Rick Scott, Adam Putnam, and Matt Caldwell: Part 2, Turbulent Waters For Florida's Toxic Trio ... by Alan Farago

Everglades Agricultural Area, algae filled drainage ditch

Before Florida's midterm election, the media filled with news reports and visual imagery, spanning network news to the Daily Show, of rampant red tides and toxic algae coating all of Florida's coasts.

After the election? A few pundits noted the impacts on political careers well-grounded in defending polluters.

Big Sugar's best laid plans for the Republican hierarchy came a cropper.

For the first time in Florida political history, Sugar's campaign contributions to state-wide candidates became a threshold issue for candidates and for voters who get it: Florida's water crises is the direct result of dark political money from billionaires turning our waters and Everglades into sacrifice zones for their profits. 

Credit is due to Bullsugar.org whose voter guides highlighted polluted campaign contributions from billionaires who have commandeered the state legislature.

Adam Putnam, whose political career benefited from family wealth derived from a water district funded farm acquisition -- and who has been a strong defender of Big Sugar -- was defeated by Ron DeSantis who made opposition to Big Sugar's cost shifting to taxpayers a central plank in his platform. 

Florida Democrats, again, proved susceptible to Big Sugar money and influence. Where and when they could have planted a flag on the outrageous exchange of Florida waters for corporate welfare, they largely declined or tip-toed through a perceived mine field. cf. Bill Nelson.

Big Sugar, you see, has a different way of forcing its echo chamber into Democratic party ranks. Chris King, Andrew Gillum's running mate, is a notable exception.

Matt Caldwell, who rose to prominence by orchestrating the upset 2012 defeat of Ray Judah -- a Republican commissioner in Lee County who eloquently supported more storage and treatment acreage in the EAA -- failed in his quest to step up the ladder to Agriculture Commissioner. He called Bullsugar, a "hate group", and attacked the group in ads but voters knew better. Look for Caldwell to find a sweet place, like former Democratic senator Jeff Clemens, on the Big Sugar payroll.

"Red Tide" Rick Scott slipped into the US Senate on a razor thin margin, bolstered by a personal investment of tens of millions. A sharper and focused Bill Nelson could have preserved his Senate seat if he had allied himself clearly and strongly against Big Sugar and for Florida's waterways, threatened tourism industries, and the Everglades.

While the punditry has dragged its feet on linking Florida's election outcomes to the toxic influence of Big Sugar, a few raised eyebrows indicate the industry is endlessly resourceful in preserving its prerogatives. It moved with lightning speed after the election, a show of political, legislative, and legal force.

A day after the election on November 7th, the very same day Jeff Sessions resigned as US Attorney General, Sessions signed an extraordinary memorandum providing new guidance to DOJ on federal consent decrees. Its key point: avoid them. Leave the messy business of fixing what is wrong to the states. A day later, the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District -- all appointees of Gov. Rick Scott -- voted to vacate the consent decree that governed relations between the state, the federal government and Big Sugar polluters for a quarter century. If you think the timing was coincidental, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

The District timing on its intent to rip up the consent decree was a show of Big Sugar force. It had been supported by very expensive lobbying and lawyering for at least a couple of years. The votes from the 2018 midterm elections hadn't been counted, but Big Sugar really didn't care. 

Do you?

(originally published August 2, 2018)

In the winter of 2016, polluted water from Lake Okeechobee turned from brown to guacamole green, thick with toxic algae carrying cyanobacteria to downstream communities, putting people and businesses in harm's way. In the summer of 2018, it is happening again. Right before midterm elections.

Gov. Rick Scott. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. State Representative Matt Caldwell. All are seeking to move up the political ladder in November on the Republican side of the slate. Rick Scott is aiming to unseat Bill Nelson, the Democrat incumbent, in the US Senate. Adam Putnam is running to be Florida's next governor. Matt Caldwell, to take Putnam's chair in the state agriculture hierarchy. The ladder is real, and it is constructed carefully by the state's shadow government: Big Sugar.

There are a handful of Big Sugar players, and a much larger circle of influence peddlers, but there are two billionaire families who are the mainstay of the Big Sugar cartel; the descendants of Charles Stuart Mott who own US Sugar Corporation and the Fanjul family, owners of Florida Crystals and a vertically integrated, transnational sugar empire.

Both the Mott descendants and the Fanjuls spend heavily to make rules and regulations work their way while claiming a public benefit: "farming for families to put the food on your table". They never say that sugar is not a food but a substance more addictive than cocaine when consumed in excess. But that is another story.

When it comes to Florida politics, Big Sugar is an equal opportunity polluter ... by gimleteye

In politics, Big Sugar is an equal opportunity polluter: it casts its net wide irrespective of party affiliation.

In this election cycle, Big Sugar put up its "Toxic Trio" on the Republican side. Gov. Rick Scott, slated to advance from the governor's mansion where he proved his worth, to the US Senate. Scott was the friendliest of governors to Big Sugar. He axed the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the state agency formed out of bipartisan consensus in a kinder 1980's moment when balancing economic growth with protection of the environment was a priority. No more. Scott also slashed the budgets of the science staff of the South Florida Water Management District and set his governing board members to harassing citizens objecting to the trashing of Florida waters. For that good work, Scott gets Sugar's support to be in the US Senate.

Big Sugar's chosen successor to be the next Florida governor was Adam Putnam until he was upended by Congressman Ron DeSantis. Putnam is from a family whose farmland was purchased by the state for FIVE TIMES its appraised value. Putnam was Big Sugar's best friend as state agriculture commissioner and went to Washington to oppose Congress' involvement is approving tough anti-pollution rules for farmland runoff into public waters. For that, Big Sugar put him on the ladder to be the state's next governor.

The third in the "Toxic Trio": Matt Caldwell. As state legislator, Caldwell headed a political committee that made sure Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah's political career would end. Judah had the guts to call out Big Sugar's pollution of waters in Lee County. In the last weeks of his 2012 campaign, Big Sugar dumped a million dollars into a PAC controlled by Caldwell. Gone. For proving his mettle on this and other anti-environmental initiatives, Caldwell is on tap to succeed Putnam as the state's next agriculture commissioner.

In the 2017 session of the state legislature, the "Toxic Trio", Scott, Putnam, and Caldwell, lined up against the initiative by then Senate President Joe Negron to fix "once and for all" the terrible trashing of Florida's waterways as a result of billions of gallons of filthy Lake Okeechobee water released to lower lake levels. Caldwell held the Big Sugar line in the State House of Representatives.

At the time, Miami state senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat, emerged to partner with Negron's call for at least 40,000 acres of additional storage treatment marshes in the Everglades Agricultural Area. Big Sugar is farmed on about 500,000 acres. More than 200 scientists signed the Now or Neverglades Declaration endorsing the plan to add marshland to soak up polluted Lake O water. Over many years and science based work, the nation's premier science agency -- the National Academies of Science -- called for the same. Florida voters in 2014 had overwhelmingly approved a major ballot referendum to raise money for this purpose.

Negron asked Rodriguez to help build Democratic support for his bill. Big Sugar blocked that, too. State Senator Jeff Clemens, from Palm Beach County, set the Democratic roadblock in the Senate. Later Clemens would complain that environmentalists failed to lobby him. Still later that year his political career would self-destruct as the result of a sex scandal. But Clemens landed on his feet: he now works for Big Sugar.

