A month-long hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades didn’t result in much of a haul, but scientists and outdoors experts say the data collected will be invaluable.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/10/3227095/everglades-python-haul-low-but.html#storylink=cpy
By CHARLES RABIN
crabin@miamiherald.com
The numbers are relatively benign, and they didn’t change much in last weekend of the Florida Everglades great python hunt, but event sponsors are calling it nothing short of a great success.
Reports as of Friday were that 50 Burmese pythons had been captured during the month-long chase that ended at midnight Sunday, and Sunday evening, Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino said he wasn’t aware whether the total had increased.
Still, he called ridding the Everglades of any of the hugely invasive predators that have caused havoc with the ecosystem, and which have been seen challenging top-of-the-food-chain alligators for supremacy, nothing short of fantastic.
“We’ll have a better handle on the exact numbers by late Monday or Tuesday,” Pino said. “But undoubtedly for us, it’s a complete success. You can argue it’s not a huge number, but its 50 pythons not in the ecosystem causing havoc.”
Hunters had to register with the wildlife commission, take a quick online course, and follow specific humane rules the commission determined were best fit to kill the Southeast Asian native monsters that can grow to close to 20 feet long. The pythons can be legally killed only by a gunshot to the head or by beheading with a machete.
Hunters have until 5 p.m. Monday to turn in what they have captured. They can keep the skins to do with as they wish. Prizes of up to $1,500 for the most pythons caught, and $1,000 for largest python captured, will be awarded at Zoo Miami on Saturday.
No one knows exactly how the Burmese python made its way to South Florida, but it has been around for decades, and multiplying at an alarming rate. It’s not uncommon to find females carrying dozens upon dozens of eggs. The largest python caught to date was 17.5 feet long and weighed 164 pounds, though six to nine feet is more typical in the Everglades.
Scientists estimate there are now tens of thousands of slithery reptiles — that used to be common as pets — in the wild. Though they are large, they are extremely difficult to spot, often hiding among weeds or in dark water.
Last year the Obama administration banned the importation of four species of constrictor, including the Burmese pythons. It is also illegal to keep them as pets unless you can produce paperwork showing you had the creature prior to July 2010.
Pino said by Monday night his agency should have a better feel for the totals, but, he said, that really doesn’t matter.
“The data we’ll get will be unbelievable,” he said.
Stalking a Python: Florida’s wildlife agency is organizing its first python hunting competition. A group known as the Florida Python Hunters is out to win the challenge. Will it even catch one?
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: January 23, 2013
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles and crossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.
But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt is taking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red “man-van” (a well-lived-in Toyota Sienna) and a blue Prius (“You can’t beat the mileage,” says one).
And when they get lucky, they clamber down from their vehicles and snare enormous Burmese pythons with their bare hands, shrugging off the inevitable bites.
Two of the hunters are brothers, reared in the swamps of Central Florida with eight other siblings. The third is a Utah native, now a Miami high school teacher, who met one of the brothers in the apartment building they share. They quickly discovered they have much in common — they are Mormons, for one thing, and not afraid of snakes, for another.
Theirs was truly a chance encounter, considering that pythons far outnumber snake-savvy Mormons in South Florida.
“We don’t hunt on the Sabbath,” declared Blake Russ, 24, a Florida International University student, as he peered out the open door of the man-van.
But on this day, the brothers are in it to win it. They have joined Florida’s “Python Challenge 2013,” the open-invitation contest organized by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. So frustrated are wildlife officials with the prolific Burmese pythons that on Jan. 12 they began a one-month python hunt in South Florida, opening it up to just about anybody over the age of 18. The hunt is taking place mostly on state land, not national park land, which is off limits.
The only requirement is that contestants must take a training course — online. A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the hunter who catches the longest snake and $1,500 to the one who “harvests” the most snakes. About 1,300 people have signed up.
The pythons, considered invasive and uninvited, arrived here as pets. After some escaped or were let loose by fed-up owners, they slithered toward marshy land, mostly in and around the Everglades. There, they snack regularly on native wading birds, gators, deer, bobcat, opossums, raccoons and rabbits. They breed easily, laying 8 to 100 eggs, depending on the size of the female.
Killing the snake is a requirement of the “Python Challenge,” and for this the event’s Web site suggests a firearm or a captive bolt (the slaughterhouse stunning tool used to chilling effect in the film “No Country for Old Men”). Chopping off the head is permissible, the Web site explains, but difficult, because the brain lives on (for a while). For decapitation, machetes are the state-recommended weapon.
