Four in favor, one against. Last week Martin County Commissioners voted 4-1 to draft a resolution in support of Sen. Pres. Joe Negron’s SB 10. (Only Comm. Doug Smith voted no.) It was a show of support and gratitude for Negron’s courage, for using his political capital to fight for a solution to the toxic discharges that plague the Treasure Coast, and for opposing US Sugar’s and Florida Crystals' massive campaign to keep the status quo. 

Virtually no one outside the sugar industry thinks the status quo is acceptable. As Negron bluntly put it: Are you telling me that in 2017, in the United States of America, with the best research universities in the world, with everything that we have, the best we can do when the water rises is we’re going to flood communities east and west of Lake Okeechobee? I don’t accept that reality and I don’t hear anyone now defending it.

Everglades and Florida Bay stakeholders don’t accept that reality, either, because the status quo protects the sugar industry’s water supply at the expense of these two world-renowned ecosystems. Negron’s solution, backed by more than 200 scientists, delivers badly needed freshwater flows to revitalize South Florida’s environment and recharge the thinning aquifer that Miami drinks from. Support for SB 10 and the Now Or Neverglades Declaration, which outlines the solution, has come from all over Florida.

Of course the earliest and loudest support for the Now Or Neverglades Declaration came from Martin County. As reeking mats of toxic “guacamole” algae closed businesses and beaches, just about every person running for local office signed it--including Doug Smith.

Negron’s SB 10/HB 761 is exactly what Declaration signers asked for: a dynamic reservoir in the EAA to store, treat and send water south--the keystone project in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), funded through Amendment 1 to purchase the land, to cut damaging discharges to coastal estuaries and rejuvenate Florida’s fabled River of Grass. And to follow the Declaration and deliver a win-win for glades communities, SB 10 supporters are working to make economic stimulus for local residents part of the bill. It’s just common sense that CERP, a 50-year, $17 billion public works project, should include training and jobs in the same region where unemployment reaches 40%.

Negron’s plan can be a win-win for Floridians everywhere, because ultimately we all want the same things: access to good jobs and safe, healthy places to live and raise our families.

Has Sunshine State News contributor J.P. Sasser lost his mind?!

“Out of this 40% unemployment, my argument is how much of that 40% is actually employable. How much of that 40% would get up and go to work every morning if there was a job available...very few.”
- J.P. Sasser, One Florida Foundation, quoted in James Patterson’s documentary Murder of a Small Town (2015)

Did J.P. Sasser really say out loud that glades residents are lazy and unemployable? As a former mayor of Pahokee, how could he so rudely insult the people he once called constituents? Who knows why he said it, but he did, and all that can be said now is--at least we know what he thinks.

Last week, Sasser alerted SSN executive director and bankrupt Mississippian Nancy Smith to a comment on our Facebook page dismissing the impact of job loss in the glades. Smith wrote in her blog that Sasser said the writer deserved a shout-out for saying what we really think about glades residents.

Is Nancy Smith really trying to smear Bullsugar with a random, unaffiliated Facebook comment, based on a tip from someone SSN is closely affiliated with, who has expressed offensive, embarrassing views about the glades communities? That’s just too rich.

February 7th's senate hearing in Tallahassee was a win for the Everglades and our estuaries.

Senate Bill 10, calling for the expedited planning and completion of a southern reservoir, took a step in the right direction with unanimous approval from the Committee on Environmental Preservation and Conservation. This victory brought an air of well-deserved celebration to proponents of Everglades restoration.

Amid the revel, a defining new development took shape. Sparked by residents from the heart of the EAA, several speakers expressed concerns that highlighted the economic hardship of the glades communities, which have suffered poverty and years of 20-40% unemployment, by far the highest in the state.

The message: “We are hurting too. If you have to build this reservoir in order to save the economy and protect the health of the people on both coasts, then find a way in this bill to create jobs here too. Make SB 10 a win-win for both the glades and coastal communities."

