Podcast on that Dastardly Miami Beach Dumping Wastewater into Biscayne Bay. By Geniusofdespair

Listen to Mayor Philip Stoddard and Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen-Gozalez - Miami Beach Pumps Fouling Waters, DNA Study Shows Human Waste to Blame


 Remember that awful Miami Beach Commission meeting I posted about the scientific studies and how Miami Beach "experts" debunked the study published by 4 scientists with a combined experience of 113 years as Scientists in their fields of study and Mayor Levine trashed the reputation of  a renowned scientist, Hal Wanless -- well here is a rebuttal to the Miami Beach experts and South Miami Philip Stoddard asks the right questions and he addresses directly the Miami Beach "Experts" claims trashing the study (Power Point of FIU and NOAA Joint Study is at the end of this blog). Stoddard KNOWS what is bullshit, we would just listen to the Miami Beach "Experts" and nod like idiots.

Really listen-up. What else do you have to do? Do you think I like writing on a Sunday. NO - so why the hell should you have fun when I am not? Listen to the damn podcast. I moved it up to 12 minutes (you can move it around as you want if you get bored Phillip comes in at 15 minutes. He is a professor so he is very easy to understand, he makes it easy). I URGE YOU TO LISTEN.

Here is the video again so you can refresh your memory of what transpired at the Commission meeting BUT YOU ARE NOT TO WATCH THE VIDEO YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST -- LINK ABOVE.



As it says on ONLY IN MIAMI BY GRANT STERN (quoted from article by Zac Cosner):

Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen-Gonzalez is waging a lonely fight against her own city, because it refuses to admit that the island’s vaunted pump system is creating serious environmental hazards in Biscayne Bay.

Miami Beach installed pumps to fight sea level rise, but without proper filtration FIU and NOAA scientists found nutrients and bacteria consistent with human waste in coastal waters while the pumps are in use, in a report you can see below.

“Miami Beach took some bold steps to invest a lot of money in trying to keep their streets dry,” according to South Miami’s Mayor Phil Stoddard, who is also scientist and professor at Florida International University.

The city is holding a public hearing on pump issues Wednesday, June 8th at their regularly scheduled Commission meeting that starts at 8:30, so you can listen to the complete podcast if you’re planning to attend and be well informed right here:

The City is currently acting on plans to invest upwards of $500 million to combat the imminent peril of mass flooding by raising roads, building on seawalls and constructing a system of 80 new storm-water pumps to remove excess water.

“The high levels of Nitrogen and Phosphorus are also a bad sign,” claimed Stoddard, “Perhaps the most worrying element of this pollution is the presence of bacteria associated with human waste. The study’s authors found concentrations of live fecal bacteria well above state standards, reaching heights of up to 600 times the state limit.”

Twenty of those pumps have already been constructed, with 60 left to complete.

“The deterioration of the bay is going to affect all of us and our economy,” said Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen-Gonzalez whose efforts to first document and then obtain a scientific study of the problem have been rewarded with little more than political, unprofessional distrust of science from her fellow elected officials, “While it is important that the city of Miami Beach takes proactive steps to combat the impacts of climate change, we must not allow ourselves to sacrifice the health of our citizens, the vitality of our tourist economy.”

“We must not sacrifice the integrity of our natural environment in the present in order to do so.”

Unfortunately, according to recent studies by scientists from FIU and NOAA, the storm water pumps which dry streets have created some significant, and unexpected consequences.

The City of Miami Beach’s leaders have certainly proven themselves to be cognizant of the threat of sea level rise driven by climate change.

In fact, Miami Beach has been quite proactive in its response to increased flooding.

“It has been an impressive success,” Stoddard said discussing the effectiveness of the pumps, which have dried the island city’s streets.

And according to Commissioner Rosen-Gonzalez, the city of Miami Beach is “writing the playbook” on sea level rise response right now.

It’s one of the sad ironies of life, that in trying to solve the problems set before us, we all too often end up creating even greater dilemmas with which to contend like these Miami Beach pumps spewing human waste where residents swim, boat and fish.

The City of Miami Beach and its surrounding community are currently feeling the brunt of this tragic irony first hand, according to recent research by scientists from FIU and NOAA.

The scientists concluded that the storm-water pumps the the tourist mecca has been installing to combat sunny day flooding, brought on by global sea level rise, have been leaking massive amounts of nutrient pollution into Biscayne Bay while they are in use, as well as massively elevated levels of Fecal Coliform.

“The authors of the study used a technique known as “Polymerase Chain Reaction” (which is used to create many individual copies of a single piece of DNA) to establish that while some of the bacteria came from the intestines of dogs, human waste accounted for the majority of the pollution. (SNIP)

THE JOINT STUDY OF THE MIAMI BEACH POLLUTION POWERPOINT

Miami Beach - FIU - King Tide Day Experiment Update by Grant Stern

Trash Asia. By Gimleteye

Inle Lake

Yes, the decline of the environment in Asia is has advanced in direct proportion to wealth accumulation.

Winding up a month traveling through India and Myanmar, it seems the entire subcontinent is covered in a hazy blanket of pollution. Reports from Beijing a thousand miles to the north press the limits of belief. But air pollution can be cleaned by stopping emissions. Much more difficult is the problem with water.

Here is my take-away: tourism and rapidly growing economies are already colliding head-on with climate change.

In south India, a massive drought is interrupting electricity supplies at the same time local economies are experiencing rapid growth. One way or another, the 24/7 world-wide web has created a global village where massive wealth transfers – from the West, East – have enabled hopes, dreams and prosperity that was unimaginable only a few decades ago. (Tom Friedman recently coined the term, ‘the virtual middle class’, and he is not wrong.)

In the United States, we mired both in the fog manufactured by fossil fuel industries and right wing extremists and in ineffective efforts by environmentalists to advance a rational transition away from fossil fuel based economies. Whatever one’s persuasion, climate change is occurring at a far faster pace than we are adapting.

In Myanmar, on the Irrawaddy River – one of the world’s great rivers – the vessel from Mandalay to Bagan ran aground on sandbars due to dramatically low water levels. At Inle Lake, a water body that is as shallow and formerly grand as Lake Okeechobee, low water levels will soon strand tens of thousands of rural poor who live on reed shacks built over the lake.

The cause is altered rain cycles. Over the last decade rainfall patterns have broken from the seasonal norms that sustained civilization in Asia for millennium. The changes follow the same pattern we are seeing in US: extremes at both ends of the spectrum. This is exactly as climate change scientists have predicted; the consequence of extraordinary additions to the atmosphere of man-made gases including carbon dioxide. Last season’s monsoon was short in south Asia, leaving water supplies at extremely low levels as the hot months approach for a billion people.

As hard as it is to grasp what is happening – although the fact of climate change is visible for all to see – what is even more perplexing is the notion that civilized nations have been unable to alter a course for humanity that points in the direction of catastrophic impacts.

Clearly, the poor – who have lived for centuries and thousands of years – through subsistence economies will be the first to be displaced. For a while, the news will be clear of famine reports, because even poor nations like Myanmar can organize the distribution of rice and basics for elemental nutrition. Successive years of severe drought will bring catastrophe, home. But, here, at Inle Lake, the impacts are at the door. Fishermen and their families – already coping with huge algae blooms for the same reasons as Lake Okeechobee – will no longer be able to access fishing grounds from homes on canals left high and dry by dropping water levels. Nor will tourists, who cannot access locations to visit except by long propeller boats. For all these, climate change is here and now.

As climate change accelerates, these stories are bound to pile up. The risk is that Western nations, with industrial scale food and energy distribution, will be lulled into imagining that our bunkers and silos are hardened. Those attributes, however, will prove far less durable in the long run. Under the pressure of climate change, the skills of the village people of Asia, accustomed to thriving through the resource and ingenuity of their own hands, could prove more durable than all the prizes of the industrial revolution.

Investigative Report: This is NOT how you deal with Toxic Material. By Geniusofdespair

Link to video shot Feb. 14, 2012.

This video is crazy I URGE YOU TO WATCH IT. I have never seen anything like this before -- a Miami Dade County truck spewing toxic water all over the city streets of Miami and dumping hazardous waste at the North Dade Landfill (there were 4 trucks in total). You would think your government was taking care of you? Hell no!!! They didn't even protect their own workers performing the dredging as you can clearly see in the video.

One man is dropping water/sediment on the bank with a net and another man is bending  over sifting through it by hand (he does appear to have gloves on, not the guy with the pole).

No location in Wagner Creek is unpolluted. The DEP said "Wagner Creek is the most polluted water body in Florida" August 2001 report. Dioxin was found there said a friend on the Miami River Commission. The spot where they did the dredging in the video is a bit upstream of the worst part that is near Jackson Memorial Hospital. They used to bury incinerator ash in that area years ago. $18 Million is needed to clean this part of the river and about $9 Million has been raised in the last 10 years. Until it is dredged, it is highly polluted. Sediment does not self-clean.