“Regardless of the technique you choose, make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain,” the Web site states.
The task is daunting. Estimates of how many Burmese pythons live in the wild here range from 5,000 to more than 100,000.
“Do we really know?” asked Skip Snow, a wildlife biologist at Everglades National Park. “No. No, we don’t.”
The snakes are everywhere and nowhere. Catching them is easy. The pythons — which can stretch to 20 feet and more — are lazy. They dislike moving. They rarely travel. Instead, they wait out their prey and ambush it, sinking their teeth in to hold it in place while they wrap it up tight, suffocate it and swallow it whole, little by little.
It is finding them that will drain hunters of all patience and fortitude, until the clocks ticks down and it’s time for a beer, or, for the three hunters in their man-van, a roadside fruit shake. Because the snakes blend in with the yellowish, brownish brush here, they are almost as hard to find as a Glenn Beck fan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
“It’s like looking for a piece of camouflage,” said Devin Belliston, 26, the science teacher in the group.
Seeing just one “Burm” is enough to rev up a hunter for days.
“It’s like seeing Bigfoot,” said Bryan Russ, 35, Mr. Russ’s older brother, who once unleashed 30 garter snakes in an Idaho college dormitory. (He got kicked out of school, which he called a “great life lesson.”)
Mr. Belliston and Blake Russ make up part of a fivesome who call themselves the Florida Python Hunters. Founded by Ruben Ramirez, who has been catching snakes for 27 years, the five men are licensed to hunt pythons. They have an impressive success rate at spotting snakes, catching them with their hands and turning them over to state wildlife officials. Last year, Mr. Ramirez and George Brana nabbed an imposing 16-foot, 8-inch python. Mr. Russ and Mr. Belliston, who started python hunting in May, have caught 15 pythons since then.
“You grab them, and let them strike at you and strike at you until they wear themselves out,” said Blake Russ, who leaned out of the man-van as it rolled slowly near an abandoned mango orchard and a canal. His eyes scanned the edge of the grass. Nothing.
Once Blake rode a scooter to a hunt, his flip-flops planted firmly on the floorboard. He spotted a python, hopped off, wrangled it into a pillow case, hopped back on and sped away.
Studying the python lifestyle is critical to success. Hunters must know that the best time to find one is the morning after the temperature drops into the 60s or below. The snakes surface to warm up in the sun. They stay close to water, so canals and levies are a good bet. They like rock piles.
Most savvy hunters stick to gravel paths or roads that abut grassy areas with water nearby.
At night, especially in summer, the hunters “road cruise.” Pythons come out then, sometimes onto the asphalt, because it is cooler at night. Sound does not bother them.
When caught, “they squirt out a mixture of feces and urine,” Bryan Russ said. “It smells like musk, like wet dog. Ruben calls it, ‘The smell of success.’ ”
How many pythons have been caught in the competition’s first week? As of Tuesday, all of 27. Mr. Ramirez and his team have caught eight.
The men scoff at those machete-toting novices from out of state who have shown up in their python-hunting finery.
“This guy had brand new clothes, beautiful new boots,” Mr. Ramirez said, of a fellow he had spotted nearby. “He was standing there on the water’s edge. I was just waiting for a gator to take him and do a gator death roll.”
Their prediction: After a couple of days of tedium, “these guys, they’ll all be like, ‘I’m going to South Beach,’ ” Bryan Russ said.
But the Florida Python Hunters persist.
Spying a black clump on a patch of grass, Blake leapt from the man-van and scooped it up. The Everglades racer whipped around and bit him several times. “It’s like a pinch,” he said. Blood bubbled up.
Not quite a python, but for these hobby herpetologists, any snake is better than no snake.
“People should really know that this is what it’s like,” he said, referring to the success rate, not the blood.
By day’s end, the team’s python count was zero. Nothing but optimism prevailed. “We’re going out road cruising tonight,” Blake Russ said. “Do you want to come?”
Ever fearful that Florida isn’t seen as insane enough, the state has invited the gun-toting world to come here and blast a python.
Would you like to make some extra money, and at the same time run the risk of being eaten by a carnivorous reptile the size of a war canoe?
