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SWFL ENews: Jan 2007 SWFL ENews:
Jan 2007 / go to archive


BIG CYPRESS

'Trespassing' ATV, dirt bike enthusiasts want room to ride
Joe Crankshaw /TCPalm /Jan 2
The dirt bikes and four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles that roar through the vacant sand dunes behind Terry Tillman's home in Jensen Beach annoy her and her neighbors. In fact, she is so annoyed, she wants to help the riders find someplace nearby where they can ride legally — without disturbing anyone. If no such place can be found, she wants to help build one. Tillman is trying to deal with a problem that is vexing government officials and law enforcement agencies on the Treasure Coast and across the state."These people are trespassing," Tillman said about the people who rideATVs and dirt bikes through the sand dunes behind the Publix on JensenBeach Boulevard. "They are a plague on our neighborhood, and I wish they would stop." The problem has persisted for years, and it is not confined to Jensen Beach. Residents in Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties ...

A canoe trip worth taking
staff /Miami Herald /Jan 7
EVERGLADES CITY -- Now here's a unique idea for entertaining snowbird guests this winter: Take them on a canoe trip in Everglades National Park. You don't have to do much except deliver them to the Gulf Coast Ranger Station in Everglades City; the rangers do all the work. They provide the canoes, paddles and life jackets, and lead groups ofpaddlers on four-hour tours of mud flats, mangroves and uninhabited islands from now through April 8. But you might want to stick around and take the trip yourself. It's fun, great exercise, and you learn a lot about your own backyardwilderness. I recently joined a group of 28 paddlers on ranger Susan Reece'stour of Halfway Creek. As many times as I have visited the Ten Thousand Islands for fishing, paddling, camping or a combinationthereof, I never had made it to the scenic, brackish waterway that runs about two miles from Chokoloske ...

Panthers need more wildlife crossings
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 8
Collier County's growth plan "falls short" of preserving enough land for Florida panthers and other animals in northeast Collier's shrinking wilderness, say researchers from two Florida universities. Their solution: Expand the lands to be protected by 14 percent and link them by constructing several wildlife crossings along three key highways. The recommendations are from a study, released last month, by Reed Noss and Dan Smith, both of the University of Central Florida, and Martin Main, a University of Florida researcher stationed in Immokalee. A coalition of environmental groups and landowners paid for the $109,000 study. The researchers used animal tracks, road kill sightings and roadside cameras to document critters' favorite places to cross parts of Immokalee Road, Oil Well Road and State Road 29. Their findings suggest the need for 18 wildlife underpasses, ...

Water district offers pasture as temporary ATV park
staff /Naples Daily News /Jan 9
The South Florida Water Management District is offering a temporary solution to Collier County's off-roading woes: a 150-acre pasture southwest of Okaloacoochie Slough. All-terrain vehicle enthusiasts have been clamoring for the water managementdistrict to make good on its promise to give the county a square mile, or 640 acres, of land suitable for their muddy play. An agreement dating back to 2003, involving an Everglades restoration project, called for the acreage to be in the county's hands by Oct. 1, 2005. Under the proposed deal, the water managemet district would lease the property from agribusiness giant Alico Inc. and pay the county's expense of running the ATV park. The park would be open two weekends a month during daylight hours for three years or when a permanent location is opened, whichever comes first, officials say. The temporary site is just east ...

State to open two parks for ATV riders
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 11
A dispute that had driven camouflage-clad activists to the streets in protest ended Wednesday with the state promising to open two off-road vehicle parks, one temporary and one permanent, in Collier County. An hour-long meeting between the South Florida Water Management District’s governing board and the Collier County Commission produced a settlement thatboth sides could live with. To make good on a promise made in 2003, the West Palm Beach-based water management district renewed its offer of 628 acres north of Lake Trafford for all-terrain vehicles to use.The state agency then sweetened the deal by offering to lease 150 acres of pasture land in northeastern Collier until the permanent site is ready for ATV play. For good measure, the governing board said the district also would try to find land along one of its canals for a much-needed boat ramp. “This has been ...

SWIM to help with Naples Bay restoration
Eric Staats /Naples Daily News /Jan 12
Naples Natural Resources Manager Mike Bauer stood Thursday on the edge of Naples Bay and pointed to the spot in the water where waist-deep volunteers built an oyster reef in 2005. Watching the show-and-tell at Naples Landing were members of the governing board of the West Palm Beach-based South Florida Water Management District, which met earlier in the day at Naples City Hall. “Great stuff,” board member Michael Collins told Bauer later on the trolley that took board members on a brief tour that included Naples Pier and a volunteerplanting project on Spring Lake south of Fifth Avenue South. “When you get the public’s attention, that’s when things start to happen.” Naples Bay restoration took a step forward Thursday when, during its meeting at City Hall, the governing board approved a Surface Water Improvement and Management, or SWIM, plan for Naples Bay. The plan ...

How deadly this wild kingdom?
David Raterman /Philadelphia Inquire/Jan 14
When you're hiking in the Everglades, surfing off Miami Beach orswimming off Fort Lauderdale, there's a chance you'll see an apex predator. There's a better chance it will see you first. After the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, whose heart wasfatally pierced by a stingray's barb off the coast of Australia in September, an intrepid writer dared to research the risks of getting out and about in South Florida's natural world. He did it over the phone. "Most important, you always want to respect the animal and its territory," says Alex Saputo, a triathlete, naturalist and wildlife guide in the Everglades. "Keep your distance, notice their behavior, pay close attention to their demeanor. If they're agitated, you're too close." But how do you - a city slicker, a suburbanite or even a gladesman - know when a dangerous animal is agitated? How do you know whethe ...