This dredging operation should have had some basic measures in place so that the turbidity in Wagner Creek didn't leave the work area (manatees beware). Additionally they should have taken measures to prevent the toxic liquid from the dredge spoil from leaking onto the surrounding pavement along the way to its destination (as this video clearly shows) to drop off the toxic sediment. I was once told there might be polio virus in the sediment. Who really knows, they never tested for that here. They did test for polio in the Keys and found it. If the County Public Works had a permit it would have had all kinds of caveats on the removal. This is not how it is done. I am told they did have a permit, have not seen it but assume they did.

When the removal was reported by my friend, who shot this video, this was the response from Miami Dade County Public Works:

"The disposal of material from any dredging project is governed by the type of contaminants that are found during the environmental assessment phase. Due to the minor amount of sediment which was scheduled to be removed as part of the County’s work very limited samples were taken. It is possible that other portions of the canal will have a different contamination profiles which may necessitate a different disposal method. The only way to know is to perform sediment testing. However, since Wagner Creek is under the jurisdiction of the City the testing would need to be initiated by them."

Passing the buck are we? This is such a dumb answer. Well, DUH, we know the sediment is contaminated in the entire area of Wagner Creek and we also know with what it is contaminated with because NOAA did an extensive study.

Why are they disposing of the  "may be" toxic sediment  -  suspended in water  that most probably contains bacteria like this? Spilling out of a county truck onto public streets. Why is their staff left unprotected? You can see them touching the dredge in the video with no masks on. Could there be bacteria in the sediment? I think public works doesn't  believe that the sediment or the water is dangerous at all because they based their dredge disposal on, as they said, "limited samples". County Public Works Spokesman provided the videographer with a sediment study that I put under "read more" (most of the 29 pages are missing but you get the gist: no toxins). Anyway, I am not so sure.  They call the sediment collection "Canal Banks" did they test the banks? I Don't know. They took two samples. I just wonder how could the sediment miraculously clean itself? I believe it can't. How could the "most polluted water body in the State of Florida" get pristine lab results? They did not test for fecal matter or waterborne pathogens in the lab test I think even if they got a clean bill of health for their limited testing" they would have taken an ounce of prevention in the collection and disposal since they didn't test the water or sediment for bacteria and this water body has chronically contaminated water.

I found this sediment study I had in my office about this very area. (hit to enlarge this):

Since this report, the rest of the Miami River was dredged but NOT in the area of video. I went to the hearing about the dredging in the Miami River years ago and there were all sorts of problems on what to do with the dredge fill -- as it was so contaminated. There was no money to dredge Wagner Creek/Seybold.

 The guy who made the video got the run-around. Well, this is his report - It finally gets to see the light of day. Thanks for caring fella, sorry you moved.  We need people like you who care.

Also, besides hazardous waste, liquids are prohibited from being dumped at the landfill.

Street view of where the removal  took place.

How much cancer could have been stopped by regulations against toxics we could have imposed but didn't, because of the power of polluters? ... by gimleteye

The power of dis-proving a negative has confounded critics of regulatory failure for decades, while the American public blithely ignored the application of science and technology to assess the causes of cancer through the proliferation of man-made chemicals in the environment.

Concurrently, well paid lobbyists and lawyers have successfully throttled government exploration of risk to the most vulnerable forms of life. Radical right wing extremists succeeded in defining a woman's right to choice on the point of abortion while utterly failing to account for real, true damage to fetuses from environmental causes that could have been regulated but weren't, because of the dominant American economic model: socialize risk, privatize profit.

In retirement, a former chief scientist for the South Florida Water Management District, Larry E. Fink, has been speaking out on this and other subversive measures adopted by government in favor of obscuring the well-laid plans and profits of the state's largest polluters.

While the nation worries about fictional "fiscal cliffs", the cancer-causing pollutants that are lightly regulated or not regulated at all have already pushed real people over real cliffs related to their own health.

If you have end of year contributions still to make, consider donating to Friends of the Everglades that is pursuing these issues and can do more, with your help.

Here is what Mr. Fink published on a list-serve today, which we re-publish in the hope it is widely read:

Over my 30+ years of professional career, I have advocated for routine sampling and analyses of human tissues to validate exposure models and assumptions and to correlate adverse health outcomes with the concentrations of persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances (PBTs) in various organs and tissues based on sound epidemiological study designs. Non-invasive tissues of reproductive relevance for the female include menstrual blood, post-partum umbilical cord blood, and breast milk, and for males, semen. Hair can also be sampled, as it accumulates both inorganic and organic contaminants with an affinity for protein from the blood supply with which the hair follicle is in contact. Since hair grows at a relatively constant rate, it captures information about instantaneous and cumulative exposures over
time.

If implemented, this National Epidemiological Study would have severely impacted the various industries that manufacture, use, or dispose of these PBTs. They would then have been highly motivated to find substitutes or advanced treatment technologies,
because that would have given them a competitive advantage over their less clever peers. Instead, they invested their efforts in undermining environmental regulations, putting political hacks on key regulatory bodies, and industry hacks on key advisory committees. Concurrently they attacked scientists who conducted such studies, including Florida State University's Ralph Dougherty, because such work is a threat to their profitable way of life. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19810312&id=B4kzAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oSMIAAAAIBAJ&pg=1510,3897648 ; http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es1013664;

Now, despite 30 years of such machinations, a new study by reputable scientists demonstrates a correlation between the incidence of reproductive failure and the concentrations of certain PBTs in blood or semen. http://www.emagazine.com/daily-news/chemical-exposures-delaying-pregnancy/ Perhaps these body burdens also account for the roughly one-in-three chance of contracting any kind of cancer during a lifetime, of which about one-third has been attributed to environmental exposure to
carcinogens and their promoters in the home, at work, and from the environment. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/causes; http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/EnvironmentalHealth/19956

So rise up in righteous anger for having your rights to life and to reproduce compromised by industry's provielge to use the environment to dilute and treat its wastes. Renegotiate your social contract to restore the value of your life, health, and peace of mind. Otherwise, it's business as usual, and you and your children, and your grandchildren are expendable for the greater good, which for the private sector is generally measured in net profit, not the net health or well being of consumers, workers, children, veterans, or retirees. To understand why it is not personal, its just business, see the classic boardroom scene form the movie "Network," because their world is increasingly ours. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mggkGeDX6lg

Larry E. Fink, M.S.
Waterwise Consulting, LLC

Orlando Sentinel: Pollution is the norm in Florida ... by gimleteye

I've written, over the years, that Florida floats in a sea of polluted water. For Friends of the Everglades, where I volunteer as board president, I have worked on water pollution issues and learned first-hand about the conspiracy of silence by regulators, that keeps the true costs of pollution from ever reaching citizens (barring a federal lawsuit) and, at the same time, maintains the figment that our state waters are being protected. They are not.

The Orlando Sentinel, this week, is publishing a multi-part series on the crisis with Florida's iconic springs. It follows in the same vein as the notable Naples Daily News series from 2003!, "Deep Trouble: The Gulf In Peril". The crisis is no different from Florida Bay or Biscayne Bay or the Everglades. Read it, by clicking the embedded link.

Gimleteye: Heaven forbid Florida ...

All things considered, from the Chamber of Commerce perspective it has been a pretty good year for South Florida. The real estate market bounced back thanks to buyers from booming parts of South America. From another point of view, Florida is a backed-up cesspool.

Over the weekend, Carl Hiaasen unleashed his sanitized invective against the use of Lake Okeechobee, by the state at the prodding of Big Sugar, as a toilet flushing through the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee River. A mayor of one small community called me last week, apoplectic at the destruction the runoff is causing. Isn't there someone to sue, he wanted to know.

Let me tell you, in an unsanitized version, how that works out.

Put the study of corruption in Florida law schools ... by gimleteye

The Hindustan Times reports that the University of Sussex in Great Britain "has announced the creation of a new research center at Sussex entitled, "the 'Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption'." The university will offer a master's degree for center students who will "analyze what corruption is, where it thrives and most importantly, what can be done about it." Understandably, this is an idea that we could affiliate with locally. The University of Miami Law School, FIU or Nova could link with the Sussex venture, started by an Indian politician, Anna Hazare.

Suggestion to UM president Donna Shalala: solicit support for a new study of corruption from Lennar and Stuart Miller, a UM board member and on whose corporate board she sits, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, or Leonard Abess, an environmental philanthropist. Just a thought, but a thought that came to me in the context of a report by environmental journalist Bruce Ritchie, "Suwannee River Water Management District chief quits, warns Senate panel about water policy." Former District chief David Still told the GOP led legislature, "People have asked me, 'How you like what you're doing in the Legislature? ... The truth of the matter is I really want to tell them -- you won't hear this out of me very often -- I'm scared. I'm scared what is going to happen in our future with water."

