soon for conclusive results from the recent dredging operations, Garland said scientists are encouraged by the number of macroinvertebrates they are finding on the bottom of the river.

Click here to read the full story.

Florida's Department of Community Affairs in peril

OUR OPINION: State House should move bill forward now When it comes to the laws and enforcement of growth management, the Florida Legislature excels at playing games. Last year, in the name of fostering jobs, lawmakers adopted a bill allowing builders of large developments to evade paying for the road improvements these projects inevitably require. Now, local taxpayers must foot the bill.

This piece of irresponsible sophistry did not improve Florida's economy. The construction industry is still in the doldrums.

This year, the Department of Community Affairs, final enforcer of growth-management laws, is up for the sunset review process that state agencies undergo every 10 years. The Senate is set to reenact the DCA, meaning its budget and programs will be reinstated without change. That's the right course for the agency that stands between more sprawl and sustainable growth.

Over in the House, though, the game is on. House leaders are sitting on the reenactment bill, not allowing it on the agenda of the Economic Development and Community Affairs Council. Friday is the last chance for the bill to be heard. If it isn't, the DCA will spend the next year in limbo, which would weaken it against powerful construction interests.

Apparently, the delaying tactic in the House is because the incoming 2011 House leadership wants to gut the agency.

The House games could very easily backfire. Delaying reenactment would strengthen the resolve of backers of Amendment 4 -- the Hometown Democracy amendment to the state Constitution on the November ballot. It would require changes to each community's comprehensive plan -- which governs local development -- to be approved by local voters. Most lawmakers hate the amendment, as do builders.

But Amendment 4 would never have gotten enough signatures to get on the ballot if Floridians weren't fed up with sprawl and the crowded schools and roads it brings.

The House leadership should rethink its strategy and schedule DCA reenactment for a vote Friday -- or it could very well rue its gamesmanship come November.

Water war

EPA's 'legal-containment strategy' called murky deal for Floridians?

Operating under the theory that "no good deed goes unpunished," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is targeting Floridians with punitive new water-quality standards.

In an unprecedented move, the EPA is singling out Florida for strict rules governing the release of nitrogen and phosphorous. The Florida Water Environment Association Utility Council estimates that the state's utilities will have to spend between $24.4 billion and $50.7 billion in capital improvements (before interest charges) to comply with the new standards and up to $1.3 billion more in annual operating costs.

This price tag will trickle down to every home and business, with yearly annual sewer rates expected to rise an average of $726 per customer, per year. And that's just for the customers with sewer service.

For large businesses, including agriculture, the annual hit could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, analysts say.

Cleaner water is an admirable, even essential, goal but critics say the EPA's proposal is murky, at best.

David Guest, managing attorney for Earth Justice in Florida, said the state was targeted because of its "uniquely serious problems" of "toxic algae" and "uncontrolled slime growth."

Florida Clean Water Network director Linda Young said during the Tallahassee hearing that opposition was “the result of many months of organizing that’s been done by … our own state government.”

“DEP has exaggerated the threat and there is a little bit of panic created by a state agency screaming fire,” Young charged.

Guest believes that the fertilizer industry is driving much of the resistance, because nitrogen- and phosphorous-heavy fertilizers -- both in commercial and residential use -- are laden with the chemicals that cause algae blooms.

Click here to read the full story.

Americans must wean themselves from foreign oil

We must stop our dependency on foreign oil!

Familiar?

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address touched on the need for developing cleaner and better sources of energy so that we could become less dependent on foreign oil. Sounds great.

Every president since Richard Nixon has blathered on about the need to wean off foreign oil, making promises with no results. President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy in 1977 with one goal, to diminish our dependency on foreign oil. So much for that. Today, that department operates on a budget of $24 billion a year, still plodding along toward failure.

In 1970, we were importing 24 percent of our oil. Today, we’re importing 65 percent. So much for the Energy Department. So much for promises. They sound great in speeches, but actions speak louder, and we’ve seen little of that.

Click here to read the full column.

Clean water victory

Space Coast residents know troubled waters when they see them, and they see them in their backyard.

The Indian River Lagoon is under relentless assault from chemically laced stormwater runoff pouring into the estuary, causing cancers and other diseases in dolphins and marine life.

The St. Johns River, an increasingly vital source of drinking water for Brevard County and Central Florida, suffers from toxic contaminants coming from agriculture, lawn fertilizers and septic tanks.

And just a few years ago, Brevard's coastal waters were struck with a prolonged red tide that caused respiratory ailments in humans and killed fish.

For those reasons and more, the Obama administration made the right decision this summer when it set strict new limits to reduce the poisonous mix of nutrients flowing into Florida waterways.

And why a federal judge's ruling last week that rejected attempts to kill the move was the correct one and another important victory for clean water - and the health of state residents - in Florida.

The White House's decision came after five Florida environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush administration, charging its refusal to establish strict standards had worsened pollution in the state's rivers, lakes and estuaries.

The result is that more than half of Florida's waterways suffer from poor water quality, according to a 2008 report from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

CLick here to read the full editorial.

Brevard lets Palm Bay official remain on EEL board

VIERA — Dozens spoke out at Tuesday's Brevard County Commission meeting about whether a Palm Bay deputy city manager should be allowed to serve on a volunteer board that identifies environmentally sensitive land for preservation.

At issue were her qualifications to serve on the scientific-minded board. In the end, the commission decided not to take action and allow Sue Hann to remain on the seven-member board for the Environmentally Endangered Lands Program.

Last month the commission appointed Hann by a vote of 3-2 over nine professionals with degrees in biology, zoology and botany. The appointment raised concerns that Hann's appointment might set a precedent for next year, when six vacancies will be filled because to term limits.

Click here to read the full story.

Hold polluters accountable for what they do to Florida waters

It is hard to imagine anyone defending the polluters that are turning our waters green.

At long last, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is agreeing to set legal, enforceable limits on Florida's worst water pollution problem: excess nutrient runoff from fertilizer and manure. Now the state's biggest polluters are trying to get out of complying.

Florida has one of the worst water pollution problems in the nation. We've got toxic algae blooms, contaminated drinking water, beaches closed by dangerous bacteria and Red Tide, rivers fouled with green slime, dead fish, dead lakes and excess nutrients bubbling out of our crystal springs.

A Florida Department of Environmental Protection report last year found that half the state's rivers and more than half of its lakes had poor water quality.

Click here to read the full story.

Despite concerns, development still heads to the coast

As early as the 1980s, scientists warned that rising seas could submerge vast portions of Florida's coast.

How have local and state governments responded? Build, baby, build.

A new study of development trends along the Atlantic Coast shows Florida has opened more vulnerable areas to construction than any other state. Three-quarters of its low-lying Atlantic coastline has already been, or will be, developed.

Despite mounting evidence of sea level rise, other states plan to follow Florida's lead -- though to lesser degrees -- eventually pushing homes, condos and other buildings onto nearly two-thirds of coastal land less than a meter above the Atlantic. By 2100, many scientists predict a rise near or beyond a meter.

Unlike some climate studies, however, this one doesn't suggest kayaks will be needed to navigate Miami or Manhattan.

Instead, it divides the coast into rural or wild areas likely to be abandoned, and urbanized areas likely to be forced to employ ``increasingly ambitious'' and expensive engineering to preserve real estate from encroaching ocean. Think dikes, levees, pumps, stilts, more dredging to rebuild eroded beaches and mountains of fill to raise roads and structures.

Click here to read the full story.

Lawmakers' love affair with Big Oil

The mystery group trying to repeal Florida's ban on offshore oil drilling is winning converts the old-fashioned way, deploying a battalion of lobbyists and throwing campaign money at state legislators.

Florida Energy Associates, which is basically a front for Big Oil, has already donated about $125,000 to the two major political parties. Nobody turned down a dime, even though the firm won't reveal which oil and gas companies it represents.

That's what makes our legislators so special. They happily sell out without even knowing who's buying them.

Florida Energy Associates has hired about three dozen big-name lobbyists to peddle the idea that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is perfectly safe, and that it will bring jobs, prosperity and a $2.25 billion annual boost to the state budget.

That dollar prediction is pure fiction, exceeding by sevenfold the maximum yearly drilling revenues from Alabama and Texas combined. But wildcatters are nothing if not optimists.

Click here to read the fuil story.

After Century of Growth, Tide Turns in Florida

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The smiling couple barreling ahead on the cover of Liberty magazine in 1926 knew exactly where to go. “Florida or Bust,” said the white paint on the car doors. “Four wheels, no brakes.”

So it has been for a century, as Florida welcomed thousands of newcomers every week, year after year, becoming the nation’s fourth-most-populous state with about 16 million people in 2000.

Imagine the shock, then, to discover that traffic is now heading the other way. That’s right, the Sunshine State is shrinking.

Choked by a record level of foreclosures and unemployment, along with a helping of disillusionment, the state’s population declined by 58,000 people from April 2008 to April 2009, according to the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Except for the years around World Wars I and II, it was the state’s first population loss since at least 1900.

...“It’s got to be a real psychological blow,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who predicted that census data in December would confirm the findings. “I don’t know if you can take a whole state to a psychiatrist, but the whole Florida economy was based on migration flows.”

Click here to read the full story.

