Articles by: Gil Smart
The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 with the goal of cleaning up our rivers, streams, lakes and more. It’s fallen almost unimaginably short. A sobering report by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that nearly half the…
Florida: We’re Number One! In polluted lakes, that is: The state’s waters have long been fouled by dirty stormwater and algae blooms fed by fertilizer run off from farms. Now a new study examining water quality across the U.S. shows Florida ranking…
Toxic blue-green algae on Lake Okeechobee isn’t just a problem for the lake, or for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee when those estuaries are being blasted with discharges from the lake full of cyanobacteria. Increasingly, as this article in the…
When the bigwigs in Tallahassee are committed to corporate privilege over clean water, you get what we’ve got – a long crisis that can only get worse. Case in point: Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson, who is running for Agriculture…
They blinked. The night before a profoundly damaging bill for the Everglades and Florida’s environment in general was slated to go before the state Senate, word came: There was an amendment. And many of the worst provisions in Senate Bill…
The Florida Senate is in session today and will be addressing Senate Bill 2508, a controversial measure which originally proposed far-reaching changes to Everglades restoration measures which would have undermined the LOSOM process and could have had a major impact…
TCPalm outdoor columnist Ed Killer has penned a dead-on piece lambasting the Florida senators who voted in favor of notorious Senate Bill 2508 as being little but shills for Big Sugar, and determined to advance the industry’s priorities over clean…
In a blockbuster Feb. 3 story, the Palm Beach Post and ProPublica laid out exactly how the sugar industry manages to capture local politicians, and indeed local communities, which then helps them stave off change at the state level –…
Stuart-based VoteWater has announced the addition of two new members, Carl Bettinger and Todd Thurlow, to the organization’s Board of Directors. Bettinger, of Palmetto, is a physician and attorney who earned a mathematics degree from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.,…
In a Jan. 2 piece, TCPalm’s environmental columnist Ed Killer hit the nail on the head by noting that as bad as 2021 was for Florida’s environment, 2022 could be worse: The list of assaults on the fragile environment seems endless: biosolids, wildfires, invasive…