Florida panther dubbed 'Beach Boy'
Jeremy Cox /ESPN /Jan 19
NAPLES, Fla. — A bikini-clad woman walks a Florida panther on a leash down Naples beach, in a promotional photograph taken in the 1960s. Four decades later, a panther appears to be trying to replicate that scene, sans woman and leash.The young male cat has pawed and sloshed its way onto Keewaydin Island, a skinny, nine-mile-long barrier island between Naples and Marco Island.It is the first time a panther has made its way to the beach since state biologists began tracking them with radio collars in 1981.``I'm guessing he did a combination of wading and slogging through mud flats, but when he got to the Intracoastal (Waterway) he had to do a little swimming,'' said Darrell Land of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Formally, the panther is known as FP147, but Land has nicknamed the nearly 2-year-old cat ``Beach Boy.'' An apt theme song for the waywar ...

It's pythons vs. gators in battle for Big Cypress
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 20
Deborah Jansen plopped the white plastic trash bag onto the grass and reached inside to reveal its contents: a Burmese python, flattened the night before along U.S. 41 East. Blood dripped from the snake’s mouth as Jansen, a wildlife biologist, uncoiled the snake to its full length and measured from mouth to tail. This one was 7feet long, not even half-grown yet. The invasion is on. Last year, five pythons were found in Big Cypress National Preserve, up fromthree in 2005. For every python that is spotted, 10 more might be slitheringaround unseen, meaning the preserve in eastern Collier County could be home to 50 pythons, scientists estimate. Wildlife officers and biologists are on high alert across Southwest Florida for the giant snakes, which can grow more than 20 feet long. A python will eat any animal that fits in its mouth, up to the size of a small deer. Even ...

Battle rages on against invasive trees, plants
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 21
Jim Burch steers a pickup down Loop Road, a lonely, limerock path that dissects the southern tip of South Florida’s subtropical wilderness. The truck bumps along for several miles through a tunnel of cocoplums, strangler figs, cypress trees, cabbage palms, red bay, pop ash and wild coffee. A small road sign declares that the truck and its occupants have entered Monroe County, but the road goes on unfazed. Finally, Burch, a botanist, brakes to turn onto a trail intended for all-terrain vehicles that, according to another sign, leads to Pace’s Dike. But the dike — and the dreams of the farms or homes it was supposed to protect — has long since vanished.It is here, just north of the aptly named Gum Slough and dozens of miles away from the closest fast-food joint or convenience store, where Burch and Jimi Sadle, a biological science technician, find their melaleuca contracto ...

SOUTHWEST COAST

SWFL rain fall totals come up dry
Julio Ochoa /Naples Daily News /Dec 30
Southwest Florida’s rainfall totals for 2006 can be described as average, but they were anything but typical. Statistics show Lee and Collier counties got about 90 percent of their average yearly rainfall totals, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story, water managers said. A shorter-than-average wet season sandwiched between two longer-than-average dry seasons created some challenges for water managers, said Clarence Tears, director of the Big Cypress Basin in Collier County.“We just had an enormous amount of rain in a short time, whereas we usually have a steady amount over a long period of time,” Tears said. The odd pattern made the year feel drier than it was. The numbers show Lee and Collier are in much better shape than other areas of the state where the drenching summer rains never fell.“When you look over the course of a calendar year, it can hide the s ...

Keep up fight for estuaries
Editorial /News Press /Jan 4
Recent stories about the woes of commercial fishermen trying to make aliving in our coastal estuaries and about the illnesses of marine birds and manatees should remind us that the health of these normally fruitful waters is still on the line. And they should spur outrage, and sustain us in the weary, decades-long fight to save this amazing gift: the Southwest Florida environment. It’s been about a year since devastating algae blooms and mats of organic muck, triggered by releases of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee, blanketed seagrass beds in J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel, among other insults. But the old damage apparently metastasizes, even without fresh infusions of pollution from the lake. And deadly nutrients still ooze and flush from thousands of other less obvious sources in Lee County itself — from septic tanks and over-ferti ...

SW Fla. Feasibility Study slows to crawl
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 4
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has run out of money for assessing Southwest Florida’s environmental needs, a setback for preservationists hoping to savewhat’s left of the fast-growing region’s wilderness.More than six years into the Southwest Florida Feasibility Study, part of the Everglades restoration campaign, work has slowed to a crawl — again. In 2000, the Corps and the South Florida Water Management District agreed tosplit the cost of the then-$7.8 billion Everglades project. That cost included the modest-by-comparison $12 million for the Southwest Florida study. The Corps reached the $6 million mark in October and promptly halted its staff from attending project meetings with the water management district and otheragencies involved in the effort. “We’re basically in maintenance mode, doing the minimum necessary to keep things rolling at this point,” said Dennis ...

Lands to be picked for lake releases
Denise Scott /News Press /Jan 11
The agencies that manage Lake Okeechobee have agreed to designate lands for emergency water storage instead of releasing damaging overflows into the Caloosahatchee River. The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board unanimously agreed this morning to ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to includesuch lands’ storage capacity in a new Lake Okeechobee Water Control Plan. Dennis Duke, restoration program manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the corps will include emergency storage in the plan draft to be presented to the public in March. “We’d like to build in an opportunity for offline storage,” he said. “…I think this is a great example of a partnership.” Sanibel Mayor Carla Brooks Johnston told the district board that a short-term solution is important to give the estuary a chance to heal from damage from releases resulting from the ...

