The Political Whore

The landmark US Sugar-Everglades deal fashioned by Gov. Charlie Crist – limping toward the finish line, a fraction of its once grand scale – could have received a shot in the arm this week with three new appointees to the South Florida Water Management District.

Crist appointed three new members to the district board that oversees and approves the deal to purchase more than 78,000 acres of US Sugar property and eventually take them out of farming production as a means of lowering pollutant runoff into the Everglades.

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Scott Wagman gets some help in his attempt to the be the next mayor of St. Petersburg, and two council candidates — incumbent Karl Nurse, long known for his conservation efforts, and newcomer Steve Kornell — also get the nod from St. Pete Sierra Club, which endorsed in just three municipal races.

From the Sierra Club announcement: Read the rest of this entry »

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor,“feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field

Charlie Miranda has come up with a plan to turn hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater into drinking water. All in the name of self-sufficiency.

Yes, we are in the middle of a drought. But we aren’t desperate:

In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a study of the treated wastewater from the city’s Howard F. Curren Wastewater Treatment Plant and found 27 different kinds of micropollutants in the recycled water even after it passed through a filtration process.

A plan to punish South Tampa homeowners who refuse to use reclaimed water on their lawns is the way to go.

That’s right, let’s go after Buffy and Thurston Howell III.

Read the rest of this entry »

For decades, Tampa has faced a conundrum; every day tens of milions of gallons of treated wastewater is dumped into Tampa Bay, wasted in a word. In St. Petersburg, treated wastewater is used for residential lawn watering, thanks to the foresightful construction of special water lines in neighborhoods. But Tampa’s attempts to re-use its wastewater hasn’t met with the same success.

So now the Tampa City Council wants to skip the whole lawn watering step and move right to drinking the highly treated sewer water. It voted yesterday to ask voters in a 2010 referendum if they want to build a system to deliver the potty product back to their drinking faucets.

From Bay News 9:

Councilman Charlie Miranda is all in favor.

“This will solve our situation for water in this area for at least 50 years,” Miranda said.

The concept isn’t new.

In the 1980s, Tampa initiated a program to treat waste water. The program failed to get support.

Miranda said the potable wastewater system could cost as much as $200 million.

So the question is: Would you drink it?

Here’s an advance look at my print column that will run in next Wednesday’s issue of Creative Loafing:

Green in 2008: Gov. Charlie Crist when being green was easier, with Michael Rea of the Carbon Trust in the U.K. signing an agreement for Florida and that nation to “share expertise on low carbon innovation and investment and to jointly develop strategies to attract low carbon industries.”
Photo: Florida Governor’s Office

They were heady, green days for Charlie Crist in July 2008 as he flew to London to attend a global climate-change conference and hobnob with members of Parliament to discuss the planet’s growing environmental crisis.

Back in the day, Crist shared a national spotlight with the likes of movie star Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, gaining attention as a group of state leaders who stepped up for the environment when George W. Bush’s administration turned a blind eye to science.

It was zenith of his 2007 pledge to turn Florida green, lower emissions and grow a biofuel industry. Last year, he laid out a $200 million investment in his green vision. But today, as Crist is all but a lame duck governor running for the U.S. Senate, very few of those hopes and promises have come true. Blame the knuckle-draggers in the Legislature. Blame the recession. Or, if you are like some environmentalists in the state, blame Crist for not having the strength or guile to get his way on green.

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Photo Credit: kwalk628 Flickr.com

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

No ceremonial photo-op for this signing, probably because nobody wants to see the Governor bending over for special interests but in my opinion that is exactly what he did by signing SB 360. This bill guts Florida’s growth management laws (yes, we had some) and everyone but special interests and their politicians are against it.

The only good news? This should be exactly what we need to get Florida Hometown Democracy approved by the voters in 2010.

Dan Waite e-mailed me to tip me off to his first effort to make and post a political video, and it is a good one, explaining how Senate Bill 360 that is on Gov. Charlie Crist’s desk is a bad one.

Watch the full video after the jump:

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Late yesterday, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio weighed in on a movement to perhaps lift her city’s lawn-sprinkler ban and water restrictions, the toughest in Tampa Bay.

