Through chapter 4 of this excellent book by Michael Grunwald. Really interesting read. It starts with the historic signing of the Everglades Forever Act, which I had forgotten how much immense bipartisan support it had. I know there's been a lot of problems with execution and I'm not personally familiar with the particulars but I look forward to reading about it. Others on this board probably know more. Many interesting issues so far. What really has me thinking so far is how quickly a national near consensus changed. By the time the Act was signed, almost everyone agreed that the Everglades were a national treasure that we should spend any amount to try to restore. But for most of our nation's history, the Everglades were viewed as a blight on our land, and many of our smartest minds were dedicated towards figuring out how to drain the swamp, so to speak. Fascinating chapter history of Osceola, not really a chief, but certainly a man deserving admiration, and the Seminole Wars. If teachers read aloud the way our military men described his physique and bearing, they would get fired under the new bill Fascinating history of the Yulee family, key in Florida history with some really unique personal history and impact, the first generation nobly arising out and influenced morally by anti-semitism, but ending up with a fairly corrupt second generation, although not necessarily more corrupt than most men of the time. The origin of the proverbial Florida land scams, Manifest Destiny, etc. Just a lot of fascinating issues, every chapter full of history that you still see playing out today even if , like me, you didn't appreciate the current effect of those historical events, that remain with us. And I'm only 20% in.
This is on my (ever lengthening) future reading list. Sounds great so far. I’d be interested to see an update when you’ve finished.
Will do. It kind of reads like a mystery thriller if you don't know what happens with the Act. He starts off with the Act getting signed in 2000 and then goes back through the history. I'm really interested to know about the politics of the last 22 years but I'm sure he'll get to it. But the history itself is fascinating and I'm glad it wasn't omitted.
Just finished. As with any well done work on such an extensive subject, it defies any easy summary. Just a few bullet points which are far from sufficient: 1) It is just amazing to hear what passed for near consensus not even 100 years ago. The Everglades were considered something of an evil scourge, unproductive land not fit for human habitation, something like the upside down in "Stranger Things". The land was just viewed as hopelessly flooded, a mistake by God or maybe created by an evil supreme being, to be conquered by man if he ever could figure out how. It's another snapshot into of the history of our state. Just amazing to hear about trying to downplay and cover up the fact that a hurricane caused damage, because the state still wanted people to keep moving here. Definitely going to read Zora Neale Hurston, not only because of her book on the 28 hurricane because the special now on Netflix about the Clotilde. 2) The consensus changed, obviously, as to the beauty and natural value of the Everglades, but not really in terms of wanting to settle it. The rhetoric changed, and we have made tremendous progress at great public cost, in some cases slowing down the destruction, and in other cases to partially remediate past damage, although the Everglades still may not survive. 3) Our legal and political regimen are just not up to correcting or substantially remediate environmental damage of this scale. Stakeholders just have too many legal and political weapons. You can bring together the President, both houses of Congress, the judicial system and the State of Florida, resulting in laws passed, federal judicial decrees, and some form of plan agreed to by all parties. But then the litigation and lobbying starts and it never really gets implemented. 4) There is a really interesting exposition of the issue of when environmentalists should be "satisfied". He re-covers the territory that the 2000 presidential election would have gone the other way but for Everglades related issue, especially the Everglades Jetport project and dissatisfaction with Al Gore for not being more of an advocate. I've read that before but forgot. Just too much money to be made to really expect that we can resolve these issues. It does not bode well for climate change. That is way insufficient. A well done book. I highly recommend
thank you for the summary. I would offer that there is one thing that congress could do that would be of tremendous value to address the remediation costs and one thing that SFWMD could do to begin to address the nutrient load problems. thoughts, sugar land is valuable because sugar can be grown on it. sugar is valuable because of the sugar subsidies. eliminate the sugar subsidies. why should the US continue to subsidize sugar production so that we consumers can pay 3x the market rate and we can continue to dedicate millions of acres for sugar cane and sugar beets to be farmed. I'm sure the beet farmers can find a different crop to grow and when the value of the muck south of the lake decreases because sugar isn't profitable without the subsidies, it is cheaper to buy to restore the southerly flow. all that muck acreage could be turned into swamp with catwalks connecting solar farms over the top of the wetlands. Already near the grid, less impacted by hurricanes. restoring flow is only part of it, the flow needs to be clean and that begins with identifying the source of the nutrient loads. Remote sensing data can do that, SFWMD refuses to deploy it in sufficient volume to gather the data required to identify the offensive land uses because it would likely cause some real problems for dairies and big cattle in the Kissimmee basin. mitigate the nutrient sources and then begin to address the legacy pollution in Lake O. the solutions are there, the political will to implement them are not jmo
