All in for the environment

While there’s little chance he’ll be remembered as a champion of the environment, Gov. Ron DeSantis is, in fact, doing something. And it’s not all bad.

As the legislative season wound down this year, the governor approved $1.5 billion from Florida’s 2024-25 budget for Everglades restoration and statewide water quality improvements as part of a $3.5 billion ecological initiative in his second term. DeSantis touted expenditures of some $6.5 billion dedicated to the environment since he took office.

“No other state in the country has taken on conservation projects this ambitious,” he said.

The Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir was a major undertaking, which included a 6,500-acre filter marsh to clean released water from Lake Okeechobee and a 10,500-acre reservoir to hold discharges to the east.

While Lake O and the Everglades have received a great deal of attention over the years, water quality in general has not. DeSantis hopes to correct that with new legislation and more federal funding.

TRECKER

Climateers are pitching in, mounting a drive to put a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot. The Florida Right to Clean Water would create “an enforceable, fundamental right to clean and healthy water,” authorizing judicial scrutiny and legal relief. It’s an uphill battle, a real long shot. But it could happen.

There are other activities. DeSantis just signed a bill to reinstate red tide research at the Mote Marine Laboratory at Sarasota, a joint program with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. This builds on a state task force put in place several years ago.

The governor also highlighted funding for the Florida Wildlife Corridor, established in 2021 and comprising nearly 18 million acres of conservation land. Some of the money will come from gambling revenues in a deal cut with Seminole casinos across the state. Nearly half a billion annually will be set aside for things like removing invasive species and water quality upgrades.

Legislators also designated funds for a whole host of local projects, most notably septic-to-sewer conversions in parts of Lee and Collier counties, as well as lake and outfall restorations in the Naples area.

On a different front, DeSantis has taken the lead in establishing a network of chief resilience officers. The CRO program, an offshoot of a national effort by the Rockefeller Foundation, features a Florida CRO appointed in 2019 and scores of local CROs who serve in cities and counties around the state.

The purpose is to have a single person embedded in local government coordinating storm resiliency programs along the coast. Benefits of having a CRO in Collier County are being investigated.

Put all these things together, and you will have a significant focus on the environment.

But DeSantis’ detractors say it’s too little, too late. Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, was quoted as saying, “Throwing taxpayer money at inadequate solutions will not solve Florida’s water crisis.”

Opponents — many driven by politics — want restrictions on growth, more wildlife corridors and less sugarcane farming. Above all, they want an open spigot of money for conservation. Like Oliver, they want more. A lot of money is never enough.

OK, that’s fair. $2 billion out of a $117 billion budget does seem pretty paltry. Or it could be just the right amount, given the gazillions of federal aid President Biden pours into the environment.

The fact is different people have different priorities. A liberal friend told me climate change had to be everyone’s top priority. When I asked about the economy, soaring prices, and overseas wars, he gave me an astonished look as if I had cursed in Swahili. ¦

— Dave Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Florida.

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