Friends of the Fakahatchee remarks given by Nathaniel Reed on December 3, 2011

1970—that seems like a long time ago—a great deal of water has gone through the everglades since then!

What do I remember? Age steals memories but 1970 was a “special year”. My loving wife kept a large book that contains newspaper clippings, overly long speeches, comments on critical state environmental issues and a flow of memorandums on a vast variety of environmental issues. I reviewed them in preparation for this evening. 1970 was a “full year” for Florida and me!

Governor Claude Kirk was in his final year. He continued to support my efforts to clean up our ocean, bays, our rivers and lakes from years of pollution. Every sewer from Palm Beach to Homestead on the east coast delivered millions of gallons of raw sewage to the ocean daily. The St. John’s River was the recipient of raw sewage, industrial wastes, Navy shipyard caustic chemicals and tons of nutrients. The only sewage plants on Florida’s west coast were primary treatment plants at Tampa and Pensacola. The Tampa plants discharge was so toxic that it totally killed hundreds of acres of grass flats.

The Pensacola plant had a long record of “failing 40% of the time” so that it released raw sewage into the once highly productive bays.

The bays were also polluted by massive discharges of chemicals mixed with paper mill wastes – a rich toxic diversity of man’s indifference.

I was the chairman of a tiny department that the legislature approved and began to fund. I seized control from the inept Board of Health. That pathetic group stated that they had no state laws that could control even the worst examples of human wastes.

I needed help and the governor gave me permission to invite the experts from the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration stationed in Atlanta to join me in enforcement actions in Jacksonville, Miami-Dade and Pensacola. Florida was a very conservative state and the “Old Guard” was furious that a young whippersnapper dared to work with the enemy—“agents of the federal government”.

We made progress. Thanks to a series of huge federal monetary investments in sewage plants and enforcement against companies that discharged their untreated chemical wastes into the Great Lakes, the Hudson River, San Francisco Bay, Pensacola and Escambia Bays, Biscayne Bay— name a body of water and I promise you that companies had managed to persuade their state health departments that the cure of their pollution was dilution.

Simultaneously, the jetport - Big Cypress proposal began to hit the front pages of the American newspapers and evening television news. It’s an interesting fact that the plight of the everglades had become a “national issue”.

We have Margery Stoneman Douglas, Joe Browder, Alice Wainwright, Charles Lee and a cast of fascinating concerned citizens to thank. Years of being deprived of adequate amounts of clean water, the ‘Glades became a symbol of gross mismanagement by the state of Florida and what is now the South Florida Water Management District. Big Ag ran the water management agency without a blush!

My friend and colleague, Joe Browder, National Audubon’s youthful, energetic, indomitable Florida director, joined with Margery Stoneman Douglas and a cast of caring Floridians to protest the threat that a jetport in the Big Cypress posed to the future of Everglades National Park and the Ten Thousand Islands. One of Florida's greatest fisheries and breeding grounds for thousands of “water birds” and millions of fish was threatened by the unwanted development that would surely follow a “Futuristic Jetport”.

The developers ached to acquire land from a variety of people who had camps in the Big Cypress for hunting or just getting away from the bustle of a frantic growing south Florida.

Joe brilliantly “worked the issue”. It became obvious that the Dade County Commissioners and the federal DOT had made an investment in a runway - a long expensive runway in the midst of the Big Cypress without really thinking about how passengers were to be transported to the site or returned to Miami. They failed to understand that a road through Conservation #3, the last best example of the River of Grass would be destructive and would be subject to every known environmental legal assault.

Alan Stewart, Dade’s Port Authority boss had an extraordinary short temper and was the project’s worst enemy.

At Governor Kirk’s insistence a committee of environmental experts prepared 102 questions for the Port Authority to answer with their consultants before any more commitments by the state or federal government should be made.

Months later we met at a Miami hotel’s ballroom, that I later learned was owned by a Miami Mafia family to receive Stewart’s and the then ridiculous Mayor’s responses to the very valid carefully considered questions.

Stewart in a monotone: read the first question and replied: “This question is under study.” Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were answered identically to the first question: it became abundantly clear that all questions were “under study”.

I stood in the front row and stated calmly and clearly that the meeting was a “ruse” that was inexplicable and showed distain for the very valid questions that needed to be carefully analyzed prior to any further discussion of the merits of a “Futuristic Jetport” in the Big Cypress.

