Environmental Intersection by George Lindemann

Florida may be the Sunshine State but it’s the drinking water in our underground aquifers and wetlands as big as the Everglades — serving as bird and wildlife habitat and helping cleanse rainwater back into aquifers, rivers and lakes — that has enabled millions of people to move to this paradise we call home.

As the Legislature moves at warp speed to end its 60-day session by Friday, three issues crucial to South Florida’s ability to grow responsibly and prosper with sufficient clean water are in play. Legislators should restore funding to water management districts, keep their hands off Miami-Dade County’s urban development boundary and provide land for expansion of Florida International University’s medical school at the current fairgrounds in southwest Miami-Dade without putting into jeopardy environmentally sensitive land now being eyed for new fairgrounds.

Fund water districts

After decades of new developments putting pressure on Florida’s water supply, wise state leaders in the 1970s, led by then-Gov. Reubin Askew, created land planning agencies and five regional water districts based not on political power plays but on the state’s natural watershed areas. In 1976, Florida voters approved giving district boards, appointed by the governor, the authority to raise taxes to buy land and manage the water supply in their area. The districts have been instrumental in ensuring there’s enough water before any new massive developments can pop up, and that floodwaters get directed away from existing homes and businesses.

Then last year the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott — in the name of “economic development” — stripped the state Department of Community Affairs of most growth planning duties, decimated Everglades restoration projects and gutted regional water districts’ budgets by lowering their tax rates, crippling budgets statewide by $703 million. That sent almost 600 of Florida’s top scientists, engineers, flood managers and planning experts packing. All that pain, and the typical taxpaying property owner saved $20 to $40 a year.

Now there’s a chance to restore the five districts’ tax rate cap, but SB 1986 carries meddling strings that would require water districts to get their budgets, at all stages, approved by the Legislative Budget Commission. Such legislative interference not only diffuses accountability away from the governor’s office, where the buck should stop, but injects another political layer on water use decisions that should be based on science, not on what pricey lobbyists say is right.

Restoring funding is a desperately needed first step in getting water resources back on track. A second step would restore water districts’ ability to pay for projects through the sale of bonds. But budget leaders should butt out of micromanaging water policy.

FIU expansion

An amendment that would force a land swap to help FIU’s medical school expand to land around the current fairgrounds south of the campus sets up a conservation nightmare. The problem isn’t the expansion, but the swap that would turn over 350 acres of wetlands in the Bird Drive Everglades Basin for a new fairgrounds far west. That land was bought by the state to protect wetlands and water recharge areas and prevent flooding. As Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez points out, fast-tracking is not advisable. That land is not the right fit for parking lots and buildings.

Miami-Dade UDB

At least a move by Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, to require only a majority vote by local governments to change long-term growth plans has died. For now. The change would have meant that Miami-Dade’s urban development boundary — which protects taxpayers from willy-nilly growth in the county’s far western fringe near the Everglades — could be changed by a simple majority instead of a super majority commission vote as Miami-Dade now requires.

Stop meddling with local control, legislators.

Opposition from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez appears to have killed a complicated land swap proposed by Florida International University — at least the most controversial part of the deal, aimed at moving the county fairgrounds onto wetlands bordering the Everglades.

In a letter sent Monday to state lawmakers, Gimenez said he objected to pushing the Miami-Dade County Fair & Exposition from its long-time home abutting FIU’s main campus to a site outside the county’s sprawl-controlling urban development boundary (UDB.)

He repeated the message during an interview with The Miami Herald editorial board. While the county has been working to help “land-locked’’ FIU find ways to expand its main campus and new medical school in West Miami-Dade, he said, “I don’t support moving the county fairgrounds outside the UDB.’’

Laura Reynolds, executive director of The Tropical Audubon Society, one of several environmental groups that campaigned against moving the fair to a mucky, frequently flooded area favored by wading birds, praised the mayor’s stance as “great news.’’

But another part of the proposal may still have life in it. In the waning days of the legislative session, FIU lobbyists and Miami-Dade lawmakers continue to push an amendment to secure a 350-acre tract bought by the state more than a decade ago for $3.7 million for a since-scrapped Everglades restoration project. The university’s original plan was to give Miami-Dade the wetlands tract as a site for a new fairground and park. In exchange, FIU hoped to take over the existing 87-acre fairgrounds.

But even if the Legislature does sign off on the free, 99-year lease FIU seeks, the idea of moving the state’s largest county fair to land originally purchased for conservation now appears dead at the county level.

Doris Howe, a spokeswoman for the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, which had been working for 18 months with FIU and the fair’s board of directors to find potential new locations, said the mayor’s letter to lawmakers about the wetlands west of the UDB had “made it really clear that it’s not under consideration to become a fairgrounds.”