What do the people of Florida recognize that the legislature doesn't? That to accommodate ceaseless growth of the cement and asphalt based footprint of development in Florida we are destroying our fresh water future. Its the same manifesto-- growth at any cost-- that made Florida the centerpiece of the housing boom and bust; mainly for the political influence peddling and campaign money that coalesced around former Governor Jeb Bush and an immoveable Republican majority in the legislature. Destroying our water future is in the genetic code of the Florida builders and associations like the Latin Builders: just give us the water we want, now. Keep the costs low. Keep building platted subdivisions in wetlands and open space. Never mind the future.

This is no exaggeration: the most important of Miami-Dade's 20 year plans based on its consumptive use permit with the state of Florida's water management district have been scrapped since Gov. Rick Scott took office. There is a virtual halt to enforcement and planning by state regulatory authority.

Don't get me wrong: I am not letting Democrats off the hook. When the Democrats had their turn at running the state of Florida and through their influence in Congress, not much was done to protect -- and I mean really to protect-- our water and air. Statewide candidates for office in Florida have been notoriously slow and indifferent to the ways that corruption is pervasive in environmental regulatory policies and growth management.

A recent report by the Department of Justice identifies Florida as 4th in the nation for public corruption. But factoring in state prosecutions, we are 1st. Numero Uno.

This leads me to thoughts about addressing corruption. Unfortunately we don't want to call corruption for what it is; not just the money under the table that lands county commissioners in jail, but policies that circumvent the will of the people as broadly expressed in important laws and regulations and for which loopholes are constantly being created. The goal posts change. The baselines vanish and are rewritten. Fast numerical standards on pollution become "narrative" standards. The Florida legislature hasn't even reckoned with the most dangerous pollutant of all, pervasive in Florida water: methylized mercury.

There you have it: the Florida legislature is obsessed with the moment of conception but cares not a shilling or dime for the pollution that is known to alter genes and creates terrible neurological deficits. This reminds me of the comment by super PAC organizer Karl Rove to the New York Times in 2003, when he was arguably the most important person in the Bush White House. Rove said, ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' I call that, corruption.
 

What kind of organization is Sierra Club? ... by gimleteye

"Sierra Club is no longer a grassroots organization," December McSherry tells Politico in response to the controversy over the nation's oldest environmental group taking $26 million in money from gas interests tied to Chesapeake Energy. To others, according to former Palm Beach Post writer Bob King, it is "a symptom of what's gone wrong in recent years with the nation's largest grassroots environmental group."

Socialized Pollution ... by Linda Young

How would you like your government to tell all of the major polluters in your community (sewage plants, paper mills, phosphate facilities, chemical plants, etc.) that they can dump their pollution in your local waters forever and never have to account for what comes out of their pipes? 

The Courtney Nash Act: Force children of Florida legislators who oppose EPA, to swim in Florida's St. John's River ... by gimleteye

Better than words, an unnecessary death-- the tragic loss of a teenager for example -- can spark new legislation protecting children. Such was the case of the Ryan White Act and Megan's Law. In a perfect world, this would be the case of Courtney Nash, the 16 year old who died as a result of swimming in the polluted St. John's River. The St. John's is polluted because Florida legislators-- and now the Florida GOP congressional delegation-- refuse to allow the federal government to fix pollution laws where the state has utterly failed.

I have an idea to change the minds of Florida legislators who aim to cure the state's ailing economy by killing the federal EPA. A federal judge-- upheld by the 11th circuit court of appeals-- ruled that EPA had succumbed to the influence of Florida's polluters. The court compelled EPA to write and enforce pollution standards for Florida's filthy waterways. In response, Florida Republicans passed legislation to block the EPA. In its own legal analysis, the EPA writes that the proposed legislation would "overturn almost 40 years of of Federal legislation by preventing (the agency) from protecting public health and water quality." It is up to the Senate to stop the madness.

My idea to make converts of Republican legislators: compel their children to go swimming in our polluted waterways. Let them experience the consequences just like an unsuspecting Courtney Nash.

From my point of view, clean fresh water is a right. When polluters contaminate our rivers, streams and Everglades -- like Big Sugar does -- with nutrients from fertilizers or any other source, they must pay 100 percent of the clean up costs. Of course they don't. Not even close. From my point of view, when lobbyists succeed in forcing environmental agencies to back down and away from protecting public health, they should be put in jail for 10 to 20 years. Lobbyists like Associated Industries of Florida and Barney Bishop, its "Jack-Ass-In-Chief", who derides citizens who want to protect our quality of life and waters as "radical left-wingers". It is a classic Karl Rove diversionary tactic and unimaginable; 30 years after the Wise Use Movement dragged the American public through its nonsense, they are at it again.

Then, Florida's waters were dirty. Today the state's waters are filthy to the point of deadly. Ask Courtney Nash's parents how they feel about the difference. The history is clear. Florida's polluters succeeded in commandeering the legislature through the decades with pro's like the late Wade Hopping, "Mr. Big Sugar", and the whole gang in Tallahassee and in county commissions.

So here is the idea for new legislation: compel the legislators' children to swim in the St. John's River, where recently a Courtney Nash recently died from a terrible bacterial infection. According to a Reuters report, the 16 year old was attacked by a microscopic amoeba while she played. The report neglected to amplify that like other forms of toxic algae contaminating Florida's waters, the amoeba thrives in pollution fed by nutrients. It "... typically enters a swimmer's nose and invades the brain causing an almost always fatal infection, according to Jonathan Yoder, an epidemiologist at the CDC in Atlanta."

Since the GOP's hatred of the EPA is based on a difference of opinion about the risks and costs associated with pollution, my idea is to require a law that requires state legislators to put their children in the same water where Courtney Nash contracted the infection that killed her. These would include State Rep. Paige Kreegel, R-Punta Gorda, who opposes the EPA’s proposed numeric nutrient criteria. Kreegel voted for a bill, sponsored by state Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers that eventually died before being voted on by the state senate. As reported by the Florida Independent, Kreegel opposed tighter standards even though his own district had just endured a nasty bout with a toxic algae bloom on the Caloosahatchee, disrupting the small town of Alva. "Residents there say the bloom was not only noxious, but was killing dogs and making people sick."

Other Republicans whose children should be forced to swim where Courtney Nash contracted the infection that killed her would include Congressman Cliff Stearns, whose district partly encompasses the St. Johns River, and who initially supported the EPA but recanted and recently chaired a field hearing in Orlando, entitled, "EPA's Takeover of Florida's Nutrient Water Quality Standard Setting: Impact on Communities and Job Creation", and Republican Tom Rooney, hand-maiden to Big Sugar, who proposed H.R. 2018 to prevent EPA from enforcing the Clean Water Act in Florida.

Hopefully the US Senate will squash Rooney's bill. Of course we need a stronger, full funded EPA to fight the polluters of Florida's waterways and Everglades. In a recent interview, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a friend of Florida Gov. Rick Scott and GOP presidential candidate, said that "he prays for the president to “ask that his EPA back down these regulations that are causing businesses to hesitate to spend money.” What nonsense. Taxpayers may want to know, the agency's budget comprises .3 percent of monthly federal expenditures. So make their children swim where Courtney did. "They were having fun just like any other kid would out in the water," her uncle told Reuters. Call it, "The Courtney Nash Act", so one kid's life won't have been in vain. (for the full Reuters story, click 'read more')

Dumb and Dumber: Palmetto Bay Village Council puffs up against the US EPA by gimleteye

It is disgusting: the pile-on by the GOP against the EPA attempt to regulate nutrient pollution in Florida. The EPA is the US Environmental Protection Agency. While the federal debt ceiling and health care reform get the top headlines, what Republican campaign contributors are really aiming for is the evisceration of environmental regulation. The big polluters, in other words, want you and me to pay for the costs of their pollution. That's what this whole nutrient standards uproar in Florida is all about. And it also ties directly to the plan to save the Everglades and assess the polluters the costs of their pollution.

Whether the Village Council of Palmetto Bay knows it or not, they are being enlisted as low level pawns in the grand plan to use the economic crisis to reverse decades of progress on the environment in the United States. That the EPA is finally taking on pollution problems in Florida, that the state will not solve in order to protect polluters, is long, long overdue. But if the polluters get their way, EPA will be permanently hobbled. And Palmetto Bay elected officials could play a role, which is strange because there are many, many Palmetto Bay voters and taxpayers who are in favor of protecting the unique attributes of their communities: one of the reasons that Palmetto Bay incorporated in the first place, not so long ago.

