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| "Red Tide Rick" bet on killing environmental rules as governor. Look what he did. |
His latest gambit is to call for the creation of research center for red tide. My God, man!
2013, 2015, 2018: Lake Okeechobee has been gushing billions and billions of gallons of toxic waters in serial calamities and NOW Rick Scott is paying attention?
He didn't paying attention as governor, or, better to say: he was ONLY PAYING ATTENTION TO POLLUTERS. His signature achievement: lax enforcement of environmental rules. Another achievement: putting hacks and polluter-friendly cronies into important positions on the governing boards of the state water management districts. From those perches, environmentalists have been attacked, marginalized, and ignored.
When environmentalists protested at the South Florida Water Management District, Big Sugar hired actors from Fort Lauderdale to counter protest, organized through dirty tricks huckster, Roger Stone.
In July Florida PEER wrote: "During the seven years under Governor Rick Scott, environmental enforcement has hit a modern nadir, with 2017 registering some of the most anemic results on record, according to a new analysis released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The upshot is that not only is Florida’s environment bearing a greater pollution load, but also its Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is losing revenue as well as its capacity to monitor--let alone deter--eco-offenses. Apart from the 2017 results in isolation, the Scott record shows a deep, across-the-board nosedive in Number of Cases in virtually every enforcement category. As seen by these tables, new cases opened, penalties collected, and other enforcement measures are all down more than three-quarters since Scott took office."
This is exactly the outcome that Scott's transition team outlined in 2010: eliminate "excessive regulation" and especially regulations protecting the environment. Red Tide Rick has done a better job representing toxic algae than people.
And he wants your vote.
Under Scott's watch, pets are dying awful deaths from exposure to toxins, residents and visitors are getting sick, and Florida's iconic beaches are turning into no-go zones for tourists; preventable nightmares if Rick Scott, Adam Putnam, and Matt Caldwell -- the GOP candidate for agriculture commissioner -- had done their jobs. They didn't, because they were too busy being ideologues on behalf of polluters. Of the Toxic Trio -- Putnam, Caldwell, and Scott -- one is gone, two remain and they must be voted down.
There are going to be fewer and fewer weddings in Naples -- Scott's hometown -- because of all the gagging, coughing, and watery eyes from wedding guests sickened by air borne effects of toxic algae. Some of the aerosol algae carried aloft has been linked to serious, irreversible brain disease in humans.
There's a lot we don't know about Florida's water catastrophe.
What we do know: Rick Scott does not deserve your vote for US Senate. Not now, not ever.
Sierra Club Blasts Rick Scott's Red Tide Plan
For Immediate Release: September 20, 2018
More Studies Won't Cure State's Catastrophic Red Tide and Green Slime
St. Petersburg, FL – Sierra Club Florida responded to Florida Governor Rick Scott's letter today to the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission asking it to create a Center for Red Tide Research.
Statement of Frank Jackalone, Sierra Club Florida Chapter Director
“Rick Scott's call for the creation of a Center for Red Tide Research is nothing more than a self-serving publicity stunt. He is desperately diverting attention from his failure over his two terms as Governor to address the pollution problems which have fueled massive toxic red tide and green slime all across the State.
"We're horrified that Scott is offering a half-baked, ineffective plan to Florida's ongoing water crisis at the end of his stint as Governor. Where has he been for the last eight years as devastating toxic algae blooms have repeatedly devastated the state's coastal waters, inland lakes, rivers and springs?
"While 'Red Tide Rick' fiddled, Florida's waters burned with toxic algae. As a result, our coastal communities are plagued by the smell of millions of dead fish on their beaches and a devastated tourism industry.
"Scott's proposal for more research won't cure red tide and green slime. The only way to reduce the occurrence, size and severity of harmful algae blooms is to stop the pollution that is feeding it at its source. We need prevention, not more studies.
"Rick Scott is the person most responsible for Florida's growing, catastrophic toxic algae problem. Over his two terms as Governor, Scott has put state enforcement of pollution laws in reverse by eliminating mandatory inspections of septic tanks and slashing enforcement of clean water regulations. His plan for reducing dirty water releases to Florida's Gulf and Atlantic coasts has been to spend billions of dollars over the next decade to store more polluted water in Lake Okeechobee and to build a 23 foot high reservoir in the Everglades over the next 10 years and fill it with more dirty water. His new plan today asking the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the next Governor to do more research should make every Floridian mad as hell."
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This summer massive amounts of sargassum seaweed has been invading south Florida and Caribbean beaches. This is a new kind of natural disaster. It was only in 2011 that this region of the world began seeing an influx of seaweed, but 2018 is far worse than ever. Scientists agree that this new phenomenon is not entirely natural; the massive blooms have been thriving thanks to a rise in ocean temperatures and nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen pollution is caused by fertilizer and sewage runoff that is known to feed algal blooms. Ocean currents have carried the blooms to our beaches, and because Sargassum is a plant that reproduces on the surface of the water (unlike other kinds of seaweed that plant themselves in the sand), the blooms have been able to keep growing as they travel. Surprising that there has been so little coverage of this problem that the beach tourism industry and public agencies have been coping with.
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