“Without question, we’re going to abide by what our chief executive says,’’ Howe said.

FIU administrators did not respond to repeated interview requests. But Sandra Gonzalez-Levy, an FIU senior vice president, issued a brief statement Tuesday saying FIU was continuing to work with the county and fair to explore options “that could support our growth plan and need for additional land contiguous to FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Moving the fair would make the current fairgrounds available to FIU.”

FIU had pitched its proposal as a win-win that would help a university with a fast-growing medical school that has run out of real estate while also preserving undeveloped land near the Everglades.

The school, along with parks managers and the nonprofit company that runs the fair, scouted 16 sites in Northwest Miami-Dade for potential new locations of up to 250 acres, most needed for parking up to 18,000 cars. The top choice was a chunk of wetlands along Tamiami Trail a few miles east of Krome Avenue that the South Florida Water Management District was considering selling as “surplus.”

By ANN ZIMMERMAN

Fresh-fallen snow may get all the credit, but many ski resorts can't keep their runs open without water that is piped in, often from miles away. Control of that water is the source of a battle between resort operators and the U.S. Forest Service.

Federal officials have until Monday to respond to a lawsuit by a trade group for the owners and operators of ski destinations, challenging a new directive that requires resorts operating on Forest Service lands to transfer water rights to the federal government.

 

The Vail Daily/Associated Press

A skier hits the powder on Vail Mountain in Colorado in February. A new federal policy on water rights affects such resorts on Forest Service land.

The group's suit, filed in U.S. district court in Colorado in January, alleges the change is an "uncompensated taking of private property" by the federal government. Ski-area owners contend it will diminish the value of the water rights they obtained "at great expense," according to the suit, and prevents them from selling those rights to anyone but another ski operation. The Forest Service says the new directive will guarantee the water will always remain with the mountain.

Ski resorts require considerable quantities of water for snow-making, as well as sanitation and cooking for guests, and they frequently gain access to extra water by securing water rights from private landowners or from the federal government, in accordance with state laws. The ski companies use tunnels, pipelines and reservoirs they build at considerable expense to transport the water—the amount, source and cost of which vary widely.

The ski-resort operators argue the regulation covers water rights they have purchased from both federal and private lands. But the Forest Service insists it only pertains to water rights obtained from federal lands, and the agency said it plans to change the directive's language to make that clear. Even so, the ski operators say they still wouldn't be satisfied.

The suit marks the latest turn in a decades-long push and pull between ski operators and the federal government over water rights. Such water fights are becoming increasingly common in many parts of the U.S., especially the Rocky Mountain states, where population growth is putting new strains on resources, and land ownership laws don't always automatically include the rights to the water there.

 

Associated Press

Ski resorts require considerable quantities of water for snow-making, as well as sanitation and cooking for guests.

The new federal policy on water rights, part of the permit a resort must secure if it operates on a mountain owned by the Forest Service, has alarmed the National Ski Areas Association, which estimates it affects 121 resorts in 13 states.

The ski association and its members are concerned that they wouldn't get fair market value for the water rights if there was only one type of buyer, rather than allowing numerous bidders. "We had no choice but to defend ourselves and our property by filing suit," said Geraldine Link, the group's director of public policy.

Officials with the Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, said the aim of the revamped clause is to make clear that resorts cannot sell the water rights and leave towns and mountains high and dry.

"The issue becomes, what if the water becomes so valuable that the resort owner sells it off for a different use, and the communities dependent on the ski areas are no longer viable," said Jim Peña, associate deputy chief for the Forest Service. Resort owners say that situation hasn't happened, a point Mr. Peña conceded. "It is a Draconian solution to a hypothetical problem," said Ezekiel Williams, an attorney for the ski-resort trade group.

Mark Squillace, a law professor and director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, said the resorts' claim that the government was taking their property "seems overwrought," given that the law ultimately gives the government the right to do what is deemed in the public's best interest. But he said "they may have a legitimate argument" in another claim in the suit, which also argues that the government didn't give the resorts sufficient notice of the change and an opportunity to comment.

Tensions have been brewing over ski-area water rights since the late 1980s, when legislation governing the ski-resort permits on Forest Service land gave the federal government ownership of water rights on federal land. That changed in 2004, when ownership of most of the water rights moved to the resorts.

Last fall, after news of the impending permit clause became public, the ski association and several congressmen asked the Forest Service to study the issue further and get public comment. The agency declined and began enforcing the directive in November.

Ski groups noted that under the new clause, the federal government would be permitted to sell off the same water it is worried the resorts will auction to the highest bidder. The Forest Service's Mr. Peña said his department plans to strengthen the language to make clear it doesn't intend to sell the rights or repurpose them for any use but skiing.

Write to Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared Mar. 7, 2012, on page A3 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Water Fight Hits the Slopes.

