The Political Whore

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND; activist

Remember that water bill we were concerned about that would silence public input and made water permits easier to get (behind closed doors)? Environmentalists and editorial boards alike urged The Bent Over one to veto it. Well, on the heels of signing SB 360 and eliminating what little growth management laws we do did have, Governor Crist signed that water bill (SB 2080) making water and wetland permits easier to get and again disappointed us while putting yet another black mark on his environmental record. In his defense, he did ask them pretty please to continue to make their water permitting decisions in the open (while signing a bill that alleviated them from doing just that).

According to my research everyone in the House and Senate that voted on this voted in favor of it regardless of party affiliation.

Photo credit: Johnnyalive Flickr.com

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.

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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.

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:

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A packed classroom at the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission yesterday afternoon showed just how much energy the push to preserve what’s left of Tampa Bay’s wetlands has gathered.

The government officials, lawyers, activists and farmers were there to review new rules being written by EPC regulators that would provide specific exemptions for farmers to disturb wetlands, generally if they are less than one-half acre. The rules are the result of a desperate attempt by the EPC and activists to prevent the abolition of local wetlands laws when county commissioners earlier this year tried to wipe them off the books, under the guise of cost-savings and eliminating duplication.

EPC staff said the new rules were better than the current vague guidelines for farmers, which leads to uneven enforcement. The activists weren’t buying it.

“If you start whittling away [wetlands protection] piece by piece, quarter acre by quarter acre, why have the EPC?” said Denise Layne, who has followed the issue locally and in Tallahassee for many years. She promised “a war in front of the county commissioners” if the EPC moved the proposed changes forward to a planned Nov. 15 commission vote.

EPC lawyer Andrew Zodrow, however, said the new rule is better, more professional and gives the EPC a seat at the table when regional water management officials approve overarching wetlands permits for farmers, something EPC doesn’t participate in at the present. “It’s a great leap forward in the rule to have a process that defines ‘farmer,’” he added as an example of the lack of specificity in the current regs.

The problem, activists said, is that the new rules may open more doors for development lawyers and allow for more destruction of smaller wetlands, which would be remotely possible under the new guidelines. “The last thing we want to do is encourage farmers to convert their land to developers,” EPC chief Rick Garrity promised the activists — to little relief.

Especially troubling to the environmentalists in the crowd was not being able to get an answer to their question of why the rules were being rushed to the county commission, without a review by an as-yet-unformed Technical Advisory Group or another advisory committee. In the end, Garrity acknowledged that the EPC is under the gun to get these changes finished because of promises made in presenting the hybrid plan, which was what commissioners agreed to try before re-evaluating whether to kill wetlands rules next year. County commissioners gave the EPC until May 2008 to streamline and change its processes (to a more developer-friendly mode, opponents argue) or face another discussion about elimination.

“We’re not off the hook,” Garrity admitted.

To see the proposed agricultural wetlands changes, click here for a .pdf. For a look at activists’ objections to the new rules, there are two .pdfs at this location.

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.