In a letter to city council members, Iorio said the recent torrential rains have helped — but not enough to lift the sprinkler ban. She set a goal of a flow of 60 million gallons a day in the upper Hillsborough River before lifting the restrictions.

Going forward, the best way to decide when water restrictions should be eased is by the level of our reservoir and the rate of flow in the river. This is an approach that is scientific in nature, not subjective. Our staff indicates that when the reservoir level is at 21 feet or higher, and Hillsborough River flows exceed 60 million gallons per day at Morris Bridge, we will propose that our watering restrictions be relaxed to the Southwest Florida Water Management District Phase 4 modified level, which will allow customers to irrigate once a week on their watering days.

Download her full letter after the jump.

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Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf blog:

By Michelle Schenck
Green Community contributor

The Florida Green Building Coalition is organizing its Sixth Annual Florida GreenTrends conference to take place between June 10-12 at the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront. The GreenTrends 2009 conference focuses primarily on housing and building green trends that are both cost effective for the individual homeowner and business owners.

Some of the Education sessions that are already set in motion include Green Remodeling, Greening your business, and new trends in water efficiency. There are also myriad keynote speakers, ranging from general contractors to solar energy experts. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a video that was the winner of The Congress for New Urbanism CNU 17 video contest, a film that looks at the connection between suburban sprawl and environmental degradation. From independent filmmaker John Paget.

h/t to Kelly Cornelius, PoHo contributor.

Watch the full video after the jump.

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Sen. Dan Gelber, a candidate for the U.S. Senate and a Democrat, warns of a rumor to that regard. From his Twitter account earlier today:
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Craig PIttman — shown above, right — and Matthew Waite (and I’m going to use a technical journalistic term here) are the bomb. The St. Petersburg Times duo have literally written the book on Florida’s bulldozing of vital wetlands in Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, their new book that grew out of a series of stories in the Times.

Brilliant stuff, from the narrative history of how Florida was dredged-and-filled (yes, I grew up on one of those finger islands off the New River in Fort Lauderdale, so I know all about it) to the computer analysis of satellite photos that (for the first time) documented the loss of 84,000 acres of wetlands to construction since 1988. As Waite points out in the podcast interview, that is a land mass the size of the city of St. Petersburg.

You can buy the book lots of places, but one good indie bookstore where you can find it is Inkwood Books in South Tampa. It is a must-read. Just as this podcast with the authors is a must-hear.

Oh, and you can catch them signing books and discussing their investigation at the Selby Public Library on April 30 in Sarasota.

Listen to a streaming version of the podcast or download it for your iPod, iPhone or iWhatever after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve lined up two great journalists, Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite (Pulitzer Prize-winning Matt Waite) of the St. Petersburg Times to come in Monday morning to talk about their book, Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss. The podcast of our chat will be No. 7 in the Political Whore podcast series (Poho Podcast, or HoCast if you’re nasty) and should be up for your listening pleasure by Monday afternoon.

Let me know if you have any specific questions I need to pose to them about their book, Florida’s wetlands and the knuckleheads in the state Legislature who obviously haven’t read the book.

Cross-posted from Daily Loaf

April 21, 2009 at 6:00 am by Lisa Montelione

Okay, if you were asked which local governments were early proponents of all things green, you may think: Sarasota with its early adoption of green ordinances; St. Petersburg, Florida’s first certified Green City; or Tampa with its initiatives and recent Green City designation. Yes, all good choices, but I bet it would surprise you that Hillsborough County led the pack. With little fanfare, one of the county’s employees has been quietly implementing energy saving strategies. It all started way back in 2000 when the county made the bold move of hiring Energy Manager Randy Klindworth. Back then, all he set out to do was curb expenses. Nine years ago, who would have thought that carbon footprint, sustainability, green, or Energy Star would be part of the vernacular?

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a year for developers and their high-paid legal lackeys to make end-runs on state and local environmental regulations, all in the name of re-starting our economy by letting development and growth run rampant — which is pretty much what tanked Florida’s economy in the first place.