On the Mat, Florida Wonders Which Way Is Up

MIAMI — The men trickling into a golf course clubhouse outside Fort Myers, Fla., had come to pray and study Bible verses that would help them become rugged, confident, adventurous. But their faces, reflected in the room’s frosted mirrors, showed only worry. More than half said they had been laid off, nearly all from jobs tied to real estate.

“We need something different,” said Norman Baldie, 54, a real estate agent in Lehigh Acres. “This community is all bent out of shape.”

...Mr. Shelor and his neighbors say they want “industry” to save them, perhaps biotech or anything stable and disconnected from real estate. It is an emotional plea more than a proposal, echoing from Key West to Tallahassee.

Gov. Charlie Crist acknowledged the problem in an interview: “Imagine a state where the dominant part of the economy is automobiles as it is in Michigan. That puts them in a difficult spot, just as real estate does for Florida.”

Actually changing, as opposed to recognizing the problem, has been harder to do. Last month, Governor Crist, a Republican, signed a growth management bill that made it easier for builders to add new construction in more populated areas, without expanding roads or dealing with regional planning boards.

He did this — arguing that it would help the economy — even though 300,000 residential units in Florida sat empty at the time, and 630,000 new ones are in the pipeline; even though a growing body of research from academics like Christopher Leinberger at the University of Michigan suggests that communities with looser land use regulations suffer more severe booms and busts.

Mr. Hunter, the development lobbyist, praised the new law for directing growth away from rural areas, where the environmental costs are greater, but critics say its definition of “urban” is so broad that it creates a new incentive for suburban sprawl.

Gary Mormino, a historian at the University of South Florida since the ’70s, said the state has yet to grasp its limits. “We’re going to have to think about new shifts in thinking,” he said, “new ways of urban living.”

Click here to read the full story.

Florida should lead in alternative energy, not take environmental risks off coasts

As the nation's energy policy focuses more on renewable resources and less on oil and gas, the Florida House would have the state move in the opposite direction.

On Monday, the Republican-controlled body approved a bill that would allow the governor and Cabinet to authorize drilling leases as close as three miles off the state's beaches.

The legislation, filed late in the legislative session, moved quickly through the House with little review or debate even though it could have major implications for the state's future.

Fortunately, the proposal seems to have far less support in the Senate. Even Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said this week, "I'm not receptive to it. That is a really significantly important issue and one that I think would, frankly at our end, would take some serious review."

If the drilling proposal should get through the Senate, Gov. Charlie Crist should veto it. It represents the worst of narrow interests superseding what is best for the people of the state.

Click here to read the full editorial.

We're dying from plague of vacant buildings, homes

This is like watching an emphysema patient try to cure himself by smoking more.

Florida is dying from a spreading plague of vacant homes, vacant stores and vacant offices. And up in Tallahassee, the solution offered by legislators is more vacant homes, more vacant stores and more vacant offices.

Their cure for the economy is another whopping dose of everything that got us into this mess.

I don't know whether they're corrupt, stupid or simply so embedded in the Culture of Concrete they can't think outside that tiny box.

The pressure to pave permeates the Florida Capitol like skunk stink.

Click here to read the full story.

Central Florida's plan for growth remains in focus

Amid the housing boom, our region of Florida concocted a far-reaching vision.

It showed Palm Bay quadrupling to 400,000 people, as well as vast green spaces set aside from here to Orlando and new transportation corridors linking major urban centers.

Farms would be saved. Schools, shopping and health care would be within walking distance. Developers would stop clear-cutting.

Then things went south for Central Florida.

Myregion.org's "How Shall We Grow?" initiative from two years ago might today be rephrased as "Will We Grow?"

Despite the economic downturn, civic leaders who participated said they plan to stick to the key concepts outlined in the Myregion vision, which they see as very much alive.

Click here to read the full story and a "Vision for Central Florida" map.

Hurricane Center developing Web tool to predict risk to homes

ST. PETERSBURG — When hurricanes hit, it's often the water that kills.

So the National Hurricane Center is making it easier for people to learn if a hurricane is likely to cause seawater to surge into their homes. They soon will be able to find out at the Web site www.hurricanes.gov.

"If you have a Category 3 coming in, you can figure out, 'Am I at risk?' " said the center's director, Bill Read, who is in St. Petersburg to (sic) for a federal hurricane conference.

For example, if your house is at 10 feet above sea level, you'd probably want to evacuate from an incoming storm that threatens to raise seas 15 feet above sea level. On the other hand, if your house sits at 20 feet above sea level, you might decide to stay put during that storm, depending on local recommendations.

Click here to read the full story.

Land Management In Florida: Old Challenges In The New Economy

We are all facing up to the gross financial mismanagement on the national level, but I would like to share with you some thoughts on how Florida fits into the picture. I agree with those who say that the Ponzi premise pretty much sums up Florida’s management strategy. As long as you can recruit new suckers to pay back the existing pyramid club members you’ll be okay. I would invite you to name one public program in Florida – transportation, education, public health, environmental resource management – where we have actually put the cost of meeting immediate needs upon the existing population. Florida’s history has been to expect that future growth will cover the cost of the current needs. Next year’s new taxpayers will get the bill for existing infrastructure deficiencies, and their new demands will in turn be paid by their successors. As the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald recently reported:

For years, governors and legislators relied on population growth to create jobs, avoid raising taxes, and shield the state from recession. The saw Florida’s population swell annually by 2 to 3 percent per year, adding the equivalent of a new Miami or Tampa each year.

We’ve marked ourselves as a low-tax, low-cost retirement haven. We have further convoluted the scheme with an absolutely archaic tax scheme, full of exemptions intended to provide short-term growth incentives but higher future costs, which will supposedly be covered by distributing those costs over a larger taxpayer base in the future.

But now we are finding that if Florida doesn’t keep growing, the pyramid can’t be sustained. Florida’s residential and commercial building spree has resulted in a vastly overbuilt market with, by some estimates, at least two years of inventory. The Times/Herald reported that Florida led the nation in job growth in 2005, and now leads the nation in job losses. After five years of double-digit increases in housing starts, it is now second in the nation in foreclosure filings. Florida led the nation in gross domestic product in 2005. It now ranks 47th in this most important indicator of a productive economy.

In its 2009 New Years Day editorial, the Palm Beach Post summarized brilliantly our past and possible future:

For decades Florida and the officials running the state, counties, and towns have perpetrated the myth that growth will pay for itself and provide a prosperous lifestyle for everyone who buys into the myth. With special tax breaks for long-time residents, the expectation that an ever-increasing supply of newcomers, snowbirds and tourists would pay most of the bills was as enticing a Ponzi scheme as any that Bernard Madoff promised. Now, Florida’s growth scheme has collapsed. The growth myth should collapse along with it. Yes, the real state market will come back – let’s hope in a more rational form. But unbridled growth never again should be seen as Florida’s perpetual money machine.

Some might argue that Florida hasn’t really had unbridled growth, but rather truly managed growth, some have said over-managed. This is a rather hard premise to accept given the obvious massive over-building which has glutted the state.

Over the past ten years, the Florida Department of Community Affairs – which oversees growth management in our state – has been continually reduced until, according to current DCA Secretary Tom Pelham, the agency is barely able to fulfill its statutory mission. Rather than confront the large public and institutional support for growth management controls, the budgetary process has become the tool to curtail growth management. In the early 1990’s – during the height of DCA’s efforts to implement the 1985 law – it had a staff of more than seventy professionals, two field offices, and three separate divisions. By the end of the Bush administration, the field offices were gone, one division had been reassigned to the Governor’s Office, and fewer than thirty professionals remain.

The Legislature is now faced with addressing a massive budget shortfall – in the neighborhood of $5 billion – for the 2099-2010 year and has only two options – further cuts in spending or additional revenue income. I expect that the legislature will be forced, reluctantly, to consider additional revenue sources. Higher “sin” taxes such as cigarettes or Internet taxes are easy, but reform of our tax codes will require real courage.

I also expect proposals to relax environmental rules, or even eliminate the Florida Department of Community Affairs, and/or all comprehensive planning will surface as possible “quick fixes.” Some of the same interests who gave us the current market glut claim that they need unbridled freedom to respond to “market conditions,” that the “planning process” takes too long and will impeded recovery. Private landowners who still believe that unrestricted property rights are a divine right will certainly join in any opportunity to eliminate growth management programs.

In another spin, counties across the state are all now facing requests to simply extend existing approved expiring development permits that are no longer economically viable until “the market improves.” In almost all cases, they are extending the projects. Is that really a good idea? Admittedly, it saves both the developer and the government the costs of repeating the permit process, but are all those projects really that good?

With hundreds of approved projects dormant for lack of funding, and with an estimated two-year glut in existing housing and commercial space, we should feel no urgency to encourage more. It will be a long time (if ever) before fixed-income retirees in the north again contemplate mass-migration to Florida. The bleak economic situation affords Florida a unique opportunity to reconsider our land management planning programs.

I think that all the discussions need to face the fact that sound economic policy must also be sound environmental policy – or we’re just once again pawning the true costs into the future – with compounded interest! And while “smart growth” is considered a desirable goal, I would argue that any growth that doesn’t pay for itself isn’t smart at all!

