Courtney Nash's Last Swim: Florida's Lethal Waters

I have been writing about toxic algae blooms in Florida waters for many years. As an economic matter, the loss of water quality in Florida is a tragedy: billions of dollars of coastal real estate values are at risk, not to mention tourism revenues and commercial and recreational fisheries. Politics have always been to blame. Environmentalists have been tilting at those windmills for decades. But the way the economic crisis has been exploited by the radical right to inflict more damage casts new waves of revulsion: big polluters determined to use the economic crisis and tout "job creation" while blithely skipping over how so much money and how many jobs have been lost because of pollution.

The death of Courtney Nash, from a rare bacterial infection, should knock the wind out of the Republican Congress' effort to gut the US EPA. In a recent blog post, widely distributed on Counterpunch, I suggested a new law -- the Courtney Nash Act-- to require the children of GOP opponents of the EPA to send their children swimming in the same area where Courtney Nash contracted her infection. The state of Florida has refused, over decades, to impose strict pollution control laws in Florida waters, succumbing to the influence of polluters. Now the polluters are using the economic crisis to blame EPA-- the agency under federal court order to enforce the Clean Water Act. One high brow critic accused me of "intellectual dishonesty" and "stooping low" in wishing harm to the children of GOP legislators.

This morning, one scientist wrote, "... Naegleria fowleri may have some linkage to nutrient levels. I believe that it has been suggested that low nutrient levels may induce the organism go
into its cyst stage, which is non-pathogenic, and high nutrients may induce formation of the
trophozoite stage, which can be pathogenic. Obviously, there likely are other factors like temperature, but nutrients may play a role."

I confess to reaching for the lowest denominator because that is the only place our national conversations are taking place. It is useless to pretend calm, rational argument prevails when we are being beaten by brick bats. Environmental laws are based on calculations of risk, benefits and costs. From the agency's first moment, decades ago, it has been under continuous attack by commercial interests whose profits suffer when regulations are imposed that protect public health, the environment, and quality of life at their expense. In my OPED, "Courtney Nash's Last Swim", I suggest that if legislators knew that their children were at risk, that they would change the laws to protect them. Why shouldn't legislators -- who are intent on preventing EPA from enforcing the Clean Water Act-- be required to bear the same risks as Courtney Nash and her family? Here is a reprint of the blog recommending a new law requiring legislators to send their children into the same toxic waters that killed Courtney Nash. Also read: "Bashing EPA is new theme in GOP race", NY Times August 17, 2011.

Courtney Nash's Last Swim: Florida's Lethal Waters
By ALAN FARAGO
August 17, 2011

Better than a torrent of words, an unnecessary death can spark new legislation protecting children. Such was the case in Florida of the Ryan White Act, approved by Congress to protect children with HIV/AIDS and Megan's Law, a Florida law meant to protect children from sex predators. In a perfect world, this would also apply to the tragic death of Courtney Nash, who died as a result of swimming in the polluted St. Johns River. The St. Johns is polluted because Florida legislators-- and now the Florida GOP congressional delegation-- refuse to allow the federal government to establish rules to fix severe water pollution where the Florida has utterly failed.


My idea to make converts of Republican legislators: compel their children to go swimming in Florida's polluted waterways. Make them float down the river exactly where Courtney Nash contracted the infection that killed her. Let the mothers and fathers in the state legislature or Congress experience the consequences of pollution they knowingly refuse to stop. Florida legislators 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." Unless the US Senate stops the bill, it will pass for the president's signature.

From my point of view, clean fresh water is a right. When polluters contaminate our rivers, streams -- like Big Sugar does in the Everglades-- with nutrients from fertilizers or any other source, they must pay 100 percent of the clean up costs. Of course their business model is to shift the costs of their pollution to taxpayers to the maximum practical extent, even though in the case of the Everglades the Florida constitution explicitly requires the polluters to pay. Not even close. From my point of view, there should be a law, when lobbyists are caught forcing environmental agencies away from protecting public health, they should be at risk of 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 that 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 to their sixteen year old daughter. 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.

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." So, whose children would be at risk under this new plan? Start with 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."

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". Here is another: 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 let their children play in the St. Johns River. "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.