If Governor Scott had agreed to exercise the 2010 option to purchase US Sugar lands, there would be today more than 130,000 acres in public ownership. Taxpayers and voters would be 8 years ahead of solving the terrible algae bloom problem that starts with Big Sugar's legacy pollution in Lake Okeechobee, from the decades the industry used the lake as its open sewer.

If Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam had supported tough federal pollution standards, instead of the wishy washy "voluntary compliance" measures -- promoted by Rick Scott -- that allow certain Big Sugar farms to dump huge volumes of pollution into taxpayers' laps, we would far along the path to hold the polluters accountable for the costs of their pollution.

If State Rep Matt Caldwell had supported Senator Negron's original plan, Florida taxpayers wouldn't be on a fool's errand of supporting deep well injection to "solve" the pollution problem by burying all that toxic waste below our drinking water supply. We wouldn't have to twiddle our thumbs, watching our rivers turn to shit, and wait more than a decade for proof a massive $2 billion EAA reservoir, 23 feet deep, will be anything more than a breeding lake for the same red tides, algae, life-threatening bacteria and phantom viruses we suffer today.

Guess who won't get a chance for a soft landing on Big Sugar's payroll like Jeff Clemens did or Gaston Cantens, the former Miami legislator who runs the Fanjul billionaire's political operations?

Florida taxpayers. No soft landing, either, for Florida voters.

There is a lesson here. Know where your candidates stand in relation to Big Sugar BEFORE you cast your vote. Pay attention to where their money comes from. Follow the PAC money that supports their campaigns. Vote Clean Water.

(Click here for a link to the Bullsugar Candidate Questionnaire.

Click here for a link to the Bullsugar Voter Guide.)

Gov. Rick Scott's refusal to test for toxics in water puts your life at risk but he wants to be your next US senator ... by gimleteye

The same state, Florida, that won't share data with the public or even acknowledge rare pediatric cancer clusters has neither tested, nor routinely analyzed, nor established protocols to monitor potentially lethal bacteria-laden algae coating its coasts.

Three years ago, Eye On Miami wrote about a distinguished statistician, Dr. Raid Amin, at the University of West Florida whose peer-reviewed analyses of rare pediatric cancer clusters had been ignored by the Florida Department of Health. The State Department of Health not only refused comment, in 2015 it refused to participate in a symposium convened by the top statisticians in the nation who reviewed Amin's data.

Today, millions of Floridians are discovering that the Florida Department of Health has studiously downplayed, ignored, and outright refused to test for deadly cyanobacteria in the massive toxic algae outbreaks that are wreaking havoc on public health, the economy, and the state's reputation as a tourism-friendly destination.

Who gave orders to the Florida State Department of Health to ignore the likelihood of rare pediatric cancer clusters? Who ordered the Florid State Department of Health to glide past the monitoring and disclosure of accurate information on cyanobacteria in Florida waters?

Yesterday, the Fort Myers News Press published a damning report, "Its mission is “to protect, promote and improve the health of all people in Florida through integrated state, county, and community efforts,” but Florida’s Department of Health has remained quiet as the blue-green algae/red tide crisis has escalated into an unprecedented toxic calamity."

The statistical prevalence of rare pediatric cancers and the presence of deadly toxins in Florida waters are not blameless phenomena. The same principle applies in so far as the Florida Department of Health is concerned: "do not seek, and ye shall not find."

The failure to test, to develop best science and analyses, leading to clear and enforceable pollution rules, and the failure to inform the public are decisions executed by senior state health care officials at the direction of the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott.

Today Gov. Rick Scott is running for US Senate. He is sprinkling state money into communities and businesses wrecked by foul, green algae coating Florida's coasts. A few million here. A few million there. He makes an occasional trip into affected waterways with angry citizens and bad photo ops kept at a distance from his US senate campaign.

Scott's handlers know: this is HIS disaster.

This state emergency didn't just pop up on his watch. 2013. Winter 2015/2016. 2018.

Today's toxic emergency in Florida's waterways is one Gov. Rick Scott substantially aided and abetted through his support of polluting industries that have dominated the rules and regulations meant to protect water quality in Florida.

Before spending his own fortune to win the governor's mansion, Scott navigated at the margins of health care reimbursements from government to hospitals and physicians. Put another way, government rules were a playing field and mastering the reimbursement game conferred great wealth on Florida's future governor.

It is a similar game with water management and infrastructure; public benefits that can be "re-balanced" to protect private profits.

The affinity between Gov. Rick Scott and the billionaire polluters of Florida's waterways is real. Over many decades, Big Sugar developed strategies and tactics to control the water quality "playing field", including rules governing pollution, and to persuade the public that they -- private industry -- were doing the best for Florida's economy, natural resources, and jobs.

Big Sugar never paid the full price of externalizing its pollution of Florida's waterways because it dominates the state legislature and Congress -- regularly flooding the hallways of the capitols with squads of lobbyists when its control is challenged by environmentalists or public emergencies like our current toxic catastrophe.

These natural allies -- Gov. Rick Scott and Big Sugar -- have one goal: to lock down the prerogatives of power and wealth at the expense of the public. And now, shockingly, at real cost to public health and safety.

This claim isn't idle speculation. According to yesterday's report, "Starting July 27, the Lee County Health Department didn't return increasingly urgent telephone calls from The News-Press with questions about its response and role, namely: At what point does a novel crisis like this merit intense surveillance and study? On Aug. 1, the department emailed that a reporter's questions had been referred to the state office in Tallahassee. Following another series of emails and calls, state officials responded to a reporter Aug. 10 by email, but they provided inaccurate information, according to scientists and neurologists."

Florida's water crisis is Flint, Michigan -- where government literally refused to protect against lead in drinking water supplies -- stretched across millions of citizens and billions of dollars of tourism-related businesses. It is proven every day, on every tide, in every photograph of the algae blooms containing cyanobacteria that is massively destroying Florida wildlife and exposing visitors, residents, taxpayers and voters to long-term health risks including those linked to severe and untreatable neurological diseases.

And Rick Scott, the political leader most responsible for this disaster and the silence of the Florida Department of Health, still wants your vote.

The only remedy -- and safety -- for jobs, the economy and our waters is the ballot box: REJECT the Toxic Trio. Scott, Putnam, and Caldwell ... by gimleteye

In his OPED published by the Treasure Coast Palm Dr. Gary Goforth writes that upcoming elections are pivotal for the state's economic future; severely threatened by water pollution. He is correct. 100 percent.

Gov. Rick Scott, running against incumbent Bill Nelson for the US Senate, blames the federal government for failing to protect Florida's water. The facts are indisputable: Scott and his designated successor, Adam Putnam, have relentlessly ATTACKED federal efforts to clean up Florida's waters. The reason is simple.

Their major campaign benefactors are polluters. Big Sugar. It is no mystery why Big Sugar uses politicians like Scott, Putnam, and Matt Caldwell, the state legislator trying to take over Putnam's job as ag commissioner: they profit when regulatory hurdles are weakened, eroded, diminished, and rendered ineffectual.

They mint billions. Taxpayers pay the price.

Somehow, Florida voters were conned over years and decades that without jobs we "could not afford" environmental regulations that strictly protected our waters and that industries were the better arbiters of what was in the public interest.

