Yes, this really happened:
In August of last year, it was confirmed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Florida State Fire College had used dangerous flame-retardant chemicals, which have since been phased out of production due to their health risks. Unfortunately, preliminary tests indicated that water from nearby well sites had elevated levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid, which is not good: Early studies have suggested they are carcinogens and have multiple adverse effects on humans.
Officials discussed in early September informing the Fire College, which was given supplies of bottled water on Sept. 9. The local residential population, however, had the unfortunate luck of the contamination being discovered during the height of Florida’s ultra-tight election contests.
The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald discovered emails in which officials debated for months how to “word messages” to the residents. The residents were eventually informed—on Monday, Nov. 5. That was the day before the midterm election.
In fact, according to Dr. Les Beitsch, a former Florida Department of Health deputy secretary, the notification to residents would have come after the election if he hadn’t raised such a stink about it. He said he was essentially fired for fighting against the delay, and he did not back off from the speculation that officials were more concerned about the impact on the upcoming tight elections than on the safety of residents. Dr. Beitsch said his boss, DOH Secretary Celeste Philips, who was appointed by Rick Scott in 2016, told him where to go when he raised the alarm: She “made it ‘very clear’ that they were not to do ‘anything right now’ at a meeting on Nov. 2. Beitsch said his training as a physician called for ‘sharing news of this nature in person and immediately.’"
Congressional Democrats are demanding answers. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, "This kind of potential political interference in matters of life and death deserves swift and thorough investigation”. For those of us who have lived under Rick Scott’s regime for the past eight years, corrupt officials are par for the course, whether it was a developer who supported molesting bald eagles’ nests appointed to the board of directors of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; a donor and marketing executive appointed to run the state board of education; or the guy indicted for taking bribes whom Scott appointed to run the Expressway Authority.
Going out the door, Scott made a record 84 lame-duck appointments, and some were so corrupt that even Ron DeSantis, our Trump-supporting governor, has already fired some of them. Five of Scott’s Everglades appointees allowed a lease extension to Lake Okeechobee's largest polluter (a large Scott donor), and that was too much for even DeSantis.
I hope they do investigate these officials who seem to have put politics over health, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Rick Scott, the man who oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history, was directly involved. Unfortunately, now that he is our senator, this won’t be the last time I write about him. In fact, I was originally planning to write about the incredibly tone-deaf, lavish black-tie party that he just threw in the midst of the shutdown carnage, right after he promised to make the shutdown his primary focus. As is often the case with him, a bigger scandal develops while I’m still researching the preceding one.
We’ve suffered enough under Rick Scott—some much more than others. Sadly, as a U.S. senator, he’s not just our problem anymore.