Everglades Restoration: not much different than Wellington's poisoned ponies ... by gimleteye

If you are curious why so much objection arises from the Palm Beach County Commission's decision to move forward with an Inland Port in the middle of the Everglades Agriculture Area, owned by the Fanjul family sugar interests, please read the full post. "We are for Everglades restoration, but we also are for economic development" is what one Palm Beach County Commissioner told the press. What complete, utter drivel. The Palm Beach County Commission, like the Miami-Dade County Commission in its applications to move the Urban Development Boundary, is happy to push the decisions to the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the state agency the Legislature is in process of pushing off the cliff.

Under the direction of pro-development interests, DCA and its small staff are standing like soldiers at the Alamo. What's worse: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist continues to maintain a sunny disposition. There is nothing sunny or optimistic about what the Republican majority in the legislature is up to. They count on voters failing to pay attention. (Please click, 'read more')

In late May 2003, the EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- now an advocate for the nuclear power industry -- resigned from the Bush administration. In Florida the moment set off a flurry of speculation that the president would appoint to the top EPA post one of Gov. Jeb Bush's key lieutenants, state environmental chief David Struhs. Struhs was an architect of the Jeb Bush 2003 plan to declare victory in Everglades restoration, by rewriting pollution law in the Everglades so that violations would disappear. The Florida legislature needed no further persuasion.

At time, the annual session of the Florida legislature had finished. Its most controversial achievement: a miserable new law changing the settlement agreement between the federal government and Florida, allowing sugar's pollution of the Everglades without enforceable standards, timelines or penalties. Big Sugar had its good reasons to change the 1992 law that required no more effluent be discharged into the Everglades by the firm, agreed-upon deadline of 2006: it couldn't meet the 10 parts per billion phosphorous standard determined to be protective of the Everglades. The new measure was nicknamed "The Everglades Whenever Act".

Phosphorous, a constituent in fertilizer, wreaks havoc on Florida wetlands when it is present in even minute quantities, likened to the equivalent of five grains in a bucket of sand.

The sugar lobby arrived at the 2003 session of the legislature en masse, numerically overwhelming legislators. Gov. Bush persuaded a bipartisan majority to approve the legislation—despite an enormous clamor from environmentalists, scientists, newspaper editorial boards, and even some prominent Republican legislators in Congress like former Broward representative Clay Shaw. (Later, Jeb would refuse to allow Shaw on stage when the state unfurled its next PR barrage for the Everglades, a multi-billion dollar plan mainly benefiting cities and agriculture called "Acceler8".)

Bush critics worried that the fundamental changes to the 1992 law would cause Congress to abandon federal commitments to fund fully its share of the original $7.8 billion cost of the original restoration plan, memorialized in Congress in 2000. At the time, they were right. Since that time, the projected cost has doubled.

In the 2003 legislative session, Struhs outright lied when he testified that the sugar bill, unceremoniously nicknamed the “Everglades Whenever Act”, had the support of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Once the bill passed committee, he retracted his remark. Having been signed into law, Governor Bush and his emissaries worked mightily to defend the measure as a step forward for the Everglades under the premise: say a thing long enough and it will be taken for the truth.

The new law attracted instant attention in the Miami courtroom where Everglades issues had been on the front burner for more than a decade. In early May 2003, Bush's consigliere, Struhs, appeared on the courthouse steps of the Federal Justice Building, but would not go inside while Judge William Hoeveler, who had been charged with oversight of state and federal commitments to clean up the Everglades, listened intently to state lawyers defend the new measure as consistent with the earlier, legally binding settlement. ("David Struhs, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the Justice Department is probably just confused by changes that were made during the bill's swift march to passage and what he characterized as misleading news accounts. Over time, Struhs promised, "they'll become increasingly comfortable with our position.", "Judge holds tight to Glades plan", St. Petersburg Times, May 3, 2003) It didn't take long for the new law to be challenged in federal court by the Miccosukee Tribe and Friends of the Everglades, the Miami based grass roots group founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in the late 1960's, to stop a planned jetport in the Everglades.

