GUEST OPINION: Paul Reynolds |
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A very interesting dog 'n’ pony show came to Ft Myers recently. The Army Corps of Engineers came to endure some mandated public hearings and show off their slightly surgically enhanced pony, claiming of course that it's new AND improved. The pony is named TSP (tentatively selected plan). It's part of their WSE (water supply and environment) schedule, known locally as We Slaughter Estuaries.
After being anesthetized by an hour of numbing charts and graphs having nothing to do with solution and everything to do with career protection, a steady stream of passionate locals came forward to plead, accuse and threaten our presumed "abuser". It's heartwarming to witness such community spirit, and painful to accept the futility of the efforts.
The USACE is dominated by regulation and there are only two options for them to change: (1) if they were suddenly to change course and support a new direction, like their very own Plan 6; or if they, and SFWMD, are sued and FORCED to change plans. The likelihood of the first has about the same odds as me taking a rubber band out in the yard, pulling it back on my finger, aiming, and hitting Mars.
They know it's going to take legal action - they've told us as much several times. Brian Bigelow, our new County Commissioner to-be, gets it. Tammy Hall, from her presentation, continues not to get it.
The plan, as it usually is with government agencies, is to wear us down. These folks have a formidable stall tactic now, and that's calling all these plans "tentative". I believe as soon as they drop that word from the title, the legal hammer is going to drop on them and we are going to force them toward solutions that are fair for everyone in the water system.
For me the most telling moment of the USACE presentation on the Army Corps of Engineer's disastrous discharge schedule was the reply to a rhetorical question posed by Sanibel resident, Chet Sadler. He asked Col. Grosskruger if the current schedule and plans are part of Everglades Restoration.
The politically correct answer from them is, "yes, absolutely, Mr. Sadler".
Unfortunately Col. Grosskruger didn't know the answer. He turned to Dennis Duke, who's been with USACE since the invention of the shovel, and he didn't know either. Whether Freudian or divine intervention, the simple truth slipped out right then.
This water, that's too polluted to go into the Everglades or storm water treatment storage reservoirs; this water that is so vile it causes lesions on fish and people on the Florida East Coast, poisonous oysters, fish kills, and nurtures 5 or 6 varieties of algae that choke off various preferred life forms on the West Coast; this water that is now measurably impacting our tourism business and destroying our fishing industries - and the solution from these government agencies is to create thousands of additional acres to store it and make it worse, and continue to destroy the communities who provide the least resistance to their policy.
One should know that the absolute number-one priority for the system and public safety would be to clean it up.
Can you possibly be unmoved by the fact that cleaning the lake (Okeebchobee) water is such a remarkably low consideration that it may occur in 15 or 20 years if everything works out as planned? Understanding that with the folks in charge, NOTHING has ever worked out as planned.
The CERP and ACCELER8 plans are not about cleaning the system, nor restoring the Everglades. They are about storing water - nasty, health-threatening, polluted water.
The people of Sanibel understand. The people of St Lucie area understand. When the lawsuits finally hit, the people of USACE and SFWMD will understand...well I may be wrong about them.
What the Lake, river, and estuary advocates say at SFWMD and USACE public meetings is: "There are fair solutions to fix our water systems that will benefit us all, not just the Agricultural community, please listen to us."
What SFWMD and USACE hear is: "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."