Good first step, now do more
Editorial /News Press /Jan 17
Sometimes, it pays to be a pain the neck. That’s what some officials and activists in Lee County have been aboutpollution of our Caloosahatchee River and estuary by water from Lake Okeechobee. Now, a significant step has been taken in the direction of relieving an underlying problem in water management in South Florida, at least as far as the lake and the Caloosahatchee are concerned. The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board has unanimously agreed to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to designate land where excess water from the lake can be stored in an emergency, instead of being dumped into the river and ultimately the estuary, where it upsets crucial salinity and triggers deadly algae blooms.A corps official said emergency storage will be included in a plan to be presented to the public in March. The corps is ultimately responsible for lake m ...

Pressure on state to protect Treasure Coast estuaries
Suzanne Wentley /TCPalm /Jan 19
STUART — After six months of debate, a group of elected officials and concerned citizens who live along the Okeechobee Waterway said Thursday they believe they've found a way to improve the health of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. Created by former Gov. Jeb Bush, the Caloosahatchee/St. Lucie CorridorAdvisory Committee met at the Indian River Community College's Wolf High Technology Center to make recommendations to the state Department of Environmental Protection and the state legislature. Residents of Martin, Lee, Okeechobee, Palm Beach and Hendry counties who served on the committee are asking the state to adopt new laws and formally reevaluate the success of clean-up efforts at least every three years. DiTerlizzi said the recommendations will be submitted to DEP secretaryMichael Sole. He said he also will deliver a final copy to state Senate pres ...

St. Lucie River's decline, Part 1
Bud Jordan /TCPalm /Jan 19
The St. Lucie River was a freshwater river emptying into the brackish Indian River Lagoon before the first "permanent" inlet was opened by local businessmen in 1898. They wanted a more direct route to the ocean and coastal trade than those offered by the few natural inlets to the north and south along the east coast of Florida. Opening the inlet had an unexpected beneficial side effect: As the lagoon and river adapted to new, estuarine salinity conditions, the river became an outstanding — some would say unbelievable — fishery. While the north and south forks of the river remained fresh in their upper reaches, supporting a rich freshwater ecology, the lower reaches became denselypopulated with oysters, clams, sea grasses, and all the myriad speciesthat even today make the Indian River Lagoon the most diverse estuary in North America. The St. Lucie River became world ...

Water board seeks more Lake O releases
staff /News Press /Jan 23
The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) has requested that the Army Corps of Engineers continue to make daily environmental releases of freshwater from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee River and estuary, the agency reports in a press statement issued this morning. These releases were initiated last month amid concerns over saltwater intrusion and the health of the Upper Caloosahatchee Estuary. Depending upon the amount of runoff from the basin, the low-volume releases of 250 cubic feet of water per second will continue as needed through mid-February, with no additional pulse releases planned, according to the statement. The recommendation for continuation of these releases was approved by the SFWMD governing board at its meeting on January 11. A written request to continue similar gate operations at water structure S-79 was then submitted to ...

New proposal for Lake O releases kinder to Caloosahatchee estuary
Julio Ochoa /Naples Daily News /Jan 24
A new plan to regulate freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee released by the Army Corps of Engineers today provides more relief to the Caloosahatchee estuary. After local leaders and residents harshly criticized a plan released by the Corps late last year, the agency went back to the drawing board to incorporate public comment. Its new plan is so different it will require another 45-day comment period before it can be adopted. The plan calls for a schedule of releases that sends fewer damaging flows down the Caloosahatchee River than the current plan and the previously selected plan. Excessive fresh water releases from the lake to the Caloosahatchee River arebelieved to cause damage to the estuary, including killing sea grasses, which provide critical habitat to marine life. Some have blamed the excessive releases on the increased prevelence and duration of red ti ...

St. Lucie River still reeling from 2004 storms, activists say
Rachel Simmonsen /Palm Beach Post /Jan 26
STUART — After a months-long dry spell, the St. Lucie River looks considerably better than it did a year ago. But look below the surface, and the view isn't so nice, river activists said Friday.Grass beds, which are home to fish and which help filter nutrients from the water, haven't rebounded as quickly from the 2004 hurricanes and subsequent discharges from Lake Okeechobee as activists had hoped. "What used to be grass beds are now algae beds," said Kevin Henderson of the St. Lucie River Initiative.Speaking Friday at the monthly meeting of the Rivers Coalition, Henderson likened the situation to a fire that had wiped out a forest, which, years later, still shows no signs of new trees. The problem is that, even though the river has gotten a reprieve from discharges of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee, sediments from previous discharges have settled to the river's bottom. Wh ...

Florida Lab Manager Blamed for Data Showing High Pollution
staff /PEER /Jan 30
TALLAHASSEE - January 30 - The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is seeking to punish a laboratory manager because thewater pollution data he reported was not ambiguous enough, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The data in question concerns pollution levels in most of South Florida’s key water-bodies, including the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie Estuary. In a letter dated January 3, 2007, Kevin Neal, who has since resigned as Director of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Southeast District, charged Thomas White, the manager of the agency’s Port St. Lucie laboratory, with “generating and reporting deceptive or fraudulent lab results” solely due to his lab’s lowusage of “Data Qualifiers,” descriptions of data limitations. Despite use of words like “fraud ...

