Tom Swihart spent
a career thinking about how Florida might best manage its water resources which
are so critical to what the state is all about today and where it’s going to be
in the years ahead. He has written a
book about it (Florida’s
Water: A Fragile Resource in a Vulnerable State). A must-read for folks seriously interested in
the importance of successful and smart management of Florida’s water resources.
Tom also publishes
a blog about water, Watery
Foundation, and you should check it out as well. Reading his and this blog, SWFWMDmatters, over the past months,
along with the growing din of editorial grumbling at all published levels, one
clearly gets the idea that CEO Scott is a Florida natural resource management disaster
in the making.
A month or two
ago, probably in a momentary lapse of good sense, Tom asked me to answer a few
questions which I agreed to do. My
responses are way too long, but I offer no apology. As is said, it is what it is and try as I
might I wouldn’t change any of it except for the usual bad grammar,
misspellings, and odd punctuation that reflect more guesswork than knowledge of
sentence structure. Here, for what it's worth, is what he published:
Four
Questions for Sonny Vergara
Emilio
(Sonny) Vergara is the only person that has served as
Executive Director of two Florida Water Management Districts (St. Johns River
and Southwest Florida) and a Regional Water Supply Authority (Peace
River/Manasota). He is active in the Florida Conservation
Coalition and maintains the hard-hitting SWFWMD Matters
blog. I very much appreciate that he agreed to answer four water management
questions I posed to him.
Q.
What should be the key goals of Florida water management?
Before
trying to answer directly, some historical context ...
To
begin with, the question might be best answered by Herschel Vinyard and Jeff Littlejohn
since they developed a public relations blitz based on getting districts “back”
to their “core mission.” Using the word back suggests they believe the districts
have gone astray from what they were supposed to be doing over the last five
decades and these two fellows somehow know better than anyone what the districts
should have been doing but weren’t. Getting
the districts “back” (to somewhere)
has since become their rallying cry for fundamentally changing them from what earlier
Governors and legislatures have been directing them to do for the last 50
years. It is becoming clear now that getting
the districts back to their “core mission” was nothing but a subterfuge to
allow Tallahassee to begin an immediate transformation process that has lasted three
years now and has gone far beyond any reductions that might have been
appropriate to reflect a struggling national economy. While perhaps legitimate-sounding on the
surface, it became clear that a much less legitimate intention was at hand.
Plainly
put, their true intent was to clear the way for big business (agriculture,
power, mining, land development and – in short – the members of the Florida
Chamber of Commerce and Florida Land Council) to be able to avoid having to
deal with distracting and worrisome environmental and growth management
regulations. When this became apparent
to certain well-heeled private sector parties, it released a pent up feeding
frenzy by Tallahassee lobbyists to take as much advantage of the situation as
possible and see how much “reduction” they could do to environmental and growth
management regulations as well.
The
administration’s plan was first to stop, de-authorize and, in some cases,
simply disregard environmental and growth management regulations at every opportunity.
Then, the agencies themselves were to be dismantled and weakened by defunding
their revenue sources and shredding their regulatory staffs to the point they
now have very little capacity to function as they should. Today, remaining agency scientists and
staffers work in abject fear of their Tallahassee-installed supervisors and of losing
their jobs in embarrassing ways, like how a very unprofessional reduction in
force was carried out at the direction of Jeff Littlejohn and Herschel Vineyard
at the Tampa office of DEP.
Vinyard
and Littlejohn are now forging new regulatory policies by letting regulated, private
-sector entities write them. If that
concept isn’t bothersome enough, such actions are not only inappropriate but
very likely illegal. Chapter 120, F.S,
requires that before implementing a policy with significant implications a
regulatory agency must follow certain procedures, which include vetting the
proposed policy’s potential impacts with the affected public and using rule
adoption protocols to institute them.
The Highlands Ranch Mitigation Bank permit offers a case in point where
a policy fundamental to all environmental permitting in Florida was simply replaced
on the fly and implemented by DEP deputy secretary, Jeff Littlejohn. It was
done with the only public input coming from the applicant’s attorney. The existing policy, known as “reasonable
assurance,” was declared inoperative and the new policy was immediately
instated. Certainly, any policy that will
set the standard for complex and important public interest matters such as the
safe and effective management of the state’s water resources and the unique natural
systems that depend upon them, should be subjected to the procedures prescribed
by Chapter 120.
So,
the claim that the districts needed to get back their core mission was essentially
the new administration’s version of a Trojan Horse. Saying changes were needed to reflect the state’s
declining economy, while sounding reasonable, was actually nothing more than a disingenuous
ruse to hide the real transformation they were pursuing which was to dismantle
Florida’s carefully evolved environmental and growth protections to the maximum
extent possible.
