Tangled up in blue: a brief history of environmentalism in Florida, by gimleteye

Last week, Congress handed President Bush the first override of a presidential veto. The issue was the Water Resources Development Act-- and for Florida, what was at stake was reviving the federal half of Everglades restoration.

In 2000, Congress set out to solve the Everglades restoration riddle (in the last WRDA Act) that had been wrapped up in more than a decade of litigation relating to Big Sugar's pollution of federal lands.

It became one of the signature environmental efforts of the Clinton White House: putting aside the acrimony between the state and federal government and moving forward in Florida with concrete plans to restore the fabled River of Grass. Seven years later, cynics call it: the River of Gas.

In Grist (htttp://grist.org), writer Michael Grunwald--the nation's leading authority on the US Army Corps of Engineers--, was emphatic about the wrong-headedness of Democrats and Repulicans uniting to override a fatally flawed bill. Moreover he wrote, "... the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them."

The AP report on the presidential veto turned to Audubon. Grunwald repeats the quote, "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration."

Even before 2000 it was clear as day that the only review and accountability for Everglades restoration would be undertaken by the Corps itself, in conjunction with the state water management district whose board is dominated by representatives of land speculators, Big Sugar, and the Growth Machine. The 2003 promulgation of rules (ie. the board game) by which dozens of government agencies would interact to move Everglades restoration according to the will of Congress triggered objections by Sierra Club in Florida: objections that were met with frosty anger by Audubon.

It was as though the prevailing view in Florida on the environment was, "take what you can, live to fight another day, compromise always give you a chance for another bite at the apple." And never, never criticize your brethren in public.

If Marjory Stoneman Douglas is watching these events unfold from heaven, she is shaking her fists in anger.

Over the years, the public has come to believe that the Everglades have been saved. What would you expect, where environmental groups have signed off and blessed a process that will take so long, the cycle of retirement will claim original champions long before the results are in, and where the results will be measured at any rate by government agencies who have performed the contracting work?

Grunwald writes, "It's hard to see how this vote helps that (Everglades) cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement."

Audubon is the only environmental organization within Florida with the budget and staff to "track" the byzantine process that has unfolded from the promises of 2000. Even then, with only one or two staffers--often juniors for whom the Everglades is a stepping stone to further career advancement--Audubon and the environmentalists have been hopelessly outmaneuvered, except where it comes to AP and the mainstream press needing a quote.

There are other forceful and reasoned voices. But they are not heard, or, if they are heard they are shunted off to committees where obfuscation, delay, and caution rule.

The result has been a mess in Florida: endless platitudes about the balance between the environment and the economy have proceeded through the rampant destruction of wetlands, aquifers, coral reefs, pristine bays.

The Congressional override ignored the pent-up demand for Corps reform: a goal fervently sought by groups like Sierra Club in the Midwest and their leaders, like Mark Beokrem--who tragically passed away before he could witness today's unfolding history. Mark was a Mississippi and Missouri River advocate. He was part of an intrepid and fearless group of advocates who hoped, with all their hearts, that during their lifetimes that Congress would undertake reform of the US Army Corps.

Midwest Sierra Club and its allies argued that without reform of the Corps, the massive multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects now undertaken under a "green banner" would always be skewed to the worst kind of special interest domination, pressure and insider politics.

But if any of the Florida environmental groups involved with Everglades restoration were willing to stand on the issue of Corps Reform in the latest Water Resources Development Act, it is too late now.

The Everglades environmentalists would not postpone the unleashing of federal funding (although, as environmental tormentor US Senator James Inhofe has pronouced--authorization is not the same as appropriation).

Grunwald is 100 percent on target when he concludes for Grist: "Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them."

But it has always been that way in Florida on the environment. Audubon, Jeb's favored environmental organization in Florida, has represented for many years the insider end of environmental politics, and for its part, Audubon has been pleased enough to be the lauded, praised and token presence on blue ribbon panels, in papal conclaves in the Governor's Mansion such as they have been in the past, including those of powerful Democrats like former US Senator Bob Graham or Congresswoman Carrie Meek.

It is a tribute, in a way, to special interests that control the Florida legislature and the Congress. They got what they wanted: the ceaseless growth of suburbs into wetlands, protected crops like sugar into the Everglades, destroyed aquifers, and water quality, and they got environmentalists to agree it was the best result possible.

(Grunwald's article from Grist is reprinted below.)

Michael Grunwald, senior correspondent for Time Magazine and noted critic of the Army Corps of Engineers, says yesterday's historic override of President Bush's water-bill veto isn't worth celebrating -- despite what many environmental activists think.

He was the toast of Congress earlier this year, but yesterday Bush was less popular.

Hooray! The Everglades and coastal Louisana have been rescued! Activists and politicians alike are giddy over the news that Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act yesterday. The override authorizes $5 billion worth of new Army Corps of Engineers projects for the dying Everglades and the devastated Louisiana coast, plus another $18 billion worth of new projects for the rest of the country. It was the first veto override of the Bush era, an unprecedented bipartisan rebuke to an anti-environmental White House. The Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Conservation Association are celebrating. So are the elected officials of Florida and Louisiana, even Bush-friendly Republicans like Senators Mel Martinez and David Vitter.