If your answer is “yes,” I have an exciting opportunity for you. It’s called the Python Challenge, and I am not making it up. It’s a real event that was dreamed up by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which apparently was concerned that Florida does not seem insane enough to people in normal states.
The Python Challenge is a month-long contest; its purpose, according to the official website (pythonchallenge.org) is “to raise public awareness about Burmese pythons.”
Q. What do they mean by “raise public awareness about?”
A. They mean “kill.”
The contest is open to anybody who registers, pays a $25 fee and takes an online training course; so far about 400 people have signed up. These people have from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10 to go out in the Everglades and raise public awareness on as many pythons as they can. There’s a $1,500 prize for whoever kills the most pythons, a $1,000 prize for whoever kills the longest python, and a $500 prize for whoever kills the python with the best personality.
I’m kidding about that last prize, of course. Burmese pythons do not have personalities: All they do is eat and destroy the ecosystem. They are the teenage males of the animal kingdom. That’s why the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is trying to get rid of them.
Be advised, however, that you cannot kill these pythons any old way you want. No, sir: This is an official state-sponsored event, and if there is one word that comes to mind whenever you hear the name “Florida,” that word is “ethics.” The Python Challenge guidelines clearly state that you have — this is an actual quote — “an ethical obligation to ensure a Burmese python is killed in a humane manner.” That means you cannot kill your python using cruel and inhumane methods such as forcing it to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo until it commits suicide, or placing it at the entrance to a Boca Raton restaurant just as the Early Bird special begins, where it would be trampled to death in seconds.
So how do you ethically kill a Burmese python? According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, you can use a device called a “captive bolt,” or you can shoot it in the head with a firearm of “a safe, but effective caliber.” (Got that? You want your caliber to be safe, but also effective.)
You are also permitted to whack off the python’s head with a machete, provided you do so in an ethical manner. To quote the commission: “Make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain.” (If you think I’m making any of this up, I urge you to go read the Python Challenge guidelines.)
One thing the guidelines are not very specific about is how you’re supposed to catch the python in the first place. I happen to have some experience in this area. A few years ago, I captured a snake that somehow got into my office and onto my desk, despite the fact that I live in Coral Gables, where snakes are a clear violation of the zoning code. The technique I used to capture this particular snake was as follows:
1. Make an extremely non-masculine sound such as might be emitted by a recently castrated Teletubby.
2. Run out to the patio and grab the barbecue tongs.
3. Run back into the office and, while squinting really hard so as not to make eye contact with the snake, pick it up with the tongs.
4. Run, whimpering, back out onto the patio with mincing steps and quickly release the snake in such a manner that it falls into your swimming pool.
5. Change your underwear.
Bear in mind that the snake I captured was of the non-python variety, and was only about two feet long. To capture a Burmese python, which can grow to nearly 20 feet, you will need really big barbecue tongs.
At this point you are no doubt wondering: “If I capture a python, is it safe to eat the meat?” I will answer that with another question: Where do you think Slim Jims come from?
No! That is a joke, and as such it is protected from lawsuits by the Constitution. The actual answer, according to the Python Challenge website, is that “neither the Florida Department of Health nor the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have stated that python meat is safe to consume.” I interpret that to mean: “Yes.”
Here’s some more good news: You can keep your python skins! The website lists the names of some companies that might want them, including a company called Dragon Backbone, which “will trade a knife for four python skins at least four feet long.” (I am still not making this up.) The website also says that a company called All American Gator Products “can tan a Burmese python skin and fashion it into something you want.” (The website does not come right out and use the term “thong,” but we can read between the lines.)
In conclusion, I think the Python Challenge is one of those ideas that cannot possibly go wrong, and, assuming it goes off with a minimum of unnecessary deaths, it should be extended to other unwanted species, starting with a Cockroach Challenge. So to all you python hunters, I say: Good luck! We Floridians all look forward to the big moment when the dead pythons are counted and the winner declared. It’s bound to be exciting. You know how good this state is at counting things.
By Dave Barry
If we’re serious about sending forth an army of gun-toting, beer-drinking, redneck snake-hunters to wade into the Everglades and eradicate the python hordes, we’re going to need more than a couple of piddling cash prizes.
We’ll need a queen.
Any officially sanctioned snake-killing frenzy worth a damn comes with a beauty contest. Apparently, girls in bathing attire, presumably of the snakeskin variety, are downright essential to a successful hunt.