It’s a false premise and a stupid idea. Now comes the most naked attack on the already pro-development balance in Florida’s runaway destruction of our natural beauty, a piece of hilariously titled legislation called “House Bill 1349 – Environmental Protection.” As Craig Pittman and Matt Waite of the St. Petersburg Times report today:

Read the rest of this entry »

By Alexandra Koutsogiannopoulos
PoHo Contributor
Alex is the program director for the United Nations Association-USA’s Tampa Bay Chapter and will be an occasional guest on the Political Whore podcast.

I thought that my first post on here should be an introduction to me: who I am, where I came from and why you should give a damn….!

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. First generation Greek-American, both of my parents immigrated to the United States individually: my father came here after completing medical school in Greece and my mother came here when she was still in elementary school when her parents came here to start a new life.

I stayed in Ohio only for four years before my parents loaded up the Toyota and drove down to Florida where all the other relatives had moved to. Greek families tend to move in herds…like wildebeests…and when one of them finds a new spot to “graze” the rest of the herd follows. We ended up in Orlando, in a community which was all cow pasture and roads going nowhere: Hunter’s Creek. In the past 6 years or so the area has boomed into a huge Westchase-eque type area.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are two big problems with the landmark deal being pushed by Charlie Crist to buy out U.S. Sugar’s acreage in the Everglades Agricultural Area: he wants to pay too much for the property, even at the premium it should demand as a trade-off for going out of the business of growing sugar and polluting the Everglades with fertilizer; and it isn’t enough land or a quick enough timetable for the sugar shutdown.

But Crist pushed ahead with the historic deal. The recession and the Legislature, however, may scuttle it.

The St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee bureau reports:

Read the rest of this entry »

Judging by the picture in this article in the Times, there is something green growing in the Hillsborough County drinking-water reservoir…….it looks like grass. Hey, my pastures are looking kinda rough with this drought and I do live almost next door…. I wonder if they would consider leasing it out as grazing land since even if we had water it isn’t so good at holding any?

The article is about Swiftmud voting not to tighten water restrictions……….drought? What drought? Drink up and more importantly BUILD UP! The conversation that nobody really wants to have is that while local and state politicians are scrambling to weaken rules for building and raping the environment all in the name of economic development (think developer welfare) what they are really avoiding addressing is the severe water shortage we are in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio is making lemonade out of lemons, using the down economy to try to snatch up a prime piece of waterfront real estate and put it into public hands: the former Georgetown Apartments property on South West Shore Boulevard.

She wrote to City Council members today:

Dear Council members,
I want to give you more information about the article you may have read in Saturday’s SP Times about Georgetown Property.

Several months ago the city initiated discussions with the Trust for Public Land and the County (ELAPP) about the possibility of acquiring the 160- acre Georgetown Apartment site.  Historically this site has housed 600 apartment units however it was sold in 2005 for $125 million with plans to build approximately 1,240 units of single-family and multi-family units.  Due to the recession the property has gone into foreclosure and Bank of America will be soliciting bids for the property.  This is a beautiful piece of land – most of it undeveloped with great access to the bay.  To be able to protect the majority of the land from development forever would be of great benefit to our environment and to the community.

After many discussions and inputs we thought the best course of action would be to have the Trust for Public Land submit a bid when BOA is ready for proposals. The Trust has a successful track record of helping communities around the country to conserve strategic land resources for public use.

I will keep you informed as this progresses and if you want to talk about this further please give me a call.
Sincerely,
Pam

Here is the property from Google’s satellite view:

Tampa Electric's Big Bend Plant in Apollo Beach

(A final vote on the Tampa Electric franchise agreement is set for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4, in the Tampa City Council chambers at 301 E. Kennedy Blvd. It is a public hearing, so you can go and let your opinion be known.)

It’s time to tilt at windmills again. Except this time, the windmills are powered by coal.

Civic activists, health advocates and three Tampa City Council members are trying to block a long-term deal with Tampa Electric Company. They say it doesn’t require the utility to clean up its coal-burning plants, won’t lead to power lines underground and doesn’t force Tampa Electric to move toward greener, alternative energy sources.