We now have the time, and hopefully the economic incentive, to move (sic) promote serious planning policies that would:

1. Promote infill and rehabilitation of existing urban areas over creating new towns. The argument for years has been that remote vacant land is cheap, and building on a blank slate is faster and cheaper – so we’ve gone toward new communities in the boondocks.
2. Pay special attention to agriculture in Florida. We need an environmentally sound, productive agricultural industry in our state for its economic, social and environmental benefits. Our current development model is driving out agriculture as speculative real estate ventures swallow rural tracts with “New Towns” that don’t pay for themselves.
3. Rethink new rural communities. In the future, they should only be built if they offer us true long-term benefits economically, socially, and environmentally. If they don’t, let’s learn to just say NO and wait for a true enhancement to the state to be developed.

Florida is truly at an economic crossroads; do we try to fall back to our old ways, or find a smarter growth model for our future, one that sustains our economy, protects our environment, improves education – and truly best serves our citizens? Do we simply try to jumpstart quick growth, or can we develop a well-devised, balanced economy and a rational growth program supported by a truly intelligent tax program? This will take true leadership and courage.

An Unsung Florida Getaway

Vero Beach has empty sand, manatees and Gloria Estefan's new resort

Singer Gloria Estefan made her first foray into Florida hotels in 1992, when she bought the landmark Cardozo on sizzling South Beach's Ocean Drive. She's opened her latest resort on an Ocean Drive as well -- in an unlikely outpost about 150 miles north: sleepy Vero Beach, with little sizzle but plenty of old-style Florida charm.

Far from the bustle of overbuilt South Florida, Vero Beach lies on a stretch of Atlantic turf aptly dubbed the Treasure Coast, in a transitional climate zone where oak trees and pine forests thrive alongside the palms and colorful tropical flora of balmier points south. Indian River Lagoon divides the city into sections on the mainland and a barrier island. It all makes for spectacular fishing, kayaking, bird-watching and boating, as well as miles of white sand beaches where you can walk for a long time and encounter no one.

...By far the best way to spend time in Vero is in and around the water, plying your way through the islands and bird refuges of the lagoon, which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway and is described by the oceanographic institute at Florida Atlantic University as the most biologically diverse estuary in North America. You can rent canoes, kayaks or paddle boards to stand on. But it's worth spending a little extra to go out solo or in a group with a knowledgeable guide like Kayaks Etc.'s Kristen Beck, a naturalist with a degree in marine science.

Click here to read the full article.

Reaping the fruit planted by greed

It wasn't surprising that President Barack Obama came to Florida to push his economic stimulus package, because no place in the United States has fallen so hard, so fast.

And when the mega-recession finally ends, Florida will be one of the last places in the country to turn itself around. That's because other states have actual industry, while our employment base depends fatally on double-digit population growth and, to a lesser extent, tourism.

Everything was going gang-busters when a thousand people a day were moving here, but now the stampede is over, and the jig's up. Without fresh meat for the housing market, Florida basically hasn't got an economy.

Developers have controlled state and county governments for so long that no Plan B exists. Lost and clueless, lawmakers desperately hack away at public budgets while clinging to the hope that boom times will return.

For good reason, Florida has become the poster child for America's fiscal disintegration. We stand at the top of the leaderboard in rising unemployment, foreclosures and, of course, mortgage fraud.

Where else could a man step out of prison and straight into a job peddling adjustable-rate home loans to buyers with virtually no credit?

Click here to read the full story.

Climate change threatens Florida's drinking water supply

If climatologists are right, Florida's future could be a thirsty one: Climate change, blamed for eating away at Florida's coastline, is also quietly encroaching on the state's drinking water.

Much of the damage to Florida's water supply will take place out of sight, in the underground aquifers that provide most of the state's drinking water. As rising seas nibble at the state's coastline, saltwater intrusion will also creep steadily inland.

"We used to assume that we could use the past records to predict the future," said Mark Stewart, a professor at the University of South Florida. "Now, we just don't know."

To cope with uncertain freshwater supplies, the state has turned to expensive reservoirs and energy-intensive desalination plants, and plans to build even more. Florida could turn to schemes that seem unthinkable today, like pumping wastewater into aquifers that supply our drinking water.

...Florida's climate has already begun to change. Sea levels have started to rise. Saltwater fish are swimming farther upstream, while saltwater mangroves invade freshwater marshes. Rainfall has become less predictable. Rivers and reservoirs are at near-historic lows.

Click here to read the full story.

by Jim Petrone, Hometown News, October 24, 2008

Lagoon worth $3.7B to Sunshine State

New study looks at the value estuary brings to region

The one-year, $112,000 effort examined benefits of the 156-mile-long estuary that spans Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties.

Officials hope to use the new figures for the estuary to leverage future government money for more projects to restore its habitats -- and preserve it as economic driver.

"I think the Indian River Lagoon is a tremendous draw," said Ron Pritchard of Merritt Island, a former Brevard County commissioner and a key advocate on boating issues. "It's one of the reasons I moved here."

Specifically, the study said activities dependent on the lagoon generated $630 million in income to local residents in the five counties, $112 million in state and local tax revenues, and 15,000 full- and part-time jobs.

The total economic value in Brevard topped $1.2 billion, including about $100 million in income to residents and 3,112 full- and part-time jobs.

An acre of seagrass -- the main money machine when it comes to supporting fish, crabs and other lagoon life -- is worth about $4,600 per year in the recreational and commercial fishing it supports, the study says.

Click here to read the full story.

New wave of Baby Boomers ready to descend on Florida

The Sunshine State is about to boom with Boomers.

Between 2010 and 2030, Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are expected to descend on Florida in even larger numbers and will increase their standing as the state's largest age group. The reason: They are nearing retirement age, the state's housing prices have become more affordable and Florida's tropical climate remains a draw.

Click here to read the full story.

State targets Indian River Lagoon for clean-up

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY - State environmental officials have targeted the Indian River Lagoon for the final year of a five-year restoration program.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, each state in the nation must identify ailing rivers, lakes and estuaries for clean-up. Pollution limits, called total maximum daily loads, are then developed for each damaged waterway.

A total maximum daily load is the maximum amount of a specific pollutant a body of water can absorb and still meet its designated uses, such as fishing, swimming, shellfish harvesting or as a source of drinking water.

Click here to read the full story. Scroll down this web page to the story entitled above.

Florida Identifies 272 Impaired Waterbodies for Cleanup

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, December 21, 2007 (ENS) - The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, DEP, has identified five groups of waterbodies that are impaired and in need of water monitoring, cleanup and restoration.

In the latest round of evaluating impairments in the surface waters of Florida, DEP Deputy Secretary Mimi Drew signed a final order on December 12 targeting 272 impaired waters for cleanup in the Everglades, Indian River Lagoon, Perdido, Springs Coast and Upper East Coast Basins.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, each state must identify impaired rivers, lakes and estuaries for cleanup.

Pollution limits, called total maximum daily loads, TMDLs, are then developed for each impaired waterway. A TMDL is the maximum amount of a specific pollutant a waterbody can absorb and still meet its designated uses, such as fishing, swimming, shellfish harvesting or as a source of drinking water.

Click here to read the full story.

Editorial: Orlando gulps, Florida swoons

Cities’ big water grab on the St. Johns River exposes problems throughout Sunshine State

The South Florida Water Management District announced new, water-saving initiatives last week. It’s hard to argue against them. Water is a precious resource and conservation is a good thing.

But Florida’s water problem goes much, much deeper than these marginal measures will ever reach. Real or anticipated shortages are not due to folks who let the faucet run while brushing their teeth. It’s not even because Mother Nature has delivered a drought to the Southeast.

The problem is that Florida’s unsustainable growth has tapped out more surface supplies and is steadily draining the ages-old Floridan Aquifer.

While SFWMD dispatches the sprinkler cops, water managers ignore the 800-pound gorilla at the northern end of their region. There, Orlando and its neighboring cities want to take 250 million gallons a day from the St. Johns River.

Orlando & Co. are desperate. Regional basins are drying up and officials know their 500 million gallons-a-day fix from the Floridan Aquifer won’t last. Water quality is dropping as salt intrusion threatens to increase.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Climate change may cost Florida $345 billion a year: study

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - If nothing is done to combat global warming, two of Florida's nuclear power plants, three of its prisons and 1,362 hotels, motels and inns will be under water by 2100, a study released on Wednesday said.

In all, Florida could stand to lose $345 billion a year in projected economic activity by 2100 if nothing is done to reduce emissions that are viewed as the main human contribution to rising global temperatures, according to the Tufts University study.

That equals about 5 percent of what economists project the state's gross domestic product will be by the end of the century.

"The status quo, the climate that we have right now, is not an available option unless we act immediately," said Frank Ackerman, a professor at Tufts' Global Development and Environmental Institute and co-author of the study.

"Doing something may seem expensive, but doing nothing will be more expensive."

Click here to read the full story.

For sale: One state, everything must go

Wipe out 2,000 acres of wetlands in the Florida Panhandle to build an airport?

Sure. We have to do it.

Otherwise, developers might miss a spot of the state. And we can't have that.

Here's what was striking about last week's approval of a $330-million airport northwest of Panama City:

It felt like the year was around 1965, and a bunch of guys in horned-rimmed glasses were bragging about how they were going to Put Florida on the Map.

Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, hailed the airport's approval because, he said, it will "attract new businesses and jobs to grow and diversify the local economy."

(Then Crist went out and appointed a couple more gator rasslers to the Florida Fish, Wildlife and Manatee-Eatin' Commission.)

Realtors predicted the airport would be just the thing for jump-starting the Panhandle's real estate market.

"Once they start turning dirt," one declared, "we'll see things really rapidly escalate."

Click here to read the full editorial.

Area looks at growth

Central Florida officals ponder sprawl trend

Take a drive across Brevard County and Central Florida. Do you like what you see?

That was the crux of a regional planning meeting Friday for a seven-county area of Central Florida, including Brevard.

The event was aimed at getting leaders in 86 represented communities to support the idea of changing the current trend of suburban sprawl development -- the theme of a campaign titled "How Shall We Grow?"

The meeting was impressive in that it drew about 600 officials and other community representatives from across the region, indicating a desire to move away from the continued development of strip shopping malls and cookie-cutter housing subdivisions, organizers said.

"We've got to be more creative about how we get things done in this region," said Shelley Lauten, director of myregion.org, a campaign that originated at the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Click here to read the full story.

Is Everyone Seeing Green?

The word “green” no longer just describes a color but has come to represent an energy efficient way of life. Apparently the times are a changin’ – more and more people are making their homes green and now the first green-certified Habitat for Humanity (HFH) home in the state is in Indian River County. Indian River County HFH built the house, sponsored by WCI – a leading builder of communities in Florida, with green certification as a requirement. It was a success according to Jennifer Languell, vice president of the Florida Green Building Coalition (FGBC), which officially certified the house under the FGBC Green Home program. Now Indian River County HFH is considering which green features they will adopt as standard practice. Languell, speaking to TC Palm News said, “This just shows that affordable housing can be green. That’s a contrast from the usual impression that pro-environment modifications are reserved for high-end housing.”

Click here to read the full story.

Officials play the market, and Treasure Coast pays

"Let the market work." This capitalistic creed works most of the time.

But when Adam Smith's hidden hand motions in the wrong direction, people get slapped.

Take the Treasure Coast housing market. Flush with cash, investors and speculators sent our real-estate prices soaring in the first half of this decade. Then, almost as quickly, the bottom dropped out.

Market watchers are still looking for the basement, but prices keep tumbling.

"Buyers will come back only when they see blood in the streets," predicts Alan Hunter, an analyst for MetroStudy, which tracks the Florida housing market.

Click here to read the full editorial.

State makes impact in step to protect gopher tortoise

When developers' bulldozers move in, Florida wildlife usually moves on, finding other places to live.

An exception — with a potentially big impact beginning today — is the state-protected gopher tortoise. When threatened, they retreat into their underground burrows.

And from now on, the state is no longer accepting new applications for permits for burying tortoises during construction. The change affects everything from large housing developments to single home lots, said Greg Holder, a regional director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

However some tortoises can continue to be buried under previously approved state permits.

Conservation groups pushed for ending a state policy that gave land owners an option: moving tortoises — at a cost of about $2,000 each — or burying them, in exchange for paying the state money for buying conservation lands. Through the years, developers have contributed $33 million the state used in buying 9,700 acres, at 11 sites in Florida, for protecting gopher tortoises.

Now all tortoises have to be moved, state officials say.

Click here to read the full story.

Couple find it's easy building 'green'

Envirohome energy efficient

Black mold inspired a green passion in Mark Baker and his wife, Nonnie Chrystal.

Their vision began with a microburst from Hurricane Frances that tore off the roof from Baker's mother's Indialantic home.

The storm provided fertile ground for mold -- and an opportunity for Baker and Chrystal.

Baker had the know-how. Chrystal, the idea.

They're building Florida's Showcase Envirohome on the footprint of the original 1967 house Baker's mother bought in 1970 for about $27,750.

By January, the couple -- and Baker's mother, Betty Baker Farley, 74 -- plan to move into what they hope will be among the most energy efficient homes in Florida, America, maybe even the world.

Click here to read the full story.

Homeowners use water-wise plants

Xeriscaping can reduce need to irrigate yards

Landscape adaptation. Xeriscaping primarily focuses on selecting plants that easily thrive in the conditions in which they are planted. The concept is appealing to environmentalists, as well as gardeners, who can save lots of money and time by not struggling to keep plants alive that are not suited to the area.

How to get started

Hank Largin, spokesman for the St. Johns River Water Management District, suggests the following steps to get started in xeriscaping your home:

1. Obtain a soil analysis from a source such as the county extension services office. The analysis will tell you which plants are best suited for your backyard.
2. Choose proper plants.
3. Use turf wisely. Grass is the biggest water-guzzler.
4. Irrigate efficiently. Hydrozone, or place plants that need the same amount of water close together.
5. Use mulches to hold moisture in the soil. 6. Perform proper maintenance.

While her neighbors fret over watering their yards, Vicki Williams sits back and enjoys the view from her West Melbourne home.

About a decade ago, Williams began swapping her landscape plantings from water-guzzling to water-wise.

"I replaced my tropicals with some hardy native plants," Williams said. "They're doing very well, as predicted. I don't have to mess with them, even to this day."

Click here to read the full story.

It's really smart growth

Development plan would not harm environment

Recently FLORIDA TODAY published an editorial headlined "Say no to density" regarding the comprehensive plan amendment related to approximately 1,600 acres of land on the south side of Micco Road, east of Interstate 95.

As the city manager of Palm Bay, I think it is important to discuss the facts of this proposal versus the emotion-based myths that have been propagated.

Click here to read the full guest editorial.

Editorial: Annexing problems

"We'd be insane not to accept the annexations, and any other city would do the same," Cheryl Hampton told the Press Journal with regard to a proposal to quintuple the size of Fellsmere by adding 18,000 acres.

The City Council member is wrong: Not every city would do the same. Take Sebastian — the No. 1 reason why the Fellsmere council tonight should reject the annexations. Voters there realized that compact cities are more economical to serve. Rejecting future annexation, they chose quality over quantity.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Editorial: Fellsmere leads county in wrong direction

Fellsmere City Manager Jason Nunemaker says he "wouldn't have a problem" with Sebastian expanding north to Roseland Road, south to County Road 510 and west to 101st Avenue.

That's mighty big of him, considering that his little city is steaming full-speed ahead on its own 18,000-acre annexation, with approval expected as early as next month. Thousands more acres are on the drawing board.

If these are the fruits of "interlocal agreements," county residents will surely rue the day that urban-boundary referendums and charter government died.

Instead of a countywide conversation, the chatter among cities sounds increasingly territorial and provincial. Rather than looking at the whole, municipal officials appear more focused on extending their spheres of influence before someone else does.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Overcrowding? Nature will fix that

In the absence of a sane growth-management policy, nature is becoming the great equalizer in Florida.

A 17-month drought has made a puddle of Lake Okeechobee and has parched the Biscayne Aquifer. Parts of the Everglades are drying up, while advancing seawater endangers the well fields that serve hundreds of thousands of residents in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Water managers warn that, unless consumption is drastically reduced, the taps could run dry -- or, at the least, start spitting salt -- in several coastal communities. Forget about watering your lawn; you won't be able to water your kids.

The emergency is so dire that even a busy hurricane season may not make it go away. Florida, one of the wettest states in the country, is running dry.

Drought cycles here are nothing new, but this is the first one to occur with 18 million people encamped on the peninsula. They might cut back on sprinkling their geraniums, but they won't stop taking showers or washing their laundry.

Not many politicians are brave enough to cite overpopulation as a cause of the current crisis, though it is. There are too many people using too much water, but it's easier to blame the weather.

Click here to read the full opinion article.

Our quality of life: Is bigger really better?

What happens when you let an economist define your "quality of life"? You buy into a pyramid scheme of land speculation, environmental degradation and an even higher cost of living.

Palm City-based consultant Bill Fruth would disagree, of course. He calls his prescription for jobs, population, wages and economic development — which he peddled in Vero Beach last week — the key to building a healthy community.

But this "growth" tonic in nothing new, and its side effects are well known to Floridians: more houses, more sprawl, more traffic, more crowding, more crime, more government and more low-paying jobs.

Fortunately, some economists have gotten wise to the growth game that's played under the guise of "economic development."

Click here to read the full editorial.

Activist says Indian River County gave road contractor wrong plans

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Tim Glover, president of the Friends of the St. Sebastian River, isn't blaming the county's road contractors for clearing the wrong property in October on County Road 512, burying at least one gopher tortoise, breaking the cap off an artesian well and letting the water carry silt into the St. Sebastian River.

Rather, he said Tuesday, crews with J.W. Cheatham Co., of West Palm Beach, got the wrong set of plans from the county.

"As far as I know, the contractor is fine," Glover said. "The problem seems to be the county provided the wrong information. ... This is a real can of worms."

Click here to read the full story.

Palm Bay feels its way through growing pains

Increased values, habitat loss follow annexations

PALM BAY - Imagine Melbourne being annexed into Palm Bay.

In just two years, Palm Bay has voluntarily annexed unincorporated land the size of its neighbor to the north.

Motivated by a desire to shape its own future, the city has annexed -- or is in the process of annexing -- 24,210 acres, or nearly 38 square miles, bringing it to more than 100 square miles.