An Everglades National Park helicopter flies over a river of sawgrass shooting special firestarting balls in an area east of Shark Valley Road in the northern section of the park to create a controlled burn. The fire was planned for two years and had to meet exact wind, temperature and moisture content levels to be started. The fire was set at about 11 a.m. Monday, March 5, 2012. 

TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

 Smoke may be visible Monday from Everglades National Park, where a controlled fire burn will be lit in the eastern district of the park.

The process begins at 10 a.m. when the park’s fire and aviation division will burn a 31,000-acre area south of US 41/Tamiami Trail into park lands and west of the Shark Valley park entrance and Visitor Center, and then east of the L-67 canal.

The fire is meant to burn off fuel in the area referred to as River of Grass.

This is not the first time there has been a controlled fire in this area. In November 2011, park firefighters burned a large portion of the same area when water levels were high and help was needed with the heavy fuel loading in the area.

Controlled burns are an important part of resource management at Everglades National Park. Information on the fire management program at the park can be found on the park website http://www.nps.gov/ever/parkmgmt/firemanagement.htm.For information on the burn, call Everglades Fire Dispatch at 305-242-7850.

 

A short-lived legislative attempt that would have made it easier to move Miami-Dade County’s urban development boundary died Monday morning in the Florida Senate.

The Senate’s rules chairman found that the proposal by Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican, was out of order because it was not directly related to the legislation she was trying to amend.

Bogdanoff’s amendment would have required a simple majority of the commission to approve any change to the county’s comprehensive development — including any shift to the UDB. Bogdanoff proposed on Friday to add the language to a short bill, HB 4003, repealing an unfunded urban infill grant program.

Bogdanoff’s amendment was not germane to that bill, ruled Sen. John Thrasher, a St. Augustine Republican, saying it “introduces a new, unrelated subject that is not natural and logical.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez sent lawmakers a letter Friday opposing Bogdanoff’s effort as an attempt to undermine the county’s unique local powers.

Last week, the mayor proposed requiring an extraordinary supermajority — three-fourths, or 10 of 13 commissioners — to sign off on any changes to the invisible boundary that limits development bordering the Everglades.

The county currently requires a two-thirds majority — nine of 13 commissioners — to approve any change to the UDB.

When she presented her amendment Friday, Bogdanoff argued the few counties and cities that impose supermajority requirements on development trample on property owners’ rights.

A short-lived legislative attempt that would have made it easier to move Miami-Dade County’s urban development boundary died Monday morning in the Florida Senate.

The Senate’s rules chairman found that the proposal by Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican, was out of order because it was not directly related to the legislation she was trying to amend.

Bogdanoff’s amendment would have required a simple majority of the commission to approve any change to the county’s comprehensive development — including any shift to the UDB. Bogdanoff proposed on Friday to add the language to a short bill, HB 4003, repealing an unfunded urban infill grant program.

Bogdanoff’s amendment was not germane to that bill, ruled Sen. John Thrasher, a St. Augustine Republican, saying it “introduces a new, unrelated subject that is not natural and logical.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez sent lawmakers a letter Friday opposing Bogdanoff’s effort as an attempt to undermine the county’s unique local powers.

Last week, the mayor proposed requiring an extraordinary supermajority — three-fourths, or 10 of 13 commissioners — to sign off on any changes to the invisible boundary that limits development bordering the Everglades.

The county currently requires a two-thirds majority — nine of 13 commissioners — to approve any change to the UDB.

When she presented her amendment Friday, Bogdanoff argued the few counties and cities that impose supermajority requirements on development trample on property owners’ rights.

For many, the Florida Everglades’ spectacular vistas exist in black and white images from the lens of landscape photographer Clyde Butcher.

Butcher’s large-format prints hang in museums around the country, adorn Florida’s Capitol and even brighten Miami International Airport. Five decades after he moved to Florida, drawn by Ivan Tors’ mid-’60s TV series Flipper, Butcher is guided by the same belief: nature matters.

On the heels of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s declaration last week that he will push to strengthen the urban development boundary, a countermove has sprung up in the Florida Legislature that would weaken the county’s protection against urban sprawl on its western and southern fringes.

State Sen. Ellyn Bodganoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican, put forth an amendment to a House bill on Friday that would make it easier to shift the UDB by requiring a simple majority of the commission to approve any change to the county’s comprehensive plan, which guides development.

But Gimenez protested, calling the move an attempt to undermine the county’s unique local powers.

On Tuesday, at his first state-of-the-county address, the mayor said he would work to bolster the UDB by pushing to incorporate into the county charter a requirement that an extraordinary supermajority — three-fourths, or 10 of 13 commissioners — sign off on any changes to the invisible boundary that limits development bordering the Everglades.

