Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam on Wednesday outlined what he called the "hard economic truths facing Florida agriculture" including the need for a "smart" immigration policy, dealing with invasive animals and plant diseases, improving Florida seaports to gain new overseas markets and ensuring future water supplies.

"These (issues) aren't separate silos," Putnam said during a speech to the Economic Club of Florida. "The future of agriculture and the future of Florida are entwined."

"Agriculture is present on two-thirds of the acreage of our state," he continued. "If that goes away, what replaces it that's better than what we have --Citrus groves along highway 27, the magnificent pine forests up and down I-10.

"What replaces that -- that gives you the same economic value, the same tax base stability and the same quality of life issues? Chances are it's not better than what you have right now in terms of a vibrant agriculture industry."

Florida's agriculture industry produces $100 billion in sales annually and provides 1 million jobs, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The agriculture commissioner said he views child nutrition as an economic issue because the state every year spends $1 billion on school nutrition programs with four million meals served each day. Taxpayers are helping pay for many free and reduced cost meals as well as the health care costs resulting from poor diets.

"If we are content to serve Tater Tots and ketchup and call it a starch and a vegetable, we will pay the economic consequences of doing that," he said.

Putnam said he has about 50 people now in Hialeah, Kendall and West Miami looking for the giant African land snails that can eat almost anything including the stucco off homes. Agriculture must factor for the increased threat from foreign species and agricultural diseases.

"When there is a breakdown at the federal government level at an airport or seaport it is frequently the state taxpayers who are asked to pick up the tab and clean up the mess," he said.

The planned widening of the Panama Canal, he said, could be a boost for Florida agriculture. He said the port could bring consumer products that now are unloaded from ships in California to Florida if the state is ready. And those ships could return with Florida agricultural products.

He also said a smart immigration policy is needed the "best human capital" from around the world to fill employment gaps.

"The simple fact is if we want to be a free nation that can feed itself and not be as dependent on others as we are for our fuel, we need that stable legal workforce," he said.

The biggest long-term economic challenge facing agriculture and the state, he said, is water. He said the lack of water flowing from federal reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River is having "devastating" consequences for oystermen and the seafood industry at Apalachicola Bay.

Water supply, he said, must be a substantial component of state programs in the future the way land acquisition has been in recent decades.

"It is that connection to the water," he said, "that not only gives us an identity but gives us the economic foundation for everything that flows from it."

With rainfall at a record pace in some places, water managers are struggling to lower water levels in Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.

From Lake Okeechobee to the marshes of the Everglades, South Florida has been saturated by what is shaping up as the wettest of wet seasons.

Water managers are struggling to deal with high-water concerns across a region left brimming by Tropical Storm Isaac and stubbornly steady storms that have followed in its drenching wake. Some spots are on pace for the rainiest year on record, with Miami leading the list at 79.51 inches through September.

On Wednesday, federal engineers ordered the drainage gates cranked open even wider on Lake Okeechobee, where water levels have climbed nearly a half-foot despite two weeks of release intended to slowly lower them. The decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to double the flow is primarily intended to ease pressure on the aging and leaky flood-control dike that rings the massive lake, but it will have a side-effect of pouring billions of gallons of polluted water into sensitive river estuaries on both coasts.

In the swollen marshes of the Central Everglades north of the Tamiami Trail, there are no similar relief-valve options to help deer and other wildlife, which have already spent the last month mostly confined to levees and small tree islands, shrinking swaths of high ground where starvation from dwindling food supplies, and diseases like hoof rot, are a growing threat.

Even without more rain, it could take another three weeks to a month for the water to drop to normal seasonal levels, said Michael Anderson, regional wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Quite frankly, after about 30 days, they start to run out of groceries on the islands and we start to see impacts,’’ Anderson said.

The Corps’ initial effort to lower the massive lake has already dumped more than 11 billion gallons of freshwater laced with high levels of farm chemicals and nutrients into the St. Lucie River on the east coast and the Caloosahatchee River on the west coast. Similar but much larger dumps after hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 destroyed oyster beds and sea grass, and triggered massive foul fish-killing algae blooms.

But with two months still left in hurricane season and plenty of rain remaining in the forecast, the Corps’ lake managers said they had little choice but to accelerate the damaging releases.