The undeveloped land is a boon to the city, officials believe, bringing construction work and impact and city fees, adding to the tax base, and generating the impetus for providing needed drainage, sewer and water lines to the outskirts of the city.

Click here to read the full story.

Just too many people

"Balancing Land Use and Preservation," an otherwise informative recent panel discussion in Vero Beach, failed to answer one crucial question: "If growth drives our environmental challenges, aren't all the 'solutions' merely tinkering around the margins if they don't squarely address the population issue?"

The presenters, who, collectively, have authored dozens of books on planning and the environment, offered many informative and entertaining anecdotes about Florida.

Bill Belleville noted the 100,000 exceptions made to "growth management plans" around the state.

Jeff Klinkenberg reported that 84,000 acres of wetlands have been lost since 1990. That's the equivalent of eight Jonathan Dickinson State Parks.

Click here to read the full editorial.

by Jim Petrone, Hometown News, April 7, 2006

Vanishing Wetlands

"Florida has more wetlands than any other state but Alaska. They stop floods, clean up water pollution, and replenish drinking supplies. Yet despite government promises, they are disappearing."

This is a Special Report series of articles by the St. Pete Times that also includes multimedia graphics and photo galleries with some wonderful images. Click here to view their Web page with links to all the stories.

Our Coastal Watershed

What's (sic) is a Coastal Watershed?

"A watershed is a geographic area in which all sources of water including the rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands as well as ground water, drain into a common surface water body. Because all watersheds are defined bu natural hydrology and ultimately drain to coastal waters, they are a good focal point for managing coastal resources. In Sebastian the watershed drains into the Indian River Lagoon, a distinctive estuary that extends from Volusia county to our south. This estuary provides a unique habitat for a diverse group of organisms. It is the breeding and feeding grounds for a variety of aquatic and terrestrial animals."

What are some of the Impacts on our Coastal Watershed?

"Loose soil from construction sites, farms, and other areas where dirt is exposed can wash off into the streams and rivers when it rains and flow to our estuary. The result is muddy waters which leave deposits in the Lagoon that smother the organisms living on the bottom, decrease the amount of sunlight reaching the sea grass beds, and clog fish gills. Some types of pollutants can bind to the sediment and flow with it to the coastal waters."

"Excess nutrients and pesticides can also wash off the land when it rains and end up in the coastal waters. Sources of excess nutrients include lawn and garden fertilizers and pesticides, pet and farm animal waste, decaying plant material, and failing septic tanks. The loss of wetlands in many watersheds has reduced the ability of nature to process these nutrients before they enter rivers, streams, and ultimately estuaries."

"Toxic substances such as lead, oils, antifreeze, brake linings and greases deposited on the roads from cars, trucks and buses, can all run off the streets and land with the rainfall. Commercial and industrial sites can also contribute to the amount of toxic substances entering the coastal waters."

What can I do to help protect our watershed, you ask?

"You can do several things to help protect our beautiful Indian River Lagoon."

• "Start in your back yard through sensible lawn care, and resource conservation. Use pesticides and lawn fertilizers sparingly and correctly. Composite (sic) organic waster."
• "Practice good housekeeping by properly disposing of toxic substances like paint and paint thinners, automotive fluids and cleaning products. Take your toxic wastes to the Indian River County Recycling centers. Many of the local automotive stores collect and recycle automotive wastes."
• "When walking your dog remember to pick p the waste and dispose of it properly. Co not leave it on the ground where it will increase the public health risks by allowing harmful bacteria and nutrient (sic) to wash into the storm system. Flush it to your septic system."
• "Properly maintain your boat, use pump out facilities, and operate your boat in a responsible manner to avoid shoreline erosion."
• "Pick up litter when you see it and properly dispose of your own trash."
• "Take your car to a car wash where the water is cleaned and recycled or wash your car over your lawn where the nutrient rich soapy water is good fertilizer but can lead to algae blooms in canals stream and the Indian River Lagoon."

"It is our duty as responsible citizens to start at home and do everything possible to protect our great natural resources, especially the Indian River Lagoon, a special waterbody that provides us with all types of wildlife, recreation and enjoyment."

Sebastian's Stormwater Utility and you, working together to improve water quality and protect your property!

What's the Problem with Stormwater?

The first and most obvious issue is flooding. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, one inch of rain falling on one square mile of land equates to 17,378,560 gallons of water.

Our environmental concern is the pollution all of this water picks up as it rushes into storm drains and heads to the receiving water body. In Sebastian, the runoff water goes to the Sebastian River (sic) and the Indian River Lagoon where the pollutants are deposited. In fact, stormwater runoff is the number one pollution problem in the Indian River lagoon (sic) and in other waterways across the country. When it rains, the water carries with it dirt, discarded trash, nutrient rich fertilizers, grass clippings left on the curbside, pet waste, insecticides, motor oils, brake dust, tire fragments, and toxic chemicals, from the road. The good news is that corrective action can be taken. The City of Sebastian and Sebastian Stormwater Utility is taking strong action to fight the problems of stormwater pollution, measures that will also help alleviate potential flooding problems. There are also many things residents can do to fight the problem and keep our waterways clean and safe so we can enjoy sailing, motor boating, fishing, kayaking, jet skiing, swimming, and nature watching.

What can I do?

Sweep up leaves or grass clippings that accumulate on your driveway, sidewalk or in the street. If you are using a blower, blow them back into your yard, never into a storm drain or swale.

• Pick up pet waste and dispose of it by flushing it down the toilet or by burial.
• Redirect roof down spouts from paved areas to grassy areas.
• Wash your car on the lawn rather then on the driveway. The nutrient-rich soapy water is good fertilizer for the grass but can lead to algae blooms if it enters the Indian River Lagoon system.
• Plant native landscaping and reduce your amount of sodded areas. Native plants require less irrigation, maintenance, fertilizers and pesticides.
• Dispose of used motor oil, paint and other household hazardous waste at a designated collection center.
  
  (The IRC Collection Convenience Center for the disposal of hazardous materials is located at 7860 130th Street, Roseland and is open daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Tuesday and Wednesday. For additional information call Solid Waste Disposal District at 770-5112.)



• Never throw trash or cigarette butts out the window where they can enter the stormwater system.
• Don't overuse fertilizers. The nutrients released into the water can cause algae bloom.
• Never fertilize before rain is expected.
• Use pesticides sparingly and only on problem areas.

Click here to access the full report.

"In the Trenches"

Dexter Lehtinen is resourceful and willing to make enemies in his crusade to restore the Everglades. An Everglades-related lawsuit with ‘huge national ramifications’ is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"In 1988, Dexter Lehtinen decided he had to save the Everglades and gave himself the power to do it. Ronald Reagan recently had named him U.S. Attorney in Miami, where the government’s top lawyer usually spends a lot of time prosecuting drug lords. Lehtinen took a more expansive view. He wanted to sue the state of Florida over the Everglades."

"'He was the guy who brought the lawsuit that started the whole movement toward Everglades restoration,' says Charles Lee, Florida Audubon Society lobbyist."

"A resourceful man unafraid to play his hand to the limit — and willing to make enemies — Lehtinen and his destiny have been entwined with the River of Grass since his birth in Homestead in 1946, the year before Harry S. Truman dedicated Everglades National Park."

Click here to read the full story. You will need to "register" to read the online copy of this story. Registration is free and Florida Trend will not send any unsolicited emails to you. You just need to create a user account to access their free online archives.

Latest Dirty Water Bill

Republicans just won’t give up on their misguided attempts to subvert the Clean Water Act. Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and Dean Heller of Nevada plan to offer a rider denying protections to one-fifth of the nation’s wetlands and as many as two million miles of small streams. The House has approved a similarly destructive measure, so it is crucial that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and his Democratic colleagues block this legislation.

The 1972 act was designed to protect “all the waters of the United States.” It required any commercial developer who wanted to dredge or fill a water body to obtain a federal permit; the purpose was to prevent destructive projects and mitigate the damage of those allowed to proceed. Over the years, muddled Supreme Court decisions, plus directives from the George W. Bush administration, created great uncertainty about which waters were regulated. The result was to limit protections to navigable waterways while removing them from small streams and wetlands that are no less critical to the health of the nation’s drinking water and aquatic ecosystems.

In April, the Obama administration proposed new guidelines restoring inclusive protections and promised to codify them in permanent regulations. This infuriated home builders and anyone else with an interest in filling in streams and wetlands. The House then voted to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers from carrying out the new guidance. The Senate bill would permanently prevent action to clarify the law. As always, the legislators driving these campaigns say their goal is to remove regulatory barriers to job creation. But the real issue is whether the country gets the clean water it wants and needs.

Click here to acccess this editorial online.

Another Dirty Water Act

Republicans in the House of Representatives — with the support of some key Democrats — seem determined to destroy the intricate and essential web of laws and regulations protecting the country’s environment. Their latest target is the hugely successful 1972 Clean Water Act.

On Wednesday, the House approved the cynically named “Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act,” a bill that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to oversee state water quality standards and to take action when the states fail to measure up. This bill is not about protecting states’ powers. It is about allowing industries, farmers and municipalities to pollute.

