Articles by: Gil Smart
Don’t panic. Don’t swim in it. Don’t eat anything that does. Medical researchers who study cyanobacteria and its human health impacts delivered clear, candid advice to a live audience this week in Stuart. But that advice contradicted much of what…
You shall love thy neighbor as thyself (Matthew 22.39). Thick smoke looms over the Glades most months of the year. In these communities south of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, ash falls on houses and cars, the children call it black snow.…
A very big story, perhaps the biggest story in Everglades restoration, has been hiding in plain sight, but another year of Lake Okeechobee discharges carrying toxic algae is pushing it to a tipping point: Water management officials claim their top…
On Friday Florida DEP confirmed that the algal bloom in Lake Okeechobee off Clewiston tested positive for microcystin. The algae is toxic. The news went largely unreported. The concentration of toxins in the sample was relatively low at 1.4 ppb,…
Gil Smart was right: the pictures from Saturday’s rally on the Roosevelt Bridge could have been from any number of toxic algae summers on the St. Lucie. Same frustrations. Same fears. With giant toxic algae blooms on Lake Okeechobee two…
This week a Florida lawmaker asked a government agency not to poison his constituents. This shouldn’t be news. It shouldn’t be unusual. But it is, and Eye On Miami explains why… Congressman Brian Mast Ventures Where Few Have Gone Before To…
Few politicians have done more than Putnam to loot and pollute the State of Florida. From steering tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to his family’s businesses–and hundreds of millions to the sugarcane companies backing his run for governor–to gutting…
Finding a scapegoat to take the rap for a crisis is nothing new, but it takes moxie to throw God under the bus. Florida’s sugarcane industry makes it look easy. Lake Okeechobee is filling up fast. Discharges to the estuaries start…
The Right to Pollute is worth billions, especially the right to pollute a national park. That means there’s money to be made defending that right. Champions of pollution build careers and fortunes helping private industry destroy public places, and few…
Welcome to the sugar policy awakening of 2018! Today’s vote in the House means more than just refining an old government program. Not long ago few people paid attention to this giveaway tucked inside the Farm Bill. Today, with a…