Commission backs water quality river proposal
Jamie Page /News Press /Jan 30
Lee County commissioners today endorsed a resolution supporting a piece of legislation that, if passed by the legislature, could push state and federal agencies to pursue more water quality protection measures for the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. It could also improve the level of water discharges from Lake Okeechobee to both river’s estuaries. The legislation essentially extends the Lake O’ Act to the two rivers and their estuaries with the same degree of protection currently provided to Lake O’. Commissioner Tammy Hall helped champion the bill through her service on the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie River Study Commission. ...

LAKE OKEECHOBEE

Chalk one up for water: Lake Okeechobee wins court fight
Scripps TC Newspapers /Naples Daily News /Jan 2
Finally, a voice of reason amid the struggle to clean up Lake Okeechobee. U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga has ruled that the South Florida Water Management District has been violating the federal Clean Water Act by failing to obtain permits to backpump water — from canals south of the lake — into the massive body of water.For those who care deeply about the condition (polluted) and future (questionable) of America's third-largest freshwater lake, there's a lot to like in Altonaga's 107-page decision. First, the judge ruled the water management district — against its objections — needs a permit to pump water in to the lake. He has scheduled future proceedings to address possible remedies to the problem. Second, the judge observed, and affirmed, the direct correlation between thebackpumping of canals and the quality of water in Lake O. "In the absence of an extraordin ...

New TMDLs could impact area dairymen
Pete Gawda /News Zap /Jan 10
Local dairymen and others with interests in the health of the lake are urged to attend a special meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 10, concerning setting Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDLs) of nutrients in Lake Okeechobee tributaries.The proposal affects several hundred thousand acres of mostly agricultural lands in Osceola, Polk, Okeechobee, Highlands, Glades, Hendry, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal organization, is conducting the meeting at the Okeechobee County Civic Center from 9 a.m. until noon. There is some concern that the TMDLs proposed by EPA for tributaries could conflict with the Lake Okeechobee TMDLs set by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) under the Lake Okeechobee Protection Plan (LOPP). While TMDLS have been established for Lake Okeechobee, currently there are no TMDLs for its tributaries.Th ...

Cleaning up waterways should be priority, Martin legislators are told
Lily Ladiera /TCPalm /Jan 6
STUART — Some residents are tired of the many ineffectual studies on Lake Okeechobee water quality and want state officials to take action to restore area waterways. "Having our rivers continue to be used as a sewer is intolerable. The excuses for inaction is equally intolerable," said Nathaniel Reed, whoonce served on the board of the South Florida Water Management District. Improving conditions of area waterways was a priority for some residents and officials who want it on the front-burner for local legislative delegates.Martin County residents and more than 20 people representing local governments, agencies or groups addressed four state legislators Friday at the county Administrative Building regarding the environment, voting systems, social services and other concerns. The delegation agreed more action is necessary from the state. "Quite frankly, I've given u ...

Fight for carbon-capture coal plants
John Capece /News Press /Jan 6
Recently the FPL corporation quietly deposited lumps of coal in the Christmas stockings of each and every Floridian. They submitted a permit application to Florida Department of Environmental Protection seeking approval to build another coal-fired electric power plant in our state. I received my personal lump in early October upon learning that the Glades County Economic Development Council (EDC) had been asked to endorse plans for a new FPL power plant west of Lake Okeechobee near Moore Haven. I looked into the issue and concluded there is a national-security logic to using coal, but only if we build all new coal plants so they eliminatecarbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) emissions. However, my desire to so amend the endorsement resolution represented a "minority of one" viewpoint on the EDC board.A Glades County coal plant (and the new natural gas power plant recently ...

Include governor's office in Lake O cleanup plan
Editorial /Palm Beach Post /Jan 9
Whatever efforts Florida makes to store and clean water before it gets to the Everglades, all the money, reservoirs and filter marshes will be useless if Lake Okeechobee isn't cleaned up. Fed by dairy farms and residential development south of Orlando, runoff filled with phosphorus and other pollutants still rushes to the lake in man-made canals. It's been going on for so long that there is a layer of pollutant ooze on the lake bottom. Wind from the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 stirred up that ooze and suspended the pollutants in the water, creating a fertilizer-rich soup that nouri Later, when the lake level got too high, regulators sent the green slime in canals to the east and west coast estuaries, the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. The St. Lucie still struggles to recover from that onslaught. This dry season has helped the lake somewhat, but phosphorus levels remain high and ...

Land search for Lake O water storage gets support from South Florida water mana gers
staff /Naples Daily News /Jan 11
A search for land to store water from Lake Okeechobee got a formal vote of support this morning from South Florida water managers. The governing board of the South Florida Water Management District, meeting at Naples City Hall, voted unanimously to support a resolution asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make storage on public and private land part of the agency's plan to manage lake water levels. Adding storage areas would mean less water from the lake being dumped into the estuaries at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, where discharges have been blamed for killed off seagrasses, chasing off marine life and triggering toxic algae blooms. Sanibel Mayor Carla Brooks Johnston called the resolution a "great step," but said she wants to see more than promises to find the additional storage space before the 2007 hurricane season. ...

A year after Wilma, Glades communities still dosing drinking water with chemica ls
Mike Clary /Sun Sentinel /Jan 16
Belle Glade -- More than a year after Hurricane Wilma battered Palm Beach County, water managers in the county's three Glades communities continue to use up to double the normal dose of chemicals to purify drinking water the cities draw from a still-agitated Lake Okeechobee. The cost of the chemicals has caused financial turmoil for the cash-strappedrural cities, while highlighting the need for the $58 million regional waterplant that is under construction. The Lake Region Water Treatment Plant will draw from deep wells, and end thecurrent practice of treating lake water. Mixtures of chlorine and organic substances found in Lake Okeechobee water can form trihalomethanes, or THMs,which have been linked to cancer and birth defects. A draft report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last y ...