“I really believe if we work together, in good faith, for six months, we can come up with a better deal for our community,” said Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena, who is leading efforts to delay passage of the Tampa Electric contract.

Here’s the issue: Tampa Electric has negotiated a 25-year agreement with Tampa to continue to be the city’s main power provider. In return for the right to use the publicly owned rights-of-way, Tampa Electric will continue to pay more than $20 million to city government, a substantial budget line item in these days of Amendment 1-fueled budget cutbacks.

The power company’s shareholders make good returns on their investments. The people get fairly cheap electricity. The city gets more revenues. A win-win-win, right?

Not really.

Read the rest of this entry »

The activists at U-CAN (United Citizens Action Network) are starting to issue report cards for all of the Hillsborough County, starting with their favorite target, Republican Brian Blair.

He got eight F’s, one C and one D. Something that surely won’t look good on his permanent record:

“Brian is goal oriented and has worked tirelessly to achieve certain goals, however, the goals he strives to achieve are not in alignment with what citizens want — improving quality of life, making growth pay for itself, maintaining our community’s way of life, reducing traffic, reducing the overcrowding in our schools, carefully preserving our environment, managing growth to reduce the shortage of potable water.”

Gov. 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)

From Dee Layne, Lutz’s own civic activist par excellence and a tireless watcher of the Legislature, a roundup of the most important legislation for Tampa Bay and where it stands as we enter the final week of the session (here emphases, not mine):

­GOOD BILLS:

SB 542/HB 7141:      These are the Florida Forever Succession bills.  They extend and enhance our state’s land acquisition program.  These bills are similar, but not the same.  For them to pass, they must be identical passing both chambers.  Both extend the land acquisition program for 10 years and give $300 million per year to the program.

CS/HB 7135/SB 1544:     These are the energy bills, similar but not identical.  There are some very good things in these bills, and some damaging.  At this point, they appear to be heading on the right track.  Again, they both must match before they will pass both chambers.  Both of these bills are in 3rd reading in each of their chambers today.

HB 761/SB 1376:    (These are okay now, but could change.)  These are the bills that took away local control of wetlands on ag land.  The HB 761 is on 3rd reading today, which means they will vote on it and pass it.  It has language that exempts any local government that has ordinances in effect by April 1, 2008.  Hillsborough County’s EPC oversight  and enforcement would be safe under this wording.

The SB 1376, the Senate version, is pending reference review and not before the Senate today.  Remember this version takes out the words “or enforce” from the bill.  This is much better than the House’s version.

HARMFUL BILLS:

HB 1173/SB 2246:   These bills are known as the Ag Enclave bills.  Although both now have been amended to make sure there is a 90 days cooling off period before a local government can be sued for property rights violation and transportation concurrency now matches the same 3 mile radius, these bills MANDATE that local governments increase the densities and intensities on an ag enclave property averaged in a 3 mile radius.  THESE BILLS WOULD TOTALLY MESS WITH OUR COMMUNITY PLANS!!!!!

HB 1173 is in 3rd reading today in the House (can be voted out).  SB 2246 is on 2nd reading in the Senate today (bill can be amended and placed on 3rd reading).

SB 474/HB 7129:    These are the growth management bills pending.  Both bills create exemptions for transportation and school concurrency without replacing our present system with anything.  HB 7129 is on 3rd reading today, which means it can be voted on and passed.  Of all the bills pending, HB 7129 AWAY CITIZEN’S CONSITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PETITION OUR GOVERNMENT FOR A REFERENDUM ON DEVELOPMENT ORDERS AND COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENTS.  This language directly addresses Hometown Democracy and would take away rights.   Whether you agree or disagree with Hometown Democracy, this is NOT the right way to plan our growth.  THIS BILL NEEDS TO DIE!!!!!!!!

SB 474 is a better bill, includes good high coastal hazard development section, but still exempts transportation and school concurrency without replacing it with any other system.

Both bills contain a “Mobility Fee Study” to look at a new way of tying land use and transportation together.  Our recommendation would be to delete all language in both bills except the “Mobility Fee Study”.   THIS BILL SHOULD DIE TOO IF NOT DELETED DOWN TO COASTAL DEVELOPMENT LANGUAGE AND THIS STUDY!!!!