You'd think I'd be fired up, too. I wrote a book about the plight of the Everglades. I wrote an angry Time Magazine cover story about the plight of coastal Louisiana. I hold no brief for the global warming denier in the White House.

But this time, Bush was right.

This bloated bill will be terrible for the environment -- and it won't save the Everglades or coastal Louisiana. It will preserve America's dysfunctional approach to water resources, the same approach that endangered the Everglades and coastal Louisiana in the first place.

The enviros who bashed Bush for blocking it will now return to their usual bashing of the Army Corps, but they just blew their best chance to reform this destructive and counterproductive agency -- which just happens to oversee the restoration of the Everglades and the protection of coastal Louisiana.

To understand why this bill is so disastrous, it helps to recall the Army Corps scandals of 2000, when a slew of independent investigations -- by the Pentagon inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, the National Academies of Sciences, and me -- exposed how the agency was skewing its economic and environmental analyses to justify wetlands-killing boondoggles that kept its employees busy and its congressional patrons happy.

Corps leaders had launched a secret "Program Growth Initative" designed to boost their budget, ordering underlings to "get creative" with studies in order to greenlight projects. The most notorious was a $1 billion lock project on the Mississippi River; the Corps brass reassigned an honest economist who had concluded it made no sense, and sent a blizzard of emails ordering his replacements to concoct a rationale for it.

Traditionally, Congress has passed a WRDA bill every two years, larded with "earmarks" for Corps flood-control and navigation and beach-replenishment projects. These waterworks are a form of political swag on Capitol Hill; lawmakers use them to steer jobs and cash to their constituents and contributors, and to demonstrate their clout. But after the last WRDA bill passed in 2000, a small group of fiscal conservatives and liberal environmentalists led by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) came up with a new strategy for fixing the Corps: No more pork without reform. President Reagan used the same reform strategy in the 1980s, blocking WRDA for six years until pork-starved legislators reluctantly agreed to increase the local cost-share for Corps projects. The hope was that communities would lose their enthusiasm for boondoggles if they had to foot more of the bill.

After 2000, the tiny "Corps Reform Caucus" demanded two modest but significant fixes before any new WRDA bill could pass. The first would require independent technical reviews of all major projects, to prevent the Corps from cooking its books. The second would require the "prioritization" of Corps projects, so that America's water resources could be developed or preserved according to a comprehensive national strategy instead of an annual scramble for appropriations. The desperate need for prioritization became especially clear after Hurricane Katrina; as I've written in Grist, the Corps had spent more money in Louisiana than any other state, but had wasted most of it on white-elephant navigation projects requested by the state's congressional delegation instead of shoring up the flimsy floodwalls and vanishing wetlands that were supposed to protect New Orleans.

The reformers held tough for seven years, as pent-up demand for Corps earmarks grew. But this year the dam burst. The House passed a $14 billion bill with minimal reform; the Senate passed a $15 billion bill with minimal reform; Congress somehow compromised on a $23 billion bill with virtually no reform. When Bush objected to the price tag, right-wing Republicans like Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) joined forces with left-wing Democrats like Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to denounce him.

Will the Everglades get help, or continue to languish?

And green groups eager to authorize restoration work on the Everglades and Louisiana's coastal wetlands echoed the opposition of dredging contractors, shipping interests, beachfront developers, and farm groups eager for more traditional Corps projects. They helped provide the political cover for the overwhelming override of Bush's veto. "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration.

It's hard to see how this vote helps that cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement.

And the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them. Why should these be any different? Congress is much more likely to fund the new bill's $900 million levee project for Louisiana, which would destroy thousands of additional acres of marshes and cypress swamps that might otherwise help deflect and deflate the next Gulf hurricane. The bill even authorizes the billion-dollar Mississippi River lock boondoggle that embarrassed the Corps in 2000 -- except that the price tag has now skyrocketed to $2.3 billion.

Enviros have been justifiably outraged by Corps mismanagement of both the Everglades and coastal Louisiana restoration projects; neither has produced any significant ecological results. It certainly would be nice to have a greener agency in charge of reversing damage that was largely inflicted by the Corps in the first place. But that's not going to happen as long as members of Congress see the Corps as their personal plaything. The best hope for America's degraded ecosystems is a better Corps. Until then, you'll keep seeing ludicrous stories like this. And this. And this.

But it's hard to imagine when there's going to be a better opportunity to improve the Corps than the one the environmental movement just missed. There's an eco-friendly Democratic Congress and a Corps-unfriendly Republican president. There's been a national backlash against earmarks, when the Corps is almost entirely funded by earmarks. The Corps and its congressional enablers recently drowned a city through bungled engineering, environmental ignorance, and misplaced priorities. And after enduring seven years without ribbon-cuttings, salivating lawmakers would have been willing to swallow almost anything that came attached to a new platter of pork.

Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them.