Everglades pollution starts here
Kevin Spear /Sun Sentinel /Jan 17
The Seven Seas Lagoon at Walt Disney World offers more adventure than visitors might know. So do Lake Lorna Doone just below the lip of the Citrus Bowl stadium, Lake Conway at the south edge of Orlando and Lake Nona next to Orlando International Airport.Perhaps a surprise to even the area's longtime residents, waters that drain from those lakes journey nearly 200 miles to the Everglades. They are part of a mosaic of ditches, canals, streams, wetlands and lakes across south Orange County that constitute the headwaters of Florida's famed but imperiledenvironmental treasure. To draw attention to that connection, the 39-year-old Everglades Coalition this Thursday through Sunday will bring its annual conference to the Orlando area for the first time. The nearly 50 environmental groups in the organization want to raise awareness that recovery of the ailing ecosystem depends ...

Everglades advocates hope Crist is warm to Lake O plans
Robert King /Palm Beach Post /Jan 20
ORLANDO — Environmentalists are greeting Florida's new governor with an ambitious, multibillion-dollar agenda for finishing the $10.9 billion Everglades restoration - even while state leaders warn that costs for existing efforts are soaring far more quickly than anyone expected. Proposals from the Everglades Coalition include turning city-sized swaths of western Palm Beach County farmland into new reservoirs and filter marshes, in addition to those the state has built since the early 1990s. Activists also urged the state to find enough land to store nearly 2 trillion gallons of runoff upstream of Lake Okeechobee and coastal waterways such as the St. Lucie River. In addition, they renewed their calls for water managers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study a proposed marshy "flow way" to reconnect the lake and the Everglades - an idea that withered under criticism from sugar ...

Glades projects continue to make progress
Mitra Malek /Palm Beach Post /Jan 21
Dreams run deep in the western part of Palm Beach County. People who live on the fringe of Lake Okeechobee have long seen their backwater's potential to push beyond one-room apartments, farmland and football. But it has taken years, if not decades, for some of the visions to take hold. In Belle Glade, two projects with the promise of upscale homes have languished: Abidjan Estates and Florida Crystals Corp.'s land annexation. And engineering studies for a boat lock have been slow to come, the prospect for a construction of a lock dampened by reports that Lake O's dike is unstable. Things have moved a little better in Pahokee: despite questions on the dike, the city continues construction on an improved marina. And Pahokee has made some headway on large-scale annexation plans. Abidjan Estates celebrated its groundbreaking in June 2004. The first 77 homes of the 338-unit community w ...

Water district gives hope for smarter management
staff /Naples Daily News /Jan 18
Water, water everywhere — and not enough places to put it.That’s the dilemma facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District as they labor to manage how much water flows into, out of and stays in Lake Okeechobee. The challenge facing them is huge. Too much water in the lake kills plants and animals and threatens a dike breach. Too little can have similar environmental effects and doesn’t leave enough for farmers and utilities. Lake managers have tried to mitigate those problems by using canals to release water into the Caloosahatchee River to the west and St. Lucie River to the east. Those releases, of course, are blamed for a litany of severe problems on both coasts, from algae blooms to fish kills. The root of the problem, of course, is that the Corps and water management district are trying — futilely, as history has proven ...

Follow law, restore lake
David Guest /Sun Sentinel /Jan 22
South Florida's water pollution problems will not be solved until state, regional and federal officials stop trying to create exemptions for polluters and start honestly enforcing the law. The South Florida Water Management District is using tax dollars to argue that it is outside the reach of the Clean Water Act, one of the most effective and popular environmental laws in the U.S., and Big Sugar supports this claim.In a recent Associated Press article, the water management district argues that if it has to get permits to regulate the contaminants in the water it pumps into Lake Okeechobee, every flood control system in the nation would have to shutdown and the entire Everglades Restoration project would be jeopardized. BigSugar also made this inflammatory claim. The water management district and U.S. Sugar presented identical stories to a federal judge in Miami i ...

Judah right about Lake O
Marti Daltry /News Press /Jan 30
In his Jan. 25 guest opinion, U.S. Sugar's Robert Coker criticizes LeeCounty Commissioner Ray Judah's call for a Lake Okeechobee southern flow way through parts of what are now sugar-cane fields. Riverwatch strongly endorses the flow way concept and supports the positions taken by Commissioner Judah. It is important to remember that the Everglades Agricultural Area was established with funding from the federal government to promote legitimate national priorities of the mid-1900s. State and national priorities ofthis century have evolved to place greater emphasis on water quality and storage. Now, for the greater good, a portion of these EAA lands need to be converted back to their natural state and used as a cleansing flow way connecting Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. To be fair, Mr. Coker makes a good point in asking Commissioner Judah to focus equal attent ...

Communities wary as work starts again on aging Okeechobee dike
Andy Reid /Sun Sentinel /Jan 31
Long-stalled work has resumed on reinforcing the aging dike surrounding LakeOkeechobee. Construction crews have begun filling in a ditch beside the Herbert Hoover Dike to make room for new berms planned to stop water from seeping through the base of the earthen levee. Now, lakeside residents wait to see whether their properties could be claimed by the new dike design, which may require as much as 150 feet of additional land in some stretches. Officials in Pahokee, Belle Glade and other lakeside communities expect to learn as soon as February which homes, businesses and city facilities could stand in the way.In Pahokee, hundreds of homes, along with City Hall, are within 150 feet of the dike. Many of those homes are among the most expensive in town and losing them would hurt the city's tax base, said Lillie Latimore, Pahokee's city manager. "It would be a devas ...

