Environmental Intersection by George Lindemann

By Christine Stapleton

 

For the second time in four months, environmentalists seeking to block rocking mining south of Lake Okeechobee have won a favorable appellate court ruling against Palm Beach County and Rinker Materials of Florida.

In a single-page ruling issued today, the Fourth District Court of Appeal blocked plans to build a proposed mine, finding there was not enough evidence to prove aggregate from the mine would be used for either agricultural or public road-building projects.

The county's comprehensive plan allows mining for only three purposes: agriculture, public road and Everglades restoration. Rinker, doing business as Cemex, wants to dig nearly 4,000 acres over 38 years in the area south of Belle Glade and east of State Road 827. The resulting holes would be used to store water.

The Sierra Club and the 1000 Friends of Florida filed a lawsuit in May 2008 to block the mine, claiming Palm Beach county commissioners failed to assess the mine's effect on the environment and that the mine did not conform to the county's comprehensive plan. A lower court judge disagreed and found sufficient evidence to prove that the mine would be used for either agriculture or road building. The group appealed.

"Although there was some evidence that the proposed mine might support agricultural activities, this was a tangential, collateral benefit," the court ruled.

"This is a huge deal," said Robert Hartsell, of the Everglades Law Center, which represented the environmental groups. "These are lands the state of Florida and the federal government are spending billions of dollars to repair, and to dig giant holes in the ground while we're trying to restore the Everglades is poor, poor judgment."

Rinker's attorney, Martin Alexander, declined to comment on the ruling or whether Rinker would ask for a re-hearing.

The ruling is the second loss for mining companies, who are the target of three lawsuits filed by the environmental groups. In August, the appeals court decided that Bergeron Sand and Rock Mine Aggregates could not expand its operations unless it could show that the aggregate it produced would be used for public road projects, a requirement the company said it could not meet.

A lawsuit involving the Lake Harbor Quarry is pending.

Killer pythons in the Everglades are not a joke, a punch line or a great screenplay for a cheesy horror movie. These large constrictor snakes are real and a danger to the ecological and economic vitality of the River of Grass. These invasive snakes are not natural predators helping to maintain an ecological balance in this environment. Rather, these snakes are gobbling deer and alligators whole and putting people in danger.

The fight to eradicate them has become a drain of scarce public funds. And at a time when restoring the deteriorating River of Grass is environmental imperative No. 1 in Florida, the killer snakes are a huge, creepy menace.

So why won’t the Obama administration sign a rule that would ban the trade in these creatures?

Such imported snakes have been sold on the Internet, at swap shops or at flea markets to people wholly unqualified to handle them. In South Florida, when these snakes outgrew owners’ ability to safely keep them at home, they did the easiest — and most irresponsible — thing possible: Released them into the Everglades. Others sometimes escaped during hurricanes.

A group of Florida’s congressional leaders is calling on the president to enact a rule barring commerce in dangerous snakes. In this highly polarized political climate that has stopped law-making in its tracks, the fact that this is a bipartisan group of officials alone should get Mr. Obama’s attention. Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the Democratic side, and Republican Reps. Allen West and David Rivera are among those who are supporting the rule. Here’s want the rule would do: It would put nine species of deadly snakes, including boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons, on a list of banned “injurious species” under the Lacey Act.

The proposal to add the snakes to the list has been under scrutiny for a long five years, predating the current administration in Washington. In 2006, the South Florida Water Management District petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking that Burmese pythons be classified injurious. Eighteen months later, in 2008, Fish and Wildlife sought public comment on the proposal.

A year and a half after that, the U.S. Geological Survey determined that constrictor snakes were a threat to the stability of natural ecosystems. In 2010, Fish and Wildlife issued a proposed rule to label the nine species of snakes as injurious; and in March of this year, the White House Office of Management and Budget/Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs received the final ruling.

This rule has been thoroughly vetted, scientifically and otherwise. It’s time to stop the trafficking in these snakes. Many states, including Florida, are out in front of the federal law, where they have made it illegal to breed, sell or possess these animals. The federal rule would stop movement into the United States and across state lines. For instance, in 2003 Congress banned interstate sale of tigers, lions and other big cats.