HB 1399/SB 1978:             These are the “CSX give away” bills under the guise of “transportation”.   These are bills that our Bay Area Legislative Delegation need to protect us, the taxpayer.  CSX is being given $423 million for its tracks AND we the taxpayers are indemnifying CSX for any accidents on the tracks whether its CSX’s fault or not.  THIS LIABILITY SHOULD NOT BE ON THE BACKS OF US!!!!    Ask the legislators to take this out!

Nikki Pike is 29 years old, a world traveler, an artist and builder and conservationist — and she can’t wait to get the hell out of Tampa Bay.

Not that Pike takes any great pleasure in her desire to flee. It’s just that this community doesn’t offer her much of a future, either for work or for play, once she completes her master’s degree from USF’s Fine Arts program.

“I actually have an exit strategy for Tampa,” Pike said. “In eight months, I’m out of here. I graduate”

Pike made this admission in front of about 200 people gathered to listen to Portland economist Joe Cortright deliver his third wave of data about how Tampa Bay could be better than it is. Pike could have stepped straight out of the pages of his first study, “Young and Restless,” which examined how poorly Tampa Bay is attracting and keeping educated young professionals and creatives, especially college-educated women such as Pike. She’d like to see Tampa Bay takes Cortright’s advice, or at least learn from his three data studies, and make a more vibrant, diverse economy with lots of job, housing and entertainment choices.

Her question to Cortright (”What can an individual do?”) was a painful reminder of how much work remains to turn around a prevailing tide of mediocrity and complacency that seems to dominate much of the public discourse.

Cortright didn’t have an answer. Only the people in this room can tell you that, he said. The composition of people in the room also was alternately exciting and depressing: lots of people with cool ideas who are just below the ruling class, but very few decision-makers who could take Cortright’s ideas and turn them into reality. Two Hillsborough County Commissioners (Jim Norman and Ken Hagan) were there; only John Dingfelder attended from Tampa City Council; no Mayor Iorio, no Mayor Baker.

Cortright’s report this time dealt with the “green dividend” that cities can realize by making environmentally friendly public decisions. Studies disprove the old saw that saving the environment is devastating to the local economy, he told the Creative Tampa Bay audience.  By his calculations, Portland saves $2.6 billion a year through a combination of transit systems and land-use plans that promote more housing choices closer to jobs. Those savings stay in Portland and are spent on local businesses (such as restaurants) instead of flying out of that region to Detroit (to pay for new cars) and Saudi Arabia (for oil).

Using his same formula, Tampa Bay could inject a saved $1.8 billion into the local economy if it cut the average time commuters spend in cars each day from 28 miles to the national average of almost 25. That doesn’t include the value of increased productivity or the value of something more important — happiness.

But Cortright added that the process of changing government and individual decision isn’t easy and can take decades. “There isn’t a silver bullet out there,” he said.

As if to remind us of the need for a silver bullet, transit opponent Jim Norman chimed in that Cortright was relating only the savings side of the equation. What about the cost of building rail, and the decades of supporting it? Cortright didn’t know those numbers for Tampa Bay but said in Portland, it was a no-brainer, that the annual savings far eclipsed the $1 billion or so that the rail system cost to build.

Pike got to see the hope and promise for Tampa Bay butt right up against its political realities. She hopes the region can transcend its past, even as she looks for other places to live, such as Portland. For now, however, she’s not going to go away without saying something about it. “I’m here,” Pike said, “and I’m trying.”

Despite her fashion faux pax (she wore a red jacket not knowing that red was the chosen color of the pro-development forces in the audience), Rose Ferlita seems the last outspoken critic against dismantling the EPC wetlands division and protections today as the rest of the County Commission appears to be falling in line with the so-called hybrid plan that will speed development.

But this is not the first time she has done battle with the pro-development forces pushing for the abolition of the local wetlands rules, even if she didn’t necessarily realize it at the time.

In 2006, Ferlita found herself in a nasty GOP primary battle with Brad Swanson. Much of the coalition that is today pushing wetlands division abolition, led by developer Stephen Dibbs, was working to elect Swanson and defeat Ferlita back in 2005-2006.

