From the ejectum of the Great Destroyers: County Commission backs off Ron Bergeron plan to jeopardize Miami-Dade drinking water … by gimleteye

"Mr. Everglades" Ron Bergeron had a plan to shrink the size of Miami-Dade's well field protection zone. Last November, we offered our acidic commentary about the petition to reduce its size. That is the opposite of what elected officials should be doing.

There is never an end to the war on the environment in South Florida. It is a battle of attrition lightly reported in the mainstream press between miners, sugar billionaires, developers, their lobbyists and proxies in elected office against neighbors, civic activists, and environmentalists. Those with profit motives normally prevail for the standard reasons. Until now, protections for the well field in Miami Dade County have been sacrosanct. Why are they being battered down now?

Of course, the Miami Dade planners have a rationale: "we don't need as much land as we thought we did when we expected to use much more water." But this flies in the face of the history of Miami-Dade begging the state to give it permission to draw MORE water. (And no where, by the way, has the county mentioned the need to preserve more fresh water supply for FPL Turkey Point's massive expansion plans: on the order of 90 million gallons per day.)

How the county and state government conspired to substitute highly engineered, chemically treated and expensive water for taxpayers in a region that once afforded the cleanest, most abundant fresh water in the United States for free is a long, winding and mostly unwritten story. (You can pick up the threads in our archive.)

The claim of developers and rock miners on the region called the West Dade well field is one of the starkest examples how baselines of what the public deems acceptable comprise between development and environmental protection are constantly shifting despite the best science and evidence calling for strict and stringent protections for our water supply. For example, during the term of county mayor Carlos Alvarez in 2006, evidence from tests by the USGS (US Geological Service) that underground water moved much more rapidly from the Everglades to the well fields, through faults and openings in the Biscayne aquifer, caused the rock miners to press their case to limit future financial exposure to water treatment costs by successfully ramming through the state legislature caps on their liability.

Apparently, our argument held. Last week the county commission listened to science and not bullshit sponsored by the Great Destroyers. Next step: county commission make clear that not a single dime of taxpayer money should be spent on the idea of shrinking the well field protection zone. Drop it, county commission!

The commission's first concern must be protect our drinking water quality and making nearby billionaire rock miners pay for the jeopardy their activities introduce to our water supply.