This trend started in the 1980's Reagan era with the Wise Use Movement, uniting timber, mining, and fossil fuel extraction industries who linked up with free market/ libertarians to undermine the purpose of environmental rules developed (in a Republican administration) a decade earlier. At the time, Big Sugar billionaires like the Fanjuls and US Sugar Corporation shareholders saw the wisdom joining their interests to a movement that began in the fight for access and rights to exploit for their profit publicly owned lands in the American west.

The trend continued through the 2000's and the rise of the Tea Party, in Florida and elsewhere, whose leaders have championed the anti-environmental regulatory agendas of polluters.

The net result is where we are today: leaders like Gov. Rick Scott scrambling to paper over terrible legislative errors with campaign ads that misdirect voters. It is NOT the federal government's fault that Florida has abdicated its responsibility to effectively protect our waters. Waters we need for our economy. Waters we need for our lives.

The Lake Okeechobee disaster is engulfing Florida. It is the result of policies actively pursued by elected officials who have taken sugar campaign money and badly cheated the public.

The only remedy -- and safety -- for jobs, the economy, and our waters is the ballot box. This November, VOTE!


State officials must strengthen environmental policies to solve algae crisis | Guest column
Gary Goforth Published 6:00 a.m. ET Aug. 22, 2018
Treasure Coast Palm

Through recent changes in environmental policies, the state of Florida has failed to protect the health of its citizens, the environment and regional economies from ongoing toxic algae crises.

As we vote this fall, it is critical we elect leaders willing to restore strong environmental policies.

The source of the toxic blue-green algae currently damaging estuarine ecosystems, regional economies and human health is a very polluted Lake Okeechobee. Members of every branch of Florida government, state agencies and others have known about the source of this pollution for more than 45 years: excessive levels of nutrient loads in stormwater from the surrounding watershed.

In 2001, the state developed a total maximum daily load of phosphorus for the lake’s watershed, established specifically to reduce the frequency of algal blooms in the lake. State legislation then established a January 2015 deadline for achieving compliance.

Hundreds of millions in public funds have been spent on dairy buyouts, agricultural best management practices, regional water-quality treatment projects and other efforts. However, the state continues to allow landowners to discharge high levels of nutrients with little to no enforcement, and the pollution of Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries continues.

The water quality of the lake is at an all-time crisis level and human health, the environment and the regional economy are suffering as polluted lake water is discharged to the estuaries.

In 2017, phosphorus loading to the lake was more than five times the total-maximum-daily-load target. The result: an algae bloom covered 90 percent of the lake this summer.

Pointing fingers at the federal government is misguided, for it is the state, not the federal government, which has the primary obligation to protect water quality. Recent policy changes in Tallahassee have exacerbated the effects of pollution of the lake and in the estuaries. These policies need to be reversed in order to control the toxic algae crises.

Our choices in the upcoming elections will be pivotal.

Examples of damaging policies that should be reversed by those elected include:

1. Significant environmental protections were dismantled in the state’s 2016 omnibus water bill. For example, the January 2015 deadline to clean up water entering the lake was deleted and replaced with an ambiguous planning process. Also, a quantitative regulatory program for limiting discharges was replaced with a planning process with no enforcement provisions to hold landowners accountable for the pollution leaving their land.

2. State agencies charged with protection of water quality have had their staffs and budgets slashed in response to mandates from Tallahassee. The state Department of Environmental Protection lost more than 1,000 jobs, and the number of new enforcement cases has plummeted by 86 percent since 2010.

3. The state’s annual “progress report” on pollution of the lake underestimates pollution loads and needs to be improved. For the last two years, DEP published reports indicating phosphorus loading to the lake has decreased, yet these claims conflict with the measured loads to the lake.

4. The legislative and executive branches have failed to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Florida Water and Land Conservation Initiative (“Amendment 1”). Designated funds need to be appropriated to implement storage and treatment projects around the lake.

5. The state encourages application of nutrient-rich human wastewater residuals (Class AA biosolids). These applications have been estimated at up to 1,000 tons of phosphorus into the Lake Okeechobee watershed every year. Applying biosolids in excess of plant requirements must cease.

Accelerating the state and federal projects to send more lake water south will certainly provide some long-term relief to the algae crises. However, those projects will not stop the discharge of polluted lake water to the estuaries. As long as the state fails to carry out its duty to control the pollution of Lake Okeechobee, recurring algae crises will be the norm.

By restoring strong environmental policies for the state, those we elect in November will be our best hope in resolving the toxic algae crises.

Dr. Gary Goforth is a Stuart-based environmental engineer with more than three decades of experience in water resource management in Florida. He serves on the board of directors of the Florida Oceanographic Society.

The Sliming of Florida Politics ... by gimleteye

Again, Florida politicians are scurrying about, trying to camouflage their reputations and avoid being targeted in November by angry voters.

There's Rick Scott, trying to unseat Bill Nelson for US Senate: Scott, whose very first act as governor was to chainsaw the budget of the science agencies charged with protecting Florida waters. No funding, no science, no problem.

And Adam Putnam, whose loyalty to agricultural polluters in Florida led him to lobby Congress to WEAKEN federal laws protecting state waters. Putnam, currently the state agriculture secretary, wants to succeed Scott as governor. He will do anything to accommodate Big Sugar.

And Matt Caldwell, whose district is over-run by toxic algae including potent neurotoxins that can cause brain damage, spends his time bashing groups trying to get some -- any -- enforcement of pollution laws by government. Caldwell is running to be the next state agriculture secretary.

Scott, Putnam, Caldwell.

For context, read a recent article by John Moran, writer and photographer who captured the awful mess Florida politicians allowed to occur.


The Sliming of a Florida River
by John Moran, July 2018

The Great Toxic Slime Outbreak of 2018 has befouled the Caloosahatchee River, the river of my childhood. I needed to see for myself, so I grabbed my cameras and headed south to Fort Myers and Cape Coral. A heartbreaking sight awaited.

Gov. Scott has declared a state of emergency in seven counties to combat the noxious green algae fed by water discharges from Lake Okeechobee.

The governor directed state health officials to warn Floridians and visitors of the dangers of toxic algae. Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism marketing corporation, will assist impacted businesses. And the governor once again blamed the Army Corps of Engineers for the slow pace of Everglades restoration projects.

Missing from Rick Scott’s emergency declaration—and indeed, missing from his entire tenure as governor—was a targeted response effectively dealing with the source of the pollution. Real leadership demands an acknowledgment that Florida’s water woes are a time-release disaster of our own making.

An epidemic of indifference has led to this riot of slime, and the response of officialdom has clearly been incommensurate with the severity of the ongoing crisis we face.

I believe we’re missing the big picture in part because our political leaders are reluctant to connect the dots and help us see that we are killing Florida’s waters with our lifestyle choices and business practices.

Nobody wanted this to happen, but that’s no excuse for the choices we’ve made. My message to our political leadership is clear: It is the Earth that lies at the very center of our existence and makes possible life itself, to say nothing of human endeavors like the economy.

That famous line about “the business of government is business” is shallow and shortsighted. We must aim higher: The business of government is wellbeing.

And to our business leaders, I say there can be no longterm wellbeing in Florida if we continue to use and abuse our waters like there’s no tomorrow.