Take Ron Bent, for instance. After the lunch break today at the EPC meeting, Bent appeared in front of commissioner wearing a red shirt, opposed to the local wetlands rules. “Our wetlands are safe and they are protected.”
Two years ago, on Sept. 20, 1995, Bent’s construction company wrote a maximum $500 check to Swanson’s campaign. On that same day, the Swanson campaign recorded checks from Dibbs, his family and his various corporations he controls, at least $2,300 worth. Also weighing in with campaign cash that day was Mosaic Fertilizer, an EPC hater going back to when the agency didn’t let the phosphate miner destroy 200 acres of wetlands that the state had already permitted it to, and the Florida Phosphate political committee.

A $500 check from Dibbs’ lobbyist on this issue, Todd Pressman, was recorded three days earlier.

Swanson lost in the primary, and Ferlita went on to win a County Commission seat. Ironically, her Democratic opponent in that election was Mary Mulhern, who lost and later ran successfully for a seat on the Tampa City Council. On Thursday, Mulhern and Ferlita found themselves on the same side of the save-our-wetlands issue, chatting briefly in the crowded media room after the meeting started.

Full disclosure: I didn’t work on Ferlita’s 2006 campaign, but I was her political consultant when she first ran for the Tampa City Council in 1999.

The Hillsborough EPC is considering abolishing or weakening its local protections for wetlands at a meeting today. I’m filing this update during the lunch break:

To use a wrestling term, one which EPC Chairman B. Brian Blair is wellll familiar with, this morning’s meeting on the future of Hillsborough’s wetlands was a “work.”

The wiki-definition of a work is “a staged event, from the carnival tradition of ‘working’ the crowd.” On Thursday morning, the “work” involved another fine tradition from the world of pro wrestling: the “Swerve,” a quickly changing plotline.

And so it was that the Hillsborough County Commission, which also acts as the board of directors of the local Environmental Protection Commission, shifted what was supposed to be a showdown between about 200 environmentalists and 100 Friends of Development/Agriculture into a wild storyline of hatred, sloth in government and — in the end — just the right compromise.

Background: A few months ago, four commissioners led by Blair voted to axe Hillsborough’s strict wetlands protections under the guise of duplication of effort and budget cutting. That vote, combined with the hamhanded nature in which Blair ran the meeting and shut down public comment, galvanized hundreds of civic leaders and environmentalists to try to save the wetlands division and its environmental protections. Today, county commissioners met for a final vote to either kill the wetlands rules entirely or adopt what has become known as the “hybrid plan” written by EPC director Richard Garrity.

One week ago, sources at the county center said, the deal was done to kill the wetlands division entirely. But after a week of steady pounding in the press — as well as concern by some Republicans for Blair’s political liabilities should the vote go through; he does face re-election in 2008, after all — somebody came up with the Swerve as an alternative plan.

So it was that even before the public had a chance to comment on the situation this morning, Commissioner Jim Norman started in with an impassioned defense of his wetlands-hating colleagues and a rebuke for the newspaper writers.

“I lived through the Roger Stewart years,” Norman said, referring to the legendary, cantankerous environmentalist who used to run the EPC until 2000. “I believe politics has gotten into EPC more than the substance coming out of it.” He criticized editorials that called himself, Blair, Kevin White and Ken Hagan “in the pockets of the developers,” pointing out that the countywide planning commission and EPC approve more than 90 percent of development projects that come in front of them, while the County Commission approves fewer, at 80 percent.

“Bad projects don’t get into the system,” he said, to more than a few chuckles in the audience. “Every project is being scrubbed before the County Commission sees it. We’re elected and we have to abide by laws. That’s why there’s a courthouse across the street that looks at land-use laws.”

“In the pockets of developers?” Norman asked with great indignation. “That’s hilarious to me.” Norman insisted that change at the EPC wetlands division was long overdue and, in fact, requested on at least 41 occasions by county commissioners over the past decade. “We could have done this a long time ago” and avoided polarizing the community.