Joe Browder who was sitting next to me and who had spent long hours working with Art Marshall, the dean of Florida’s environmental experts and a cast of experts from federal and state agencies who prepared the questions bellowed: “You have blown it! You have ignored a legitimate process. Do you think we are fools?”

Mayor Hall and Stewart went “bananas” accusing us of being “White Radicals” who opposed anything and everything. Stewart stated that “he would build me a glass house filled with butterflies for me to spend useful time chasing”. The room filled with serious environmental experts went berserk. It was inconceivable - incredible that so called Dade County Aviation Department “experts” who had supposedly prepared and planned the proposed project could not answer a single legitimate question! The fiasco became a lightning rod, very news worthy crisis of confidence.

The Nixon White House became interested, as the Secretary of Transportation had made a significant grant to build the runway.

Secretary of Interior Hickel, still smarting from an uncomfortable highly controversial confirmation hearing where the growing environmental non-governmental organizations really took him to task as an “Alaskan Boomer” who had no environmental credentials, seized the opportunity to gain “green spurs” by joining with the governor to oppose the jetport.

Governor Kirk and I were summoned to Washington. We met with Russell Train, the then Under Secretary of Interior and the leader of the Nixon Administration’s environmental team, in his Washington living room. I unfolded maps and aerial photographs and explained the long-term threat that the proposed airport would open the Big Cypress to unwanted development in the last major natural flow-way into the western reaches of Everglades National Park. Train agreed, but couldn’t help wonder what the future of the Big Cypress would be. Acquisition seemed unlikely. Land use restrictions or easements seemed far-fetched. We left the meeting deeply concerned but without affirmative action other than to force the abandonment of the one runway.

We met at the White House the next day. We were informed that President Nixon had decided that the “jetport would be canceled—he was confident that it was a dream crafted by the speculators and developers all connected to the incumbent Democrat majority in Dade County”. Nixon may not have canceled the jetport plan on environmental grounds, but in 1971 he sent to Congress a bill with an Environmental Impact Statement written by Art Marshall, members of my staff and experts on the hydrology of south Florida. The proposal was overseen by Dr. Luna Leopold, the head of the United States Geological Service, urging Congress to acquire the Big Cypress. Dr. Leopold’s fame was needed, as Dr. Marshall although revered in Florida was not well known on the Hill or nationally. The Congress created the Big Cypress National Preserve, an extraordinary victory. In later years, 147,000 additional acres were added to the preserve.

Now to the subject at hand. I had been invited by Franklin Adams repetitively to join a curious man named Mel Finn and him to explore a “swamp of unusual characteristics - a wild, untamed swamp filled with unique plants and trees”. Franklin maintained it was a swamp that was “world class” and as important as all the other subjects that were on my list.

At the time, Secretary Udall, head of the Interior Department, was making commitments to Lloyd Miller and his indomitable group to spare Biscayne Bay and create a National Monument that would doom forever the hoax of the “Mythical City of Islandia”.

I was at loggerheads with Mr. Macgregor Smith, Florida Power and Light’s chairman over the problem of cooling one million gallons of heated water per minute that would come from the Turkey Point Nuclear plant. He wanted to pump it back into Biscayne Bay even though the heated water would destroy thousands of acres of rich, aquatic grasses. I refused to grant the company the needed state permit.

Although the state was receiving federal Land and Water Conservation Funds and Environmental Land Bond Funds it seemed improbable that we could add the mysterious Fakahatchee Swamp to the list of “must buys” and the full plate of issues that the governor and I faced.

This was my “excuse” for dodging Franklin’s repetitive requests to join Mel and him and visit the Fakahatchee Swamp.

His persistence paid off.

I had met Franklin Adams and recognized that he was a truly significant environmentalist. He had incredible knowledge of the Big Cypress, having camped and hunted within its boundaries since childhood. Further, he was highly respected among the nascent south western Florida environmental community as a man who kept his word and could not be swayed by the omni present developers who traded in mangrove and swamp lands.

Franklin kept urging me to find time in my schedule to tramp - a wade through a portion of the Fakahatchee Swamp with the mysterious Mel Finn and him. I delayed and delayed, as there was always another priority; another crisis.