EVERGLADES RESTORATION

Change environment from 'Don't Expect Protection'
Editorial /Palm Beach Post /Dec 30
Gov.-elect Charlie Crist is off to an uncertain start in naming a new chief environmental regulator and top growth management official, but outgoing Gov. Bush's environmental legacy leaves the new governor ample room to improve. Michael W. Sole, now a deputy secretary, is the new governor's choice to head the Department of Environmental Protection, and he appointed Tom Pelham to head the Department of Community Affairs, a job Mr. Pelham held under Gov. Bob Martinez in the 1980s. Mr. Sole has 16 years' experience with DEP and mixed reviews from environmentalists. Mr. Pelham did a good job when he worked for the state, but The jury still is out on Mr. Sole, but he deserves the freedom to lead and a chance to change the joke that DEP stands for "Don't Expect Protection." He can't be worse than Gov. Bush's first DEP chief, David Struhs, who eventually resigned to work for a polluter, fo ...

Florida environment: A wish list for 2007
Alan Farago /Orlando Sentinel /Dec 31
To greet the new year, there are so many wish lists it is hard to know what to want. So let's give it up for the environment, in no particular order, that: Florida's agencies charged with protecting public health and the environmentshall abandon predetermined outcomes based on political expediency. Cost considerations -- for instance, land prices bid up by speculators -- shall no longer guide policy decisions for what is most protective of people, our air and water, and our wilderness heritage such as Everglades restoration. When the state purchases environmentally sensitive land, the beneficiaries -- whether corporate or private -- shall be required to disclose any campaign contributions to politicians or political parties in the previous five years. Florida shall become the solar-energy capital of the world, with a massive effort to reward consumers and industry to ...

Gov. Jeb Bush's environmental legacy during eight years in office
AP /FL Times Union /Dec 14
A look at Gov. Jeb Bush's environmental legacy: _About 1.2 million acres of land acquired for preservation. _Invested $2 billion of a committed $3.3 billion to be spent through 2010 onEverglades restoration. _Acquired more than 210,000 acres of land for Everglades restoration, including some 36,000 acres of man-made wetlands that clean water through natural marsh filters. _More than a million acres of farm land and natural areas converted to housing developments. _Development continues to encroach on the edge of the Everglades. Environmentalists say the region needs a buffer zone to maintain restorationefforts. _Passage of the 1999 Florida Forever Act to expedite land acquisition for conservation and preservation purposes. _Congress becomes 50-50 partner with the state on its $10.5 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP, in 2000. _A ...

'Anti-sugar' trumps 'clean lake' to detriment of all
Robert E Coker /Palm Beach Post /Jan 6
Congratulations. A federal court essentially outlawed the cleanest 3 percent of the water going into Lake Okeechobee while ignoring the worst 97 percent. ("Stop pumping pollution" editorial, Dec. 16.)We seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. By focusing on "anti-sugar" instead of "clean lake," the true problems in the system never will be fixed. Why on Earth would you outlaw the cleanest water in the system while ignoring once again the heavily polluted water pouring into Lake Okeechobee from the northern tributaries? Not only is the water south of the lake some of the cleanest water People in the Glades are growing weary of being singled out and treated differently than every other area in the system. Ninety-seven percent of the pollution and the water that flow into Lake Okeechobee come from the northern half of the watershed, draining development from Orlando, south. This ...

Florida can't wait for federal funding to act
Nathaniel Reed /TCPalm /Jan 11
The near collapse of the Hoover Dike, the need to keep a far lower lake stage to avoid a repeat of the New Orleans disaster puts Stuart and Martin County along with our friends at the Gulf end of the Caloosahatchee River in the unenviable position of having our rivers continued to be used as sewers. The current situation is intolerable and the excuses for inaction are equally intolerable. The governor and the Florida Legislature must face the problem that federal dollars are going to be in short supply for many years, as thetotal expenses of the Afghan-Iraqi wars threaten the financial stability of our country. We cannot wait indefinitely for federal funding to face up to major Florida environmental crises even if uninformed actions of the Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District are the cause of many of our local and South Florida prob ...

No back-pumping required if growers would clean up
Editorial - David Reiner /Palm Beach Post /Jan 12
I was amused to read U.S. Sugar Vice President Robert Coker's latest whine letter, "Anti-sugar trumps 'clean lake' to detriment of all" (Jan. 6), in response to the federal court ruling declaring the South Florida Water Management District's practice of pumping polluted water into Lake Okeechobee illegal. Back-pumping water from the Everglades Agricultural Area into Lake Okeechobee is necessary on I was pleased to read of Mr. Coker's concern over other sources of pollution entering the lake and the Everglades and promise that Friends of the Everglades will join in any pollution abatement lawsuit U.S. Sugar files to stop these other sources. I also agree with Mr. Coker that unbridled development is a major contributor to the system's pollution problems. This is the single greatest reason why ...

EPA seeks to clarify Clean Water Act after adverse court rulings
Brian Skoloff /Bradenton Herald /Jan 13
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - If not for the pumps, canals and dikes that dissect South Florida, much of it would be under several feet ofwater part of the year. Towns along the south rim of Lake Okeechobee would be inundated during downpours. To prevent such catastrophes on the northern edge of the Everglades, state water managers move water back and forth through channels in and out of the lake and have done so for decades. But a federal judge's recent ruling in Florida that the U.S. Clean Water Act requires the state obtain permits before pumpingcontaminated water from farmland and urban run-off into Lake Okeechobee has put the state's flood control operations - and similar programs around the country - in limbo. It also could affect a multibillion federal and state effort to restore the Everglades, critics of the ruling say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Ag ...