The full court pressure against the EPA has rippled down through the state legislature to local municipal governments. Palmetto Bay is poised on June 6 to take up a resolution opposing the U.S. EPA plan to clean up Florida waters because the state of Florida won't. I wonder who the polluter lobbyists are, pushing this measure.

Every big polluter in Florida, including Big Sugar, is investing in the jihad against EPA. So what comes next? Palmetto Bay and every municipality in Florida will issue their own little ordinances banning nutrient pollution? Who will do the enforcement, then? The dog catcher?

Let me tell you  what this whole nutrient issue is about: giving polluters a free pass so that taxpayers will have to cover the costs of pollution.

Florida's waters would not be such a disaster if the state had done what it is required to do for the public in the first place, by law: protect us and protect our water quality. The Council should vote no on the resolution sponsored by Council Person Howard Tendrich. The Council should reject  being used as a pawn by rich polluters. Let the EPA do its job because Florida won't. And when Tendrich is elected out of office, Palmetto Bay voters should lift a glass of dirty canal water in his memory.

Carol Wehle: Water District Chief gone ... by gimleteye

The director of the water management district serves at the pleasure of the governor and the state legislature; in other words, enough masters for a politically talented manager to get lost in the crowd. Along this line, it helps that the crowd marches to the same beat of the Growth Machine. More water for growth, development, agriculture when and wherever it is needed. That's the simple equation that also orders local politics; utilities get what they want, to serve the customers they need.

In recent decades, problems with water supply have piled up in Florida incurring tens of billions in infrastructure deficits. These are costs that past and present politicians decided to shift to future generations. We have been living on borrowed time, for a long time, and then the real estate crash. I can't tell you why Carol Wehle resigned from the water management district this week. But I can guess.

Top managers like Wehle thrive in the balancing act: managing public responsibilities, political overlords, industries that are likely future sources of personal income, and manoevering around federal judges who do not take lightly the slights and evasions that have kept state waters highly polluted. Recently, Wehle drew strange attention to herself, through the appearance of inappropriate dealings between her partner, an engineering consultant, and the district's partner in the operation of South Florida canals and planning of Everglades restoration: the US Army Corps of Engineers (some recent press, attached). It wasn't the first scrutiny Wehle had drawn to the intersection of professional relationships and private life. Although the media has jumped on the issue of failed water pumps costing taxpayer millions, these are really a drop in the bucket; even a diversion. A few million in failed pumps is a rounding error. In the rarified atmosphere of the state's most powerful water agency, prerogatives of power slip on quite easily. In Palm Beach County, where the district headquarters is located, powerful officials regularly slip off to jail. In Wehle's case-- as in her predecessors'-- it is more likely that she will slip into a high paid consulting job for one of the industries she regulated.

Everglades restoration has been a top priority of the water management district for decades. Its role was forged in the crucible of federal litigation in the early 1990's that established pollution standards in the Everglades Protection Area. Meeting those standards will cost more than $20 billion. Although the state is charged with paying for at least half of the restoration (actually the polluters are supposed to pay the state share), the culprits include Big Sugar that controls the state legislature, the enlist the same lobbyists as developers. Their jihad against "gummint regulations" gets buried in marketing budgets. It all worked fine until it didn't. In a personal letter to a federal judge, Alan Gold, Wehle recently made extraordinary statements that, in effect, sought to warn off the the caretakers of federal law; we are doing the best we can do, we can't afford any more, and you will just have to trust us when we (the state) say the Everglades are being protected. Wehle's Sept 30, 2010 letter was on the point of remedies sought by the US EPA after a blistering 2008 decision in favor of environmental plaintiffs (including Friends of the Everglades, where I serve as a volunteer board member). When I read it, I thought Wehle had decided to resign: the letter seemed a declaration of intent.

On the other hand, why not? The public wrongly imagines the worst is over from the housing bust. People would just as soon forget -- and perhaps, have already forgotten-- that the worst economic crisis since the Depression was preceded by a decade of foolishness in high places. In Florida, that foolishness was on blatant display during the Jeb Bush regnum in Tallahassee. The robbery happening in Tallahassee today under Gov. Scott would make even Jeb! blush. Judge Gold struck down the revision to Everglades law triggered by the state legislature in 2003. It was massively promoted by Bush and Big Sugar. The same furious competition to control how pollution is defined in order to protect polluters is what recently set Gov. Scott and Florida businesses against the US EPA to stop the imposition of pollution standards for Florida waters by the federal government. (The action of EPA was also as a result of federal suit decided in favor of environmentalists. If you want to bless President Obama for anything, please do it for his determination to let science guide environmental policy and not pure greed.)

Although there is not much traffic with the ordinary taxpayer on these details, they are the true grit of government. When Florida's Growth Machine hummed along, dragging suburbs and rock mines into wetlands all over the state-- generating great wealth for developers and land speculators--, the conflict between institutions and citizens was business as usual. (Search our archive, "Wade Hopping" or "Associated Industries".) These days, though, the economic crisis has busted budgets everywhere. It is not going to be fun, or even possible, to orderly manage through contractions while a rabid, reactionary right is determined to starve government out of business. There will be a backlash from the public at some point. But by the time it happens, the damage being inflicted on Florida by the GOP will be done. "Florida is for sale, everything must go!" Whether Wehle surfaces again in government or private industry, for the time being it is not her problem. Not her problem at all. (Click, 'read more')


South Florida water district chief's boyfriend hired for 6-figure job
Carol Wehle didn’t disclose the relationship. Now, he is in a position to scrutinize her work.

By JOEL ENGELHARDT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The South Florida Water Management District has hired its executive director’s boyfriend for a $120,000-a-year job with her administration’s watchdog.

Executive Director Carol Wehle told The Palm Beach Post she did not publicly disclose the relationship because she had no role in last June’s hiring of Bob Howard, whose job falls under the agency’s inspector general, a watchdog who reports to the governing board.

But initially, one of Wehle’s top deputies suggested to the Army Corps of Engineers that it — not the inspector general — hire Howard. The deputy, Ken Ammon, suggested three candidates, including Howard, to act as a liaison between the district and its federal partner in the billion-dollar business of building and managing South Florida’s water system.

After the corps refused, the district’s inspector general established the position of engineering auditor and hired Howard from a pool of five.

While interviewing for the job, Howard, an engineer with no auditing experience, did not disclose his personal relationship with Wehle, Inspector General John Williams said. But before Howard began work on June 21, word of the relationship leaked. An anonymous letter tipped off then-district board Chairman Eric Buermann. “I can’t tell you that I was happy about it,” Buermann said, “but again, I learned very late in the game after it was a fait accompli.”

Williams, who said he still doesn’t know the exact nature of the relationship, told board members that Howard and Wehle had a relationship and assured them that Howard would not be involved in district operations.

“He was eminently qualified,” Miami-area board member Sandy Batchelor said. “He had been vetted. And was a friend of Carol’s. Why should I have a problem with that? What potential conflict could there be?”

Buermann, whose term expired this month and who remains on the board until Gov. Rick Scott names his replacement, said he was told that Howard “was never going to be in West Palm Beach auditing and dealing with executive management.” Inspector General Williams told The Post that Howard would spend at least 75 percent of his time in Jacksonville.

District records, however, show that Howard spent just nine nights in Jacksonville in December, January and February, 14 percent of his time. A district spokesman explained that the corps has offices in West Palm Beach and Clewiston, as well as Jacksonville, and “the need for travel will vary according to the project.”

‘A glaring conflict’

Buermann said Howard’s time in West Palm Beach poses a problem. “I don’t need to explain it,” he said. “It’s obvious to anyone off the street. He’s either posted in Jacksonville, as was represented to me, or, if he’s not, that’s a glaring conflict of interest.”

Howard’s hiring came as Wehle built a lakefront home with a construction value of $528,000 in the Central Florida resort town of Lake Placid. When Wehle bought the vacant land in 2009 for $250,000, she listed Howard’s Lake Clarke Shores home as her official address on the deed.

She began construction of the five-bedroom, six-bath home in March 2010, still using Howard’s address on the Notice of Commencement document. One month later, the district posted the job opening.

Wehle, Howard and their families are weekend fixtures at the home, a neighbor told The Post. The home recently has been listed for sale at $1.2 million.

Wehle said that she and Howard do not live together. She said she used his address “for a few months when Mr. Howard was living in LaBelle,” his hometown. Public records, however, reveal that she listed his address on several documents between July 2009 and June 2010.

In a written response, Howard said that he and Wehle “are mature adults who have a close, personal friendship.” He said they always have maintained separate residences.

Howard, 57, an engineer since 1976, worked for the district from 2000 to 2006, leaving as operations director. He went to a Naples engineering firm but left that job two years later, he said, after the firm closed its Bonita Springs office. He landed the district job seven months later.