I finally confirmed a date May 1, 1970. I was accompanied by Ney Landrum, the Director of our state’s park system, Joel Kupperberg who had vast knowledge and experience in southwest Florida’s environmental issues and George Gardner, my newly appointed assistant, a recent graduate of the University of Florida.

The Governor assigned us a twin engine state plane and we landed at the Everglades City grass airfield.

Franklin’s mother had passed away the evening before our trip. We missed him as he is, in fact, the reason for our visit and subsequent efforts made to protect this unique swamp.

I cannot over emphasize the importance of Franklin Adams to this story of a great experience.

The “mysterious Mel Finn” met the two state trooper vehicles that brought us to the starting site. He no longer remained a “mysterious swamp man”. In a matter of minutes we all recognized Mel as a fascinating fellow, a Miami attorney who hated practicing the law and lived for the weekends to explore the last great wildernesses of the Big Cypress and his find - his glorious find - The Fakahatchee Swamp.

We were briefed by Mel. Despite the dry time of the year, there was knee deep water; even waist deep water on the route that Mel led us into the swamp. We were outfitted with 5 foot long forked sticks that were useful in persuading water snakes and water moccasins to move quietly out of our way. George Gardner had brought along a machete. I had urged him to leave it with the state patrol officer. He was last in line and he could not resist the temptation of having a machete hanging from his hip.

You know what we saw! We gaped at wonder. The cypress leaves had turned the wonderful light green that signals their spring. The cypress trees, many growing from stumps of trees cut for lumber 80 years in the past, had regrown into leafy towers. The Royal palms reached through the cypress trees – 60 - 75 feet - even 100 feet high. Orchids and bromeliads were everywhere, growing with rare abandon, undiscovered and untouched by man.

We stopped frequently and Mel briefed us on some oddity, something special, and something that he and we found uniquely exciting.

There were long periods of silence as the majesty of the excursion dawned on all of us.

As we began to return to the starting site, suddenly, there was a cry from the rear of the troop. George had taken out his machete and swung it against a vine hanging from a cypress tree. The machete bounced off and cut his leg very seriously.

I helped apply a tight tourniquet. I said: “George, you are too big to carry. You are simply going to have to be very brave and we will move as quickly as possible back to the road where we can get you tied up better than what we have tied around your leg.” We mushed our way back to the waiting trooper’s car. I sent George back to the airport in one of the trooper’s cars with a note for the pilot to take him to the nearest hospital. For reasons never fully explained, the pilot flew him to Marathon where an ambulance took him to their tiny hospital. George survived despite the fact that he had to do battle with all kinds of interesting bacteria.

The rest of us huddled together, overcome by the sights of the Fakahatchee and as one we held our right hands high in the air and swore we would not rest until the Fakahatchee was preserved. I maintained it was as important as the Roman “Oath of the Horatii”.

As we waited for the return of the vehicle that had rushed George to the plane, an obvious rental car drove up and paused next to me. Two delightful ladies in their mid-fifties inquired where they were. I answered they were in the middle of the Fakahatchee Swamp. “No, no”, snapped one of them, “Our ranch which we bought from the Gulf American Company is right around here.” I had the unpleasant assignment of informing her that the Rosen Brothers were facing both state and federal governmental legal actions as peddlers of “swamp land” all across southwest Florida.

That’s another story in itself. Sufficient to report that it took many of my remaining months in Tallahassee working with a superb group of young men from every cabinet member’s staff to force the Rosen’s and their land schemes out of Florida.

I became Assistant Secretary of Interior on May 12th, 1971, and working with Joel who Governor Askew wisely appointed to head the state’s land board and Ney Landrum, my great friend and coworker who made the Florida State Park system the envy of the nation, Ney set about acquiring hundreds of properties, mostly 1.25 acres each that the Rosen’s had sold to unsuspecting suckers. It took years to identify the owners of ranchettes and quote “Gulf side properties” deep inside the swamp. The majority sold out for $100 an acre. Ney used funds from the Endangered Lands State Bonds and acquired the major portion of the swamp from GAC (General Acceptance Corporation), bought the canal system to prevent them for ever being used for drainage and slowly but surely identified and bought out the vast majority of the swamp’s 57,297 acres paying the various owners a total of $12, 223,000. It was exhausting, time consuming work requiring total dedication to the task. Friends of the Fakahatchee and the citizens of Florida have much to be grateful for during Ney Landrum’s incredible leadership of the state’s park system, but one of the greatest jewels of his extraordinary land acquisitions is “our Fakahatchee Swamp”!