Look in the mirror, Florida: Choices have consequences. Sustainability must be more than a marketing buzzword. Real sustainability must be at the foundation of our vision for Florida in the 21st century, for without it this will not be a place our children’s children will want to live or work or play.

Florida’s waters are the very foundation of our economy, our way of life, and our identity on the world stage.

This is the truth that must be said: Our waters are a mess. We are failing the test of responsible stewardship. With apologies to the great Caloosahatchee, Denial remains the mightiest river in Florida.

For the love of Florida, listen to the pictures and then listen to your heart.

——————

John Moran is a Florida nature photographer based in Gainesville. The following photos taken recently of the Caloosahatchee River, courtesy of John Moran.

What Senate President Joe Negron Should Do About The Lemon Reservoir Plan ... by gimleteye

It will cost $2 billion. It won't clean water for the Everglades and it won't protect the upstream estuaries. All the plan for a massive new reservoir will do is cement the prerogatives of the state's powerful cartel, Big Sugar.

The reservoir plan was the most important piece of work that emerged from the Florida legislature last year; an initiative at the insistence of then in-coming Senate president Joe Negron because the previous year, toxic puke from Lake Okeechobee had coated his constituents in a bath of guacamole thick algae. The lake (thank you, climate change) had risen alarmingly high in dry season. Something had to be done. Now that details are emerging, the accolades are dying too.

I don't want to get into the weeds on what the legislature passed and Gov. Scott signed into law. Basically, they agreed to create the largest man-made structure in Florida: a mini-Lake Okeechobee south of the 500,000 acres where sugarcane is grown. They want to do it on public land to clean up private industry's pollution because -- well -- that's how we roll in Florida.

What I want to focus on is Rod Tirrell.

Activist Rod Tirrell in an undated photo. (Courtesy, Matt Schwartz)

Rod was an Everglades warrior. He passed away this week, far too young, leaving behind school-age twins in Broward County. In the late 1990's Rod -- a volunteer board member of the Broward Sierra Club Group -- was part of a team of Club activist leaders struggling to come to terms with the Clinton administration and Lawton Chiles plan to save the Everglades. It was called the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and became law of the land in 2000.

Rod argued strongly that Sierra Club should NOT support the plan because it failed to include a way to store and treat enough of Big Sugar's pollution to solve the problem of dirty water contaminating the Everglades and Florida Bay. That's the same problem we face today.

Back in the mid-1990's, most mainstream environmental groups, led by Audubon, said: this is the best we are going to get. Senator Bob Graham and Floridian, then EPA administrator Carol Browner said, this is the best you are going to get. The debate raged within Sierra Club ranks for years. Sierra Club was persuaded by its allies; "Let's take this now and live to fight another day."

Rod wasn't involved with Sierra Club when last year environmentalists said the same thing in support of what emerged from the sausage grinder in Tallahassee. He never lost his love for the Everglades but drifted away from Sierra Club after its decision to support CERP in 2000.

Today, the same environmental groups are in a crisis over the Negron plan which started with best intentions and turned into a lemon.

This week, the water management district -- whose board is appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, now the undeclared Republican candidate for US Senate -- released a glossy, PR heavy "plan" in Tallahassee. It is basically for a man-made reservoir as much as 19 feet deep. Its walls will have to be thirty to forty feet high to prevent over-topping in case of hurricanes.

Although district scientists pledge it will work, remember Rod Tirrell: two decades after governmental agencies all agreed that 10 parts per billion phosphorous pollution must be achieved for the Everglades to survive, it still hasn't happened. As the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians pointed out in an acidic letter to the governor and legislature yesterday, the only way you can claim things are going great with water quality in Florida is to make up the numbers.

So here is what the governor and legislature need to understand: you can waste a year doing more "planning" how to fit 10 gallons of sludge into a one gallon bucket or you can go back and fix last year's bill.

A fix would require Senate president Joe Negron to do heavier lifting than any Florida leader has ever done in opposition to the sugar cartel.

The fix would require stripping from the current law, the provisions that prohibit eminent domain (yes, the same eminent domain that President Trump will need to use to build that wall), that prohibit the state from negotiating with unwilling sellers, and the provision for the C51 reservoir that awarded one billionaire family, the Fanjuls, a path to use their land to sell dirty rainwater/ flood runoff to Floridians for water supply. These three poison pills found their way into last year's law because Big Sugar squeezed the legislature. Scott and the cabinet agreed to be squeezed. And Democrats in the state senate helped because they too love to be squeezed by Big Sugar.

We've already heard Big Sugar's answer to its critics, "Take your seat at the back of the bus. Be grateful you have anything at all." Like Rod Tirrell, many who love Florida's water, Florida's quality of life, and depend on a healthy, vibrant tourism industry have been at this a long time. It costs nothing to tell the truth about a piece of legislation. Rod Tirrell wouldn't have it any other way, and that is why he was a real Everglades warrior.

Discrimination in Water Management Decission Letter and Attachments by Alan Farago on Scribd

Florida Voters: Happy Thanksgiving and Gov. Rick Scott thinks you are really, really stupid ... by gimleteye

It's an interesting Florida phenomenon in the Age of Trump: there is so much lying at the top that even the good guys -- or at least a lot of them -- have given up on persuasion tactics unless they involve fawning. Consider water pollution and the vast destruction of Florida's coastal real estate values, rivers, bays and Everglades.

The Palm Beach Post recently reported a visit by Gov. Rick Scott to a section of restored Everglades wetlands. Scott's spin: “Everglades restoration has been clearly a priority over the last seven years. We have made historic progress with environmental restoration projects over the last seven years but we’ve got a lot left to do." There is only one reason for those restored wetlands: environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe successfully sued the state of Florida in federal court and won.

There is one inarguable marker for progress: how politics in Tallahassee are efficiently ordered when it comes to doing Big Sugar's bidding; the troops are in place and the marching rehearsals have all been timed with metronomes. The state and Big Sugar are STILL appealing the federal ruling that caused wetlands to be restored; vast acreage that was designated for water quality and pollution clean up of Big Sugar's runoff BEFORE the historic flooding of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee in the winter of 2015/2016.

Scott aims to succeed Bill Nelson in the US Senate. Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, the sweet- faced boy whose family farm was bought out at multiples of appraised value by the South Florida Water Management District, aims to be next governor, and Matt Caldwell, Sugar's ambitious water carrier from Lee County, will slip into Putnam's position.

What they all have in common: Republicans are buried so deep in Big Sugar's pocket that daylight hardly escapes. Dems don't get a free pass.

In the last session of the legislature, the big ticket item was one that Big Sugar finessed like the practiced oligarchs: the additional conversion of lands already in public ownership into a vast storage reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee and their sugarcane fields -- more than 500,000 acres -- in the Everglades Agricultural Area. The price tag for the public to clean up this tranche of Big Sugar's pollution: nearly $2 billion.

Senate President Joe Negron initiated this critical legislation. It passed because Big Sugar let it through without necessary assurances that sufficient cleansing marshes in acreage would be included in the final law, leaving that pesky detail for later. Only one Democrat in the state senate, Jose Javier Rodriguez -- now running for Congress in the seat surrendered by Republican Ileana Ros Lehtinen -- supported Negron's effort to drive home a solid deal for Florida taxpayers. There were not enough Democratic votes to fix the legislation because Big Sugar had gotten to them, starting with Democratic senate minority leader Oscar Braynon.

