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.
In 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.
Eye on Miami, in a recent post, noted the following:
Massive toxic algae blooming around the southern half of the Florida peninsula, coating with dangerous scum the prospects for public health, tourism, business and real estate on both Florida coasts is the real consequence to taxpayers and voters of losing their bet on Republican leadership: Gov. Scott, Senate President Joe Negron, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, state representative Matt Caldwell, US Senator Marco Rubio, and all the insiders and cronies they corralled to serve on boards like the water management districts and Public Service Commission. This isn't hyperbole. A real bet was made by voters. A real bet was lost.
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Another of Gov. Scott's first acts was to cast aside a bargain made by his predecessor and US Sugar Corporation, the largest producer of sugarcane and one of the biggest landowners in Florida. The deal would have put into state ownership, over time, enough land -- 187,000 acres -- to begin the process of fixing what the US Army Corps of Engineers and Florida agencies like the South Florida Water Management had destroyed: the elasticity of the infrastructure system whose goal was to manage water resources for all taxpayers and for the benefit of economic interests that depend on a healthy environment. Today's ecological collapse in the St. Lucie River, connected estuaries, in the Caloosahatchee River, along both Florida coasts and stretching down through the Everglades to Florida Bay is a neon sign flashing in front of taxpayers and voters. When Gov. Rick Scott, Marco Rubio and Adam Putnam killed the US Sugar deal, they ignored the history and science of Lake Okeechobee. Of course, Scott had already eliminated the science capacity of the state water district. By allowing political science to trump fact and the imperative for government intervention, Florida's GOP created political conditions for deadly cyanobacteria to destroy the treasures of South Florida, including public health and personal real estate.
Eye on Miami shines the spotlight on how Marco Rubio was bought and paid for by U.S. Sugar and the Fanjul billionaires:
Multiple, six-figure campaign contributions have been shunted Rubio's way by the Fanjul billionaires and by US Sugar, the other branch of the Big Sugar cartel, owned primarily by the 'environmentally sensitive' Mott Foundation. The Fanjuls summoned Rubio to run against then-governor Charlie Crist in 2010. They were outraged when Crist in 2008 had offered to buy US Sugar lands -- more than 125,000 acres at a projected cost to the state of about $1.2 billion -- without consulting them. The reason for the fury: if government built wetland marshes using US Sugar lands to store and cleanse filthy agricultural waters, then the state would be a step closer to key parcels owned by the Fanjuls in the Everglades Agricultural Area. For the public, the end game is to provide connectivity between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, building a solution toward cleansing Big Ag's toxic mess of Lake Okeechobee. Halting toxic releases to tide -- measured in trillions of gallons -- would eventually provide clean, fresh water to the remaining three million acres of Everglades, owned in perpetuity by the public thanks to the national park and other public entities.
In August of 2015, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported on Marco Rubio’ s pilgrimage to the Koch conclave “where he defended his home state boondoggle in front of the most powerful supposed enemies of corporate welfare, the Koch brothers.”
Tampa Bay Times:
Marco Rubio is not the first politician to put opportunity before consistency, which is why he surprised no one Wednesday by announcing he would reverse himself and seek re-election to the Senate. Republicans may see Rubio as their best hope for retaining control of the Senate, but his entry into the race gives Floridians a chance to question Rubio's record and his presence in Florida.
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Rubio, a career politician, may frame his move as selfless, but it keeps him in the public eye as a frontrunner for another Senate term, and in a prime spot to launch a bid for the White House in 2020. On that score, voters should note that a six-year Senate term would run through 2022 and that the often-absent junior senator would be campaigning for another office with the majority of his elected time still to serve.
More immediately, though, Rubio's decision gives Florida voters an opportunity to judge his thin record in the Senate, his tortured policy on immigration and his out-of-step positions on Cuba, guns, climate change and other major issues. And where has Rubio been for the past six years? Many communities would need to form a search party to discover that Florida has two members in the Senate. This race should be a reminder that this office cannot be taken for granted.
I can’t give this rapidly changing story the justice it deserves. I can invite you to like the BullSugar Facebook page though. These activists are amazing people and their posts will stun you and make you want to help in any way that you can by spreading the word that Florida is in environmental crisis. They need—hell, everybody in Florida—needs the nation’s media to report on this issue and put pressure on the powers that be to address this problem now. Because Rick Scott is not doing anything to stop the collapse of our ecosystems.