So far, only about 400 contestants have signed up for South Florida’s “2013 Python Challenge,” which kicks off Saturday. Compare that to the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater (that’s the other Sweetwater) which brings in about 30,000 apparent lunatics every year to a dusty town in the middle of Texas with a population of not quite 11,000, where the only other tourist attraction is the National WASP Museum (for the women Army fliers, not the insects.) South Florida’s python shindig would need 18 million attendees just to keep pace, proportionately, with the festivities in Sweetwater.
What Sweetwater offers, along with the rattlesnake holocaust, is a Miss Snake Charmer, though the title is a bit of misnomer, given that pageant winners are required to decapitate a rattlesnake. I dug up this charming Associated Press quote from Laney Wallace, 16, Miss Snake Charmer circa 2011. “Tomorrow I get to skin snakes and chop their heads off. And I’m super excited about it.”
Go ahead with your snide Freudian analysis, but last year that giant posse of displaced Texas cowboys collected bounties on 1,700 pounds of rattlesnake redeemed at $5.50 a pound.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the hunter who brings in the longest python, and $1,500 for the fellow who bring in the most pythons. Of course, certain rules apply. No roadkill. No pets. “DON’T dismember pythons into more than two pieces or they will not qualify for the ‘longest snake’ category.”
Also, pythons must be dispatched humanely. Miss Snake Charmer would be disappointed, but Florida rules won’t allow decapitations. Gunshots to the head, however, will be okay. Also, “captive bolts,” a slaughterhouse instrument familiar to moviegoers as the killer’s favored weapon in No Country for Old Men. A special FWC online python challenge training course suggests: “To target the correct area, draw an imaginary line from the rear left of the head to the right eye, and then draw another line from the rear right of the head to the left eye. While one person is holding the snake in place, position the captive bolt where those lines intersect. The bolt must enter at a slight angle, not flush to the skull.”
Imagine some conscientious serpent hunter, trying to figure the prescribed humane angle while wrestling a 15-foot Burmese python in two feet of black swamp water. No, this particular snake extravaganza will be all about gunplay. If the hunters can find something to shoot.
Apparently, the idea of a python hunt came out of the governor’s office, where it was conceived as a “market driven” solution to a fast-breeding exotic that’s caused considerable damage to native wading bird and small mammal populations. (Instead of, say, pushing Congress to ban the importation of exotic reptiles.)
But Michael Dorcas, a herpetology researcher, author of I nvasive Pythons in the United States and an expert in these stealthy exotics, suggested Monday that the marketplace may seem a little bare. “The one thing I know about these snakes,” said Dorcas, who knows everything about these snakes, “is that they’re very difficult to find.” Dorcas said that Burmese pythons are so secretive and so well camouflaged, “we’ve walked right past a 15-foot python without seeing it.”
He said the snakes range across thousands of square kilometers of southern Florida, most of that habitat away from roads and canals and nearly inaccessible to most hunters. “Probably, some pythons will be removed, but the damage to the overall population will be minimal.”
Dorcas worries more about unintended consequences to other populations, including humans. The Sun-Sentinel reported that hunters from 17 states have signed up for the month-long python chase. They’ll be coming into unfamiliar terrain, laden with poisonous native snakes, underwater limestone holes and other local hazards. The required 30-minute online training course seems a bit inadequate.
Dorcas is more worried about native snakes, likely to be scarfed up by frustrated python hunters, ready to blast away at any reticulated reptile that happens their way. Saturday could be a very bad day to be a brown water snake caught out without proper identification.
Ironically, the Rick Scott Python Challenge comes the same year that the famous Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Ga., immortalized in the Harry Crews novel Feast of Snakes, stopped rounding up snakes. Wildlife officials noticed that the hunters had been pouring kerosene down tortoise burrows, setting them alight and catching the panicked snakes as they escaped. Several hundred other species also resided in those burned-out turtle abodes. Meanwhile, the Eastern rattlesnake has neared extinction. So this year, the roundup became a non-lethal wildlife celebration.
Texans, of course, don’t care much about biodiversity and the relative value of venomous native snakes. Rattlesnake hunts persist, guilt free. Maybe some of the promotional ideas that make these Texas hunts so damn successful might be worth emulating in python-plagued Florida. For instance, in Brownsville, home of the Brownsville Rattlesnake Roundup, locals distinguish themselves from the crazies in Sweetwater by devouring the still-beating hearts of freshly killed rattlesnakes. “They’re little-bitty. You don’t really chew them up. You just put them in your mouth and swallow them,” a festival organizer explained to BigCountry.com, an Abilene, Texas, news website.
