There is no tropical storm off the coast of Stuart, Florida, but double red flags are up in Martin County Florida beaches anyways. Sgt. Steven Hearn with the Martin County Sheriff's Office Community Policing Unit stated that his deputies posted double red flags and posted warnings that toxic algae is in the water and that it can cause serious health issues. Lifeguards and deputies cleared hundreds of people out of the water recently. And it’s not just Martin County, beaches in St. Lucie County have closed and the toxic algae bloom is moving south into Palm Beach County.
Big sugar and other agricultural interests pump the public’s water from Lake Okeechobee to irrigate their fields, then send the water—polluted with fertilizer and other farm chemicals—back into Lake Okeechobee. We have received a lot of rain since January and state officials are concerned that the aging dikes holding back the water could collapse. So Rick Scott and other Republican power brokers devised a disastrous plan to divert this toxic water, which is estimated flow at the ungodly rate of some 70,000 gallons per second, through two major Floridian rivers—the St. Lucie river and the Caloosahatchee River—each waterway flowing to a different coastline.
Dead ManateeIn 2014, the citizens of Florida passed Amendment 1 that designated billions of dollars to conservation efforts. The Water and Land Conservation Amendment required that, for the next 20 years, 33 percent of the proceeds from real estate documentary-stamp taxes go for land acquisition. For 2016, the share of the real-estate tax is projected to bring in more than $740 million. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by 75 percent of voters. In a stunning rebuke to the will of the Florida citizen, Republican Governor Rick Scott and his GOP tea-bagging legislature have used the proceeds for such things as salaries, benefits, insurance costs and vehicle purchases.
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