Historically,
the statutory goals of the districts have morphed substantially from their
primary focus on, for example, flood control. There is no question about this. The reasons for it, however, are obvious and
sound. Legislators and governors from
both parties found it necessary to assign additional duties to the districts over
the years because of the expanding needs of a growing population and a changing
society that was demanding it. The
reason this was believed to be the way
to go was that the state could not afford the cost but the districts could, so
it was delegated to them.
For
one significant example, an unfunded mandate that had enormous impact on the
districts’ budgets and taxing levels resulted from passage of the Warren S.
Henderson Wetlands Protection Act of 1984.
This act required DEP to begin regulating all dredge and fill
operations. The responsibility for
implementing this new responsibility was quickly delegated to the districts,
however, because elected state officials simply were not going to take the heat
that would be generated by raising the taxes necessary to pay for it.
Today
we know that limiting regulation of pollution, flooding, water use, loss of
wetlands, wildlife, wildlife habitat, recharge lands, and shorelines, simply because
it might affect the state’s economy to some degree, will not lead to any long-term
prosperity for the state. We are
realizing that absolute limits need to be set because, in the end, not setting
them will result in irreparable harm to the state’s physical and economic well
being. In other words, we now have to
draw clear and absolute lines in the sand.
Setting Minimum Flows and Levels and Total Maximum Daily Load limits are
two examples where the attempts to achieve this are already underway. It is endgame thinking. If founded upon good science and wise policy,
allowing maximum or minimum limits to be exceeded could cause negative impacts
from which recovery might not be possible, could be very long–term, very
expensive, or all the above.
Therefore,
I suggest the key goal of water management should be to have their authority,
autonomy, and funding capacity returned at least to where it was before
2010. Urbanization of the state has not
stopped and everyday it continues the attendant resource problems grow more
complex and solving them gets more expensive.
It is ridiculous to think that the key to the future is to create a
weaker, more highly politicized, less science-driven, less experienced,
Tallahassee-controlled resource management agency to replace what was in place
before 2010. As urbanization continues
to threaten those aspects of natural Florida that, if destroyed, will have a
devastating impact on its economic future, it is frightening to think what has
become of the country’s most respected water management system. It has become only a flimsy, filmy rendition
of what it was and it will not be able to do the job. Changes must be made.
More
specifically, some goals for water management should include:
1. Remain
as autonomous as possible from Tallahassee political interference. The governor’s oversight and appointment
authority is appropriate and adequate.
The legislature can initiate further direction by proposing and vetting
laws needed to keep the districts’ abilities to solve problems in line with ever-changing
statutory charges and priorities.
Governing board members are not incapable and should not have been
completely marginalized as they have.
The way it is today, with all decisions being made in Tallahassee, there’s
hardly any reason for them to continue to exist.
2. Return
control of the districts’ constitutionally authorized ad valorem taxing
authority to the governing boards. In
2010 and 2011, most of it was taken from them by the legislature and the
governor’s office. Florida’s constitution
prohibits property taxes levied at the state level. The current level of legislative and
gubernatorial control of district budgets may be encroaching upon that
prohibition. Governing boards were created
to identify and prioritize resource problems and determine the funding needed
to resolve them at the regional (non-state) level. Today, however, any legislator who is
friendly with an applicant can bring pressure upon a district’s regulatory decision-making
processes. Lobbyists and their regulated clients are having a field day. Also, while DEP has supervisory duties over
the districts by statute, it was never intended that the secretary of the
department should dictate what they are to do, how they are do it, or try to
influence the issuance of permits - all
of which appears is to be happening today.
Governing board members know the problems within their districts and
they know they will be among those paying the taxes levied to fix them. They
should be able to generate their own budgets within reasonable millage caps set
by the legislature, determine the optimum staffing levels needed to achieve
their priorities, and hire their own executive director - none of which is
happening today.
3. The
idea that Florida’s water resources should be somehow made available to the
private sector to sell to the highest bidder needs to be ended once and for
all. Recent covert attempts (City of
Tampa; 2012; HB639; Dana Young) to become owners of water and be able to place
a value on it beyond what it costs to develop, treat and transport it, should
be halted. While privatizing water might
sound reasonable in some contexts, the bottom line is that its price will be
market-driven and those who need it the most will have to pay the most. In this kind of world, price control through
competition will not work as public supplies become very limited and only a few
control them. Privatizing water supplies
and selling it as a commodity will only create great wealth for a few at the
expense of virtually the entire population of Florida, because every member of
it must have it.
4. Remove
the dollar caps placed upon the districts’ budgets and leave their ability to
meet their statutory obligations alone.
Governing board members are appointed by the governor who has adequate
oversight to keep district budgets in check.
The limits the legislature set on the abilities of the governing boards
to support a budget capable of addressing known resource problems is preventing
them from effectively carrying out their statutory duties.
5. Modify
the millage caps set by the legislature in 2010 and 2011 back to what they were
before.