Everglades Restoration projects to get reshuffled
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 13
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reshuffling the order in which it will undertake the daunting list of projects in the massive Everglades restoration campaign. The effort is intended to hasten projects that offer “the most return in terms of environmental benefits at the earliest possible time,” said Dennis Duke, restoration program manager for the Corps in Jacksonville.Some projects may move up the priority list. Top candidates include returning the Kissimmee River to its winding path and shoring up the fragile Lake Okeechobee dike, Duke said. Others, he added, “will be slightly delayed.” Further, the Corps is reorganizing its bureaucratic structure from Washington to West Palm Beach in the hope of getting restoration projects reviewed more quickly. As part of the “management reset,” the agency has appointed a senior Corps official, Tom Waters, to a newly creat ...

New plan downsizes mega-development
CMorgan & RDellagloria /Bradenton Herald /Jan 15
It's too soon to pronounce a controversial mega-development in Florida City dead, but the landowner is preparing to pull the plug with two key proposals. Atlantic Civil has filed zoning and permit applications in the last few weeks to build a rock-mining operation and fewer than 200 homes on the property adjacent to the Everglades where it had proposed up to 6,000 homes. John Shubin, an attorney for Atlantic Civil, said the company was simply hedging its bet on the Florida City Commons development. ''There's a lot of time and money invested . . . and we are going to continue to move it forward,'' he said. But with significant political and regulatory hurdles and a tanking housing market, any going appears increasingly difficult for a project that has been a lightning rod in Miami-Dade's debate over whether to open new land to development.The new proposals would ...

State is lagging in Lake Okeechobee, Everglades cleanup
Brian Skoloff /Naples Daily News /Jan 18
WEST PALM BEACH — State water managers are not doing enough to eliminate pollution from Lake Okeechobee and to restore the overall health of the Everglades, according to an Audubon of Florida report released Wednesday. The group claims more water storage areas need to be constructed north of the lake to clean pollutants before they enter the Everglades system and to keeplake levels low. Audubon also claims the state has not made substantial progress toward meeting federal deadlines for phosphorus clean up. The state is currently operating its Everglades restoration under court oversight that came from a 1992 settlement reached after the federal government sued Florida for not abiding by its own clean water standards. The deal produced a consent decree under which a federal judge oversees cleanup. Environmentalists have accused the state of dragging its feet and poin ...

Water-pump ruling leaves state in limbo
Brian Skoloff /Orlando Sentinel /Jan 15
WEST PALM BEACH -- If not for the pumps, canals and dikes that dissect SouthFlorida, much of the region would be under several feet of water part of theyear. Towns along the south rim of Lake Okeechobee would be inundated duringdownpours. To prevent such catastrophes on the northern edge of the Everglades, state water managers move water back and forth through channels in and out of the lake and have done so for decades.But a federal judge's ruling in Florida that the U.S. Clean Water Act requires the state to obtain permits before pumping contaminated water from farmland and urban runoff into Lake Okeechobee has put state flood-control operations -- and similar programs across the country -- in limbo. It could affect a multibillion federal and state effort to restore the Everglades, critics say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now says it may seek an amendme ...

Water district director says negative publicity about Everglades restoration
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 19
ORLANDO -- The leader of the state agency spearheading the nearly $11 billion Everglades restoration campaign today chided environmental groups that have criticized the effort, saying the negative publicity is impeding congressional funding. "If you go to Congress and tell them all the things that are wrong with Florida, they're going to say, 'They don't have their act together so why should we give them any money,'" said Carol Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District. Many of the critics Wehle was addressing were in the audience in front of her at the 22nd annual Everglades Coalition conference. And they were quick to rebut her comments. "People sometimes use that to keep us quiet, but we believe that's the wrongapproach," said Richard Grosso, executive director of the Everglades Law Center, referring to the notion that criticism is so ...

Everglades clean-up on backburner, but there's hope
Craig Pittman /St Pete Times /Jan 19
ORLANDO — It’s billions of dollars more expensive than expected, 10 years behind schedule and the governmental partnership formed to build it is on the verge of unraveling. Yet advocates of the floundering Everglades restoration project say they’re hopeful that new leadership in Tallahassee and Washington will finally get the world’s largest environmental rescue back on track. With a new governor who has a good environmental record and a new party in charge of Congress, said Audubon of Florida conservation director Eric Draper, “it’s a completely new game here.” Leaders of the annual meeting of the Everglades Coalition, a consortium of 45 pro-restoration environmental groups including 1000 Friends of Florida and the League of Women Voters, got an added boost Friday when they found out Gov. Charlie Crist will deliver the keynote speech tonight. Crist’s staff had ...

Everglades restoration explosions are planned, worrying some Broward residents
David Fleshler /Sun Sentinel /Jan 20
The vast and ambitious plan to restore the Everglades is coming to southwestern Broward County, and not everyone is thrilled. State engineers are drawing up plans for 3,600 acres of water impoundments and a 5,000-acre barrier to keep clean water from draining out of the Everglades and dirty water from the suburbs from seeping in. The plan may call for blasting to crack the thick, hard limestone under these areas -- a sensitive point in nearby Miramar, Pembroke Pines and Weston, where homes have already been damaged by blasting from rock mines and residential development. The South Florida Water Management District will conduct two public meetings next week to hear residents' concerns. "Everyone understands the reasons why these areas need to be created, and for the most part, everybody supports the idea of making the Everglades more hospitable to wildlife," ...