A first-time taster compared rattlesnake heart to “eating a slug….. It sure doesn’t taste like chicken.”
Who knows if the still-beating heart of a Burmese python heart in South Florida would have the same gourmet appeal as a west Texas rattlesnake? No, what we need is a queen, Miss Python Challenge 2013.
With a little luck, she’ll be as adept at public relations and reptile dissection as Miss Snake Charmer Laney Wallace, who didn’t slither away from her queenly duties. “You have to make sure you don’t pop the bladder,” she warned. “That’s a huge mess.”
By Fred Grimm
Nearly 400 sign up to shoot pythons in Glades
Participants coming from 17 states
The State of Florida is offering a $1500 prize to whoever can kill the most Burmese pythons.
Nearly 400 people have signed up to enter the Everglades and do battle with Burmese pythons, the giant constrictors that have emerged as the latest and weirdest threat to South Florida's wildlife.
The 2013 Python Challenge, which begins Saturday, has attracted participants and media interest from around the United States for a monthlong event that will feature prizes of $1,000 for catching the longest snakes and $1,500 for catching the most.
Participants do not need hunting licenses, unless they're under 18, or have experience with snakes. The only required training can be done online. Given those slender requirements, some have questioned the wisdom of encouraging amateurs with firearms, particularly non-hunters, to take on pythons in the wild.
"Going out into the bush in Florida is a potentially dangerous thing to do," said Stuart Pimm, a prominent Everglades scientist who is professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. "This is very, very rough terrain. Getting stuck out there without enough water could be a life-terminating experience."
But assuming people use caution, he said, they could kill enough of the giant snakes to help the Everglades.
"This is a very serious threat indeed," he said. "It could radically change the composition of the species that we find in the Everglades, and the Everglades have enough threats without the snakes. I think extreme measures are extremely appropriate."
Warren Booth, assistant professor of biology at the University of Tulsa and science director of the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers, which represents the reptile industry, said he saw the hunt as a potential "disaster" for people and native snakes.
"You've got venomous species, like the eastern diamondback rattlesnake and the cottonmouth," he said. "I think we're going to see native wildlife being killed and a potential human safety issue with people being bitten."
Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is supervising the hunt, said the commission will have extra law enforcement officers on the ground for the event and will provide training on identifying venomous snakes and avoiding harm to native wildlife.
"Of course any time you do something like this people are going to have concerns," she said. "I think that overall, people understand that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with and are very supportive and understand that these actions are warranted."
Participants have signed up from 17 states. Among them is Tyler Newbolt, of Lake Worth, who is having a friend fly down from Michigan for a week of python hunting. Newbolt, 27, an experienced hunter of hog and deer, is looking forward to the chance to go after an unusual species with his .22 caliber rifle.
"It's just something fun to do," he said. "I'm definitely interested in the Everglades and the ecosystem. I'm a big advocate for the Everglades."
Bruce Moore, of Pembroke Pines, plans to bring a pistol loaded with snake shot, pellet-filled cartridges that allow a pistol or rifle to function as a mini-shotgun.
"I love the Everglades," said Moore, 47. "I think the Everglades is very important. I want to do something to make a difference. I'm not going to be reckless about it. If you run into a 15-foot python, that's a powerful animal."
The FWC's recommended killing method is a bullet or shotgun blast to the head, or the use of captive bolt, a device used in slaughterhouses that drives a metal shaft into the brain. Decapitation is considered inhumane, unless the brain is immediately destroyed, because consciousness in snakes can persist long after the head is separated from the body.
Burmese pythons, native to southern Asia, became established in the Everglades through the exotic pet trade. They consume small mammals, wading birds, alligators and full-grown deer. The largest one caught so far stretched 17 feet, seven inches and contained 87 eggs.
The Python Challenge starts Saturday at 10 a.m. with a kick-off event of training and talks on identifying and handling pythons at the University of Florida's Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie. The hunt itself starts at 1 p.m. Saturday and ends at midnight Feb. 10. An awards ceremony will be held Feb. 16 at Zoo Miami.