In time the Fakahatchee’s headwaters, the 13,000 acre Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest and surrounding high ground were preserved insuring a continuous natural water supply.

Finally, the swamp was “ours”, “ours” - for the people of Florida, “ours”- for the American people – “ours” to be shared with tourists from around the world – one visit and the Fakahatchee is theirs too.

Mel Finn’s spirit is still there - he lived a life that is embodied by this Native American statement: “We pray for the world, that the people of the world will embrace harmony, that they will show respect, tolerance, and acceptance for each other and for all living things. This is what my people have taught me and it is my responsibility to continue living this way of life. In doing so, I am telling my ancestors that: “I’m still here practicing your teaching so that my children and all other generations will continue to practice this way of life---life will go on and on, even after I am gone.”

We have lost Joel and the indomitable Mel, but the rest of us who gave our oaths are still living: never forgetting our mutual pledge to save this precious gem.

I think Clyde Butcher’s April 24, 1999, photograph of us sums up what I cannot adequately express: the quiet satisfaction of success, the fellowship and the incredible leadership of Mel and Franklin who would not give up and finally got the right players to the field of action.

What can I say to you in the way of thanks - genuine thanks for your devotion in patrolling the swamp, for leading tours, for sharing an experience of excitement and wonder with hundreds of visitors?

It took time, energy, foresight, determination, lots of our money and love of our land to have saved the Fakahatchee Swamp forever!

Volunteerism is a great American tradition. It is one of our national “hallmarks”. You are Fakahatchee Stands loving stewards. Continue to take care of this unique, irreplaceable part of untamed, um-trampled Florida.

I am reminded of Margaret Mead’s famous quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has!”

Thank you for the pleasure of inviting me over to join you at this wonderful part of the Florida that I love!

JACKSONVILLE - The Past, the Present and the Future

Remarks by Nathaniel Reed on November 15, 2011
Before the Late Bloomers Garden Club

In 1968, literally immediately after he swore the Oath of Office, Gov. Claude Kirk asked me to become his Environmental Advisor. He offered me a converted closet with a desk near his office and a $1 a year salary. After a brief conversation with my wife, who was with me at the Inauguration, I accepted.

Six weeks later, the two tired characters that were the titular heads of the Florida Department of Health briefed the Governor and me on the millions of gallons of raw sewage and a deadly cocktail of untreated chemicals that flowed into every river, lake and estuary the length and breadth of Florida. They highlighted the plight of the St. Johns River where raw sewage was compounded by chemical dumping and even hospital waste discharges!

We were aghast, especially when they informed us that there were no state laws that gave the state power to enforce far stricter water quality standards. The Federal Water Pollution Control agency was buried in the Department of Interior; their role was unclear, but appeared to be only advisory.

The governor stated clearly: “Nathaniel, this is your issue! I will give you my support to pass the needed state legislation to require our municipalities and counties to clean up their sewage and I will see to it that we will invent a department of government that will enforce both state and the oncoming federal laws.”

A couple of months later the governor informed me that he had accepted an invitation by the Jacksonville business leadership for me to come to Jacksonville for lunch at the River Club and take a close look at the governor’s new “environmental advisor”. Governor Kirk thought that it might be appropriate to discuss the “St John River problems” with this group.

A state police officer drove me from the Iveson Airport toward downtown. As we approached one of the major bridges crossing the St. Johns we were held up by a phalanx of men in work cloths that were “on strike”. I leaned out the window and asked one of the leaders what the issue or issues were. He informed me that the bridges crossing the St. Johns were aged and needed to be painted with rust-proof paint every few years, but that the city had failed to increase their hourly wages for years—therefore the strike.

I arrived at the River Club which was located above the Prudential Building and escorted into a beautiful private dining room. I stood in line with Mr. Ball and shook hands with forty of the Titans of Jacksonville. They looked seriously formidable.