The ugliest threat to SB 10, Senate President Joe Negron’s bill to cut toxic discharges to the Treasure Coast, may come from mercenary community leaders in his home district. While Martin county’s elected officials, led by Negron, have championed a solution to the crisis, local organizations with ties to Flint, Michigan-based US Sugar are scrambling to undermine the plan.

This week, the Republican Club of Martin County invited an outside critic of the proposal, Dan Peterson, to a local event where he campaigned against SB 10. Club President Darlene Fuggetta said that she recruited Peterson to speak against the bill because his opposition was objective compared to county residents who become emotional about toxic discharges. On top of being openly defiant to Negron and unsympathetic to a community that just spent 242 days under a state of emergency because of toxic algae blooms, Fuggetta’s choice of Peterson as a supposed “free-market” voice was bizarre.

Peterson represents the James Madison Institute, a self-described free market think tank best known for boasting about its “political jiu-jitsu” in support of last year’s ballot amendment to block solar energy competition -- essentially the opposite of a free-market initiative. Peterson’s endorsement of US Sugar’s position, opposing a discharge-reducing reservoir below Lake Okeechobee, also contradicts free-market ideals, supporting one of the state’s most big-government-dependent industries.

Contrast JMI’s pro-sugar position to that of Grover Norquist’s and the Heritage Foundation, a legitimate free-market think tank, calling Florida’s sugar industry and its market-distorting government support “cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty.”

Nevertheless Peterson took the stage on Tuesday to lobby on behalf of US Sugar and its cohorts against legislation proposed by republican officials to save local businesses, shore up a $9.7 billion fishing economy, and avert a catastrophically costly human health crisis. Fuggetta said that Peterson’s criticism of the bill was based in part on his grasp of the science, aided by extensive discussions with local expert Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society and a former South Florida Water Management District’s Water Resource Advisory Commission member. Perry has no recollection of ever speaking to Peterson.

Our state officials frequently remind people, "I'm not a scientist," but they don't let it stop them from arguing science.

The South Florida Water Management District recently tried to undermine Sen. Joe Negron's proposal to reduce toxic discharges, attempting to "shape" available science in a PR stunt. Their target was the dynamic reservoir planned south of Lake Okeechobee, which the sugar industry opposes.

SFWMD publicly claimed that studies support storage north of the lake as a substitute. This contradicts virtually every hydrologist's findings, including Dr. Thomas Van Lent whose research was attacked in official statements and a splattering of fake news.

The district claimed that its proof came from an independent University of Florida report by Dr. Wendy Graham. But it didn't. The modeling cited in Graham's report wasn't hers -- it was SFWMD's own model, referenced in Graham's report and clearly noted in her January 11 slide presentation to the senate subcommittee conducting a workshop on the issue (see slide below).

By Peter Girard

This summer’s toxic algae blooms may have far-reaching health implications that radically alter the debate over water management in South Florida.

Public health concerns came up frequently at last week’s Everglades Coalition annual conference, including building evidence that exposure to toxic blue-green algae blooms can be linked to increased cancer rates and neurological diseases like ALS and Alzheimer’s. Worse, touching the water – even when algae aren’t visible – and even breathing near the shore may expose people to deadly toxins whose affects can take years to surface.

One audience member put it bluntly to a panel including the University of Miami’s Dr. Larry Brand: Do we have to wait 20 years for an epidemic of liver cancer to acknowledge the seriousness of this problem?

The fake news industry kicked off the new year in style. A flurry of misinformation from US Sugar’s Judy Sanchez, Janet Taylor’s “Glades Lives Matter,” the Sunshine State News, the Okeechobee News and others introduced the following stories (in no particular order):

• Scientists are planning to flood Belle Glade and Clewiston
• Everglades restoration is a front to eradicate farming
• Toxic algae blooms don’t come from Lake Okeechobee
• Federal agencies are killing off endangered species
• Water can’t flow south into the Everglades in wet years
• Florida Bay doesn't need any more freshwater than it gets now
• Lake Okeechobee would be clean without pollution from the north