What emerged was badly flawed and only had a chance of succeeding if the South Florida Water Management District -- run by Gov. Scott directly -- did the necessary science modeling to determine if the reservoir design and scope established by law was adequate to the purpose: stopping plumes of polluted fresh water from destroying our rivers, bays, estuaries and Everglades.

So between the end of the legislative session last May and now, what has happened?

As deadlines crept up, the District kept a closed lid on its deliberations. It finally granted an opportunity for public comment without presenting any of the science models to show that the proposed reservoir plan was large enough in acreage, including cleansing marshes, to solve the pollution problems plaguing the southern half of the state.

The reason for the plan: vast contamination of coastal waterways and real estate on both coasts as a consequence of historical rainfall in the winter of 2015/2016. The cause of the massive pollution: Big Sugar's domination of water management infrastructure in South Florida. The state's multi-billion dollar flood control system is designed and operated with a single, top purpose. Keep Big Sugar's crops dry when it rains too much, and irrigated when it is too dry.

The emergence of a new constituency for outraged citizenry, activated by groups like Bullsugar.org and Captains For Clean Water, was unexpected. Citizens who trundled to the governing board meetings of the water management district were regularly treated like trash by Scott's designated board chair, Peter Antonucci.

At the district headquarters in West Palm Beach, Big Sugar staged counter-protests with hired actors through the agency of Trump confidante, Roger L. Stone. Where was Rick Scott? Hiding in Tallahassee and planning his Senate campaign.

Big Sugar has reinforced decades of mismanagement with a rigorous scheme of political campaign contributions and public "outreach"; recruiting community leaders to defend its barriers when public resistance emerges to its command and control of Florida's fresh water. It has continuously and successfully elbowed federal agencies out of a management role, leaving power to the state and its control through political contributions including rivers of dark money.

When Rick Scott began his unlikely campaign to win the executive office in 2012, with no prior experience in public service, one friend popped up to help: Big Sugar. Ever since, Scott has played the compliant and complicit actor in giving Big Sugar whatever it wants, when it wants and claiming victory when it is not his.

It doesn't take imagination to see that Gov. Scott is operating on bad faith. His water management district governing board set up a public comment period to end virtually on Thanksgiving Day. We know what that is meant for: for Big Sugar to thank Rick Scott by pushing him into the US Senate for endorsing a plan that is in the end will primarily benefit Big Sugar. Again.

The Everglades? Florida's badly damaged rivers and bays? Taxpayers? If you have to ask the question, you know the answer.


From Bullsugar:

	Senate President Joe Negron’s legacy is in jeopardy.  Ironically, even as the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie are being crushed once again by discharges, we are closer than we’ve ever been to a real solution, thanks largely to his championing SB10 this year. But the devil is in the details, and as gratifying as progress is, we’re watching it slip away through a flawed planning process. The South Florida Water Management District doesn’t appear to be acting in good faithto follow the letter and spirit of SB10 or to stop the discharges. The plans they’re showing the public are designed to fail, at least for the purpose that Joe intended. Independent expert analysis and the district’s own presentation reveal that their plans are either impossible to follow, won't do much to stop the discharges, or both: The reservoir dimensions they propose would need towering sides, berms more than 50 feet high, and depths requiring space-age pumps that may not exist. The design has to be cost-effective for federal approval, and engineers say any configuration much deeper than 12-½ feet can’t be built or run efficiently enough to qualify. The plan doesn’t include enough land to clean the water efficiently--approximately 13,000 acres of STAs for 240,000 acre-feet of lake water--which will restrict the reservoir’s ability to maximize discharge reduction. This is a bottleneck in the current proposal that undermines the reservoir’s entire purpose. The district refuses to present modeling for wet years--the only time it matters. Instead they graphed an average year, when the project might send 300,000 acre-feet per year south. We don’t have a problem in an average year; designing this project for an average year is designing it to fail. We need to see projections for at least 1.3 million acre-feet--a relatively modest wet-year target. The district’s approach begins with limitations that prevent the design from working: making treatment acreage a secondary consideration instead of starting with the minimum needed (the graph starts with zero treatment and still never reaches the reduction target); and assuming a fixed 16,000-acre footprint despite having as much as 15,000 acres of available public land in addition to the 14,000-acre A2 parcel. SFWMD has public land and the authority to use it--there’s no excuse not to model enough treatment. We can’t allow a state agency to sabotage the planning process and undermine our last chance to protect our water, our economies, our property values, and our health. Thankful as we are for what Joe has done this year, we need his leadership now more than ever to hold SFWMD accountable to deliver the solution we all fought for. -Bullsugar.org
	Bullsugar.org		http://www.bullsugar.org/

Captains For Clean Water
Our Estuaries Need Your Help Right Now!

We need your help! We are calling our members, supporters and followers to email the South Florida Water Management District by this Wednesday, November 22 and ask them to model a reservoir that is both effective at reducing Lake Okeechobee discharges, and cost effective to build. Sending a personal email to the EAA Reservoir Project Manager is an easy step you can take to help ensure the future of our estuaries.

Send an email to:
EAAreservoir@sfwmd.com
Mike Albert, Project Manager
South Florida Water Management District

Key Points (to include in email):

Ask the SFWMD to run modeling for the EAA Reservoir that takes into account ALL state-owned land in the EAA that may be used for land swaps.

Ask the SFWMD to increase treatment capacity by including additional Stormwater Treatment Areas within the EAA Reservoir project.

The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) started the public planning process for the EAA Reservoir one month ago. After committing to upholding the timeline laid out in Senate Bill 10, the SFWMD released initial modeling for the reservoir project, but failed to include enough land for the project to construct a reservoir that would provide meaningful benefit to our estuaries. Senate Bill 10 identified land within the EAA which could be used for land swaps to create a large enough reservoir, coupled with Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs), to provide a meaningful conveyance of water through the EAA and into the Everglades. The SFWMD did not account for this in the modeling, and instead modeled reservoirs on a smaller tract of land without enough treatment capacity to alleviate discharges. Without sufficient treatment capacity, the reservoir will quickly fill up and will be unable to mitigate discharges. Also in question is the feasibility of constructing the reservoir concepts. One of the concepts calls for a 24-foot-deep reservoir, which would be cost prohibitive to construct and operate.

Captains for Clean Water is a grassroots 501(c)3 organization founded by a group of fishing guides and outdoorsmen who were frustrated with the water mismanagement and years of subsequent devastating effects in the state of Florida. Our unique approach focuses on building a culture that promotes clean water and healthy estuaries. Through education and advocacy, we fight for science based solutions to Florida’s water management issues.

We are working to hold the government accountable to implement recent legislation - that we helped pass - to protect Florida’s Everglades and coastal estuaries by reducing harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges and restoring Florida’s historic water flow.

Join us in helping save Florida’s coastal estuaries and America’s Everglades by becoming a member of Captains for Clean Water.

They moved a mountain: a new solar mandate in South Miami, Florida ... by gimleteye

Delaney Reynolds and EOM writer, Alan Farago April 22 2017, Miami March for Science

Congratulations to the majority of South Miami city commissioners, to Mayor Philip Stoddard, and to Delaney Reynolds, the University of Miami student (incoming freshman) who proposed and passed a city ordinance requiring new construction or significant remodeling to incorporate solar energy.