Wehle, 56, came to the district in 2001 under her predecessor, Henry Dean, after eight years at the St. Johns River Water Management District and four years as a Brevard County commissioner. She became executive director in 2005.

Her ability to remain in the $202,000-a-year job depends on a new governing board to be appointed by Scott, who wants the district to cut its property tax collections by 25 percent. Scott has five openings to fill on the nine-member board.

Responding to questions in writing, Wehle said she has no oversight role over the agency’s inspector general. The inspector general’s office, however, is charged with identifying waste, fraud and abuse in Wehle’s administration.

Not in chain of command

“Since the position of engineering auditor was not in my chain of command,” she wrote in an e-mail, “whether the individual hired was my friend, sister or husband was of no consequence in the hiring process.”

It’s a stance similar to the one Wehle took in 2007, when The Post reported that she and her husband, John Wehle, shared a home with a 74-year-old district consultant, Jack Maloy. After the publicity, Maloy, a former district executive director, resigned from his $66,000-a-year job. John Wehle died in 2008.

While Wehle had no formal role in Howard’s hiring, it’s difficult to remove the executive director entirely from any hire. Two administrators who had ties to Howard and who work under Wehle served on the three-member panel that selected Howard.

Panelist Tommy Strowd, deputy executive director for operations and maintenance, had known Howard since they worked together in 1981 at an engineering firm. Panelist Larry Carter, an assistant deputy executive director, supervised Howard when Howard worked for the district in 2006. They helped with the selection, the inspector general said, because the job involved engineering, an area in which the inspector general lacked expertise.

The third panel member, the inspector general, Williams, came to the agency two years after Wehle and from the same agency, St. Johns River Water Management District.

Among those Howard beat out for the job was Joe Schweigart, an engineer with 38 years with the district overseeing major departments and working closely with the corps.

In the highly technical world of corps-district relations, with the restoration of the Everglades and drinking water for South Florida hanging in the balance, the idea of a district liaison embedded with the corps in Jacksonville so thrilled the corps commander, Col. Al Pantano, that he promised to give the liaison an office next to his own, said Ammon, the district deputy director.

Wehle denied that the liaison position morphed into an auditing role. The corps refuses to answer questions about Howard’s assignment. Howard, however, is not seated near the colonel.

Relations between the district and the corps, strained by the demands posed by recent rulings in two federal lawsuits, remain troubled, with the district threatening to sue over one disagreement and the corps embarking on a redesign of the $1 billion Lake Okeechobee dike after a dispute about the district’s role.

As an example of “progress in relations,” the district offered a recent e-mail from Pantano thanking the district for an aerial tour for three corps employees. “I certainly believe that this experience was very helpful in enhancing the relationships between our respective key leaders as well as improving our understanding of the system and challenges we face,” Pantano wrote, closing with “HOOAH!” and a typographical smiley face.

On the district website, Williams urges employees to report suspicious activities and wrongdoing, with assurances of confidentiality under the state whistle-blower act. Hiring the executive director’s boyfriend would not, he insisted, have a chilling effect on potential whistle-blowers.

However, appearances make a difference, said longtime Miami-Dade County Inspector General Christopher Mazzella. “The perception of utter and total independence from the entity you’re inspecting is essential,” he said.

Clearly, the situation creates a perception problem, Palm Beach County Inspector General Sheryl Steckler said. “If the inspector general claims he did not know, it’s not a questionable hire, but now that you know, what do you do about it? It’s not an easy answer.”

Williams said he initiated the position to fill a need in his seven-person office. “The purpose of the position is to provide highly advanced engineering expertise and knowledge,” he said. That means spending time working with district employees in West Palm Beach, Williams said.

Calling Howard a “great fit for the job,” board member Joe Collins, who was elected chairman in March, described the role as being more than an auditor but also someone who would help the district and the corps “get on the same page.”

“I’m going to say acting as a liaison,” said Collins, an executive with grower Lykes Bros. “That may not be exactly the right word. He would express the district’s position on some of these things.”

Howard ‘most qualified’

Added board member Kevin Powers of Martin County: “Bob Howard is one of the most qualified people in the state, if not the country, to serve that function.”

Buermann remains uneasy.

“It’s not that Bob is not a fine fellow,” Buermann said. “Auditors have to be independent from management. That’s why the inspector general reports to the governing board. To have somebody like Bob Howard there who is romantically involved with the executive director, even if things are fine, to the public the perception is not there.”

Staff researchers Niels Heimeriks and Michelle Quigley contributed to this story.

The timeline

May 26, 2005

Carol Wehle becomes executive director of the South Florida Water Management District.

Sept. 25, 2006

Bob Howard resigns as the district’s operations director and takes job with Naples-based Agnoli, Barber & Brundage engineering firm.

Nov. 4, 2008

Wehle’s husband, engineer John Wehle, dies.

July 7, 2009

Wehle pays $250,000 for a vacant home site on Lake June in Lake Placid. She lists her address as 8153 A Chelsea Court, a Lake Clarke Shores home belonging to Bob Howard. She said she used his home for several months, while he was living in LaBelle, because she did not want to be in her West Palm Beach home after her husband’s death.

Aug. 28, 2009

Wehle sells a home in Placida, on Florida’s gulf coast near Port Charlotte, for $645,000, again listing Howard’s Lake Clarke Shores address.

Dec. 1, 2009

Bob Howard leaves Agnoli and starts his own engineering firm, WR Howard Jr. PE.

March 2, 2010

Wehle begins construction on her home in Lake Placid, which is northwest of Lake Okeechobee in Highlands County.

April 20, 2010

District advertises to hire engineering auditor.

June 2, 2010

After interviews with five finalists, inspector general offers Howard job of engineering auditor at $120,016 per year.

June 21, 2010

Howard starts work at the district, listing the Lake Clarke Shores home as his address. Board Chairman Eric Buermann receives an anonymous tip that Howard and Wehle have a personal relationship. Inspector General John Williams persuades Buermann and the rest of the board that no conflict exists.

June 23, 2010

Wehle lists the Lake Clarke Shores home as her address on a financial disclosure form.

July 29, 2010

Construction completed on Lake Placid home. Home is now listed for sale at $1.2 million.

Find this article at:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/south-florida-water-district-chiefs-boyfriend-hired-for-1352154.html

Democracy For Sale in United States, where independence of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches is only aspirational ... by gimleteye

The subject deserves a book. If it were a book, the destruction of democracy in the United States by special interests could be told through the all-out war by the GOP to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from waking from its decades-long sleep. This federal agency is a regulatory Rip Van Wynkle, jarred from hibernation (imposed by industry lobbyists placed inside the agency as political appointees) to find the world of regulations changed drastically from its formation in the 1970's by a Republican president.

The example I would use, in this book to explain to the American people, is the effort by the US EPA to reign in the ongoing, lethal pollution of Florida waters from nutrients. One of President Obama's greatest achievements-- and least noted-- is his insistence to base environmental policies on science not the marketing budgets of big polluters. In taking this firm stance, he has triggered the fury of funders of the Tea Party like the Koch Brothers; billionaires whose profits are maximized when regulations are lax and unenforced.

Most public attention to the EPA by the mass market media is focused on climate change issues. Big Oil and Big Coal are spending millions against the US EPA intention to regulate carbon dioxide emissions that are turning the atmosphere into an oven. The water quality issue-- pollution as a result of fertilizing farms, lawns, and tolerating unlimited runoff of roadways and from urban areas into canals, streams, rivers and bays-- is under the mass market media radar, but the Florida example proves the point that of all Obama's initiatives, including health care, foreign policy, and taxation, it is the effort to regulate polluters that generates the most instant push back from the big contributors to the conservative, extremist right.

In Florida, the polluters control the legislature through lobbyists. In the current session of the Florida legislature, they are using the economic Depression in Florida to eliminate every regulation that hinders growth, conveniently sliding by the fact that a desperately polluted Florida will be unattractive to any investor, except one who seeks out a state with the least regulations. That's right: the new GOP slogan could be, "Come to Florida, we're too poor to clean ourselves up or even care!"

On the issue of the executive and legislative branches of government taking on the US EPA in Florida, the record is clear: Governor Rick Scott and the GOP legislature have taken every opportunity to express their objection to new EPA nutrient rules. Never mind the fact it took environmentalists more than a decade and important federal litigation to get EPA to face up to its responsibilities under the Clean Water Act to tame the pollution of Florida's waters. We are too poor to be clean is one part of the message, reinforcing a key GOP tenet that you can only protect the environment to the extent that profits from exploiting the environment generate revenues to afford regulation of polluters. It is part of the mad, inchoate logic of the "free market" capacity to regulate itself better than punitive laws and rules.