Among its chief sponsors are John Mica, Republican of Florida, who is angry at the E.P.A.’s recent crackdown on the agricultural pollutants that are destroying the Everglades, and Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia, who is furious at the agency’s effort to stop mountaintop mining from poisoning his state’s rivers and streams.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Trash Inc - The Secfet Life of Garbage

Garbage. It's everywhere — even in the middle of the oceans — and it's pure gold for companies like Waste Management and Republic Services who dominate this $52 billion-a-year industry. From curbside collection by trucks costing $250,000 each, to per-ton tipping fees at landfills, there's money to be made at every point as more than half of the 250 million tons of trash created in the United States each year reaches its final resting place.

At a cost of $1 million per acre to construct, operate and ultimately close in an environmentally feasible method, modern landfills are technological marvels — a far cry from the town dump that still resonates in most people's perceptions. Not only do they make money for their owners, they add millions to the economic wellbeing of the towns that house them. Technologies, such as Landfill Natural Gas and Waste To Energy, are giving garbage a second life, turning trash into power sources and helping to solve mounting problems.

Across the world, we’re producing more trash than ever before…nearly a ton per year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. Nearly half of it winds up in landfills....

For more information about the program and to view video segments and slideshows from the program, please visit their website.

New Report Warns of Expanding Threat of Hypoxia in U. S. Coastal Waters

Declining oxygen levels in Nation's waters forming dead zones, destroying habitats

A report issued today by key environmental and scientific federal agencies assesses the increasing prevalence of low-oxygen “dead zones” in U.S. coastal waters and outlines a series of research and policy steps that could help reverse the decades-long trend.

The interagency report notes that incidents of hypoxia—a condition in which oxygen levels drop so low that fish and other animals are stressed or killed--–have increased nearly 30-fold since 1960. Incidents of hypoxia were documented in nearly 50 percent of the 647 waterways assessed for the new report, including the Gulf of Mexico, home to one of the largest such zones in the world.

To read more about, and download a copy of the full report, please visit the NOAA website.

EPA' Budget Proposal Seeks Efficiencies, Increased Environmental Protection

Budget proposal aligned with Administrator Jackson’s key priorities

WASHINGTON - The Obama Administration today proposed a budget of $10 billion for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This budget heeds the president’s call to streamline and find efficiencies in the agency’s operations while supporting the seven priority areas EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson outlined to guide EPA’s work.

“To meet our environmental challenges and ensure fiscal responsibility, we’re proposing targeted investments in core priorities. This budget cuts spending while promoting clean air, land and water, growing the green economy and strengthening enforcement,” said Administrator Jackson. ”The president’s budget is focused on creating the conditions that help American families, communities and small businesses thrive. Clean air, clear water and green jobs are rebuilding the foundations for prosperity in communities across the country.”

Click here to read the full story and highlights of the EPA budget proposal.

Study Reveals Mercury Contamination in Fish Nationwide

Scientists detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in 291 streams across the country. About a quarter of these fish were found to contain mercury at levels exceeding the criterion for the protection of people who consume average amounts of fish. More than two-thirds of the fish exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency level of concern for fish-eating mammals. Some of the highest levels of mercury in fish were found in the tea- colored or "blackwater" streams in Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana - areas associated with relatively undeveloped forested watersheds containing abundant wetlands compared to the rest of the country. High levels of mercury in fish also were found in relatively undeveloped watersheds in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest.

For more information, please visit the National Water-Quality Assessment Program website.

Also see U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Listing of Fish Advisories www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/advisories/.

Natural Connections - Harness the healing power of time spent outdoors

Though it happened more than 40 years ago, Dan Shelton remembers it like it was yesterday. "My family had just moved to rural Illinois, and I was standing on a riverbank, looking at a field and some woods," he recalls. He was only 6 years old, and life at home was tumultuous. Yet Shelton says that while standing there, alone with the trees and grass, he had an emotionally healing experience. "I felt so peaceful," he says. "I remember deeply feeling that somehow I was meant to be there."

For Shelton, frequent contact with nature played a key role in his emotional and spiritual health until the late 1980s, when he moved to Chicago. "It was my first time living in the big city," he says. Without easy access to the natural world he loved, he slipped into depression. "I didn't experience any relief until I moved back to South Carolina nine months later."

Since then Shelton has made it his mission to help others get back to nature via workshops he conducts. Shelton is just one of many involved in the emerging field of ecotherapy¿the practice of promoting mental and physical well-being by deepening one's relationship with the natural environment. Like Shelton, "many people have some of the deepest experiences they've ever had through the natural world," says Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, a psychotherapist and founder of the International Association for Ecotherapy. Yet today many folks are more disconnected from nature than ever. "People are realizing that something has gone profoundly wrong in the human/nature relationship," she says.

Click here to read the full story.

The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required

Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. On another, the Douglas fir. Another, the oyster mushroom. If you owned the Book of All Species, you would need quite a bookshelf to hold it. Just to cover the 1.8 million known species, the book would have to be more than 300 feet long. And you’d have to be ready to expand the bookshelf strikingly, because scientists estimate there are 10 times more species waiting to be discovered.

It sounds surreal, and yet scientists are writing the Book of All Species. Or to be more precise, they are building a Web site called the Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org). On Thursday its authors, an international team of scientists, will introduce the first 30,000 pages, and within a decade, they predict, they will have the other 1.77 million.

While many of those pages may be sparse at first, the authors hope that the world’s scientific community will pool all of its knowledge on the pages. Unlike a page of paper, a page of the Encyclopedia of Life can hold as much information as scientists can upload. “It’s going to have everything known on it, and everything new is going to be added as we go along,” said Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist who spearheaded the Encyclopedia of Life and now serves as its honorary chairman.

Click here to read the full story.

Buying Into the Green Movement

HERE’S one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.

Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight— careful to buy carbon offsets beforehand — and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an eco-resort in the Maldives.

That vision of an eco-sensitive life as a series of choices about what to buy appeals to millions of consumers and arguably defines the current environmental movement as equal parts concern for the earth and for making a stylish statement.

...It’s as though the millions of people whom environmentalists have successfully prodded to be concerned about climate change are experiencing a SnackWell’s moment: confronted with a box of fat-free devil’s food chocolate cookies, which seem deliciously guilt-free, they consume the entire box, avoiding any fats but loading up on calories.

Click here to read the full story.

The Power of Green

One day Iraq, our post-9/11 trauma and the divisiveness of the Bush years will all be behind us — and America will need, and want, to get its groove back. We will need to find a way to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration. I have an idea how. It’s called “green.”

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. One thing that always struck me about the term “green” was the degree to which, for so many years, it was defined by its opponents — by the people who wanted to disparage it. And they defined it as “liberal,” “tree-hugging,” “sissy,” “girlie-man,” “unpatriotic,” “vaguely French.”

Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.

How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states — not an America divided between red and blue states.

Because a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward. That’s why I say: We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

... Bush won’t lead a Green New Deal, but his successor must if America is going to maintain its leadership and living standard. Unfortunately, today’s presidential hopefuls are largely full of hot air on the climate-energy issue. Not one of them is proposing anything hard, like a carbon or gasoline tax, and if you think we can deal with these huge problems without asking the American people to do anything hard, you’re a fool or a fraud.

Being serious starts with reframing the whole issue — helping Americans understand, as the Carnegie Fellow David Rothkopf puts it, “that we’re not ‘post-Cold War’ anymore — we’re pre-something totally new.” I’d say we’re in the “pre-climate war era.” Unless we create a more carbon-free world, we will not preserve the free world. Intensifying climate change, energy wars and petroauthoritarianism will curtail our life choices and our children’s opportunities every bit as much as Communism once did for half the planet.

Equally important, presidential candidates need to help Americans understand that green is not about cutting back. It’s about creating a new cornucopia of abundance for the next generation by inventing a whole new industry. It’s about getting our best brains out of hedge funds and into innovations that will not only give us the clean-power industrial assets to preserve our American dream but also give us the technologies that billions of others need to realize their own dreams without destroying the planet. It’s about making America safer by breaking our addiction to a fuel that is powering regimes deeply hostile to our values. And, finally, it’s about making America the global environmental leader, instead of laggard, which as Schwarzenegger argues would “create a very powerful side product.” Those who dislike America because of Iraq, he explained, would at least be able to say, “Well, I don’t like them for the war, but I do like them because they show such unbelievable leadership — not just with their blue jeans and hamburgers but with the environment. People will love us for that. That’s not existing right now.”

... Am I optimistic? I want to be. But I am also old-fashioned. I don’t believe the world will effectively address the climate-energy challenge without America, its president, its government, its industry, its markets and its people all leading the parade. Green has to become part of America’s DNA. We’re getting there. Green has hit Main Street — it’s now more than a hobby — but it’s still less than a new way of life.

Why? Because big transformations — women’s suffrage, for instance — usually happen when a lot of aggrieved people take to the streets, the politicians react and laws get changed. But the climate-energy debate is more muted and slow-moving. Why? Because the people who will be most harmed by the climate-energy crisis haven’t been born yet.

... An unusual situation like this calls for the ethic of stewardship. Stewardship is what parents do for their kids: think about the long term, so they can have a better future. It is much easier to get families to do that than whole societies, but that is our challenge. In many ways, our parents rose to such a challenge in World War II — when an entire generation mobilized to preserve our way of life. That is why they were called the Greatest Generation. Our kids will only call us the Greatest Generation if we rise to our challenge and become the Greenest Generation.