“We just haven’t seen the results we wanted since we started,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Greco, the Corps’ deputy commander for South Florida.

Under the Corps’ management plan, the water level in Lake Okeechobee is supposed to stay between 12.5 feet and 15.5 feet above sea level, rising and falling with seasonal rain. It stood at 15.69 feet on Wednesday.

That’s still well short of the 17-foot level where engineers begin to worry about the integrity of its aging dike, which has sprung leaks during past hurricanes and is undergoing repairs that will take years. But a tropical storm like Isaac can quickly drive up lake levels by two or three feet, which would raise the risk of a potentially catastrophic failure.

The lake has to come down and the Everglades are already too full to send water there, Greco said.

State and federal water managers say they are doing the best they can do with an outmoded and overwhelmed flood-control system that operates under sometimes conflicting regulations to protect suburbs, farms and the Everglades from excessive flooding. A string of Everglades restoration projects, starting with a bridge along Tamiami Trail expected to be completed next year, promises to resolve many of the issues and eventually allow more water to flow south into Everglades National Park. But it could take a decade or more for enough of the projects to come on line to make a significant difference.

For now, water managers are diverting as much water as they can out of the biggest troubles spots in the Everglades — the marshy water conservation areas bordering Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — and sending it down canals into southern Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. State wildlife managers also have temporarily restricted public access to flooded portions of the Everglades and the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area to ease stress on stranded wildlife.

Flooding decimated the Glades’ population of white-tailed deer in 1982 and 1995, knocking the herd from thousands to hundreds, and killed countless smaller animals that rely on high, dry tree islands for food and shelter.

The FWC’s Anderson said he doesn’t expect that level of loss this time around, barring another major storm, which could keep water levels high even longer.

According to the South Florida Water Management District, which runs the flood control system from Orlando to Key West, seasonal rainfall is running about 114 percent above normal with an average of 37.53 inches across 16 counties.

But some areas have been hit harder than others, with the district showing eastern Broward County experiencing the wettest April through September since 1955, with more than 44 inches of rain — more than nine inches above average. Eastern Miami-Dade has been even wetter, with nearly 50 inches of rain — 13.22 inches above average.

At the official rainfall gauges maintained by the National Weather Service, Miami is on pace to record its wettest year ever, with 79.51 inches measured at Miami International Airport through September. The annual record for that site is 89.33 inches in 1959. The Redland, with 72.69 inches, and Homestead, with 67.58 inches, also are on pace for the wettest years on record. Fort Lauderdale’s Dixie water plant, with 69.24 inches, is the second wettest mark through September on record.

-By CURTIS MORGAN

STUART — Several Martin County commissioners and residents Tuesday blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to release polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie Estuary.

Releases of polluted water from the lake have historically harmed fish, sea grasses and other wildlife and made it hazardous for people to swim in the estuary.

"I suspect it's going to get worse before it gets better," said Commissioner Sarah Heard. "They need to see what the consequences of those actions are. It's an unhappy, unenviable, unfair consequence."

The commissioners voted unanimously to ask the South Florida Water Management District, which helps the Army Corps manage the lake, to provide information needed to discuss the discharges with Army Corps officials.

The commissioners also agreed to invite Col. Alan M. Dodd, the commander of the Army Corps district that includes Florida, to visit Stuart to see the problems caused by the lake discharges.

In addition, the commissioners agreed to send news articles, photos and other information about the releases to federal lawmakers to show them the need for funding for the C-44 Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area, the Herbert Hoover Dike Rehabilitation and other related projects.

"It continues to rain, the forecast continues to be wet and we do have the releases going on now," said Deborah Drum, the county's manager of Ecosystem Restoration and Management.

The Army Corps began releasing water from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers on Sept. 19 as part of its efforts to manage the rising lake level so the dike is not compromised.

Commissioner Doug Smith expressed sentiments similar to Heard's.

"I've been here for five colonels now. They all seem to tend to think as they go into their new position that they've got everything under control," Smith said. "They need to come and see and understand what it really means to us locally because it does change their perspective instantly when they see it."

Jacqueline Trancynger, a civic activist from Jensen Beach, said she thinks the lake releases are the result of the South Florida sugar industry's extraordinary political power. Massive sugar cane fields are located south of the lake.