Frank Mazzotti, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida and a well-known expert on Everglades wildlife, who helped design the Python Challenge, said he understands the concerns and doesn't expect such activities alone will solve the problem.
Mazzotti said the idea came from the office of Gov. Rick Scott, who he said wanted a "market-force" approach to the python problem. A one-month hunt won't eradicate the snakes, Mazzotti said, but it could provide valuable information about the snakes and the effectiveness of using hunters to go after them.
"I don't think a single event like this will be a silver bullet," he said.
The snakes will be examined, providing scientists with information on their diet, age, sex, genetics and other biological characteristics. Having hundreds of people looking for them at once will give a unique, simultaneous snapshot of where they are and where they may not be, with participants asked to note the location, water level, weather conditions and time of day, he said.
"This will give us the most complete sample that's ever been taken of pythons," he said.
Saving Florida’s riversOUR OPINION: Urgent task can no longer be postponed
By The Miami Herald Editorial
HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com
Like Florida’s Everglades, the unique “River of Grass,” many of the state’s other rivers are also beset by pollution and fluctuating water levels thanks to seasonal droughts and increasing demand for drinking water in urban areas. Unlike the Everglades, however, many of these threatened rivers are getting no relief. So says a year-long study, Down by the river, of 22 rivers statewide conducted by the Orlando Sentinel.
From the Apalachicola River in the Panhandle to the Miami River in the heart of the state’s largest urban core, Florida’s waterways, which stem from springs and lakes and often intersect, need more help. There are no quick fixes, and certainly no cheap remedies. The state doesn’t completely neglect its abundant waterways — Florida taxpayers already send more than $1 billion a year in fees and taxes to several state agencies that regulate waterways. But all who understand the dimensions of the widespread pollution say much more money will be needed over time.
Largely because of the expense, the state has spent 14 long years resisting the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s 1998 requirement that states write water-quality controls with effective measures to curb pollution in their rivers, lakes and other waterways by 2004.
Florida balked, citing enormous costs, with state officials and EPA bosses in a perpetual sparring match. The state missed the 2004 deadline, and in 2008, exasperated environmental groups sued the state in federal court, citing the federal Clean Water Act. Finally, under court pressure, the EPA agreed to write the rules and impose them on Florida, which continued to resist. But in what is largely seen as a bit of election-year politicking, the EPA in late 2011 backed off, saying the state could write the rules after all.
Still, Florida officials, citing huge compliance expenses for urban areas, industry and agribusiness, resisted. And all the while, the state’s waterways grew more nasty things like algae blooms and dead zones, as runoff of every kind continued. But the end of this battle may be in sight. Last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle denied the state’s request for more time. He ordered the EPA to implement its water-quality rules in Florida.
What the state does next is anybody’s guess. But what it should do is comply with the judge’s ruling. This will not be easy, yet it’s vitally necessary if the state is to protect its drinking-water supply, which come from waterways, springs and underground aquifers. The costs are high, but the stakes are higher. If Florida is to continue to attract new business investment and residents it has to safeguard this most fundamental basic need of existence.
There are some ongoing efforts to protect and restore some waterways. In the 1980s, the Save our Rivers program bought nearly 2 million acres of open space to protect river basins. The restoration of the historic, north-flowing St. Johns River is one of the state’s most ambitious environmental projects. So is the restoration of the Kissimmee River to its traditional ox-bow flow by the U.S. Corps of Engineers . The cost for both restorations totals $2.5 billion so far.
And then, of course, there is the 20-year plan to restore the Everglades, which is an example of how the state’s waterways are interconnected. The Kissimmee River, located north of Lake Okeechobee, dumps polluting nutrients and urban runoff into the lake, which in turn dumps them into the Everglades and magnificent river estuaries on both coasts of Florida. Cleaning up the Kissimmee is as necessary a step toward Everglades restoration as all the other related cleanup projects in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
It’s also an example of how complex the state’s waterway systems are and why cleaning up and protecting all the state’s water bodies from further pollution can’t be avoided any longer.
In 2003, when a leaky gypsum stack at an abandoned phosphate plant threatened to kill a vast cross section of Tampa Bay's marine life, Charles Kovach came up with a solution that saved the bay.
But this month, 17 years after he was hired by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Kovach was one of 58 DEP employees laid off by the agency. Kovach believes those layoffs were designed to loosen regulation of polluting industries.