Now, in Miami-Dade County a new county commissioner-- Lynda Bell-- is picking up the cudgel on behalf of her campaign contributors and lobbyists. On April 4th, she has sponsored a resolution from the County Commission to object to new EPA rules to limit phosphorous pollution. What Bell knows about this issue could fit on the head of a pin. But she is just doing the work of her prophet, Natacha Seijas the former county commissioner disgraced by voters in a recent recall election.

If Bell is the worm's eye view of legislative attack on the EPA, then the bird's eye view would be the organizers of anti-pollution regulation efforts in Florida: Big Sugar. Billionaires like the Fanjuls of Coral Gables and Palm Beach routinely invest tens and hundreds of millions in lobbying against laws that restrict their massive blanketing of the former Everglades, now sugar fields, with nitrogen and phosphorous. The fertilizer is needed to augment land that has been exhausted to the point of disappearance in order to grow one of the most heavily subsidized industrial crops in America: sugar.

You see: Big Sugar is FOR federal regulations that protect its profits, like the Farm Bill, and AGAINST regulations that limit its profits, like the 10 parts per billion nutrient standard; the kernel in the corn of state-wide nutrient standards opposed by the Florida Chamber and Associated Industries. (Let's see the Tea Party take on Big Sugar and Marco Rubio, strongly supported by Big Sugar.) The Florida Independent took a look at the Fanjuls yesterday in a well written if not ground-breaking, "The Fanjuls, the Koch Brothers of South Florida."

How do these predatory practices add up to the federal judiciary is a more complicated point to unwind in a short blog post. Suffice it to say; this is the most important part of the Fanjuls game and one their lobbyists know perfectly well. All the huffing and puffing by the GOP wolves on the EPA water quality issue in Florida take place in the context of twenty years of litigation in federal court on Everglades water quality. Think of the battle to force EPA to regulate pollution in the Everglades-- facts long-ago determined by federal courts-- as a template for state-wide nutrient pollution issues.

Environmental non profit groups (I am conservation chair of Friends of the Everglades) have struggled through this time to raise funds to initiate highly complex litigation against government agencies, including the EPA!, for its failure to enforce pollution limits and remedies against Big Sugar's pollution. Fighting on the other side are law firms founded by Ramon Rasco (Rasco, who is also the chairman of US Century Bank-- the region's zero ranked sprawl advocate also recently hired former Steel Hector's Joe Klock who has represented the Fanjuls for decades) and the State of Florida itself, taking marching orders from Gov. Scott and the legislature, to corner and box any federal judge who gets it in his or her uppity head that they can mess with the prerequisites of the powerful in the world's most outstanding democracy.

The polluters' trump card: GOP presidents who have approved federal judges who pass muster and meet the quality control standards of Big Business. Proxies of the president like Karl Rove understand perfectly well how federal district cases on the environment can be appealed and even end up crashing into the U.S. Supreme Court. It's all about politics.

The so-called judicial conservatives are "activists" on behalf of causes Big Business supports. If somehow a federal budget emerges in the next few weeks, with or without anti-environmental riders including one that would prohibit EPA from imposing pollution standards on Florida waters, no one will cheer the impending gridlock more than Big Sugar and its billionaires who know that for the foreseeable future, there have never been better conditions to buy the legislative and executive branches. Limits on campaign contributions have been thrown to the wind by the US Supreme Court. It's not just political offices that are for sale. In Florida, everything is for sale. Just look at what Miami-Dade's Miguel Diaz de la Portilla is proposing with SB1690 -- to remove limits on state campaign contributions-- for evidence that the doors to the prisons have been thrown open and the keys to the jail thrown down the sewer grate. (Click 'read more', for three important articles including the one on the Fanjuls, "The Koch Brothers of South Florida".)

The Fanjuls: The Koch brothers of South Florida?

By Kyle Daly | 03.31.11 | 10:59 am
The Florida Independent


Following revelations of their involvement in the war on public unions in Wisconsin, the once-anonymous Koch Industries Executive Vice President David and his brother Charles have in a short time become boogeymen of the left, the liberal answer to the man behind many conservative conspiracies: George Soros — something David groused about in a recent, fawning Weekly Standard profile.
Meanwhile, other billionaires and multimillionaires who have used their wealth to fund their agendas have managed to slip under the radar. Among them are the Fanjul family — Florida sugar magnates who also happen to be friends and neighbors of David and Julia Koch.
Like the Kochs, Alfonso “Alfy” and José “Pepe” Fanjul are two of four brothers who inherited a massive conglomerate from their father — in their case, Cuban sugar kingpin Alfonso Fanjul, Sr., who fled Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power. Unlike the Kochs, Alfy and Pepe are by all accounts still on good terms with their brothers, Alexander and Andrés, though Alfy and Pepe are higher profile and are the top executives at Flo-Sun, Inc., the family sugar empire.
Flo-Sun owns resorts in the Dominican Republic but gets most of its revenue through its American Sugar Refining division. American Sugar owns the C&H, Florida Crystals and Redpath Sugar brands, but its largest and best-known subsidiary is Domino Foods, Inc., producer of Domino Sugar. All told, Flo-Sun is estimated to pull in about $2.5 billion annually.
The Fanjuls, however, are not necessarily the easy liberal targets that the Kochs are.
To begin with, Alfy is a devoted Democrat. In the run-up to the 2010 election, he gave $37,230 to nine Democratic candidates for U.S. Congress. The biggest recipients of his largess were Kendrick Meek, who lost his Senate bid to Marco Rubio despite former President Bill Clinton’s vigorous campaigning, and Ted Deutch, the Broward County representative (and, given their Palm Beach headquarters, the Fanjuls’ own congressman) who overwhelmingly defeated Republican Ed Lynch in a special election in April of last year.
Despite Deutch’s party affiliation, based on his policies and his voting record in the Florida Senate prior to becoming a U.S. representative, Associated Industries of Florida gave Deutch an 80 percent “business friendly” rating, the third highest of any Florida Democrat analyzed, and the highest of any Democrat now serving on the national stage. His general voting record in U.S. office, however, has been overwhelmingly along party lines.
Pepe Fanjul, meanwhile, gave $40,100 to nine Republican candidates prior to the 2010 election. He gave the most to U.S. Rep. David Rivera, he of numerous ethics troubles. Should Rivera remain in office, he has pledged (.pdf) to oppose any legislation addressing climate change that would increase any amount of government spending. The pledge he signed was originated by Americans for Prosperity, a limited-government organization funded by the Koch brothers.
The second largest recipient of Pepe Fanjul’s campaign contributions was freshman U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, whose dedication to loosening environmental regulations on corporations like Flo-Sun has previously been reported by The American Independent.
Of course, for mega-corporations like the Fanjuls’, just giving to favored candidates may not represent the best Washington investment for their money. Lobbying is where the Fanjuls put in major cash.
Flo-Sun spent $695,000 (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) in 2010 alone lobbying the House, Senate and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on industrial waste regulations, food safety rules relating to sugar and elements of the Clean Water Act that affect the Florida Everglades.
Neither the Fanjuls nor their lobbying firms are required to disclose exactly what’s discussed in lobbyist meetings or which politicians have agreed to meet with them — though it would certainly strain belief to suggest that they’re spending almost a quarter-million dollars a year to argue in favor of deeper government regulation. Since 2005, Flo-Sun has spent $3.65 million lobbying the federal government.


orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-scott-maxwell-money-politics-0330120110329,0,2725932.column
OrlandoSentinel.com
Just what we need: More big money in politics
Scott Maxwell
TAKING NAMES
March 30, 2011
Florida lawmakers are among the most innovative pimps you'll ever meet.
Just when you think they've exhausted every possible way to prostitute themselves, they come up with something new.
The latest proposals have politicians trying to raise campaign-donation limits — by stratospheric proportions — and setting up political slush funds where they can accept unlimited amounts of cash.
Sure, our state is in a financial crisis. And yes, there's talk of de-funding everyone from veterans to the disabled. But darn it, if legislative leaders can't find an easier way for Big Sugar or the billboard industry to give them $50,000, what's the point of being in office?
We'll start with Senate Bill 1690 — the one to boost maximum contributions from $500 up to $10,000.
That's for the gubernatorial races, anyway. Donations would top out at $5,000 for other statewide candidates; $2,500 for legislative races; and $1,000 for local ones.
The bill's sponsor, Miami Republican Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, says his plan has nothing to do with wanting more money.
Of course it doesn't.
He says he just wants to free up legislators to spend more time with their constituents. If they can take big chunks of cash, they won't have to waste time chasing down all those pesky little $500 ones.
"What you'll see," Diaz de la Portilla told the News Service of Florida, "is candidates being able to spend a lot more time campaigning and being out there with voters…"
I see. You know what else might help you guys save time? If we just let you accept briefcases full of cash. Maybe some cars, boats and jewelry too.
I'm sure there are any number of companies — like a casino giant desperate for you to legalize gambling on South Beach, for instance — that would gladly fork over $250,000 in unmarked bills.
And think of all the extra time you hardworking public servants would have if you didn't have to waste time worrying about silly things like jobs or mortgage payments either.
(More on this bill in the newest installment of the Malarkey Meter at orlandosentinel.com/takingnames
The other big-money idea lawmakers love is leadership slush funds. So they're bringing those back, too.
They voted to do so just last week.
We're talking millions of dollars — unlimited donations to funds controlled by the incoming legislative leaders from each party. Future leaders, like incoming House speakers and Senate presidents, will now be allowed to take big checks from special interests and then redistribute the money to their friends' campaigns — in chunks as big as $50,000 each for legislative races and $250,000 for statewide ones.
How is the average Floridian supposed to compete with that?
You can't. In fact, this toxic combination of money and politics was such an obvious recipe for corruption that Florida lawmakers outlawed leadership slush funds more than 20 years ago.
On the day after the state House took action back in 1989, the Sentinel headline read: "HOUSE CLEANS ITS IMAGE BY PASSING BILL."
But we're now in a new era in Florida — one in which politicians seem to care a lot less about their image.
So I have an idea of my own. If we can't get them to clean up their act, at least we can make the money easier to follow.
My idea: Sponsorship patches.
You know, like NASCAR.
If a corporate interest cuts a sizable check to a politician — be it through increased campaign limits, leadership slush funds, political parties or third-party groups — then that politician would have to wear a patch with the donor's logo.
This way, if a lawmaker tries to ram through some surprise piece of legislation allowing oil drilling in our shallow waters, for instance, you can simply look at his suit jacket and say: "Oh, I get it! Senator Smith is sponsored by the Florida Association of Petroleum Patriarchs!"
Think about how much easier it would be for you to understand why a lawmaker was voting to cut school funding — so that he could give an extra tax break to high-end yachts — if his suit pocket is clearly labeled: "Sponsored in part by the Florida Yacht-Hawkers Association."
We may not be able to stop these guys from acting like prostitutes.
But at least we can make it easier to see who their johns are.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6141
Copyright © 2011, Orlando Sentinel


Florida Legislature proves once and for all that it is for sale
By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
In Print: Sunday, March 27, 2011



These are harsh words for a Sunday morning, but the occasion screams out for them. I take them from the Bible; please forgive me.

The Florida Legislature proved this past week, once and for all, that it is the utter Whore of Babylon.

It is now legal in our state to pay off the Legislature directly. Who says so? The Legislature.

This is not a joke.

This is not satire.

This is Florida — where the laws of our democracy are now openly, officially For Sale.

On Thursday afternoon, with greedy lip-smacking speed, the Legislature voted to relegalize a bygone and corrupt institution, outlawed in this state for more than two decades, known as "leadership funds."

These "leadership funds" are campaign slush funds operated legally and officially by the leaders of the Legislature themselves:

The speaker of the Florida House and his chosen successor, the "speaker designate."

The president of the Florida Senate and his successor.

The leaders of the minority party in the House and Senate.

So now, just as it was in Florida's corrupt past, if you are an interest group that wants a law passed, you simply go to the leaders of the House and Senate …

And you pay them off directly.

I feel the need to repeat: This is not a joke.

This is now the law of Florida, as of Thursday — for they tripped over themselves to make it effective immediately.

And so this is our stewardship of the great nation birthed by Washington and Jefferson and preserved by Lincoln.

This is the American legislative process once practiced by Clay and Webster.

This is what we have come to.

"Lawmakers" walking around with open gunny sacks, selling the democracy, frankly, proudly, wickedly, shamelessly, amorally.

Good God.

• • •

If you tell yourself a lie, and if everybody around you tells the exact same lie, and it is vitally important that all of you believe it — then all of you will believe it.

Especially if you all profit from it.

And so every single person in Tallahassee who voted for this outrageously wicked law on Thursday will tell you exactly the same lie:

It's an improvement.

It's a reform.

Here is Tallahassee thinking. Here is how they rationalize it:

See, it will be better if interest groups can just pay off the Legislature directly. We will list the contributions in a separate report and everybody can see it. This will be more "transparent."

Yes, a nice, separate report! Makes me feel better!

Except for two tiny, teeny things:

1. The money is laundered anyway.

They turn right around and pour their ill-gotten money into local elections around the state to perpetuate their power. Local candidates Smith and Jones are still being bankrolled by corporations, or unions as the case may be, hidden through the leadership funds.

2. The second teeny, tiny problem is, in case I have not adequately mentioned it …

THE LEGISLATURE IS BEING PAID OFF

Good grief! Jehoshaphat! Are you kidding me? Are you kidding?

In what universe should the very writers of law in a democracy operate their own slush funds, into which those seeking favorable treatment can pour money?

Listen:

If you are personal friends with, or a fellow Rotary member of, a Florida legislator who voted for this — heck, if you are married to someone who voted for this — you will want to believe him or her. This is human nature. It is loyalty. It is understandable.

Ed Hooper of Clearwater. Peter Nehr of Tarpon Springs.

Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, who promised to take people to the "woodshed." (Did he mean, so they could give money there?)

Jim Frishe of St. Petersburg. Dana Young of Tampa. Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel, the next speaker, whom I like tremendously.

I am sure that if you are among their friends or family, you will want to believe them. They will speak very smoothly about it.

But here is the reality. Here is the truth.

Legislators. Sworn to the sacred duty of writing the laws of a free people. Taking legal, direct payoffs from those seeking favorable laws.

If you can swallow that, then your moral relativism knows no bounds.

• • •

Here is who voted for this from our part of the state, and who voted against it.

Senators voting yes:

Dennis Jones, R-Treasure Island; Jack Latvala, R-St. Petersburg; Jim Norman, R-Tampa; Ronda Storms, R-Brandon.

Senators voting no:

Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey; Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland; Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa.

House members voting yes:

Larry Ahern, R-Seminole; Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton; Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg; Rachel Burgin, R-Riverview; Richard Corcoran, R-New Port Richey; Jim Frishe, R-St. Petersburg; Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City; James Grant, R-Tampa; Shawn Harrison, R-Tampa; Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater; John Legg, R-New Port Richey; Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland; Peter Nehr, R-Tarpon Springs; Rob Schenck, R-Spring Hill; Jimmie Smith, R-Inverness; Greg Steube, R-Bradenton; Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel; Dana Young, R-Tampa.

House members voting no:

Janet Cruz, D-Tampa; Richard Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg; Betty Reed, D-Tampa; Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg.

Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city!

Florida Chamber of Commerce: we can't afford to clean our pollution of your waters ... by gimleteye

Recently, the St. Pete Times wrote an editorial blasting the business interests that are obstructing the US EPA from enforcing against pollution of Florida's waters that makes The Miami Herald editorial page, a desert in comparison. The editorial, reprinted below, is along the lines that I wrote recently, "Florida is floating in a sea of pollution." This weekend, I saw this phenomenon first-hand; through an airplane window and then on a small boat out of Key West: the blighted, shallow water environment-- wrecked by algae blooms and pollution.

This photo shows is layers of polluted water converging and moving through the Keys. The photo was taken, roughly, between Islamorada and Marathon, on the Atlantic side. But the ugly water is everywhere.

Shot from a few thousand feet in the air, I matched this view a few hours later from a small boat from Key West into the Mud Keys and Snipe Point. It was a magical winter day-- almost without wind and warm, too. At dead low tide there should have been wading birds everywhere, spearing small crabs and shrimp in the exposed bottom. I only saw a few and I knew why. Like so much of the Everglades, the place was barren. That's because there is so little food left; its fragile web has been busted apart by polluted water. To an untrained eye, the water looked fine. But I've watched this stretch of our natural heritage since the 1970's. Everywhere the water had a dense green cast; the sea grass didn't resemble anything like the lush carpet that once blanketed these meadows. For the most part, the blades of seagrass were coated with slime, like a sick tongue. Click, 'read more'.


My friend, a life-time resident of the Keys and avid waterman, told me that bonefish populations had collapsed in the past year. He is a doctor. Several times a week for decades, he puts out of his dock on Sugarloaf Key and heads to the back country. He knows the channels and tides like lines in his palm. We've had this conversation before. My friend still harbors the expectation that hard science will tell him what is happening now; that the jury is still out, that the decline of marine life is a pause in an unfathomable cycle. This is not what I have observed. As young men we both fished the Keys in the 1970's; then, there were moments in the backcountry when life was firing on all eight cyclinders-- a riot of species in water so shallow you could measure its depth from your waist, down. Things began to change very quickly in the 1980's. You didn't have to be a marine scientist to read in the sudden blooms of toxic algae a threat to Florida.