You have far more technical expertise than I do. I can just tell you that the book, which is more of a political than natural history, is very detailed about the significant investment of political resources, including at least three instances in which there was seeming consensus between the both Congress and the President, and a consent decree in federal court, only to get bogged down in litigation from stakeholders, largely but not exclusively Big Sugar, during implementation. It really is discouraging, which is why said I'm not sure our system can handle this. There have been ironclad laws that were violated but any enforcement was delayed long enough and bogged down to where it largely didn't happen. There have been detailed decrees and settlements that any slight ambiguity was exploited in litigation and bogged down, and eventually abandoned. The author makes the point that notwithstanding the setbacks, a lot of progress occurred. Even after they could not get 10 ppb phosphorus as a standard, economic forces and the Miccosukee tribe ended up de facto creating a standard. They use their sovereignty to mandated as a standard and because their land is so situated, ended up creating it is a reality. Then again, they didn't want to give power to the federal government for understandable historical reasons, but that ended up giving the state government, which with rare exception is owned by Big Sugar, the most significant enforcement authority
big sugar protests because the land has value as sugar land. remove the subsidy, reduce the value, supplement the purchase of 100 year lease rights by energy producer to convert land to solar fields over the top of flowways. repurpose the land and encourage it by eliminating the sugar subsidy and redirecting that to land purchase/lease rights for conservation or solar fields. big sugar is making business decisions and the sugar subsidy drives those business decisions. does the book address sugar subsidies and their impact on the value of the land or offer alternative means explored to capture value on the land for big sugar? yes, SFWMD doesn't want to know what it doesn't know, hence no enforcement. but they do like to spend billions on more engineered projects instead of thousands on prevention at the source. the big projects are so much better in the press than forcing, heck even helping, the dairy or cattle farmer to clean up his act. and forget about eliminating sludge dumping. Peoples water and sewer bills would go up if they had to properly process all that sewage sludge that gets dumped on fields north of the lake
I am not qualified to address your points. I'm sure you're correct. I will just say they even discussed about removing the subsidy and it went nowhere politically. They're just too powerful
Sugar beets are grown in the north / mid west. N. Dakota and Montana etc. I think it's too hot here for them.
agreed, but they are only grown because of the sugar subsidy makes it lucrative to grow them. if you eliminate the sugar subsidy to drive sugar cane cultivation out of business (not profitable without subsidy), the beet ox gets gored too. I'm sure that land could get repurposed for something more useful too, even if just a different crop.
like I said, the solutions are there, the political will isn't. the sugar subsidy is an indirect tax on every american who consumes any form of sugar. it needs to be eliminated. congress can do that
Thanks for sharing. This is where the conservative movement misses out...conservation. Theodore Roosevelt had this one right.
That is probably the only summary necessary for most any issue affecting the public weal. Alpha indviduals, necessary though they may be, know no balance or moderation.
Florida man captures 28 Burmese pythons to win top prize in state's annual challenge Over 200 pythons were captured in this 10 contest. That's s small start
Thanks. I saw that it was thinking of posting it. The Everglades have also been a regular home to invasive species, clogging waterways and sucking up the waters through the melaleuca trees, which I'm probably not going to be able to spell correctly. They were brought in because they absorb all the water where they are planted
Also bad for folks with allergies. Pretty smart trees tho. Can't burn em out cause they then throw off a ton of seeds to generate a bunch more plants.. Gotta dig em up.
we cut them down and then have the stumps treated them with herbicide when we do exotic removals in conservation areas or wetlands to be preserved unless the whole wetland is or CE is a monoculture. It is amazing how thick those trees can grow, they just choke everything else out
