Monday, June 25, 2012

Is Marco Rubio ready to talk about climate change? ... by gimleteye

Happy Monday morning! Good news. We are not getting beach erosion like the Panhandle from Tropical Storm Debbie. We don't have drinking water contamination like Cedar Key.

The Gainesville Sun reported on June 19th,"Salt water intrusion plagues Cedar Key tap water". Officials asked citizens "until further notice" not to drink the city's tap water or use it for any other purpose designed for human consumption. The city's water well turned up salt.

Think that's a blow to the local economy? Think I'm mad that elected officials have avoided, skirted, and dodged responsibility for protecting our drinking water? Not on Monday morning.

This morning I'm feeling very good I don't live in the Panhandle. In Texas.

In Harper's Magazine this month, there is a crushing report on the disappearance of vast swaths of the western plains, because the Ogallala aquifer has been used up. Used up, as in finished.

In 2004, during the presidential election, I was asked to write for a national publication on the key environmental issues. I wrote that the Ogallala aquifer would finally come to the forefront. How wrong I was.

In Cedar Key, last week, "Residents lined up in golf carts and vehicles and presented their paperwork — a water bill, a room receipt or a storm re-entry pass — to receive two gallons of bottle water. That's the daily allowance the district is providing for drinking and cooking." Wonder how that would work for Miami Beach hotel occupancy, when that happens here?

Officials blame drought for the salt water intrusion, but drought is only half the story. The other half is the pitched battle by development interests to tap into the Suwannee River. Depleting the Suwannee has major ramifications downstream. We in South Florida know how that works. Don't we? How wrong I am.

It is not the Suwannee in South Florida, it is the Biscayne aquifer that is being exhausted by water withdrawals and the Everglades, Big Sugar's cesspit. (Who is counting what Turkey Point will need, to cool its existing and planned nuclear reactors, when our wells turn salt. It is going to be some kind of mess in Homestead when that happens.)

The New York Times reported on Florida's vanishing springs this weekend. “We are either in or headed for a water crisis,” said Estus Whitfield, a former principal environmental adviser to five Florida governors. Note to Estus: all that time, why didn't you help put a cap on water withdrawals for development and agriculture around the state?

Florida has been in a water crisis for decades: the problem is that no Governor or state legislative majority has had the guts to do anything substantial about it, except to postpone the day of reckoning for another day. But it's Monday, and I'm going to think something really special to start my week.

Maybe Marco Rubio will talk with climate change scientists today, instead of trying to cut EPA out of enforcement for water pollution destroying Florida's springs and rivers and bays.

I have some photos of what one famous Florida spring looked like in the 1950's. And a photo of what it looked like in 2006. Ask Gov. Rick Scott if he knows the difference. Or ask Senator Rubio.



6 comments:

Grayland said...

Great post! I can only wish our local elected public officials across the Board heed these warnings. I doubt many will. All it takes is watching a BCC meeting or hear Lynda Bell whine about "regulations".

Anonymous said...

PLEASE!!! No more Rubio Climate Change articles.

I cannot understand why you would write the same thing over and over with the same title. We get it GOD so please stop.

Geniusofdespair said...

I am not writing these Rubio climate change articles with the similar/identical titles. I wrote the big ass article. Don't confuse us.

Cato II said...

Marco is going to be at the Barnes & Noble at Kendall Village West, 12405 N Kendall Drive, Miami, FL 33186 on Saturday June 30, 2012 @ 3:30 PM.

Why don't you go to the event and ask Marco about climate change then?

Anonymous said...

I don't get the signicance of the two photos. The older photo is just black?

Anonymous said...

Lyngbya wollei is an invasive algae.