As I was served lunch, I inquired as to the smell that permeated Jacksonville and even influenced the air-conditioned room. Ed Ball replied that the scent was a combination discharges from chemical plants, paper mills and paint companies and the combination was really “quite delightful once one got used to it”. He added: “Nathaniel, it is the smell of money being made!”

I opened my off-the-cuff remarks with the story of the striker and jokingly added that I thought they should be rewarded with higher pay because if they fell into the river they were sure to be victims of every known disease that might have been dumped into the river. I urged my audience to seriously consider the value of the St. John’s River as one of Florida’s greatest assets, and worth their efforts to enhance and protect.

In closing, I announced that one of my most pressing priorities was to have the Florida legislature pass a clean water bill to regulate the discharge of toxic chemicals and eliminate the discharge of raw sewage in Florida. Deafening, frigid silence followed my closing. There were no follow-up questions. I bid my ado’s and rapidly headed for the safety of the state policeman and his car.

When I walked back into the Governor’s Office in Tallahassee there was a note on my desk requesting an immediate visit with the governor. I felt that my tour of duty was coming to a swift, short conclusion.

Kirk bellowed as I entered the Governor’s Office: “Well you really made a lot of friends for me in Jacksonville! I have received a dozen calls demanding not only your resignation but your head!” I answered: “I told them the truth: a clean St. John’s could be one of the great features of a great city, but I struck out!” I repeated Ed Ball’s perspective that: “stink equaled money” and the governor laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall out of his chair. Then there was a long moment of silence and he stated quietly, but firmly: “This is the battle that you have spoken about all over this state for the last ten years and you have been studiously ignored. Now you have my full support. Clean up this state!”

It’s been a long 40 plus years, but I think that Jacksonville has truly come a far distance from where it was so long ago.

Indeed, Florida – statewide - has made notable progress addressing both air and water pollution compared to where we were.

But Florida continues to grow, and growth continues to adversely impact many of our state’s prized resources, and indeed set back our efforts to make greater progress.

This morning I’d like to address two specific issues of critical importance to our home state: comprehensive land use planning – sometimes simplistically jargoned as “growth management”, and water resource management. Either topic alone could encompass all my and your available time today. The topics are tightly intertwined, but I would like to address each of these topics in the very specific context of our current economic situation and how this is influencing important policy considerations. My comments reflect my personal perspectives from all the “good experiences”, as well as a few bad experiences, over my past forty years of public service in Florida.

Much of our current dilemma may be due to the fact that Florida has always been the ultimate “pyramid scheme”. The Ponzi premise – as long as you can recruit new suckers to pay back the existing club members – you’ll be okay. This pretty much sums up the management strategy of Florida over my 40+ years of observation and participation. I would invite you all to name one public program in Florida – transportation, education, public health, environmental resource management, where we have actually put the cost of meeting the immediate needs upon the immediate population.

Florida’s history has been to expect that future growth will cover the cost of the current needs – next year’s new taxpayers will get the bill for existing infrastructure deficiencies – and their new demands will in turn be paid, not in full by them, but by their successors. As the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald staff in Tallahassee reported: “For years, governors and legislators relied on population growth to create jobs, avoid raising taxes, and shield the state from recession. They saw Florida’s population swell annually by 2-3% per year, adding the equivalent of a new Miami or Tampa each year”.

We’ve marketed ourselves as a low-tax, low-cost retirement haven. We have further convoluted the scheme with an absolutely archaic tax scheme, full of exemptions intended to provide short-term growth incentives but higher future costs – which will supposedly be covered by distributing those costs over a larger taxpayer base in the future.

FSU President T.K Wetherell observed that Florida is a state unwilling to face its challenges and noted: “You can’t be a world-class state and use the tax system that we have. This system is not going to produce the resources that we need to run one of the largest states in the nation and provide the services that people want. You can’t keep putting Band-Aids on it.”

The Palm Beach Post - in their 2009 New Year’s Day editorial – summarized brilliantly our past and possible future: “For decades Florida and the officials running the state, counties, and towns have perpetrated the myth that growth will pay for itself and provide a prosperous lifestyle for everyone who buys into the myth. With special tax breaks for long-time residents, the expectation that an ever-increasing supply of newcomers, snowbirds and tourists would pay most of the bills was as enticing a Ponzi scheme as any that Bernard Madoff promised. Now, Florida’s growth scheme has collapsed. The growth myth should collapse along with it. Yes, the real estate market will come back – let’s hope in a more rational form. But unbridled growth never again should be seen as Florida’s perpetual money machine.”