Those who dismissed the threat, then, to Florida's natural heritage are the same who dismiss it now: wealthy sugar barons who farm and dump their pollution into the Everglades that feeds Florida Bay, big cities that continue to use canal systems as sewage drains to dump stormwater filled with chemicals and nutrients, and shills for the builders and land speculators whose business models depend on shifting infrastructure costs to taxpayers while they pocket profits. Today they are fighting tooth and nail in Congress, to strip out the authority of EPA -- surely the most bedraggled of federal agencies-- to regulate fertilizer and phosphorous pollution; a chief culprit in the toxic waters of Florida.

Then, Florida's business leaders didn't give a crap that our nearshore waters were falling apart. They would use hollow arguments: "Science is inconclusive," or, "This is just part of the natural cycle." Or, "What we need is a big hurricane to wash out the dirty water." Today, in the Keys and the rest of Florida they are out of excuses including the worst of all: "Business can self-regulate their pollution better than regulations."

Florida's business leaders don't see how our state's natural resources contribute to the bottom line and how that bottom line is racing us to all become trailer trash. The reason that regulations don't work is that the entire system-- from civil service requirements to measurement metrics-- is designed to fail. It is not that government can't work. It is that the business interests that control government, don't want it to. That's the point of the St. Pete Times editorial, in rebuttal to Gov. elect Scott and the panoply of Republican extremists who are harping on the US EPA for its plan to finally-- FINALLY-- require Florida to impose laws on the kinds of fertilizer and nutrient pollution that is killing our state.

My opinion is: shut down the polluters. Who can doubt the time is long overdue to put the cost in the products they sell? Well, for one, the doubters include the Idiocracy that sees nothing wrong with the Keys water quality turning into garbage. They hold the center stage. They grab public attention with catch phrases like , "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" They don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about.

Take Sarah Palin, for example. Palin clearly loves the outdoors in Alaska. But nature in Alaska is not like anywhere else in the continental United States. There, human impacts are dwarfed by wilderness; or at least seem so. For the time being, Alaska is the last place where nature remains appears intact. It is no wonder that corporate polluters aka The Tea Party have grabbed onto Palin and her blissful ignorance that Alaska stands for everywhere. They did the same with other Alaska politicians who held environmental regulations hostage to "freedom", to stand for the whole nation and to hold the whole nation, hostage.

The economic crash has simply strengthened their hold. Now, the gang is in Tallahassee, promoting Jeb Bush ideologues back into the limelight; Jeb! whose amendments to the 1994 Everglades Forever Act, passed at the urging of Big Sugar in 2003, condemned the Everglades to more years of costly delay and federal litigation that still is not resolved while the waters of Florida degrade into layers of disgust.

The polluters want to keep polluting, and they are taking advantage of this mini-depression and economic crisis to solidify their agenda. They want taxpayers to foot the bill. They want voters to really believe that there is nothing we can do to stop progress that is the addition of all the features of modern life including pollution. We become dumber, sicker, and more and more used to a blighted, toxic landscape. (click 'read more' for the full St. Pete Times editorial)


St. Pete Times OPED: "Rick Scott, Pam Bondi and the rest of Florida's newly elected Republican leadership teamed up the other day for a shameful cause — dirtier streams, lakes and drinking water. The pair joined a host of incoming Republican officeholders to blast the new clean water rules announced this month by the Environmental Protection Agency. These leaders need to get their facts — and their priorities — straight. Polluted water endangers public health, threatens the golden geese of property values and tourism and destroys the very environment that attracts residents here. The state should welcome the new standards and work with polluters to clean up the public's waterways.

The new rules are hardly an example of an activist federal government overstepping its authority. The EPA told the states in 1998 to limit nutrient pollution in surface waters by 2004 or it would do the job for them. But 2004 came and went. Finally, in 2008, environmental groups sued the EPA, calling on the agency to intervene in Florida under the Clean Water Act. Last year, the agency settled the case under the stipulation that it adopt specific pollution standards for Florida waterways. The EPA unveiled those standards — for lakes, river and springs — this month. A separate proposal for coastal waters is due by November 2011.

Florida's political and business leaders decried the move as an unprecedented reach and a costly mandate that could stall Florida's recovery — totally ignoring that the EPA and state had dragged their feet for more than a decade while waterways deteriorated further. Industry groups said the measure could cost agriculture, municipal and industrial wastewater plants and pulp and paper manufacturers $12 billion a year. Barney Bishop, who heads Associated Industries, the powerful business lobby, blamed "radical left-wingers" for imposing regulations that the state might not even need.

Radical left-wingers? These rules were put into motion under the administration of President George W. Bush, after the EPA had worked for a decade with two Republican governors of Florida to write tighter pollution standards. And the standards are not near as draconian or as costly as industrial polluters have claimed. The EPA estimates the rules would affect only a fraction of farmers, plant operators and other polluters. Fewer than half of the wastewater plants and only about one-tenth of farming operations would fall under the plan, according to the EPA. The agency estimates the cleanup would cost between $135 million and $206 million annually. And that's before polluters could take advantage of a variance process that could take entire operations or watersheds off the hook from making any changes at all.

Business groups have done a good job camouflaging the issue as a jobs bill and confusing the point: The public's waterways should no longer be a cheap dumping ground for fertilizer, chemicals, livestock manure, stormwater runoff and septic tanks. Nutrient pollution causes harmful algae blooms, which can kill fish, cause infections, rashes and respiratory problems among swimmers and beach goers and cause huge financial losses in tourism and property values. The state acknowledged in 2008 that nutrient pollution tainted 1,000 miles of rivers, 350,000 acres of lakes and 900 square miles of estuaries in Florida.

The EPA's standards build on what is a Florida solution to a Florida problem. Federal officials have shown good faith by continuing to meet with state regulators and affected industries to ensure that the clean-water standards are reasonable and specific to the local hydrologic conditions. The EPA also stayed the rules for an additional 15 months to give the industry time to prepare. This was after the agency postponed the rules initially at the request of Florida's two U.S. senators, Republican George LeMieux and Democrat Bill Nelson. Florida's political and business leaders need to heed their own call for science, not politics, to drive this process. This is the water that Floridians drink."


[Last modified: Nov 19, 2010 06:47 PM]

Under Miami's radar: the Growth Machine opposes cleaning Florida's waters ... by gimleteye

The Florida Independent has a concise report of the major effort by Florida's Growth Machine to stop the U.S. EPA from requiring Florida to clean up its polluted waterways. "Dozens of politicians, lobbyists and industry heads have written to both the EPA and Congress to argue against new water quality standards that would force many big utilities and agricultural companies to reduce the amount of waste they dump in Florida’s waterbodies. Their argument? The rules would be far too costly to follow for industries in a state already grappling with record high unemployment." That's right, folks. The best we can do is create an economy that eats itself alive.

Is it safe to eat Gulf shrimp and fish, now? or now? or, now? by gimleteye

The University of Georgia came out with an analysis yesterday that sharply contradicts the claim that most of the Gulf oil from the Deepwater catastrophe simply disappeared into thin air. (I called readers' attention to the work of the University of Georgia in early June.) According to UGA scientists, the vast majority of oil is disappearing into water column, trapped by layers of cold and salinity. From there, microscopic beads of remnant oil will leach into the food chain, starting with micro-organisms, and accumulate up into the seafood we like to eat. The uncertainties from there pile up like tar balls. When carcinogens are measured in parts per million, and when food and water safety is a lesser concern of government officials than covering their asses, getting re-elected, or safeguarding their pensions, knowing when Gulf shrimp and fish is safe to eat is an individual decision. Is it safe to eat Gulf seafood now, tomorrow, or, the day after? If you are fishing in so-called clean water, is it possible the snapper you catch might have swum or fed from water through which a toxic oil plume passed? It is the same kind of question that confronts homeowners in The Acreage in Palm Beach where cancer clusters have popped up. When do you cut your losses and give up what you value-- and what cost you a lot of money-- just to protect your health? Environmental catastrophes are forcing people to flee from what they value and where they have invested. These catastrophes are created by bad decisions. Shouldn't there be a law criminalizing decision-makers who push citizens into this race to the bottom? Now, all the talk in the Gulf is about getting federal regulators off the back of the oil industry. We need jobs! So, who will then be held accountable if ten years from now, you get a life-threatening disease that may or may not have been caused by oil in your food supply? The answer is, no one. Maybe you also watched a food inspector in the Gulf, on NBC Nightly News, do a "smell test" for oil in fish fillets in a restaurant. Like that's a very scientific method for protecting your health. Stick your shnozz in a piece of raw grouper. No thank you. Pass the "organic" kale, please.