Some observers think the sugar industry uses its wealth and political influence to block efforts to restore the historic flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south to the Everglades.

"It is certainly not a lack of the understanding of environmental facts that is causing the Army Corps to release water from the lake, so that if it continues (it) will kill our rivers and our lagoon forever," Trancynger said. "Think Big Sugar and all of their money, much of which is earned by subsidies from my tax money in the first place."

-TCPalm

The chairs of the state's five water management districts say their agencies are focused on the "prudent use of taxpayer dollars" rather than on raising taxes.

They wrote a letter on Monday in response to a missive sent to Gov. Rick Scott last week by 20 former board members of the districts . The former board members asked the governor to restore funding for the districts in the wake of cuts last year imposed by legislation.

The Legislature this year lifted the spending caps, but the districts have proposed keeping the same or slightly lower tax rates under reported pressure from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. A DEP spokesman said this month the department "collaborated" with the districts to hold down the cost of living for Florida residents.

The former board members, in their letter last week, described the economic benefits of proper water management and threats to future water supplies from a growing population. They point out that the owner of a $150,000 home in the South Florida Water Management District saved less than $20 in taxes paid because of the cuts last year.

They suggested the option of allowing "some discretion" for each of the five districts to adopt tax rates needed "to accomplish their core mission."

The five chairmen responded Monday that past spending on land acquisition, building expansions and local partnership projects had built good will but also had led to unrealistic growth their agencies' sizes along with salaries and benefits that exceeded those of state employees.

"Today, in a different fiscal climate, the governor and Legislature are focused on prudent use of taxpayer dollars and not increasing the burden of more government and higher taxes on Florida’s citizens," the letter stated.

The chairmen pointed to projects under way this year in each of the districts that when combined provide almost $1 billion towards restoration and water conservation. In addition, the South Florida Water Management District is moving "aggressively" forward on the governor's plan to spend $880 million over 12 years on Everglades restoration, including $87.6 million in this year's budget.

The board chairmen said they were pleased that the Legislature lifted the revenue caps.

"This will allow our budgets to grow as Florida’s economy grows -- rather than increasing the burden on current taxpayers," they wrote.

Eric Buermann, a former South Florida Water Management District board member, said he and some of the others who signed the letter last week were disappointed and taken aback that the governor did not personally respond.

"The districts are driven now right out of Tallahassee," Buermann said. "Anybody who doesn't think that is kidding themselves."

-Bruce Ritchie

By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel

Building new $64 million pumps could finally get water flowing as once intended from a Palm Beach County reservoir plagued by controversy.

South Florida taxpayers already sunk $217 million into transforming old rock mines west of Royal Palm Beach into a reservoir intended to boost water supplies and help the environment.

Now, the South Florida Water Management District has approved a deal to design and construct a pumping station that has been on hold since the L-8 Reservoir was finished in 2008.

Budget problems and changes to Everglades efforts contributed to shelving pump plans.

But now the reservoir plays a key role in revamped Everglades restoration plans and more money is pouring in to get the pumps built.

"It's a very, very significant construction project," said Joe Collins, board chairman for the South Florida Water Management District. "It's something that has been a long time coming."

Even with the long-delayed pump plans getting back on track, questions remain about whether the reservoir will ever deliver the expected water supply benefits.

"They are trying to bail out a bad decision," Drew Martin, of the Sierra Club, said about the new plans for the reservoir. "It was just a bad investment."

The 15 billion-gallon reservoir built at Palm Beach Aggregates was once intended to store water that would replenish the Loxahatchee River — which had natural water flows diminished by decades of draining in South Florida.

The reservoir was also meant to supplement community drinking water supplies and provide drought relief for West Palm Beach and other areas.

While the reservoir has helped West Palm Beach during droughts in 2007 and 2011, without the pumps it hasn't delivered the water expected for the Loxahatchee River.

Also, water quality problems blamed on the depth of the reservoir and stagnation from lack of pumps have dogged the project.

Now the state's new $880 million plan for improving Everglades water quality includes sending the bulk of that reservoir water south.

Help for the Loxahatchee River instead would eventually come from plans to store and treat water on Palm Beach County's Mecca Farms property, west of Palm Beach Gardens.

The planned pumping station would include six large pumps capable of drawing water from 40-feet deep. The reservoir's 15 billion gallon capacity is enough water to cover 34,000 football fields one foot deep, according to the water management district.