Norman then turned to Blair and said, “The hits this man to the right has taken …” and revealed that Blair’s house had been vandalized and his family harassed over his stance on the issue. “It’s absolutely awful to me that we tore this community apart. It really does distress me.”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. (I always wanted to write that line. It’s not true in this case, but it is a great line, huh?)

It was then Blair’s turn. With a poorly acted mixture of solemnity and deep hurt, he said, “Yes, I have taken a lot of bullets” over the wetlands issue. He then dramatically passed the chairman’s gavel to Commissioner Al Higginbotham so he could make a motion to accept Garrity’s hybrid plan.

Blair’s swerve threw a big wet blanket over the environmentalists lined up to speak against the total abolition of the wetlands protections. The storyline went from “big bad pro-development commissioners trying to kill wetlands” to “caring, compassionate environmental advocates who were merely trying to bring the various stakeholders in the wetlands issue together to craft a better system for everybody and got crucified for doing it.”

Right.

Shortly after he spoke, about a dozen people wearing red shirts signifying their opposition to the EPC’s wetlands division got up and left, along with developer Stephen Dibbs, who has spearheaded a drive to abolish the local wetlands rules.

Their work there was done.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the foregone conclusion is taking longer to play out. Commissioners will hear more citizens after their lunch break and then are expected to vote on accepting the hybrid plan, which lowers Hillsborough’s stringent environmental protections. It appears that the hybrid has the votes of the original four commissioners who wanted total abolition, as well as abolition opponents Mark Sharpe and Al Higginbotham.

Oh, and the fact that they were being “worked” was not lost on the audience. As one resident, Marcella O’Steen, put it: “The spinning I’ve heard from board is amazing.”

The Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission will meet at 9 a.m. Thursday for a scheduled final vote on the wetlands issue. It will be held in the County Center, 2nd Floor meeting room, 601 E. Kennedy Blvd.

Here’s a preview of my story set to be published on Wednesday:

Jadell Kerr has all the menace of a smiling third-grade teacher on the first day of school.

But if her demeanor is mild, the campaign to discredit her has been ferocious: opponents have hired lobbyists to whisper in the ears of Hillsborough County politicians and sent private investigators to comb through her personnel file.
Kerr was director of Hillsborough County’s wetlands protection division within the Environmental Protection Commission. The office has been around for more than two decades, making sure that developers don’t pave over quite all of the area’s vital wetlands. It is one of 19 such local environmental agencies in the state.

It was a job she cherished. She started her career 15 years ago at the EPC on the bottom rung, as a Scientist I, doing fieldwork. She eventually was promoted through the ranks and ended up running the 29-employee wetlands division.

Her five-year tenure came to an abrupt end last month.

Kerr resigned her $116,000-a-year job in July after serving a two-week suspension for posting a blog comment that criticized her bosses, the Hillsborough County Commission, and a local developer who has pushed for the abolition of her wetlands division.

At issue was the county’s 26-year-old tradition of enforcing tough rules about when and if developers can destroy wetlands. Kerr ended up on the wrong end of a movement to relax those rules, a push dominated by one Tampa Bay developer but abetted behind the scenes by big-money interests from all over Florida.

She walked away with a $38,000 severance package and the freedom to take the gloves off in her fight to protect wetlands.

So on a recent Wednesday evening, she stood before 40 members of the Sierra Club armed only with a laptop computer and a Powerpoint presentation that explained why wetlands are so important.

“They are the kidneys of the environment,” she told the crowd. Wetlands filter out pollutants from stormwater before they can contaminate rivers, lakes, Tampa Bay and the aquifer, our source of drinking water. They provide important habitat for birds and amphibians. They absorb hurricane storm surge and prevent damage. They control flooding in heavy rains by storing excess water.

Wetlands preservation, however, is hardly a given. Hillsborough County has lost almost half of its wetlands since 1990. Statewide, a St. Petersburg Times story found, more than 84,000 acres of wetlands were destroyed during that same period.

