Well, well, well.
This is not going to help Florida Governor Rick Scott in his months-long effort to greenwash his despicable environmental policies. It came out just in time to frustrate his efforts to muddy the waters, so to speak, in his Trump-endorsed battle to unseat Democratic Senator Bill Nelson.
As many of you know, the discharge from Lake Okeechobee (laced with poisoned runoff from the sugar industry) gets released during the rainy season. It happens every year at this time (and even in winter, if it rains too much), and it is horrifying to witness. But this year the discharge is truly devastating both Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The rivers that empty the lake, the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie, are void of life. Any marine species that swims into the discharge dies. The water is green and thick with algae. Many of our waterways and beaches are nothing more than a graveyard with the bodies of fish, bottlenose dolphins, manatees, turtles, and whale sharks littered about. Who wants to go for a swim and see that?
The discharge to the Gulf coast has combined with a red tide, making it a grim reminder of how ecological devastation can impact a community. Property values are plummeting, the tourism industry is hit hard, people are getting sick from just breathing, and we are devastated at what we are witnessing in the ocean.
Rick Scott previously declared a state of emergency for the Lake Okeechobee discharges for affected counties on the Atlantic side, but it’s too little, too late for many Floridians.
Today, Rick Scott is nibbling on some crow. The Orlando Weekly blogger Colin Wolf has noticed that today’s State of Emergency to fight our current outbreak of red tide comes from a governor who “cut nearly $700 million from Florida's environmental agencies (many of whom oversee algae outbreaks)”.
Executive order 18-221 will allocate $1.5 million in funds to state agencies, including $100,000 to Mote Marine Laboratory to assist local scientists in saving distressed animals, $500,000 to Visit Florida to combat the horrible images of dead fish and $900,000 to Lee County to actually clean up the dead fish.
"As Southwest Florida and the Tampa Bay area continues to feel the devastating impacts of red tide, we will continue taking an aggressive approach by using all available resources to help our local communities," said Scott in a statement. "Today, I am issuing an emergency declaration to provide significant funding and resources to the communities experiencing red tide so we can combat its terrible impacts."
The order will address impacts of red tide in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota, Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
This is a very raw topic for me. I am having a hard time dealing with what I see in my social media feeds, so I don’t watch the videos of suffering and dead marine life that people post. I scroll quickly past the images of beauty destroyed.
I hope Rick Scott and the GOP controlled legislature go down in flames this November. Nobody deserves it more.