Some might argue that Florida hasn’t really had unbridled growth, but rather truly managed growth, Governor Scott says over-managed – a rather hard premise to accept given the obvious massive over-building, and 1920’s style Boom-Time speculation that which has glutted the state housing market. Little wonder that we are now the poster-child for the foreclosure debacles.

Governor Scott and the developers who control the majority of the legislature had their way in the last legislative session: they have eliminated growth management in Florida.

I think all levels of Florida’s government, must face the fact that a sound economic policy must also be a sound environmental policy – or we’re just once again pawning the true costs into the future - with compounded interest!

The current economic catastrophe placed us squarely at the crossroads of Ponzi Place and Sustainable Avenue. We had the opportunity to break out of the old More Growth No Matter What syndrome – and we failed. Under the chorus call of “Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs”, we removed even the most prudent, practiced, and minimal of restraints on Ponzi planning.

In times of stress, especially, we hear calls for “leadership and courage”. But re-election is much more dependent upon following the public will than trying to lead it – and the public will is currently much more concerned with immediate personal problems than the long-term future of Florida. We need to recognize that many Floridians would willingly accept another future problem - which they won’t likely live to face - in exchange for a fix to their immediate financial woes.

Throughout the last decade, we had somewhat adopted the catchphrase “smart growth” to imply greener, more sustainable efforts. It’s been perhaps most accurately considered a desirable “goal”.

I would argue that any growth that doesn’t pay for itself isn’t smart at all!

And what the Governor and the legislature have done isn’t less than smart, its truly stupid - and wholly irresponsible pandering. In one year, they’ve set Florida back by forty years. The cumulative shared growth legacy of five successive governors; Kirk, Askew, Chiles, Martinez, and even Bush, has been negated by one business promoter with no apparent understanding of the importance of sound growth planning.

If I sound angry, I am! And disgusted that the state legislature has lost all those great Floridians (Kirk, Askew, Chiles, Martinez, and Bush) whose vision included our citizens of the future, rather than just knee-jerk responses that might look good in their re- election a few months later.

During its infancy, comprehensive planning in Florida wasn’t really strongly linked to water issues. Comprehensive plans focused more on balancing residential/industrial/commercial uses, providing adequate green space etc. Water was considered primarily in the context of drainage needs and potable supply needs. The need for water conservation criteria evolved in the early process. “Demand management” became the new focus; requiring water-conserving fixtures in new homes and more efficient irrigation systems.

Meanwhile, the Water Management Districts were finding that groundwater withdrawals in some areas were approaching unacceptable levels and risked environmental damage or well-field damage by salt-water intrusion. Especially in South Florida, the traditional solution of “stick another straw in the ground” wasn’t an option anymore; too many straws guaranteed too little water left. Across the state, the Water Management Districts, through their regulatory permitting processes forced the utilities to pursue new alternatives. We were once the nation’s leader in water management.

From a water resource perspective, the Governor’s gutting of the autonomy of the water management districts with the mantra that the citizens shouldn’t be governed by non-elected boards, and the desire for legislative control of their budgets to supposedly save taxpayer dollars, promises to be another fiasco. Can anyone in the room point to something that the Florida legislature has managed so successfully that you now can feel comfortable with them now managing your water supply? Schools, Transportation, Public Health?

Close to your homes, the battle between JEA, Jacksonville and Duval County's giant power and water utility unwillingly faced the fact that growing evidence indicated that pumping from the aquifer had reached or even exceeded sustainable limits. New research indicated that the city’s well fields were playing a part in the dramatic drawdown of lakes in the interior of northeast Florida. I won’t replay the incredible political decisions that over-ruled sound science and will lead to lawsuits and confusion in years to come as Jacksonville’s power brokers convinced Governor Scott and his designee to grant a 20-year pumping permit when all the evidence indicates that present pumping is impacting aquifer levels even in the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers. Water wars are bound to be the result of political meddling with sound science. Expensive lawsuits are inevitable.

Governor Scott and the leaders of the Florida legislature have nearly crippled one of the most innovative water management systems in the United States, if not the world. It’s easily accomplished: simply force major reductions in the water management budgets, retire all critics and sound scientists that don’t agree with the orders of the day.