Click here to read the full story.

Crossing the Divide - Evangelists and Environmentalists Join Forces

All Things Considered, January 21, 2007 · A group of leading scientists and evangelicals have chosen to put aside their differences on how the world came to be and join forces to protect its future. They've formed a coalition and are lobbying Capitol Hill on environmental issues.

Richard Cizik is the vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He believes God made the world in matter of days. Eric Chivian is a biochemist from Harvard University who maintains that man evolved from matter over billions of years.

Chivian says that, before meeting each other, Cizik may have thought of him and other scientists as "latte-sipping, Prius-driving, endive-munching, New York Times-reading snobs. And we might have seen them as Hummer-driving, bible-thumping, fire-breathing…"

"…snake-handling fundamentalists," Cizik finishes.

Unlikely allies? Perhaps. But that's exactly what they've become in their mutual quest to fight global warming. The two men have launched what they're calling a dialog between leading figures in science and religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. They're not pushing any specific legislation, but they're trying to raise the public profile of environmental issues.

Click here to read the full story and a link to listen to the entire broadcast online.

And the Color of the Year Is ...

I know that you should never generalize about global warming from your own weather, but as a longtime resident of Washington, D.C., it's hard not to, considering that it's been so balmy this winter season I'm half expecting the cherry blossoms to come out for Christmas. In fact, my wife was rummaging through her closet the other day and emerged to tell me she needed a whole new wardrobe — "a global warming wardrobe," clothes that are summer weight but winter colors.

For this, and other reasons, had I been editing Time magazine I would not have opted for the "you" in YouTube as Person of the Year — although that was very clever. No, I'd have run an all-green Time cover under the headline, "Color of the Year." Because I think that the most important thing to happen this past year was that living and thinking "green" — that is, mobilizing for the environmental/energy challenge we now face — hit Main Street.

For so many years the term "green" could never scale. It was trapped in a corner by its opponents, who defined it as "liberal," "tree-hugging," "girly-man," "unpatriotic," "vaguely French."

No more. We reached a tipping point this year — where living, acting, designing, investing and manufacturing green came to be understood by a critical mass of citizens, entrepreneurs and officials as the most patriotic, capitalistic, geopolitical, healthy and competitive thing they could do. Hence my own motto: "Green is the new red, white and blue."

Click here to read the full editorial.

The Energy Fix

10 Steps To End America’s Fossil-Fuel Addiction

First, the good news: America is poised for an energy renaissance. We already have the technology to begin seriously shifting away from fossil fuels toward clean, renewable power that can give us all the energy we crave while weaning us off foreign oil.

You know the bad news. The U.S. consumes a quarter of the planet’s daily output of 84 million barrels of oil, up to a third of that imported from unstable corners of the world. Meanwhile, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing permafrost to melt, ice shelves to collapse—and climatologists to warn that if emissions continue at their current rate, the next generation will be subject to unprecedented environmental devastation....

The major roadblocks to this new energy era are no longer technological; they are political and bureaucratic. If we can overcome them, the payoffs are huge: We’ll reduce trade deficits, enhance national security, and create millions of non-exportable jobs. We’ll ease an overwhelming array of environmental problems and make America far more competitive and self-sufficient in the process.

Click here to read the full story.

Climate Crisis

The Pro-Growth , Pro-Tech Fight to Stop Global Warming

The May issue of Wired magazine featured a series of articles on global warming, the efforts being made to counteract it and the opportunities that will be available to those who recognize and make the most of them.

This issue features such articles as "The Next Green Revolution" and "The Resurrection of Al Gore". Click here to access this issue.

Will We Run Dry?

In a country where limitless clean water is available at the turn of a tap, it's hard to believe that many parts of the world are at the losing end of a life-and-death struggle over water. Every year, drought and water-related diseases kill 5 million people around the globe, mainly children. Blessedly, that's not the case in the United States.

But policymakers and experts are warning that the U.S. also faces a water crisis. "If we wait another 10 years to get serious about meeting the demand for water, it will be too late," Rep. John Linder (R., Ga.) tells PARADE.

Click here to read the full story.

Nuclear Now - How Clean, Green Atomic Energy Can Stop Global Warming

"On a cool spring morning a quarter century ago, a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island exploded into the headlines and stopped the US nuclear power industry in its tracks. What had been billed as the clean, cheap, limitless energy source for a shining future was suddenly too hot to handle."

"In the years since, we've searched for alternatives, pouring billions of dollars into windmills, solar panels, and biofuels. We've designed fantastically efficient lightbulbs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. We've built enough gas-fired generators to bankrupt California. But mainly, each year we hack 400 million more tons of coal out of Earth's crust than we did a quarter century before, light it on fire, and shoot the proceeds into the atmosphere."

To read the full story (and it is worth reading!), click here.

There was a recent program on this topic on the "Living on Earth" radio show. Here are descriptions of the several segments of the program:

"Today, a special report on the once and future source of power, the atom. Einstein's theory of relativity proved that great forces could be unleashed if large atoms were split. But, even greater energies could be freed if small atoms could be fused together. Bruce Gellerman reports on the scientists who are trying to do just that."

"Bruce Gellerman continues his investigation into the future of fusion with a look at the latest research in the field of cold fusion, the science of creating a nuclear reaction at room temperature. Most scientists call sustained cold fusion reactions impossible, but others say their experiments are producing energy."

"A new kind of nuclear power plant is being developed in South Africa. Scientists say pebble bed technology is clean and safe, and will revolutionize the energy industry, especially for developing nations. But critics are concerned about the cost of the pebble bed reactors and about the lack of disposal plans for the radioactive waste."

Click here to listen to the whole radio program.

Introduction to the Clean Water Act

The Clean Water Act celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in October 2002. The EPA has produced a "slide show" to help the public understand the Act and how it is used. To view the slide show go the EPA's "Watershed Academy Web".

New Reports Assess the Condition of U.S. Coral Reefs, Outline Strategy to Reduce Threats

NOAA announces the availability of two new reports on coral reef ecosystems produced in cooperation with the United States Coral Reef Task Force and other partners.

The new report—the first-ever national look at the condition of U.S. coral reefs—points to pressures posing increasing risks to reefs, particularly in certain "hot spots" located near population centers.

A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.

Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.

Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.

Click here to read the full story.

Animals face extinction threat

Nearly one in five mammal, reptile, bird or amphibian species — from Tasmanian devils to whooping cranes — face extinction, international conservation experts reported Tuesday.

And without the nature reserves erected over the past half-century, more would be gone.

"Conservation is working, there is just not enough of it," says study author Ana Rodrigues of France's Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive. "Now is the time to scale up conservation."

The five-decade survey of the extinction status of 25,780 vertebrate species, roughly half of all backboned animals, was released by the journal Science. Led by Michael Hoffmann of the United Nations Environment Programme, the results find that almost one-fifth of those species are threatened with extinction (from 13% of birds to 41% of amphibians) — meaning either there are fewer than 50 individuals left, or the species' chances of extinction are 50% or greater within 10 years. The declines are mostly tied to expanding farmland, overlogging, overfishing and competition from invasive species.

Click here to read the full story.

Restoring mangroves in Indonesia

"A hidden culprit in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was degraded shorelines. Now Indonesia’s moving to protect its coasts by restoring thousands of miles of mangrove swamps. Ari Daniel Shapiro has the story."

Below is and excerpt of the transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. You may read the restt of the transcript or listen to the audio recording of the broadcast at the link below.

MARCO WERMAN: "I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. You see them growing in thickets and forests around tropical coasts. Their intertwined roots become visible when the tide is low. They’re called mangroves. They’re a crucial ecosystem and the trees protect the land from erosion but they are disappearing. Only in the past few years has there been a growing recognition of the importance of mangroves and renewed efforts to restore and preserve them. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro visited a mangrove restoration project in Indonesia."

Click here to access the full transcript and the link the audio reccording of this broadcast.

Oceans at Risk

There is no shortage of scientific studies documenting the degradation of the world’s oceans, the decline of marine ecosystems and the collapse of important fish species. Several have appeared in the last month. What is in short supply is a sustained effort by world governments and other institutions to do something about it.

Last month, a team of American, British and Canadian researchers concluded that not a single square foot of ocean had been left untouched by modern society, and that humans had fouled 41 percent of the seas with polluted runoff, overfishing and other abuses.

A narrower but no less scary study from Oregon State University found that a dead zone off the Oregon coast had spread south to California and north to Washington and devastated marine life in one of the world’s most productive fisheries. The culprit is believed to be global warming, which has changed the interaction between wind and sea in ways that rob the fish of oxygen.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Global warming unstoppable for centuries; scientists hoping for fast government action

PARIS: Global warming is so severe that it will "continue for centuries," leading to a far different planet in 100 years, warned a grim landmark report from the world's leading climate scientists and government officials. Yet, many of the experts are hopeful that nations will now take action to avoid the worst scenarios.

They tried to warn of dire risks without scaring people so much they would do nothing — inaction that would lead to the worst possible scenarios.