"I've seen the way politics has influenced that agency in the past, but never like this," Kovach said. "It's not about compliance (with the rules). It's about making things look like they're compliant."
On top of the layoffs is the fact that DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard has installed a number of new people in the agency's upper ranks whose prior experience was working as engineers or consultants for companies the DEP regulates.
The DEP's deputy secretary in charge of regulatory programs previously spent a decade as an engineer who specialized in getting clients their environmental permits. Another engineer who worked for developers heads up the division of water resources. A lawyer who helped power plants get their permits is now in charge of air pollution permitting. An engineering company lobbyist became a deputy director overseeing water and sewer facilities.
And the DEP's chief operating officer is a former chemical company and real estate executive from Brandon. He's not an employee, though. He's a consultant who's being paid $83 an hour — more than Vinyard makes on a per-hour basis — to advise Vinyard and his staff on ways to save money.
The DEP "was never great," said Mark Bardolph, a 27-year DEP veteran — and onetime whistle-blower — who was laid off from the Tallahassee office. "But now it's all a political farce."
DEP press secretary Patrick Gillespie defended the agency's staffing under Vinyard.
"The department strives to employ the most qualified staff members and seeks a diverse group of individuals to lead and support our mission of protecting the environment," Gillespie said in an e-mail. The layoffs weren't aimed at politicizing the agency or placating industry, Gillespie said. Instead, he said, the DEP was ensuring that "staffing levels are reflected by workloads and supporting the mission of protecting the environment."
The agency's leaders "have spent months assessing staff and structures to identify inefficiencies and improvements and how to more effectively carry out our duties," he said.
As for Brandon-based consultant Randall F. "Randy" Greene, Gillespie said he was hired because he "has a background in financial consulting and transactions and specializes in strategic and financial planning for companies and their officers."
However, Gillespie could provide no contracts or other paperwork documenting what Greene does or when and why he was hired. Gillespie said he only works part-time but a state website lists Greene as a full-time employee. Greene could not be reached for comment, but his Linkedin entry says he has served as the DEP's chief operating officer since September 2011.
The hiring of people from the private sector to run the agency's most important divisions has been going on since Vinyard, a shipyard executive, was appointed to the office in January 2011 by Gov. Rick Scott. According to former employees, the hiring and layoffs reflect the Scott administration's pro-business attitudes.
"It's a hatred of regulation in general and in particular environmental regulations," Bardolph said. "It's profit that counts."
Kovach, Bardolph and the other employees who were laid off learned their fate in November, but were kept on the payroll until this month to give them time to find new employment. One was notified via e-mail while on active duty with the Coast Guard, according to the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
"The majority of positions they were eliminating are compliance and enforcement positions," said PEER's Jerry Phillips, a former DEP attorney. "They want to essentially turn the agency over to the regulated industries."
Gillespie called Phillips' allegations "baseless" and said, "Rather than allow for environmental harm to occur and fine an entity after the fact, the department has put more effort into outreach and education in order to keep businesses and other permit holders in compliance."
Both Kovach and Bardolph said the layoffs appeared to target more experienced employees, regardless of their past achievements or the importance of their jobs.
"They got rid of everyone with any history and knowledge," Kovach said. The people who remain, he predicted, will be so cowed they "won't be able to speak their minds."
Kovach was not known to be shy about speaking up. Nine years ago, when the bankrupt Piney Point phosphate plant began leaking and threatened to spill millions of gallons of waste into the bay, it was his proposal that saved the day: load it onto barges that sprayed it across a 20,000-square-mile area in the Gulf of Mexico.
When his bosses told him he was being laid off, Kovach said, "they said, 'Don't you think it's about time you look for a new career?' " When he asked what they meant, "they suggested academia."
Bardolph had run into trouble for speaking out before. As a state dairy inspector, he filed a complaint in 1999 alleging the DEP had failed to protect the aquifer from animal waste. As a result, he was transferred to a section that had nothing to do with permitting. Instead, he worked with people whose wells had been contaminated to help them find a new source of water. He was assisting a dozen or so when the ax fell, he said, and he was escorted out of the office with his belongings in a box.
The people deciding who was laid off "looked at an organizational chart, but they didn't even know what people did," Bardolph said. "My boss was just outraged that they got rid of me."
Then, Bardolph said, they got rid of his boss, too.
By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Craig Pittman can be reached at craig@tampabay.com.