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

A host of state legislators from both sides of the aisle will announce the formation of a Florida Everglades Legislative Caucus at a press conference slated for 1 p.m. today.

The event, which will be held in Boynton Beach, will be hosted by state Rep. Steven Perman, D-Boca Raton, and Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera.

The readers’ forum

SFWMD returns to its core mission

A more streamlined, mission-focused budget at the South Florida Water Management District will continue to deliver progress in Everglades restoration without abandoning the science that supports it, as some critics fear. In streamlining operations and returning the agency to its core mission of flood control, water supply and ecosystem restoration, the District is appropriately assessing the scope of science, research and monitoring.

Over the past six years, we have invested more than $250 million in the monitoring and assessment of South Florida’s ecosystem and flood-control system. To gather water-quality information alone, the District annually collects samples from close to 2,000 monitoring stations and runs more than 300,000 laboratory tests. To evaluate water flow, we gather data from 4,500 sensors at more than 500 sites throughout the greater Everglades.

More than $32 million has been committed for monitoring to produce data that will be helpful to restoration projects.

This funding is further enhanced by significant investments made by other government, academic and environmental organizations.

As a partner in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), we also finance a Monitoring and Assessment Program (MAP), in which we have invested $75 million over 10 years together with our federal partners. We now have in hand more than a decade of pre-project data, plus the knowledge that some of the data aren’t as applicable to restoration objectives as originally thought.

As CERP projects become authorized by Congress and construction a reality, we can verify the level of pre-project data and refocus our monitoring efforts on measuring the response of the ecosystem to implemented restoration projects. In the meantime, it’s incumbent upon state, federal and local partners to reevaluate the MAP program. We must strike the right balance between allocating taxpayer dollars toward monitoring the environment and building the projects that will improve it.

Melissa Meeker, executive director, South Florida Water Management District, West Palm Beach

Geotourism: Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and well-being of its residents.

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