“Today, we are at a crossroads in Hillsborough County,” Kerr told the crowd. “We have to make a decision — are we willing to let the state take over our local control of wetlands?” Read the rest of this entry »

Just heard from Rep. Gus Bilirakis’ office on a query for my story on the CAFE fuel efficiency standards battle in the House of Representatives. The options include the Markey-Platts bill that is backed by environmental and consumer groups and the auto industry-and-union-supported Hill-Terry legislation. Press secretary John Tomaszewski writes:

The Congressman supports improvements to existing CAFE standards. He has not come to a decision about which piece of legislation he would support.

Anyone looking for an example of just how “business-as-usual” Congress is despite a changeover in party leadership in 2006 needs look no further than the current fight over fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

The Democratic-controlled Senate has already voted to require a substantial increase in fuel efficiency, a 10 mpg increase to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, the most substantial change in the three decades since the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were adopted.

Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist support stricter auto-fuel levels and lower emissions.

Even President Bush in his State of the Union speech this year called for a 4 percent increase in fuel efficiency annually as a way of weaning the United States off its dependency on foreign oil and fighting the War on Terror.

Then why is the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives seriously considering legislation that would water down those fuel efficiency targets, costing the U.S. 1.1 billion gallons of fuel every day?

The answer can be traced to money and influence — as personified by Democratic Congressman John Dingell. He is the chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee considering the CAFE legislation. He is from Michigan. The home of Detroit. The epicenter of America’s foundering auto industry.

This week, Dingell publicly threw his support behind legislation known as Hill-Terry, an auto-industry supported bill that dilutes the Senate’s efforts to achieve fuel efficiency. Reps. Baron Hill and Lee Terry propose to give carmakers more time (until 2022) to hit a lower target (at least 32 mpg). It would also prohibit the federal government from setting that standard any higher than 35 mpg, even if technological changes between now and then make that an easy goal.

Perhaps the worst pill in Hill-Terry is a provision that would stop individual states from setting tougher emissions and fuel standards than the federal government, as has been done in California and 11 other states.

That hasn’t stopped Dingell from pimping the bill. Read the rest of this entry »

The Hillsborough County Commission, acting as the board of directors of the Environmental Protection Commission, is scheduled tomorrow to hear a proposal to spare the EPC’s wetlands protections.

No vote is expected on the issue until August, but at least EPC Executive Director Dr. Richard Garrity will be able to present what has come to be known as “the hybrid plan” that calls for preserving the division while streamlining the development approval process and allowing for more wetlands destruction via “mitigation.” In those cases, developers can fill and build on wetlands if they create other wetlands in another site. Mitigation has questionable value.

Denise Layne, an activist who has fought for environmental protections locally and at the state level,  plans to address the concerns of her Coalition 4 Responsible Growth about Garrity’s compromise. Her full presentation after the break:

Read the rest of this entry »

Two updates about Hillsborough County’s preliminary vote to eliminate wetlands protection from its Environmental Protection Commission, as some developers desperately want to see happen.

This week’s issue of CL features my story on the matter called “Pimp My Lake,” and includes some strong support for the EPC’s wetlands functions from Republican County Commissioner Mark Sharpe:

“It makes good sense to be good stewards of the environment whether you are Democrat or Republican. We need to be thinking about locally what makes sense. Protect the environment.”

Also, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters has come out strongly in favor of saving the wetlands division. A letter to the editor from president-elect Richard Brown says:

If the decision of the Commission stands, Hillsborough County will inevitably lose wetland acreage. As wetlands acreage gets reduced, citizens of Hillsborough County will encounter increased pollution and flooding. They will also be forced to pay for cleaning up the resulting disasters. As our county becomes more developed, environmental protections should be increased, not reduced.

The full text of the letter follows in the comments section (with a nod to Adam for stealing the way he does these things).

Just a reminder that a great event for those hoping to save the planet (or at least a little piece of it) is coming up this weekend in St. Petersburg, the second Pinellas Living Green Expo at the Coliseum and Sunshine Center downtown.

I wrote in Ought-Six about the importance of this grassroots (if you excuse the pun) movement that aims to do for the environment what our governments seem unable or unwilling to do.

The Expo is free and will give you lots of great ideas about how to reduce your impact on the planet.  Hours are: Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.