The district chose Archer Western Contractors, based in Atlanta, to design and build the pumps. Archer was the low bidder among two other competing firms. It's expected to take 2-1/2 years to build the pumping station, with construction expected to start in May.

Controversy has followed the reservoir project.

Palm Beach Aggregates ended up reimbursing the district for a $2.4 million secret "success fee" that federal prosecutors contend was paid to an engineering consultant who pushed the reservoir deal to water managers — without revealing his work as a consultant for Palm Beach Aggregates.

That fee and a Palm Beach Aggregates home development proposal factored into separate federal corruption investigations that led to the resignations and jail time for two Palm Beach County commissioners ousted by scandals.

By ERIC STAATS  

Wednesday, August 22, 2012  

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/aug/22/Mirasol-develop-wetlands-north-collier-agreement/  

NORTH NAPLES — A longstanding fight between developers and environmental groups over saving key wetlands in a northern Collier County slough has come to an end. 

The final piece of the preservation puzzle fell into place when a coalition of five environmental groups reached a deal with landowner IM Collier Joint Venture over plans for Mirasol at the northwest corner of Immokalee Road and Collier Boulevard, the groups announced Tuesday. 

Mirasol came to epitomize a decade-long push to stop new subdivisions that developers proposed putting in the middle of a flowway the groups wanted to protect for the sake of nearby Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and foraging habitat for endangered wood storks that nest there. 

Since 2006, the groups filed a string of lawsuits and administrative challenges over Mirasol and two other projects, Parklands and Saturnia Falls, that together would have taken a 1,200-acre bite out of wetlands in the Cocohatchee Slough. 

The groups came to a truce with G.L. Homes in 2010 over Parklands and Saturnia Falls after the developer agreed to cut back its development footprint and boost its wetlands preservation plans. The deal over Mirasol found similar common ground. 

"I think this is a good ecological outcome for the region," said Brad Cornell, policy advocate for the Collier County Audubon Society, one of the groups in the coalition.

Other groups involved were the National Wildlife Federation, Audubon of Florida, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

The groups were preparing to go back to court over Mirasol's new federal wetlands permit, issued in 2011 after a judge revoked an earlier version of the permit in 2009.

The deal averts another lawsuit and paves the way for IM Collier Joint Venture to sell the land for Mirasol to another partnership led by development company Taylor Morrison. Development is expected to start in 2013.

"We felt we could solve these issues if we put our heads together in a positive way and in the end we came up with a solution that was acceptable to everyone," said Dennis Gilkey, who has a minority interest in the new partnership and spearheaded negotiations with the groups.

Landowners are petitioning Collier County to amend its approvals for Mirasol to reflect the deal; state and federal permit modifications also are pending.

Mirasol, which will be renamed, is adding 80 acres to its 1,800-acre project, dropping one of two planned golf courses and building 1,121 units instead of the original 799 units, Gilkey said.

The new project still will destroy more than 550 acres of wetlands, but the project will preserve some 1,100 acres of wetlands.

The deal calls for a net increase of 170 acres of wetlands to be preserved on site and funds restoration of another 1,000 acres of off-site farm fields to the kind of shallow wetlands that are important for providing food to trigger wood stork nesting at Corkscrew. A decline in those wetlands has been blamed for wood storks not nesting at the sanctuary for five of the past six years.

In all, the settlements with G.L. Homes and IM Collier will protect 3,500 acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat in the Cocohatchee Slough, according to the groups' figures.

Case #2 -
 

Earlier this year, in Friedman/Starkman v. SFWMD, Audubon Florida supported the Defendant SFWMD through a brief amicus curiae.   In this case, Plaintiff landowners had filed suit against the SFWMD, claiming that they had lost nearly all value of their land and should be compensated for the value of their property.  The arguments in support of this claim were, among others, that their properties had been identified on maps showing potential future restoration projects and other property nearby had been purchased by the SFWMD from willing sellers.  There was also an attempt to set a new precedent in Florida for compensating landowners under a theory of “precondemnation blight.”  We felt strongly that establishing this cause of action in Florida would impact the ability or willingness for agencies and local governments to participate in proactive land use planning and made the decision to support the SFWMD. More information about the facts of the case can be found in the attached memo.