Last year there were less than a dozen new homes built in the small Florida municipality, but the government mandate is a common sense measure, albeit one that stirred a backlash by the monopolistic regional electricity supplier, Florida Power and Light.

Solar in Florida, "The Sunshine State", has had a brutally difficult time taking flight compared to other states as a result of monopolistic practices by the state's large utilities. Their goal? To put solar at a cost disadvantage to consumers.

The utilities have taken a simple approach: buy off state regulators and top politicians like Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam (aiming to replace Scott as Florida's next governor), and to enforce, basically, their conviction that no one gets to tell them how to run their businesses.

Meek regulators, pompom waving cheerleaders from statewide business and trade councils, and politicians in the pockets of big campaign contributors have all conspired to keep solar at an awkward disadvantage to consumers except for the bravest and most hardy.

Among those: university science professor South Miami Mayor Stoddard. Citizen Stoddard installed solar in his South Miami home many years ago. He knows to the last penny how much solar has saved his family budget. Florida Power and Light underwrote a smear campaign against Stoddard and funded his political opponents.

This is the point about the absolute power held by the state's electric utilities: so much effort, time and money is spent protecting and defending the high walls of monopolistic practices that any breach -- even 10 homes per year in the case of South Miami -- is interpreted as a dire threat. (All Florida monopolies, including Big Sugar, behave the same way: a very good reason for elected representatives not to empower monopolies.)

Successful businesses adapt and evolve or die. Instead of ruing that FPL has made such bone-headed errors -- Turkey Point nuclear's failed cooling canals in the most present and pressing example -- Floridians should celebrate South Miami's leadership and a smart, rising environmentalist, Delaney Reynolds.

Time will tell; the mountain needed to be moved, and they moved it.

I Have Been Banned From YouTube for months over this Video of Rick Scott and US Sugar. By Geniusofdespair

I made this video for Gimleteye of a very suspicious small portion of a clemency hearing -- fair use to be sure. The complaint went to YouTube. They took down the video and won't let me view other videos until it is resolved. I have been trying to resolve it for almost a year. Watch the damn video, look at the face of the attorney, she wasn't allowed to elaborate on the charages or anything. Swept under the rug I think and I am being silenced.

GOP Playing Russian Roulette With US National Security ... by gimleteye

Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck articulated one aspect of the GOP platform on national security recently: "When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like ISIS."

The GOP does not acknowledge man-made global warming. Acknowledgement would require that the GOP to do something about it, here in the United States. For example, US Senator Marco Rubio asserts there is nothing we can do about climate change. Moreover, we can't tell China and India what to do. Therefore any energy policies to avert the worst of global warming would impose costs on the American people that others don't have to pay. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, representing a state with the most to lose from rising seas, goes a step further: his administration blocked staff from even using the words "global warming" and "climate change".

Denying reality puts the safety of America and the Constitution at severe risk.

In 2009, Donald Trump signed a group letter urging policy adaptation to fend off global warming impacts. He has flip-flopped. Even as one of his golf course properties in Great Britain petitioned for approval for a new seawall to protect his investment against sea level rise, he parrots the GOP line that climate change is a hoax.

His narrow base of supporters embrace Trump antagonism to political correctness. Flip flogs are standard. Why apologize?

Continued GOP refusal to acknowledge real and present dangers of climate change is playing Russian roulette with our national security. Prediction: the US military will have none of that.


Sea Level Rise a Big Issue for Military in Hampton Roads, Science Says
The Virginian-Pilot | Jul 27, 2016 | by Joanne Kimberlin

The latest scientific conclusion echoes others: It's likely that sea level rise will eventually swallow huge swaths of Hampton Roads' military installations, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report scheduled for release today.

Donald Trump and Gov. Rick Scott: Too busy to fix Florida's water quality catastrophe ... by gimleteye

Algae clogged canal draining/irrigating EAA sugarcane field

When GOP candidate Donald Trump was asked at a Miami press conference yesterday about Florida's water quality crisis and toxic algae puking out of Lake Okeechobee, Trump didn't default to: "Trust me." He answered that that problem was something he wanted to learn about.

Trump, a part-time resident of Florida for decades, owns a 20 acre Palm Beach estate, Mar-A-Lago. The property is a focus of Palm Beach high society, including Big Sugar billionaires like the Fanjuls who parade at Christmas time. The point is that Donald Trump certainly knows about Big Sugar's influence on Florida water management. It is inescapable as the fresh air in Palm Beach blowing off the Atlantic.

Trump also just accepted Gov. Rick Scott's decision to be the national chairman for the superPAC supporting his presidential candidacy.

The Florida governor is firmly embedded in Big Sugar's sticky embrace.

Literally and figuratively, Rick Scott is adhered to Big Sugar's side. For Trump, taking a position against Big Sugar requires some shucking and jiving.

Consider: Scott's appointees on environmental commissions like the board of the South Florida Water Management District have defended Big Sugar's prerogatives and domination of water policies and practices with more arrogance and disrespect for public critics than ever before. Even Jeb Bush's appointees pale in comparison to the current regime, hiding behind an Iron Curtain of denial that their mismanagement of the water crisis put Floridians' health, billions in property values and a tourism-based economy at severe risk.

Gov. Rick Scott's policies and practices have plunged counties that lean Republican in election years in a bath of toxic pollution.

Scott, who plans to run for US Senate in two years, will have a harder time wriggling out of this dilemma than he did with his own company. Before being elected governor of Florida, Scott skipped away from the health care company he founded as it faced charges and ultimately paid to the federal government the largest civil fine ever assessed for abuses related to Medicare reimbursements.

Donald Trump discovered in Rick Scott his mirror image without seeing what everyone else sees.

To his view, Scott is a successful businessman whose self-belief lead him to a high elected office with no prior public service experience. Others don't see Gov. Scott that way at all. Through Florida's water quality catastrophe, these voters now see a leader whose views were formed through the porthole window of a private jet flying at 35,000 feet and never changed.

This week, the US Army Corps of Engineers sent a remarkable letter to Congressman Patrick Murphy, in response to his request that the Corps initiate at once, the necessary studies for land suitable to storage and cleanse polluted Lake Okeechobee on property now owned by Big Sugar. "The Army is prepared to initiate this study quickly, once a non-Federal sponsor for the study is identified."

By non-Federal sponsor, the Corps means: the State of Florida and Gov. Rick Scott who is busy raising money for Trump's superPAC and leaning on Big Sugar billionaires for campaign contributions.

Donald Trump doesn't need to "learn" anything about Florida's water quality catastrophe. Hobnobbing with the Fanjuls and other sugarcane growers all these years at Mar-A-Lago: he knows they've been making money the old fashioned way.

He should come out right away and say it: let's pay the Big Sugar billionaires for their land in the EAA and fix this problem in Florida. At the same time, end the corporate welfare in the Farm Bill, what Grover Norquist calls "cronyism in its inexcusable, undiluted majesty".

Make the Everglades, Florida's bays, rivers and estuaries, great again: buy the land, send clean, fresh water south. #NowOrNeverglades #FixFlorida

US Army Corps of Engineers Response to Congressman Patrick Murphy on Eaa 7.26.16 by Alan Farago on Scribd

In case Donald Trump and Big Sugar's dirty political war in Florida hasn't fried your brain: a few words from Greenland ... by gimleteye

July 2013, Eqi glacier photo by Alan Farago

Later this morning, a friend in his small plane is picking me up in Maine. Four hours later, we will be in Labrador, a province on the far eastern coast of Canada. Another four hours, we will have reached a remote mining town in northeastern Canada, and four hours beyond that, on the other side of Baffin Bay: Greenland.

