Crist saves the Everglades but screwed our beaches
June 24th, 2008 by Wayne Garcia in PoliticsGov. Charlie Crist tried to rebound from his horrible flip-flop on offshore drilling with a stunning, “Yellowstone”-sized deal to put a big chunk of Big Sugar out of business and save the Everglades.
From the NYT account:
In a deal that environmental groups said would be the largest ecological restoration in the country’s history, a plan for the state to buy the nation’s largest producer of cane sugar was announced Tuesday by the governor and officials of U.S. Sugar Corporation.
Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, with Robert H Buker Jr., the chief of U.S. Sugar, held up an agreement struck between the state and the sugar producer.
The intention is to restore the Everglades by restoring the water flow from Lake Okeechobee, in the heart of the state, south to Florida Bay. That flow had been interrupted by commercial farming and the Everglades have suffered as a result.
U.S. Sugar is one of two large sugar growers and processors in South Florida, but very politically connected (the Fanjuls and their Flo-Sun being the other), and in full disclosure, I have to say that I was a consultant to U.S. Sugar in the 1990s for one year. In all of this, though, I have yet to read where FLA is going to come up with $1.75 billion. From the Palm Beach Post:
The details of how the state will pay for the land are still unclear, as is the question of how exactly the state would use such a vast expanse of parcels scattered through Palm Beach, Hendry and Glades counties. The deal also includes some property U.S. Sugar owns in Gilchrist County.
The huge acquisition will require the state to refashion its $10.9 billion Everglades restoration plan, said Michael Sole, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection. The current plan relies on a complex network of pricey engineering projects, such as more than 300 deep storage wells, which critics have assailed as impractical and perhaps ecologically dangerous.
So maybe by not having to do the expensive engineering projects we can afford to buy out U.S. Sugar? Let’s hope so, because otherwise, last time I checked our state didn’t have a spare $1.75 billion. Didn’t we just slash the shit out of the state budget? Murderize funding for our higher education system? Gut our criminal justice system?
Crist’s oil drilling stance, widely viewed as a political ploy to assist John McCain’s presidency, was starting to hurt the Gov, as the Florida Democratic Party was more than happy to point out again today in an e-mail:
Crist has reason to worry about his support among the people of Florida. A Miami Herald report today cites a new Zogby International poll that shows the once-popular Governor’s approval rating dropping precipitously as he spends more time gallivanting around the country and less time attending to the state’s economic challenges.
A majority of South Floridians acknowledge that Charlie Crist is doing a fair to poor job, “the first time in Crist’s 18 months in office that more people give the Republican a negative rating than a positive one.” [Miami Herald, 6/23/08]
Previously, Zogby polls showed Crist’s rating at 54-36 percent in September and 54-40 percent in December in South Florida. The latest poll shows the tide has turned on Crist, 43-52 percent.
I’m not sure the Everglades pact will be enough to turn that around, especially once we see the financial details.
(photo by Craig O’Neal)
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June 26th, 2008 at 6:55 am
This whole deal will likely crash and burn once the Legislature gets hold of it. His oil drilling flip-flop notwithstanding, at least Crist gets to look good nationally for a time as an enviromentally-friendly politico, because he can then blame the Legislature when they reject the deal on cost considerations.