Sen. Nelson wants groups' help in jumpstarting Everglades restoration
staff /Naples Daily News /Jan 19
Florida’s senior U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, upset about delays in providing federal money for Everglades restoration, is trying to organize environmental groups. Nelson said Friday he will urge hundreds of the nation’s leadingenvironmentalists gathering in Orlando this weekend to sign a letter aimed at getting the attention of other national lawmakers. Nelson intends to enlist the organizations' help in a speech he’s scheduled to give Saturday to The Everglades Coalition, an alliance of 45 local, state and national conservation and environmental organizations. The coalition is holding its annual national conference this weekend in Orlando. Nelson contends that, after years of delays under a GOP-controlled Congress, he thinks there’s a good chance now to get the new Democratic-led Congress to move ahead with the stalled federal legislation that includes money for pro ...

Leaders in Washington must help Everglades
Opinion /News Press /Jan 20
In the gaudy history of Florida swamp scams, it was a beaut. But this time it was the folks from Up North who left the Floridians looking like suckers. In 2000, with much fanfare, Congress and the Clinton administration signed the federal government up as equal partners with Florida in a 30-year plan to restore the Everglades.The feds were to put up half the cost (then estimated at $7.8 billion, now $10.5 billion) and more than half the cash to fix the problems caused by mankind’s century of disastrously re-jiggering South Florida’s naturalwater system. Water flow to the parched Everglades National Park would be doubled, Lake Okeechobee and lots of wetlands restored to health and water cleansed and conserved rather than polluted and dumped into the rivers, estuaries and seas. That’s important for Southwest Florida, where polluted lake releases have threatened coasta ...

Everglades restoration could gain funding, Nelson says
Amie Parnes /TCPalm /Jan 20
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Nelson today will ask hundreds of environmentalists around the country to sign a letter urging lawmakers to pass legislation that includes funding for Everglades restoration projects and the Indian River Lagoon. At a speech in Orlando, Nelson, the Florida Democrat, is expected to tell members of the Everglades Coalition that he believes the Water Resources Development Act will have a good chance of passing this time around under Democratic leadership, especially with the environmentalists' continued support. The previous legislation, which contained more than $1.2 billion for the Indian River Lagoon, passed through both chambers of Congress in July but was held up in a conference committee where House and Senate members attempted to work out their differences.But as the clock ran down on the last congressional session last month, lawm ...

State trying on Everglades; make the feds try harder
Editorial /Palm Beach Post /Jan 26
Audubon of Florida has just released a report that outlines eight ideas for cleaning up Lake Okeechobee. Collectively, the approach amounted to keeping pollution from getting into the lake. It's the right idea, but hardly a new idea. Apparently, though, coverage of the report prompted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the South Florida Water Management District to send out a joint statement that began: "No other state in the nation has achieved more than Florida for environmental restoration. A news story incorrectly interpreted a recently released environmental report, accusing the state of not making pro During the Jeb Bush administration, this was standard operating procedure. Specific criticism about environmental policy brought a generic response about the wonderfulness of the governor and the state. As the Associated Press story on the Audubon report point ...

`Simply put, our water isn't right'
Bill Nelson quotes /Miami Herald /Jan 27
Below are excerpts from Florida Sen. Bill Nelson's speech to theEverglades Coalition (www.everglades coalition.org) last Saturday in Orlando. We are joined by a common cause, a common devotion to protecting and preserving the vast flowing river we call the Everglades. This is a region of strange beauty and environmental diversity. Yet it also is one of our most important sources of water. Listen to the words of the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas, from her 1987 autobiography, Voice of the River: ``Much of the rainfall on which South Florida depends comes from evaporation in the Everglades. The Everglades evaporate, the moisture goes up into the clouds, the clouds are blown to the north, and the rain comes down over the Kissimmee River and Lake Okeechobee. ``Lake Okeechobee, especially, is fed by these rains. When the lake gets filled, some of the excess drains down th ...

Glades area is tired of being singled out
Robert Coker /Sun Sentinel /Jan 29
David Guest's Jan. 22 commentary applauded a federal court ruling thatessentially outlawed the cleanest 3 percent of the water going into Lake Okeechobee while ignoring the worst 97 percent. Until environmental groups let go of their obsession with sugar farmers and start attacking the major pollution problems north of the lake, everything downstream will continue to suffer.The Clean Water Act was never intended to usurp a state's responsibility formoving water. Apparently Guest knows better than to suggest that the South Florida Water Management District not operate the pumps that move water from the heavily populated urban areas to the bays, rivers and coastal estuaries. No, he attacks only the farming area south of Lake Okeechobee. Not only is the water south of the lake some of the cleanest water in the entire system, but the farming areas south of the lake account for le ...

Saunders measure would generate $2 billion for restoration
Jeremy Cox /Naples Daily News /Jan 29
With questions looming about the federal government's commitment to fix the Everglades, Florida lawmakers this spring will consider a proposal to boost the state's annual contribution from $100 million to $150 million. If the Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist sign off on the measure, it will generate nearly $2 billion by 2020 for the lagging effort. The South FloridaWater Management District has vowed to match the state's contribution, raising the total to nearly $4 billion. The $7.8 billion plan to restore the River of Grass to a semblance of its former self was designed to be split 50-50 between the state and federal government. But since 2000, the year Congress approved the plan, the state has borne thelion's share of the expense."The gap continues to widen," said state Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, the sponsor of the latest bill. An identical bill will wend its way th ...



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