Water and Sunshine

By Diane Roberts

Floridians have always taken for granted that we have an abundance of water–water to drink, flush, bathe in, swim in, fish in, and otherwise enjoy. We have always taken for granted that we, the citizens, have some say in decisions about our water.

Not any more.

Here’s what happened: last year, SB 2080, sponsored by senators J.D. Alexander and Carey Baker, was on its way to easy and uncontroversial passage. Among other things, the bill promoted conservation-minded “Florida Friendly” landscaping with native plants that don’t need tons of fertilizer or constant irrigation. It prevented homeowners’ associations–you know, the people who insist your front door be painted a certain shade of beige and your truck parked out of sight –from demanding that you keep up a lush St. Augustine grass lawn. Then a last-minute amendment appeared--an amendment putting the executive directors of the five Water Management Districts in charge of water use.

Here’s what it means: the public has been cut out of the process. Instead of the Water Management District boards, members of which are accountable to the governor, considering whether to issue a permit for a bottling plant or a new development or a strip mall in an open meeting, five bureaucrats now control our water. Five people in a state of 18 million. No public forum. No debate. If, for example, a staffer in the nether reaches of the Suwannee River Water Management District decides it’s just dandy that Proboscis, Inc. pumps a gazillion gallons out of Blue Springs to bottle and sell, we can’t do anything about it. The boards can’t do anything about it.

Yet if, say, the South Florida Water Management District executive director denies Leviathan MallCorp a permit to build a 5 million square-foot shopping center in Pahokee, the company can challenge the denial before the full district board.

In other words, the big boys, the mega-bucks interests who already control so much of the game with their campaign contributions and their lobbying money, have more rights than we do. They get two turns; we get none.

Governor Charlie Crist has made open government a hallmark of his administration. Yet he signed this bill with its poisonous amendment, attaching a letter which asks the water districts to pretty please “continue to include surface water and consumptive use permits on all board meeting agendas or other public meetings for discussion and transparency purposes.”

That’s very nice and all, but Florida water politics is not a gentleman’s game. Crist’s request has, of course, been roundly ignored. Permits–some allowing extractive industries and other polluters decades-long rights to our natural resources–are being issued in the dark.

Case in point: St. Johns Water Management District’s executive director Kirby Green recommended approval of a consumptive use permit for California-based Niagara Co. to suck 484,000 gallons per day from our aquifer to be bottled and shipped out of state–along with its profits

Local residents objected: Lake County’s lakes, streams and springs were stressed, suffering from several years of drought. The tiny city of Groveland (pop. 7000) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to mount a legal challenge to the permit, only to be slapped down. They had no standing, even though St. Johns Water Management District restricts how often they can water their lawns and spends millions in taxpayer dollars exhorting citizens to do fewer loads of laundry and take shorter showers.

Happily, the Florida Legislature has a chance to correct the situation. There are bills in the House and Senate which would reverse last year’s provision and put water policy back in open government where it belongs. Let’s hope whoever sneaked that amendment in there has learned his lesson: water is necessary for life, but so is sunshine.

Diane Roberts is the author, most recently, of Dream State, a book about Florida. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Miami Herald, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Times of London, the New Republic and the New York Times. A former member of the St. Petersburg Times editorial board and still an occasional columnist, she teaches writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

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