A group of friends made a similar trip to Greenland four years ago.

Here is a link to posts from that visit in July 2013. To those who can't go, the beauty and serenity of Greenland is readily available through photos and videos on the internet. What these don't capture is the remoteness and distance between civilization and the polar extremes.

The northern route on a passenger jet to Europe flies over or within site of Greenland. Because passengers fly by at an altitude of 30,000 feet, Greenland is little more than an afterthought between international airports, baggage carousels, and anticipated destinations that have nothing to do with ice or snow, glacier melt and icebergs. Moving slowly in a small plane from the urbanized east coast, a few thousand feet above a vast Canadian wilderness, the weight of geography begins to sink in. Greenland leaves it imprint on what we take for granted.

According to "May Marks One More Record Hot Month For The World", the warmest May on record blew through the temperature target of 2 degree celsius; established by scientists as a metric to keep the climate from spiraling into the unknown.

"Through April, the global average temperature was 2.6°F (1.45°C) above the average from that earlier period. Nations have agreed to limit carbon dioxide emissions to keep warming under 2°C (4°F) by the end of the century, but have discussed trying to achieve an even more ambitious target of 1.5°C (3°F)."

It is not going to be 113 degrees where I am traveling, but it will bring the dissonances swirling around the refusal of the Republican Party of Florida to acknowledge global warming. GOP leaders including Marco Rubio, Pam Bondi, Gov. Rick Scott and Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam are part of a brilliantly coordinated disinformation campaign -- straight out of the Donald Trump reality TV / political horror show. They ignore the realities of climate change in our backyards, on our coastlines, and through the massive rainfall and flooding events that are wrecking our rivers, estuaries, bays and Everglades.

To some, it may seem I write only about the Everglades and global warming. Here is how the two are connected. Global warming is the greatest story in the history of the world.  Fixing the Everglades should be the model of science and engineering in the service of a sustainable economy and restored natural resources. That is what is at stake in Everglades restoration. That is the ideal and principle on which billions of taxpayer dollars are being invested.

However, the reality is dismal. Like so many, I am watching the figurative conflagrations within the Republican Party and the literal fires consuming iconic California with a sense of anxiety and alarm.

What is happening in Tallahassee is that politicians afflicted by addiction to campaign cash from Big Sugar -- the same flood of Dark Money the Koch Brothers have been paving the road for anti-science ideologues in the Republican party -- are all-in on the game of kicking the can down the road. The unwillingness and inability of politics to shape itself to an efficient, clear outcome on the Everglades portends poorly for our existential fight on climate change.

There is no Plan B, says the bumper sticker. One of our Everglades advocates, Joe Podgor, said it another way: "Restoring the Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet." I'll be writing about what the planet looks like from the perspective of Greenland next week.

Florida politicians reversing course on environmental protection at full speed ... by gimleteye

Gov. Rick Scott opens 2016 legislative session.

Call it cold rage; the way environmental protection has been mislabeled, rebranded, and repackaged by the GOP legislature without any unified opposition by Florida Democrats.

Environmentalists could see it was coming during the Jeb Bush era, when Jeb re-branded the Florida Department of Environmental Protection: "more protection, less process". What Jeb brought was a succession of efforts to suppress the rule of law and regulation, especially governing water quality, water resources, to advance Florida's signature industrial wealth creator: rampant sprawl.

Charlie Crist, who succeeded Jeb, was indifferent to the case for managing Florida's growth and agriculture in order to protect natural resources. Rick Scott, who succeeded him, has been a disaster of the highest order.

This year's travesty -- the water policy bill -- effectively destroys the expectation that the state will regulate and enforce against polluters. It represents, instead, capitulation to the idea that polluters will self-regulate and if they screw up, so be it.

One is tempted to call Scott, "clueless", except that Scott's wealth in the private sector was based on his skill trolling for profit at the margins of health care laws and reimbursement regulations. In other words, when it comes to spying opportunities to make money from exploiting environmental rules and regulations, Scott instantly understood both the constituency -- Big Sugar and Big Development -- and the way to solidify his political authority.

This is how Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida legislator set out on their own course, ignoring critics while pandering to special interests. Harder to understand: why the Florida Democratic members of the legislature have been so derelict in their responsibilities to offer resistance, as if to say of Tallahassee: "all ye who enter here, abandon all hope."

The water policy bill making its way after near unanimous approval in the House is exactly as Carl Hiassen described in the Miami Herald: "a major win for polluters and the politicians they own."

So why did every Florida Democrat in the House -- with the notable exception of two representatives, including Jose Javier Rodriguez of Miami-Dade -- approved this catastrophic measure?

In part, because in its badly weakened state, Florida's environmental movement was incapable of mounting a unified opposition to the measure. In the last session of the legislature, Floridians were outraged that the GOP failed to enact the authorization of Amendment 1 for land acquisition as the constitutional amendment -- passed by more than 68 percent of voters in 2014 -- required.

Some environmental groups -- notably Audubon of Florida and the Everglades Foundation -- supported the water policy bill because it offers $200 million to the failing Everglades. But we saw the same mechanism of divide and conquer at work in the early 2000's, when dangling hard cash in front of environmental groups for the Everglades was just a sneaky way to mask even more damage to the public interest.

One long-time observer commented on an Everglades list serve, relative to the absence of public outrage: "The gap grows between the Everglades as an environmental cause and the Everglades as an environmental business." In other words, after decades of broken promises, environmentalists in Florida -- and Democrats, too -- have been shuffled into chutes like compliant cattle. "If you want your elected office, just move along."

Ours could have been the generation that built on bipartisan consensus to protect Florida's environment, but we watched quietly while the GOP and the fear-mongerers put that consensus in reverse, full throttle.


Carl Hiaasen: Polluters win again in the state Legislature

Proposed law would let polluters police themselves.
Tax dollars will be used to subsidize clean-ups.
Rules about violations, enforcement vague and undefined.

BY CARL HIAASEN

Touted as an environmental breakthrough, the water policy bill passed last week by the Florida Legislature is actually a major win for polluters and the politicians they own.

Enforcement of clean-water rules is basically being replaced by the honor system. Big Agriculture couldn’t be happier.

Enterprise Florida: cooking the books ... by gimleteye

Florida's faux Fox News source, Sunshine State News, piles on "Enterprise Florida's High-Living Liability, Bill Johnson". Apparently, Miami's inside wheeler-dealer Mr. Johnson is a lightning rod for powerful Republican business leaders angry with Gov. Rick Scott. Scott's offense: trying to turn the state capitol into his own, wall-to-wall ultra-delux home aquarium. The guys who come to clean the tank every day -- our state legislators -- are restless. According to OPED writer Frank Cerabino:

There’s a rift developing between Gov. Rick Scott’s beloved corporate welfare operation, better known as Enterprise Florida, and the state Legislature that has to fund it.

Scott and his recently appointed Enterprise Florida chief executive, Bill Johnson, have been complaining about legislators who don’t want to fork over all the requested $80 million of taxpayer dollars this year to use as job-creation bait.

