News
Call this the calm before the storm. Take a look around at the waterways where you live. They look pretty good, right? After an appropriately dry dry season, many oft-turbid waterways are clear and blue. In some regions seagrass is…
Ding dong, the bill is dead. On June 8 Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he’d vetoed notorious Senate Bill 2508, the worst environmental bill out of Tallahassee this year. SB 2508 was a toxic mixture of dirty politics and terrible policy,…
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…
The counterattack was inevitable – and utterly predictable. While the billionaire sugar barons haven’t deigned to comment on the “No Big Sugar Money” campaign which launched last week, they’ve sent their surrogates out to spin. Predictably, it’s been picked up…
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…
Florida’s powerful sugar industry spends millions to buy influence in the halls of power. Today begins a new campaign to make that money toxic. In conjunction with a broad array of environmental groups, companies and political leaders on both the…
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…
It looked like there was a real wedge between the two most powerful Republicans in Florida – Gov. Ron DeSantis and current Senate President Wilton Simpson, who’s running for state Agriculture Commissioner. But they’ve kissed and made up. And that…
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…