The county currently requires a two-thirds majority — nine of 13 commissioners — to approve any change to the UDB.

Gimenez sent a letter Friday to each member of the Miami-Dade legislative delegation — along with Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, and House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park — blasting the legislative move as an interference with Miami-Dade’s Home Rule Charter. He said it “potentially threatens precious wetlands.”

“They are trying to usurp local authority,” the mayor told The Miami Herald. “It strikes me as funny that soon as my state-of-the-county address calls for strengthening the UDB, this crops up.”

(An incarnation of the amendment surfaced Monday, a day before Gimenez’s speech.)

In the letter, the mayor said denying Miami-Dade residents the ability to require a supermajority vote to amend the UDB would be “denying the people of Miami-Dade County the ability to govern themselves on this issue of local concern.”

EMAILS CIRCULATE

Local environmentalists circulated emails over the weekend urging supporters to call Bogdanoff to oppose her amendment.

The most recent effort to move the UDB came two months ago. Miami-Dade commissioners, acting against the recommendation of county planners, sent the state an application by Ferro Investment Group II to allow business and office development on 9.9 acres designated as agricultural on the southeast corner of Southwest 167th Avenue and 104th Street, outside the UDB.

Ferro Investment’s pro-bono lobbyist is lawyer Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, also a Republican state senator from Miami. Diaz de la Portilla, a former county commissioner, said the project has no relation to Bogdanoff’s amendment.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “The Ferro application has nothing to do with that.”

Diaz de la Portilla noted he helped create Miami-Dade’s community councils to give neighbors a say on proposed development. He also backed requiring that a two-thirds majority of commissioners approve UDB-related applications if they burdened public services. That condition has since been eliminated, he said, adding that he favors Bogdanoff’s amendment to even the playing field for property owners.

By NATHAN KOPPEL

AUSTIN, Texas—The state's persistent drought has claimed its latest victims: rice farmers.

Because of low water levels in several lakes that serve as reservoirs here, officials said Friday that they wouldn't release irrigation water to farmers in three counties downstream that produce much of the rice in the state.

Associated Press

Ronald Gertson stands beside one of his John Deere tractors last month at his rice farm in Lissie, Texas.

The rice industry contributes about $394 million annually to the economy of the state, which produces about 5% of the nation's rice. The three counties—Colorado, Wharton and Matagorda—lie west of humid Houston and usually get enough rain to make rice farming practicable.

This is the first time in its 78-year history that the Lower Colorado River Authority, which is based here, has cut off water to farmers. The agency waited until the last possible moment—a minute before midnight on Thursday—to make its decision, hoping that water levels would rise enough to avert a cutoff.

The irrigation ban is not expected to affect the shelf price of rice, but it has forced some farmers to lay off employees and consider diversifying into other crops.

"This is my livelihood at stake," said Ronald Gertson, a Texas rice farmer who projected he would produce only about 40% of his typical rice crop this year.

"It sticks in the craw" of farmers, Mr. Gertson said, that the authority will continue to release water to golf courses and other recreational customers that pay higher rates for a guaranteed water supply.

In a statement, the agency said that farmers "pay considerably less for water than cities and industry. And therefore, their water is considered 'interruptible' during a severe drought."

Texans in the rice business said they could probably stay afloat this year, thanks in part to crop insurance, but they worried about another year of interrupted irrigation water.

"If this happens again, we'll be in much more trouble," said Dick Ottis, the president of the Rice Belt Warehouse in El Campo, Texas, which stores and dries rice. The warehouse plans to store more corn, wheat and other commodities this year, he said, but those crops do not produce the profit margins rice does.

"I have already let go about 20% of our employees, because I knew this day was coming about," Mr. Ottis said, adding that his family had been involved in rice farming for almost 100 years and had lived through droughts, but none this bad.

It always seemed like the good Lord would bless us with more rain," he said.

But there appears to be little relief in sight from the drought that still afflicts 85% of Texas. Temperatures are expected to be above normal this summer, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist.

Rainfall levels are harder to predict, he said, but "we are in a dry stretch now, which will be worrisome if it continues. It reminds me of last year."

The water agency said it plans to find new supplies of water to avoid a repeat of this year's problems.

Farmers agree. "The development of new reservoirs is imperative," said Daniel Berglund, a 49-year-old rice farmer in Markham, Texas, who said he woke up at 1:15 a.m. Friday and checked to see whether the lakes, against all odds, had risen high enough to allow irrigation water to be released.

"Consumers only see grocery shelves stacked with food, floor to ceiling," he said. "This is an example of the risks we take as farmers. When you lose irrigation water, it stops everything," he said.

Write to Nathan Koppel at nathan.koppel@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared Mar. 3, 2012, on page A3 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Texas Rice Farmers Lose Their Water.