Don’t go in the water? What is this shit?
July 6, 2009 at 5:32 pm by Kelly CorneliusBy Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND; activist
Stay out of the water! That was the warning just prior to the start of this year’s 4th of July holiday about the Courtney Campbell Beach. Was it because of a bull shark attack? Nope. Maybe an invasion of rogue lionfish? Nope. Maybe a jellyfish convention then?
No, silly, there was just too much shit in the water. Course they said the high bacteria count could be due to several things including animal feces, stormwater runoff, and lastly they mention sewage. Uh-huh. Don’t forget there is a 14-mile-long algae bloom going on right now that’s also attributed to contaminated run-off. Oh goodie, let’s make it easier to build more houses!
Photo Credit: James Laurence Stewart at Flickr.com
When I was a kid the 4th of July meant going to the beach without a care in the world. Guess maybe I am showing my age, but I don’t remember any of my favorite beaches getting closed down because of excess shit, but then again I did grow up south of here where I don’t recall any of our County Commissioners being hauled off in handcuffs for taking bribes in exchange for approving land deals either.
On what planet does it make sense to encourage practices that contaminate our environment, destroy the very reason people make Florida a travel destination and degrade our quality of life? Yet that is what local and state politicians have done by gutting growth management laws, wetland and water permitting while promoting “economic development.” Let’s be honest; at least in Hillsborough when you hear the phrase economic development from a politician, think campaign fund development and do a little checking.
Take a look at this article that describes how the Little Harbor developers lost a land use vote when wanting to build in environmentally sensitive areas. They later contributed heavily to two of the NO votes and when their appeal came up for review those two commissioners changed their votes, handing the developers a win and dealing a blow to the citizens fighting them. Shows just how hard it is to argue with bribes oops, I mean campaign contributions.
Remember, we don’t have enough water as it is (and people scaled back due to restrictions that in turn caused water rates to go up). And now we often can’t even swim in the bodies of water surrounding our communities because of pollution. Yet our politicians think we need to make it easier to build. Anybody else think maybe it is time to re-think things? Stop swallowing the shit many of our elected officials and their staff are feeding you about growth paying for itself (it doesn’t ) before you really could have to drink shit.
What can you do? Well, if you don’t like the way elected officials pass out land use changes like candy to their shuga daddies then vote YES to Hometown Democracy (Amendment 4) now officially on the 2010 ballot. It doesn’t allow us to vote on everything (like re-zonings) but it does give us the final say in Comprehensive Plan amendments which are often the route that developers use to get bigass subdivisions approved. Do your homework on current elected officials and candidates seeking office. When they claim to be fiscal conservatives, ask them just whose pocketbooks they are looking out for — yours or developers’? If they say they support “sustainable” communities, which seems to be the politically correct buzzword right now, ask them to define sustainable and see if their definition includes so much shit in the water that we can’t go swimming.
