Maggy Hurchalla, an environmental hero in Florida, died last weekend unexpectedly.
We featured Maggy on our blog over the years. We wished the mainstream press and media had, too.
To read our work on Maggy, click here:
Her passing is a great loss. Below you'll find a blog post from January 2015. I hope Gov. Ron DeSantis takes time read it. He is in the Governor's Mansion in no small part because Florida environmentalists loudly returned his competitor, Adam Putnam, to the private sector.
Putnam is a wealthy farmer who owed his political life to Big Sugar. Environmentalists did not hesitate to let Florida voters know.
The reason Ron DeSantis should take the time to read about Maggy Hurchalla?
Because the Florida legislature is in the midst of another horrible legislative effort to give Big Sugar what it wants, when it wants. That's the battle Maggy Hurchalla fought. DeSantis should think a little bit about what she stood for.
Maggy understood what scientists claimed as loudly as they could afford to (and still be employed): that the only way to fix Florida's water woes and the Everglades was to purchase lands currently used to farm sugar, the most heavily subsidized crop in the United States.
Big Sugar had other plans. It felt the pressure and reacted. In 2017, the sugar industry used legislation proposed by Senate President Joe Negron to pass a horrible bill into law. A Trojan Horse. Classic.
The Negron legislation started out as a way to address the wicked toxic algae blooms exploding on both Florida coasts because Lake Okeechobee is managed within an inch of its life to accommodate Big Sugar.
The bill that eventually passed in 2017 included other horribles; for example, stripping state agencies from using eminent domain on sugar lands.
Maggy never gave up. She was as determined and smart and sharp and vigorous as they come. She knew the Everglades because she had lived them. She knew the Everglades because she loved them.
Maggy Hurchalla understood the assignment! God speed.
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The following is the original blogpost from January 2015: "The attached OPED is by Maggy Hurchalla, Miami native and former Martin County commissioner,
whose interview featured here; our first 'Achiever' of 2015. Read Maggie's OPED,
next to my broadside earlier this week on Adam Putnam, Florida Secretary of Agriculture, and Big Sugar, the Great Destroyers of Florida.
Miami is as affected as any other part of the state by water policies favoring the Great Destroyers, but Miamians need to look up from their shoelaces, sandals, and Guccis and see that the water policies dramatically impacting the rest of the state also are central issues, right here.
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| When all the Everglades were good for, was draining |
The bottom line: Big Sugar has to let go of central land holdings in order to protect the water supply affecting millions of Floridians and the dying Everglades. They will do this either as willing sellers or through eminent domain. They are strenuously resisting either.
Read my OPED on Putnam, to understand how Big Sugar is gaming the media, the system, and taxpayers, pointing in the direction of endless delay.
The Miami-Dade County Commission has been deathly silent on "sending the water south". Lots of money was made in Miami, representing Big Sugar in legal proceedings and selling farm equipment to the Everglades Agricultural Area.
The stakes are so high that continued silence by Mayor Gimenez and the county commission is no longer tolerable. The weight of the county and the Dade delegation to the legislature is considerable. It is decades beyond the time for clamoring by our elected officials in Miami, send the water south. Instead, we've had mouthpieces for the Great Destroyers like Pepe Diaz acting like experts about the need for more drainage of the Everglades. What is missing is leadership.
BUY THE LAND: SEND THE WATER SOUTH
That's the war cry of the folks where dumping Lake Okeechobee to the east and to the west coasts is literally killing their estuaries. Comprehensive Everglades Restoration has to send the water south.
It's not hysteria. Even the Corps of Engineers agrees that without a change in water management, the St. Lucie Estuary will be irrevocably destroyed. Irrevocable is forever.
The irony is that the people who need to be shouting loudest are the residents of Miami-Dade County. They have been strangely silent.
A recent Herald editorial pointed out…