"It's not too late," said Australian scientist Nathaniel Bindoff, a co-author of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued Friday. The worst can be prevented by acting quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

The worst could mean more than 1 million dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in costs by 2100, and adapting to a warmer world with more extreme weather such as droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires, study co-author Kevin Trenberth said in an interview.

Click here to read the full story.

Footprint of Nations: World's Ecological Footprint Exceeds Biocapacity by Nearly 40%

The Ecological Footprint is a measure of the amount of nature it takes to sustain a given population over the course of a year. According to the new 2005 Footprint of Nations report, humanity’s footprint is 57 acres per person while the Earth’s biological capacity is just 41 acres per person. By comparing a population’s footprint with its biological capacity, Ecological Footprint analysis suggests whether or not that population is living within its ecological means. If a population’s footprint exceeds its biological capacity, that population is said to be engaging in unsustainable ecological overshoot.

Please visit the Redefining Progress website to learn more.

End of the Wild

The extinction crisis is over. We lost.

For the past several billion years evolution on Earth has been driven by small-scale incremental forces such as sexual selection, punctuated by cosmic-scale disruptions—plate tectonics, planetary geochemistry, global climate shifts, and even extraterrestrial asteroids. Sometime in the last century that changed. Today the guiding hand of evolution is unmistakably human, with earth-shattering consequences.

To read the full article, please click here.

Ecological Politics

UM's Larry Brand flouts the grant system, pays the price

On Saturday morning, December 1, 2001, Larry Brand parked his black Nissan pickup in the lot at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Brand's a professor there, hired as a phytoplankton ecologist in 1981....

On that Saturday, Brand was carrying water samples he'd gathered in Big Cypress Swamp and the Everglades. He expected to filter the samples, then freeze them in one of the half-dozen fridges he had. Brand collects water samples all over the Glades and Florida Bay, and measures them for things like nitrogen and phosphorus, the microscopic particles that make up fertilizers. This seemingly innocuous work had become a nuisance for some of the most powerful businessmen and politicians in the state of Florida -- as we shall see. But Brand wasn't too worried back then. He was concentrating -- as he always does -- on the work, in an almost monkish way. He isn't so much a religious man as an altruist. He had a duty to look for the truth in these particles, which can cause as many problems as they solve. And as a scientist, he saw the data leading him toward that truth.

But on that Saturday morning, it was hardly about the data, and when he opened the door to his lab, reality hit him like a 50-foot tsunami. Everything was gone: $100,000 worth of equipment, test tubes, beakers -- all his papers.

Click here to read the full story.

Horseshoe crab survey in Florida

The Florida Marine Research Institute has recently started a new horseshoe crab survey. The goal of this survey is to locate and document horseshoe crab nesting beaches around the state of Florida. To document these important nesting beaches around the state, they are relying on volunteers to report any observations that they have of horseshoe crab nesting activity. The FMRI is asking anyone to report information on the date of their observations, location of their observations, whether or not horseshoe crabs were mating, and estimates of the number of horseshoe crabs seen. They have set up a toll-free phone line (1-866-252-9326), an email address (horseshoe@myfwc.com), and an online survey (http://www.floridamarine.org/horseshoe_crab) for volunteers to use to report their observations. This project provides an excellent opportunity for the public to get involved with a scientific/conservation-oriented study.

You can also read more about horseshoe crabs, the results of the survey to date, and view photos at: http://research.myfwc.com/features/category_sub.asp?id=5080.

Florida's "Impaired Waters Rule" and TMDL's

We have been participating with the Southeastern Regional Office of the Clean Water Network (CWN), in a challenge of Florida's "Impaired Waters Rule" (IWR). This rule was designed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to comply with the requirements of the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) provisions of the Clean Water Act.

The CWN felt there were numerous problems with the IWR and coordinated with more than 50 organizations around the state (including the FSSR) to challenge this rule. The FL Department of Administrative Hearing's Officer ruled in favor of the FDEP. The ruling is being appealed and the participating organziations have also filed suit against the EPA for what we believe is their non-discretionary duty to either approve of or deny what amounts to Florida changing its water quality standards unilaterally.

If you are a current member, you can read some of the documentation of these proceedings in the "Library" section of the "Members Only" page of our website.

If you would like to read more about TMDLs and the process Florida is currently following to implement them, click here for lots more information.

The state of Florida is also in the process of developing a system of water pollution trading credits. This is similar to the free-market based system the EPA has used for years in air pollution regulation. Below is an editorial about the efforts being pursued by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). In addition, click here to read more information about the proposed DEP pollutant trading policy.

Cleaning Up

One of the most interesting and important bits of government policy-making these days is going on in a group called the Pollutant Trading Policy Advisory Committee (PTPAC). PTPAC’s job is to help the state Department of Environmental Protection create a system for trading “pollution credits” as part of cleaning up polluted waterways in Florida.

The committee is at the leading edge of the trend in Florida toward incorporating more free-market principles in environmental regulation. The thinking is that government should focus more on telling polluters how much to clean up and less on specifying exactly how they have to do it. Credits are supposed to provide the financial incentives to do the right thing.

Click here to read the full article.

St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park - Volunteers

Informational Graphics

Sport Fish of the Sebastian Inlet - Life Cycle

This image was produced by the Sportfish Research Institute, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida. To download the full-size version of the image, click here (1.4 MB).

Everglades Restoration

The following graphics are from an article in the Washington Post, June 23, 2002 on the components, projects and technologies being proposed for the restoration of the Florida Everglades.

Everglades Restoration Plan
Everglades Water Flow
Environmental Toll of Diverted Flow
Restoring the Kissimmee River
An Everglades Alternative
Lake Belt
Untested Technologies
Crowding out Panthers

Drinking Water Supply

The following graphics are from the Orlando Sentinel.

Drinking water sources...critical issues today
How rain refuels our drinking supply
Water useage per day

Sebastian Area Land Use and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation

Sebastian area 1995 land use, 1996 sea grasses
Sebastian area 1996 Submerged Aquatic Vegetation

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Growing Native

Growing Native is an email list devoted to the discussion of Florida native plants and their cultivation, propagation, and conservation. It is moderated by Rufino Osorio, author of "A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants." One may join the Growing Native email list by sending an email to growingnative-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Recycling CD's, Magnetic Tape and Cell Phones too!

Staples First Major Retailer to Accept E-waste

by Earth 911 Staff, May 21st, 2007

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. Staples, Inc., the world’s largest office products company, today announced that it now makes it easy to recycle used computers and other office technology at any Staples store nationwide, becoming the first national retailer to offer computer recycling in stores every day.

Staples makes it easy for customers to recycle e-waste by simply bringing their used computers, monitors, laptops, printers, faxes and all-in-ones to any U.S. Staples store, where the equipment will be recycled in accordance with environmental laws. All brands will be accepted, regardless of whether or not the equipment was purchased at Staples, for a fee of $10 per large item. Staples is working with Amandi Services, one of the country’s most experienced and innovative electronics recyclers, to handle recycling of the equipment, following standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

For more information, please click here or visit your local Staples store.

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We recently came across the GreenDisk company that recycles all those CD's that you receive in the mail, soliciting you to sign up for AOL or other Internet service. Actually they recycle a lot more too! They recycle any CD - computer or music and the cases they come in, computer diskettes, and just about any kind of magnetic tape - cassette, answering machine, Dictaphone, VCR, reel-to-reel, etc. CD's are ground up and magnetic items are "degaussed" to remove all information.

The Friends is collecting these items for recycling and have also arranged for the Keep Indian River Beautiful Reuse Exchange and the Vero Beach Computer Group to accept them too. We encourage you to recycle these items. To do so, please bring them to any of the meetings of the Friends or the computer club, or they can be dropped off at the Reuse Exchange office at 1255 Main Street (behind the old City Hall) in Sebastian (phone 388-2002). For more information, send us an email, visit the Keep Indian River Beautiful website, or check out the GreenDisk website at: http://www.greendisk.com.

If you are interested in the whole issue of problems created by through-away electronics, and especially computers and components, you may be interested in a recent article in the "Audubon" magazine - "Garbage In, Garbage Out - We are drowning in digital detritus".

Additionally there are other opportunities for recycling many types of items right here in Indian River County through the Reuse Exchange. They are located in the Indian River Mall on route 60 in Vero Beach. Please give them a call at 772-226-7738 for more information. They are open for drop-offs on Thursdays from 10am to 3pm.

You can also find out more about the Reuse Exchange center on the Keep Indian River Beautiful website.

It was projected that in 2004 there were 19 million people with unwanted cell phones. A growing environmental concern is how to keep those phones from reaching landfills.

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is encouraging Floridians to recycle old or unwanted cell phones. Recycling electronics helps protect the environment from heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, which can impact groundwater – the source of 90 percent of Florida’s drinking water.

There is a relatively new recycling program for cell phones in Indian River County. There are three locations where they can be dropped off. On the Mainland there is a recycling container at the "Guest Relations" at the Indian River Mall. On the barrier island, phones can be dropped off at Sandpiper Valet drycleaners on Cardinal Drive. And in Wabasso, the Environmental Learning Center is accepting phones too. You can find more information on the ELC website at: www.discoverelc.org.

The ELC has also agreed to collect CDs for us too, so feel free to drop them off there and we will get them!