Money for Everglades restoration is restored in legislative budget

A year after slashing Everglades funding, Florida lawmakers appear poised to give some back.

House and Senate budget negotiators this week agreed to set aside some $30 million for restoration projects. That’s still $10 million short of Gov. Rick Scott’s request but a major leap from the zero the Senate had initially penciled in.

Environmental groups praised the move as a positive sign, saying they were cautiously optimistic that it signaled a change in direction from last year’s tough session, when lawmakers and Scott gutted Everglades and conservation land-buying programs, state growth management rules and other long-standing regulations.

Now, they’re keeping their fingers crossed the trend will continue with a still-bigger target — a Senate bill that would lift spending caps lawmakers last year placed on the state’s five water management districts, which are largely funded by property tax revenue.

The Florida Conservation Coalition calculated that the cap, placed on property tax rates that supply much of the districts’ revenues, wound up shriveling budgets by nearly 40 percent, or $700 million. The law also shifted oversight of the agencies’ spending to the Legislature. Keep reading.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/01/2668074/everglades-may-get-boost-from.html#storylink=cpy

Legislators push plan to remove ban on sewage seeping into ocean by 2025

A bill making its way through the Florida Legislature would allow the dumping of 5 billion gallons of treated sewage into the ocean every year, but save South Florida’s utility ratepayers at least $1.3 billion.

The bill would change a 2008 law that told utilities to completely stop flushing treated sewage into the ocean by 2025 to save coral reefs and marine ecosystems. A 2008 study by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection stated that “the weight of the evidence” showed the sewage was harming South Florida’s coastal marine life.

The new measure would allow utilities to pump a reduced amount of sewage into the ocean annually after the 2025 deadline: 5 percent of their annual sewage flow, which would total an estimated 5 billion-plus gallons a year. Right now, utilities pump about 71 billion gallons of treated sewage into the ocean a year.

All the sewage outflows affected by the bill, which is being considered by the Senate Budget Committee and has passed the House unanimously, are in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. If the bill passes the committee, it will go to the full Senate for a vote. Story here.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/22/2655716_bill-would-allow-a-slow-flow-of.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy

SoFla football and hockey teams see casinos as a potential partner

Add the Florida Panthers to the list of South Florida professional sports teams that like the potential synergies between casino gambling and sports.

The National Hockey League team has taken several Las Vegas casino operators on tours of the Sunrise property and discussed the possibility of building a destination resort casino on the land surrounding the arena if Florida legislators approve an expansion of casino gambling. The plan is similar to one being explored by the Miami Dolphins.

Representatives from Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts International confirmed they have looked at the property. Wynn Resorts has also visited the site. Story here.

Ethanol in your gas -- not with bill moving through House and Senate

You know that label on just about every gas pump tank in Florida that announces the fuel contains 10 percent ethanol? Forget about it if a bill that passed the House Energy and Utilities Committee Wednesday becomes law.

The bill, HB 4013 by Rep. Matt Gaetz, would repeal the 2008 Florida law that requires gasoline to include ethanol. A Senate committee has already approved the measure 10-1.

Gaetz argued that the corn-based biofuel causes problems in boats, lawn mowers and old cars, is an efficient net consumer of energy and a unfair government mandate. He compared it to tacos.

"Businesses particularly love stability when the government mandates that the public buy that business's products,'' he said. "If I sold tacos for a living, I would really like an environment where the government forced everyone to eat three tacos a day."

But Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, a Democrat from Tallahassee, noted that "tacos are not energy policy. Energy policy is important not only to the state but to national security and our economy." She argued that increasing the use of renewables such as ethanols is essential to decrease the nation's dependence on foreign oil.

The committee also heard from companies that produce biofuels in Florida, who warned that the measure will reduce jobs and may not reduce the amount of ethanol at the pump, since federal law also includes ethanol requirements and gasoline producers will include it even if Florida doesn't require it. Marine industry and boat manufacturing lobbyists argued in favor of the measure, even though state law exempts gasoline used in aircraft and boats from including ethanol.

Enviros file suit against DEP to block 'damaging' rules

A statewide environmental advocacy group today filed a legal challenge against the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in an effort to block proposed water quality rules that it says fail to protect Florida's waterways and water supply.

Earthjustice, a coalition of environmental groups that include the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, St. Johns Riverkeeper and others, is challenging the proposed rules because they require that Florida waters reach a dangerous and potentially toxic level before they are deemed unsafe.