Recently, the 5^th District Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court and ruled in favor of SFWMD.  The good news is that after some additional motions by the landowners, their motion for rehearing was denied and a mandate was issued effectively dismissing the appeal. 

Thank you for your support, that enables us to participate in this important matter and help make sure this case didn’t open a new door of “precondemnation blight” litigation in Florida that would have severely hindered the ability to proactively plan for future land conservation and ecosystem restoration projects.

Falls short of taxpayers' more than $100 million investment

By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel
7:57 PM EDT, August 14, 2012

By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel
August 10, 2012

Rock mining money could pay for transforming farmland into wetlands under a new proposal to finally make use of costly land bought for Everglades restoration.

The South Florida Water Management District is working on a new plan to restore more than half of the 26,800 acres that in 2010 cost taxpayers $197 million in a deal with U.S. Sugar Corp.

How to pay for this plan is raising concerns with some environmental advocates, worried that the district's proposal would siphon money away from other restoration commitments.

The district proposes turning almost 15,000 acres of citrus groves north of Everglades National Park into a "mitigation" project. Rock miners would pay to restore the farm land in compensation for the environmental damage they cause by digging and blasting stone two counties away in Miami-Dade County.

That could be worth more than $150 million — recouping taxpayers' investment in that portion of the U.S. Sugar land purchase, paying for restoration of that property and potentially supplementing other district restoration efforts.

"It's a very good use [of the land]," said Ernie Barnett, the district's director of Everglades policy. "Putting it back to the way it was."

While environmental groups support the restoration of the former U.S. Sugar land, some object to using the rock mining money to do it.

Redirecting rock mining mitigation money to restore the former U.S. Sugar land in Hendry County would fail to compensate for the environmental damage from mining dozens of miles away in Miami-Dade, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

"It seems to fly in the face of keeping mitigation local," John Adornato, regional director for the environmental group, said about the funding proposal. "It seems like a stretch."

On Aug. 29, the proposal goes before a state board that oversees Lake Belt-area rock mining in Miami-Dade. If that board gives its blessing, restoration work could begin on the Hendry County citrus land in 2014, according to the district.

The mitigation project approach would raise "a significant amount of money" for the budget-strained district and deliver real environmental improvements, according to district Executive Director Melissa Meeker.

The restoration work would remove citrus trees, drainage ditches and levees and turn the land back into a mix of wetland prairies and tree islands to become a new extension of the Everglades, according to the proposal.

"Take what is now a citrus grove and turn it into native habitat," Meeker said.

The land comes from a watered-down version of then-Gov. Charlie Crist's $1.75 billion bid in 2008 to buy all of U.S. Sugar's 180,000 acres and use the land to store and treat stormwater needed to replenish the Everglades.

The national economic downturn and other hurdles whittled the deal down to $197 million for 26,800 acres, as well as a 10-year option to buy the rest of U.S. Sugar's land.

The land acquired in 2010 included 8,900 acres in Palm Beach County, east of Lake Okeechobee, and 17,900 acres of citrus land in Hendry County, northeast of Everglades National Park.

So far, that land has yet to be put to use for Everglades restoration, and is being leased back to U.S. Sugar for continued farming.

New Everglades restoration plans call for trying to trade the Palm Beach County portion of the former U.S. Sugar land for property in other areas targeted for Everglades restoration. Those plans also include building a shallow reservoir and other water storage on about 3,000 acres of the citrus land acquired in the U.S. Sugar deal.

Tapping into the rock mining mitigation money would enable the district to pay for its new plan to turn the rest of the Hendry County property back into wetlands and other vital habitat — prime for panthers, black bears and migratory birds.

While the district would get money for restoration, the rock mining industry would earn the mitigation "credits" it needs to keep mining.

Rock mining mitigation money needs to be spent on environmental efforts such as protecting water flows to Biscayne Bay, not cleaning up Everglades pollution problems created by farming, Adornato said.

The Sierra Club was still reviewing the district's new mitigation proposal, but group representative Jon Ullman said that relying on mitigation to compensate for environmental damage typically "is not an equitable solution."

"Mitigation has shown to be a net loss of wetlands," Ullman said.

abreid@tribune.com, 561-228-5504 or Twitter@abreidnews