From the way Johnson is talking, you’d think he’s running a soup kitchen, not an agency that just handed out $765,000 in employee bonuses, including $50,000 to himself — for a job that he started in February.

Enterprise Florida has turned out to be a job-creation outfit that is much better at creating job-creation announcements than actual work. And it has been orchestrating the kind of corporate handouts that even some Republican legislators find hard to justify.

“We don’t want to see tax incentives for corporations that are already coming here anyway,” Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, told Johnson. “In my community, I’m not seeing this big splurge of jobs, and I’m really not seeing high-paying jobs. I’m seeing a lot of hospitality and those are not high-paying jobs.

Scott tapped Miami-Dade's longtime port chief to run Florida's economic-development arm in January, 2015, making Johnson -- the Miami Herald called him "a prominent local administrator" --  the state's top corporate recruiter. To really rise to the top, you have to show your willingness to play ball, however it is played in the corridors of power. That's what it means to be "a prominent local administrator".

Johnson had become Miami-Dade County's water-and-sewer chief after serving as director of the Port of Miami since 2006. With billions of dollars in upgrades required to comply with federal infrastructure standards, Miami-Dade power brokers needed someone who would reliably protect the status quo. But even earlier, Johnson had established a gold-plated reputation as facilitator for Miami-Dade pro-growth development agendas; earning the respect of downtown lawyers for pushing projects past citizen objectors like the ones who battled the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco in the mid-1990's.

When Johnson became CEO of Enterprise Florida, he also was awarded the title of commerce secretary.

The board of Enterprise Florida -- whose charter is to lure big corporations and jobs to the Sunshine State -- is a who's who of state business leaders. Apparently Mr. Johnson has been over-stating the case for Enterprise Florida's return on investment. At worst, he has been cooking the books while living very high-on-the-teat.

The Tampa Bay Times writes:

Mary Alice Nye, chief legislative analyst for the office, told the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee that many of the sales numbers reported by Enterprise Florida remain “largely unverified and may overstate performance.” 

After Scott led a trade mission to the Paris Air Show in July, the governor’s office sent out a release that said 17 companies from Florida on the trip pulled in more than $150 million in projected sales. 

Projected sales for nine life-science companies that went on an Enterprise Florida mission to Brazil was $31 million. A trip to Mexico City resulted in more than $6.5 million in sales to six Florida companies. And 32 Florida exhibitors attending a Dubai-based show reported $155 million in projected sales. 

However, while Enterprise Florida has reported anticipated export sales the past three years at $2.1 billion, the actual export total is closer to $243 million.

Aww.  Really, folks, isn't this how pay-to-play democracy works in 2015? The revolving door between the state legislature and the lobbyist corps is extraordinarily lucrative. Facilitators like Johnson move to the top of the food chain whether in government or quasi-government partnerships with industry like Enterprise Florida, and when it is time to move on, they are valuable commodities to the private sector who need insiders who "know how things work".

The partisan members of the Enterprise Florida board of directors may be turned off by Gov. Scott's remote, dictatorial management style, and Bill Johnson may take a fall as proxy for their upset with Scott. Don't worry about Johnson. A big payday awaits, even bigger than the mid-six figure salary plus benefits he is making today. Anyhow, there is a long line of candidates waiting for their turn in the batter's box. Their aim: to prove to the business elite -- like the board of Enterprise Florida -- that the status quo is unlovable, no matter what political scripts float into the public realm. You win if you do smoke-and-mirrors, you lose if you take too much credit. Like Rick Scott who wants to be Florida's next US Senator or Adam Putnam, another pay-to play exemplar, who would be Governor.


Tampa Bay Online, The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times - breaking news and weather.
Thursday, Dec 10, 2015

POLITICS: Enterprise Florida’s numbers don’t add up
BY JIM TURNER
News Service of Florida Published: December 9, 2015

TALLAHASSEE — The state’s business-recruitment agency, which Gov. Rick Scott uses for international trade missions, needs to do a better job of separating anticipated overseas sales figures from the actual sales, according to the Legislature’s accountability office.

Florida's Thieves Hell-Bent On Stealing State's Solar Future: Story of the Year ... by gimleteye

Whatever political party and candidates one favors, it is possible for all Floridians to agree that the best chance for independence in an age of climate change is diversified choice on solar power.

There is no need to review the pitiful history why the Sunshine State is a laggard in solar at the level of consumers and business. There is a need, however, to understand why the largest corporations in the state are hell-bent on preventing taxpayers from using solar power independently.

Thanks to their fear that someday citizens of Florida would wake up and take control of their energy destiny, the state's largest utilities and special interests conspired to pass a constitutional amendment requiring a supermajority vote, 60 percent, of the electorate to change the constitution (where "wise" state legislators only need 50 percent, of course).

As a result, leaving aside the presidential vote in 2016, the most important issue before Florida voters is a solar power amendment to the constitution that would ensure citizens and not large utilities will have a stable energy future in an age of climate change.

As might be expected, the forces of darkness are spending tens of millions of dollars to overwhelm the forces of light. Their aim is to confuse ALL voters in Florida with a sham amendment, Consumers for Smart Solar, and their puppets in Tallahassee -- the Rick Scott administration -- are spending loads of taxpayer money to thwart the will of taxpayers.

Remember, "Fair Districts" and "Amendment 1"? Both passed overwhelming at the ballot box by more than 60 percent of voters? Well, the goal of the black hats is to deny and obscure; to defeat the real pro-solar choice by confusing voters, qualifying their sham amendment through the Florida Supreme Court (not yet!) and collecting signatures for their sham petition.

The real grass roots effort for solar is being run by Floridians for Solar Choice.

WHAT IS THE SOLAR BALLOT INITIATIVE? A broad coalition of businesses, conservatives and environmental organizations is working to place a question on the 2016 general election ballot asking voters to decide on expanding solar choice to Florida’s families and businesses. The ballot initiative would remove a barrier that currently blocks clean, renewable solar power.

HOW DOES IT REMOVE A BARRIER TO SOLAR POWER? Florida is one of only four states that prohibit citizens from buying electricity from anyone other than a utility, along with North Carolina, Kentucky and Oklahoma (Georgia’s Governor Deal signed a third-party solar bill into law in May 2015 but this map hasn’t yet been updated to reflect that change). This prohibition limits customer choice and blocks the growth of this abundant, clean homegrown energy source. The petition, if passed, will expand solar choice by allowing all customers the option to power their homes or businesses with solar power and who provides it to them.

Get the facts here about the real choice for solar in Florida, not the sham, shady move by the utilities.

And if you want to learn the facts of who is pulling the strings of that sham, shady move, read the excellent report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR).

BIG ENERGY POURS $1.9 MILLION INTO ANTI-SOLAR GROUP, November 16, 2015 By Trevor Aronson, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Utility companies operating in Florida have donated more than $1.9 million to the misleadingly named Consumers for Smart Solar, a political action committee set up to oppose a ballot initiative that would allow for third-party sales of rooftop solar energy.

According to a tally of campaign contributions by the Energy and Policy Institute and the Center for Media and Democracy, organizations that promote adoption of solar energy, Florida Power and Light — which provides power service to nearly half the state — has given $595,000 to the PAC. Tampa Electric Company has kicked in $556,000, Duke Energy $355,000, Gulf Power Company $380,000, and PowerSouth Energy Cooperative $30,000.