On July 29, 2008, Judge Alan Gold ruled in favor of the Tribe and Friends joining in a string of stinging rulings against government like the July 2007 federal ruling against the illegal permitting of 5400 acres of wetland destruction in the East Everglade by the US Army Corps of Engineers: "The Corps simply has failed to abide by its governing regulations, and its failure to disclose the benzene contamination to the public, and to this Court, and to consider it fully is the most egregious example of these failures. The Corps' approval of this mining is contrary to the directives of (several federal environmental laws)."

Judge Gold's decision was a sharp rebuke to the claim by Gov. Bush that the pollution law re-write had moved Everglades restoration forward. Putting dirty water into the Everglades is against the law. He also ruled, that the state of Florida cannot issue permits that allow the discharge of dirty water into impacted or unimpacted areas. Although there was no specific remedy proposed, the federal court introduced enough uncertainty that one of the principal lawbreakers, US Sugar, decided to to sell its land to the state of Florida. Today, Florida's cratering economy pushed by steady pressure from the billionaire Fanjul sugar interests is threatening the US Sugar deal.

Judge Gold ruled: "... the Florida legislature ... violated its fundamental commitment and promise to protect the Everglades."

Today, the Florida legislature is unmoved and apparently immune from the consequences of its actions because of a permanent incumbency and revolving door between lobbyists, regulated industry, and political insiders. Its latest effort-- accompanied by the same rounds of broad based media criticism as the law favoring sugar judged in federal court to be illegal-- is to eviscerate wetlands regulation by the state and measures intended to "manage" growth. Both fallacies occur under the banner of encouraging a strong economy in order to afford the costs of protecting the environment.

Bush's consigliere, David Struhs, did not clear the short list for EPA chief. He is now a top executive for International Paper, a corporation involved in complex regulation while he was Florida's environmental chief. "The Department of Environmental Protection secretary resigned to work for a polluter -- a polluter for whom he engineered a bailout with public money. Mr. Struhs' decision to become vice president of environmental affairs at International Paper Co., the $25 billion-a-year company that is the world's largest paper products firm, sums up his five-year record much more clearly than the happy-talk testimonial to himself and Gov. Bush, who hired him. Mr. Struhs began working to help International Paper shortly after the firm bought a paper mill near Pensacola in 2000. The mill has not met state water-quality standards since 1989, discharging 24 million gallons of waste daily into area waterways. All along, DEP backed off from strict enforcement; the plant employs nearly 1,000 people, and politicians worried about how International Paper might react. Meanwhile, the water got dirtier." 'Struhs sold out Florida to cash in for himself', Palm Beach Post, Feb 4, 2004)

An obscure 2007 EPA report notes that at least half the remnant Everglades are contaminated with excessive levels of phosphorous, measured from 1270 locations in the Everglades; a 50 percent increase from a 1995-1996 analysis.

Whitman is lobbying in private practice for two new nuclear reactors, that will cost ratepayers more than $18 billion. "Nuclear is expensive, no doubt about it," says former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, now a paid spokeswoman for the industry. "But we can't keep saying no to everything." ('Nuclear's Comeback: Still No Energy Panacea', Time Magazine, Dec. 31, 2008). She was succeeded in the Bush White House by a functionary so colorless and of such little consequence the world cannot remember his name.

Recently, President Obama appointed a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Rock Salt, former District Engineer of the Corps in Jacksonville, has been a long-time, senior level intermediary within the bureaucracy and between industry and government. He was there, like Forrest Gump, and knows every single point of the Everglades restoration mess. Whether General Salt can represent "change we believe in" given the Everglades' record of compromise, inefficiency, violations of federal law, and a steadfast belief in engineering solutions that wouldn't pass an Optimist Club smell test remains to be seen.

On March 18, 2009 the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals denied the appeal by a sugar intervenor in favor of the Miccosukee Tribe and Friends of the Everglades.