Florida Big Sugar weasles out of land deal

[FLPanhandle]

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article12872678.html

In Tallahassee you can be a gutsy champion for the Everglades, or just another lame shill for Big Sugar.

You can’t be both, though some politicians try to pretend.

Check out Steve Crisafulli, the Republican speaker of the Florida House. He comes from a citrus family, once headed the Brevard County Farm Bureau and has his eye on becoming state agricultural commissioner.

Crisafulli lives in Merritt Island, which is bordered by the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile-long body of water whose southern end is being devastated by agricultural pollutants pumped recklessly from Lake Okeechobee.

Right now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is flushing an average 614 million gallons of nitrogen- and phosphorus-tainted lake water every day into the St. Lucie River, which flows into the Indian River Lagoon through the St. Lucie Estuary.

The idea is to regulate the levels in Lake Okeechobee so it won’t overflow during in the rainy season. However, the water-dumping causes massive algae blooms, fish kills and a nightmare for marine and tourist businesses along the Treasure Coast.

Because of where he lives, Crisafulli would seem a likely crusader for the Indian River Lagoon, a person who’d fight for those whose livelihoods depend on it. As House speaker, he can guide funds for the acquisition of key land near Lake Okeechobee to be used for cleaning the polluted farm runoff and sending it south through the Everglades.

One problem: That land is owned by U.S. Sugar, and U.S. Sugar has Crisafulli on a short puppet string.




Good old Republicans turning the Everglades and our water into a sewer and dumping area.

[countryjake]

1. K&R!

[onethatcares]

2. it never changes here

and people should remember what John Ellis suggested we do.

PUMP OUR AQUIFIER FULL OF SEWERAGE PRIOR TO PUMPING IT OUT AS DRINKING WATER