A good example is the dramatic shift that has taken place within the St. John’s Water Management District. The District has essentially stopped rule making and ended an updated water supply plan, once a top priority said to be legislatively mandated the all-important road map of the future.

Less than a year ago, the SJRWMD was sounding the alarm that Northeast Florida was reaching the sustainable limits of the aquifer. However, the District recently issued an unprecedented CUP (Consumptive Use Permit) to the JEA utility that could eventually result in a 40% increase in withdrawals from the aquifer. The permit was issued despite U.S. Geological Survey models that indicate current Northeast Florida groundwater use is already adversely impacting springs and waterways to the west. Florida legislators have also made it more difficult for citizens to achieve standing and to have a voice in the decision-making process that impacts the water resources that belong to all of us. This was an outrageous effort to prevent public input in vitally important issues.

Rather than continue to lament Florida’s movement back into the Dark Ages, I’d like to now focus on where we go from here.

As the saying goes “this too shall pass”, though painfully. The pendulum has been swung too far, too quickly, and the effects will certainly lead to an attempt to correct the errors. That’s the nature of government.

In a few weeks, former Governor Graham, several dozen members of the legislature, and a cadre of environmental leaders will meet on the Capitol steps to announce our intent to challenge Governor Scott and begin planning for the post-Scott era.

Without doubt, growth management planning, and water supply management deserve thoughtful review and careful scrutiny, and some portions of programs could possibly be eliminated or modified, but the basic premise of state oversight to insure comprehensive, affordable planning remains sound. The necessity to insure that our water supplies are adequate to meet our future growth is an absolute fundamental necessity.

We are trying to throw the economic recovery of Florida on the back of construction workers – that may be a quick fix – but we can’t expect to continually build ourselves out of trouble – just ask Spain, France or Italy what eventually happens when you run out of ways to grow and have created an unsustainable economic framework.

The water problems in the Everglades remain perhaps even more acute than those of the St. Johns River basin; however I’m not going to talk about the great Everglades ecosystem and the giant efforts that are underway to restore this once world-class natural feature.

I just want you to know that one of your finest, Joe Duke, is a member of the Everglades Foundation’s Board of Directors that within a few short years has engaged the finest staff imaginable - fully capable of taking on misguided efforts by the state of federal agencies to misjudge what restoration entails. Our board and staff are totally committed and we have strong allies in the Congress even though we have lost key supporters in the legislature and in the governor’s chair. Every statewide poll indicates strong support for restoration in every corner of this elongated state.

You should also be aware that there are a minimum of two major federal lawsuits against the state for failure to provide clean water to the Everglades. It will be the ultimate challenge to see if the state will comply with the decisions that survive legal challenge - probably all the way to the Supreme Court. So far, EVERY federal court ruling has favored Everglade’s restoration efforts, with federal judges consistently unwilling to accept further state delay, or half-measures in lieu of adequate protection.

I’d like to take a final moment to address one last critical water issue that has recently been at the forefront of our state’s environmental news – the problem that excessive nutrients are still polluting hundreds of lakes, rivers and our once productive, clean estuaries. From the beginning of water quality management in Florida, we have relied on non-numeric criteria to manage run-off. I passed this standard in 1970. We knew nothing – nothing about nutrient pollution!

Our state’s water quality law says you cannot degrade a water body by the agricultural discharges. The law essentially says that you can’t degrade a water body without telling you when you’re doing so. We’ve relied upon “improvement plans” without a link to the actual needs of our various diverse natural systems. Best Management Practices (BMP’s) have proven to be a myth. They aren’t enforced and they don’t work!

Despite doing various “good deeds”, we haven’t provided true protection: more than 300 water bodies in our state have been classified as seriously in danger from unregulated discharges of phosphorus and nitrogen. That's just the beginning. Further testing will prove that there are another 200 or 300 bodies of water that are dying because of floods of nutrients. I can’t give you an exact number, but it is safe to say that MANY are…primary examples: Lake Okeechobee, the St. Lucie, Caloosahatchee, and St. Johns Rivers. Most of our major river systems and lakes are on the wrong side of the nutrient balance.