"Petitioners challenge the existing and proposed rules becuase, contrary to FDEP's claims, the rules are not designed to protect state waters from the adverse impacts of nutrient over-enrichement,'' the coalition wrote in its 30-page complaint filed with the state Division of Administrative Hearings. "Instead, these rules go so far as to prevent a finding of impairment due to nutrients until the waterbody is covered with nutrient-fueled toxic blue-green algae."

Photo credit: Tampa Bay, Florida Slime Tracker

Bob Graham blasts legislature for reversing 40 years of enviro progress

Surrounded by environmental officials of previous governors, former Gov. Bob Graham forcefully urged Gov. Rick Scott to reverse the environmental damage done by legislators last session and “now lead.”

In a rare rebuke, Graham said the 2011 legislature  “reversed 40 years of Florida’s progress in water and land conservation.’’

“We are in a time machine which has now delivered us back to the 1960s,” he said to a rally of activists and former officials of previous administrations outside the OId Capitol.

Graham stopped short, however, of condemning Scott for failing to renounce the deep budget cuts that led to massive reductions in staff and funding at water management districts around the state.

Bob Graham to Legislature: You are endangering the Everglades

Former Florida Governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham wrote this blistering op-ed in Sunday's Miami Herald blaming lawmakers for eroding progress on restoration efforts for the state's famed River of Grass:

The Everglades is in danger again. This time it is not from a drought, hurricane or other act of nature. It is not from some imminent encroaching development.

It is from the 2011 Florida Legislature and its cascade of damaging legislation which threatens to bring the three-decade-long effort to save the Everglades to a halt.

Everglades restoration is not just a matter of saving one of the Earth’s most important and unique environments and protecting the fresh water supply for a third of Florida’s residents. Everglades restoration is our state’s largest job and economic development program. A 2011 report by Mather Economics to the Everglades Foundation estimated that investing $11.5 billion in Everglades restoration (equally divided between the federal government and the state of Florida) will result in $46.5 billion in gains to Florida’s economy and create in excess of 440,000 jobs in the next 50 years. More here.

Today, a bi-partisan group of legislators will announce the first ever Everglades coalition at a press conference in Boynton Beach. Members include Rep. Steve Perman, D-Boca Raton and Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera.

Ken Salazar to Rick Scott: Everglades plan doesn't go far enough, fast enough

Good start but it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough.

In a nutshell, that sums up the federal government’s initial response to an Everglades pollution cleanup plan personally laid out last month by Gov. Rick Scott during a visit to Washington.

Nevertheless, both sides remain upbeat about resolving the long-running legal and political battle over Florida’s repeatedly delayed plans to reduce the flow of the damaging nutrient, phosphorus, that pours off farms and yards into the Everglades after every rain storm.

In a meeting Monday with the editorial board of The Miami Herald, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was “cautiously optimistic’’ that the state would address initial concerns sketched out in a Nov. 10 letter to the governor from four federal agencies involved in Everglades restoration. Story here.

PolitiFact Florida checks Sen. Bill Nelson's role wrangling oil spill data from BP

It's been a year and a half since oil suddenly gushed from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig into the Gulf of Mexico. 

In the early days, rig operator BP estimated about 1,000 barrels a day might be escaping into the gulf. The true number? More like 50,000 to 60,000 barrels — or more than 2 million gallons — every day, for three months.

How did we learn it was so high?

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., says it wasn't until he and a Senate colleague were able to "wrangle the actual streaming video" from BP that scientists were able to calculate the flow.

Nelson spoke about the spill Oct. 11 on the Senate floor, where he urged his colleagues to find a way to fund gulf research. Was the senior senator from Florida responsible for lifting the veil on a disaster unfolding 5,000 feet underwater?

PolitiFact Florida checked it out.

Judge says state is polluting Everglades with its runoff

U.S. District Judge Frederico Moreno dealt a blow today to the state's efforts to allow discharge flow into the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and Everglades National Park and ruled that the practice exceeds pollution limits. Download 1010-Order-Affirming-SM-2011-01-04-Report

Here's the press release from Earth Justice, which filed the suit:

A federal judge has ruled that water running south into the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge has been exceeding pollution limits designed to protect one of America’s most significant environmental treasures. Specifically, water coming off the state-operated Stormwater Treatment Areas exceeded the official limits that the state of Florida set for phosphorus between 2005 and 2009, ruled U.S. District Judge Frederico Moreno.

 “We know that too much phosphorus, which comes from agricultural pollution, upsets the delicate balance in the Everglades,” said Earthjustice attorney Alisa Coe. “Judge Moreno affirmed what we’ve been saying – that the state limits must be met and pollution must be reduced.” The ruling is part of a long-running legal case that stretches back to an historic 1992 consent decree between Florida and the federal government.