Florida Water Quality
Out-of-control development, poor water quality, dead seagrass and dying manatees were not inevitable in Florida. It didn’t have to be this way. But it IS this way due to specific decisions made by elected leaders and bureaucratic officials who act…
Florida Sportsman publisher – and VoteWater Board President – Blair Wickstrom makes the case: In 2020 alone, Florida’s sugar industry — the home of Big Sugar — put at least $11 million into congressional campaign coffers. This happened on both…
This commentary was first published in late April, by Ryan Smart of the Florida Springs Council – no relation to VoteWater Executive Director Gil Smart – as a depressing post-mortem on this year’s legislative session: Going into the 2022 legislative…
As they usually do, the folks at TCPalm get it right in an editorial, this one dated May 6, titled “Manatee deaths, algal blooms suggest Florida’s waters getting worse, not better”: When will legislators address the widespread problems facing Florida’s…
On the first Earth Day in 1970, organizers said the goal was to “shake the political establishment out of its lethargy.” Fifty-two years later in Florida, we’ve still got a long way to go. Already this year, toxic blue-green algae…
We’ve met the enemy. And, go figure, he’s us: In a new study that is the first to explain what some have long suspected, researchers found that human activity helps sustain and intensify naturally occurring red tide blooms in Southwest…
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…