To its credit, the St. Johns District has spent decades developing and implementing impressive plans, and land acquisitions, to reduce inputs to the St. Johns from large farm operations, but the problems continue. The St. John District is miles and years ahead of the other WMD’s in controlling excessive nutrients entering your major water systems but there is still much to be accomplished.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency was finally forced by a brilliant Florida lawsuit to in turn force the State of Florida to face its major nutrient pollution problem. The state, as usual, has never established stringent numeric nutrient regulations as federal law requires, and after months of negotiations, EPA decided that enough was enough and announced that they would establish workable standards and enforce them.

All hell broke out. Our congressional delegation raced to the congressional appropriations committees and begged them to deny funding for EPA’s determined effort.

The Members of the Florida Legislature went bananas.

Adam Putman, our brilliant Secretary of Agriculture and a young man with a great future mobilized every Chamber of Commerce, every agricultural interest to oppose any involvement of EPA to enforce nutrient standards. It was a hysterical reaction, as EPA cannot enforce non-point standards – but under Florida law DEP can! The most commonly used phrases were: “we cannot afford to comply” which translated into common English means “we prefer dirty water versus trying to have clean water”.

The second complaint by our “leaders” was this was an example of overreach by the federal government - EPA reaching into Florida and mandating a significant action.

The polluters won. President Obama’s political advisors overruled the EPA experts and forced the Administrator of EPA to agree to a Florida plan that is clearly inadequate and will be again challenged in court, as it is still in violation of the Clean Water Act.

The charade continues. As leaders in your community, ask yourselves, is it worth paying for major improvements to the sewage systems of this city to remove nutrients and have DEP enforce nutrient standards upstream or are you satisfied by a St. John’s River that reeks on incoming tides during the warm summer months when the nutrients create a vast green algal bloom that stretches miles and can develop into a very serious human health issue?

It is an issue worth your close attention. We must insist that DEP be required to enforce state law.

We all are in shock at the jobless figures, a dysfunctional Congress, our fiscal dilemma, the incredible gap in our national budget, the loss of so many fine young men and women in two far off wars of questionable value that now cost $2 billion a week to support and the growing problem of the national debt that forecloses so many options for rebuilding America into the powerhouse that it can be.

Winston Churchill’s final address before his school where he had been beaten, bullied, failed in class work, stumbled from lack of coordination, and even developed a lisp was simple. He tottered to the podium as the school children and faculty waited breathlessly for this seminal address. They were stunned when the great man’s final speech was simply: “Don’t Give Up!” He turned to walk to his seat but paused and returned to the podium. He stared across the rows of young men who would become the leaders of Great Britain and stated firmly, “No, Never, Never give up!”

We must find men and women with courage to defy quick fixes and think about the legacy we want jointly to leave our successors.

I leave you today with the hope and expectation that the superb city and county in which you live will show the way to a better Florida.

It’s up to us, all of us to halt the determined, short-sighted attack on the state which we love. Governor, Members of the Legislature: we will not GIVE UP!

Thank you for the honor of being your guest.

Preserve Martin County

Be sure to join this important grass roots movement to educate the citizens of Martin County: http://www.facebook.com/PreserveMartinCounty

Reed is to receive the Federation's Hall of Fame award.

Jupiter Island's Nathaniel Reed is among 14 Floridians behind honored for their conservation efforts by the Florida Wildlife Federation on Saturday, June 11.

Reed, whose parents developed Jupiter Island, served as assistant secretary of the interior under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and is chairman emeritus of 1,000 Friends of Florida.

Besides being deeply involved in land issues, Reed's resume also includes being the state's first Governor's Environmental Counsel in 1967, Chairman of the Commission on Florida's Environmental Future, and serving under three governors as a member of the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board.

Also being honored Saturday will be the Loxahatchee River Preservation Initiative as Water Conservationist of the Year.

The federation's 74th Annual Conservation Awards Banquet is being held at the Chateau Elan Hotel and Conference Center in Sebring.

http://www.fwfonline.org/documents/Conservation-Awards/2011/NATHANIELPREEDPressRelease2011.pdf

Check out the Everglades Foundation's Website

http://www.evergladesfoundation.org/

Pumps to keep Lake Okeechobee's water flowing south

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-05-27/news/fl-drought-affects-snail-kite-20110527_1_snail-kite-lake-water-lake-levels