Adding the nine species of constrictor snakes to the “injurious” list would go a long way in bolstering Florida’s no-possession law, working hand-in-glove to crack down on this deadly scourge. In the fight to save the Everglades, the federal government should not throw good money after bad. It’s time for the administration to prohibit trade in snakes that have become a real-life horror story.

 

TALLAHASSEE -- Surrounded by environmental officials who served under previous governors, former Gov. Bob Graham forcefully urged Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday to reverse the environmental damage done by lawmakers in the last legislative session and “now lead.”

In a rare rebuke, Graham said the 2011 Legislature “reversed 40 years of Florida’s progress in water and land conservation.’’

“We are in a time machine which has now delivered us back to the 1960s,” Graham said to a rally of activists and former officials of previous administrations outside the Old Capitol.

Graham stopped short, however, of condemning Scott for failing to renounce the deep budget cuts that led to massive reductions in staff and funding at water management districts around the state. He pointed to a statement Scott made last month, and an opinion piece the governor wrote this week, suggesting that water policy and restoring the Everglades will be a priority for his administration. Graham sounded a hopeful plea that the freshman governor and his staff will see political value to preserving Florida’s resources.

“We commend Gov. Scott, now we ask for his leadership,’’ Graham, a Democrat, said of the current governor, a Republican. He noted, however, that the $210 million in property tax savings achieved by Scott and lawmakers saved property owners the equivalent of two pizzas a year but cost the state the “dramatic reduction in our ability to assure sustained quality water and flood control protection and, yes, the restoration of the Everglades.” In an opinion piece in the Tampa Tribune on Sunday, Scott said that he wants to create a stable regulatory environment that focuses more dollars on environmental projects than bureaucracy, but added that “does not mean lower environmental standards.” He also said that he expect water manager to justify every dollar they spend but wants to “look to public-private partnerships to help meet our water quantity and quality goals.”

Graham announced that he and the state’s top environmental advocacy groups have formed the Florida Conservation Coalition to elicit public support and to join Scott’s “army” for a reversal of the damaging policies.

“The governor in Florida for the last 40 years has had the responsibility for protecting that public asset,’’ he said. “Governor, we call on you with our thanks and appreciation for the statements you have made. Now lead.”

Graham questioned the motives for reversing years of water policy to create a surge of jobs in Florida.

“There are over one million unsold homes. There are hundreds of thousands of vacant commercial facilities. Does anyone believe that by changing the character of our water management districts we are going to suddenly put millions of people back to work in construction in Florida?” Graham asked.

He warned that the legislative cuts to water management district funding, and changes in water policy, resulted in dismantling the professional staff at the water districts, removed the authority of their citizen boards and “has raised questions as to Florida’s long-term commitment to Everglades restoration.”

Graham said proposals now pending before the Legislature, such as a plan to allow for 50-year permits to extract water from the Floridan Aquifer, threaten the state’s water supply. Meanwhile, the halt to the state conservation land acquisition program weakens protections of floodplains and rivers, he said.

“We have to stop the hemorrhaging — do no harm,” Graham said.

Nathaniel Reed, a former environmental adviser to Gov. Claude Kirk and President Richard Nixon, joined the rally and blasted the Legislature’s decision to “eviscerate” major parts of the state’s growth-management laws, including limiting the state’s role in reviewing local land-planning decisions.

“The developers paid for and they got what they wanted,’’ Reed said. “It’s a disgrace.”

He chastised lawmakers for attempting to shift control of water management districts from the local level to Tallahassee. “I can think of nobody that knows less about water management in Florida than the members of the two chambers opposite me,’’ he said.

State Sen. Paula Dockery, a Lakeland Republican who fought many of the proposed budget cuts, said it was time to take politics out of water policy.

“The governor should be accountable, not the Legislature, for water management districts,’’ she said. She also urged Scott “to follow in the footsteps of some of our greatest governors who have made water conservation a priority.”

Graham said the group will not only monitor water management district decisions and conduct grass roots conferences but will have a presence in next year’s elections.

“We want to alert the voters of 2012 as to who was responsible for what happened in 2011,” he said.

Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@MiamiHerald.com and on Twitter @MaryEllenKlas