6. Priorities
for water management:
a. Return
science as the basis for regulatory and resource management decisions instead of
political doctrine or influence. Science
is no longer a primary consideration in the issuance of a permit as exemplified
by: the Highlands Ranch Mitigation Bank permit; no-bid leases to specific entities being
dictated by the legislature; the continuing inability to stop additional
withdrawals or pollution within the springsheds of major springs despite the
obvious damage, and; the fact that the issuance of permits is routinely influenced
by Tallahassee.
b. Co-partner
with local governments on projects that are consistent with statutory
directives and do not create conflicts of interest with the districts’ regulatory
responsibilities. Limit co-funding for
local projects to the ad valorem taxes paid by those who will benefit from the
project. Establish a pathway for local
input on projects to be undertaken and who is going to pay for them. This was standard protocol in SWFWMD before its
basin boards were eliminated and their governor-appointed members fired by the
new Scott administration.
c. Aggressively
continue setting absolute limitations designed to prevent damaging
over-withdrawals from identified water bodies.
Good science and sound policies must be followed. Politicizing the development of policies and
its supporting science will only result in ineffective or dangerous decisions
that can cause terrible mistakes and irreversible damage.
d. Aggressively
continue setting absolute limitations designed to prevent identified water
bodies from damaging pollution levels from point and non-point pollution
sources. But to restate, politicizing
the process will only poison the credibility of the limits and their projected
effectiveness.
e. Continue
the acquisition of conservation lands, which has been functionally halted for
the last three legislative sessions. Acquisition
of conservation lands is vital to the state’s future. If significant funding ever again becomes
available, public ownership in fee title should be the primary objective. The current thinking is that ownership of conservation
easements without ownership of the property is just as effective. In the long term, it is not. This should be resisted. Any belief that acquisition of conservation
easements is going to permanently preserve and protect natural Florida in perpetuity
to the same extent as the public actually owning the property, is not valid. In some cases, it may be the only alternative
available to reach a conservation goal, but placing land in public ownership is
always the better alternative. Many times
the cost of an easement is very near the actual market value of the land. The purchase of certain rights vs. fee title becomes
a windfall for the seller. Conservation
easements rarely sufficiently constrain the current uses of the landowners who remain
in total control of the property Usually,
conservation rights preclude public rights of entry. This is not a bargain that
serves the public’s best interests.
f. Aggressively
continue to develop and require conservation of water. Reduction of demand through conservation and
reuse is going to be the only available answer for meeting the future water
supply needs of many communities that have no other viable alternative. Carry out and support efforts to research and
develop cost effective alternative processes to treat water to drinking water
standards. Avoid perpetually
supplementing the cost of developing, treating and distributing water. Real and actual cost will be higher but it can
substantially reduce per capita consumption by causing needed changes in water
use behavior. This is not to preclude partnering by the districts with local
entities on a one-time basis in order to incentivize their decision to use a
process that has greater environmental value.
g. Carry
out water supply planning and water resource management based upon surface and
groundwater basins. Planning should be
based on the ability of a basin’s resources to support the plan. Avoid inter-basin transfers that only serve
the future of one community at the expense of another. This is neither good
planning nor good government.
h. All
policies and regulations should be aimed at protecting and preserving what’s
left of Florida’s natural hydrologic and biologic systems.
i. Be
leaders in resource monitoring (data gathering) and development of the sciences
(research) needed to make informed water resource management decisions.
j. Maintain
a vigorous public education and information program and solicit the support of a
constantly changing population’s participation in the most effective water use
practices. The current thinking in Tallahassee
is that “outreach” is inappropriate agency promotion. In reality, it is a valuable strategy used to
educate and obtain public support and participation in achieving water resource
management objectives. For example, reducing per capita usage by an informed
and motivated public from 120 gallons per day to 100 gallons per day for the
population of Tampa Bay (which let’s assume is 4 million) would free up 80
million gallons every day to meet the demands of future growth and natural
systems. Public education through water
management outreach has been seriously misunderstood by the current
administration. Outreach became one of the
most targeted district activities for reduction by Tallahassee because it was
considered unnecessary.
k. Reinstitute
a quality growth management function for Florida and join it at the hip with
comprehensive water resource planning.
Presently, the result of the legislature’s dismantling of the state’s
primary planning agency, the Department of Community Affairs, has been to deny
the state the ability to set a clear course for managing growth in the
future. It is a state where Tallahassee
leaders have essentially washed their hands of the responsibility and set it adrift
with no apparent concern that 67 individual and separate county commissions are
now in charge of its future. It is almost
laughable, were not so idiotic, that Florida, the country’s fourth most populated
state, has decided that having and following a master plan for its future growth
was unnecessary. It is ridiculous, and
it should be embarrassing within all of our highest elected offices.
l. Be
as frugal and effective as possible but avoid indiscriminant across the board
budget cuts which can hinder resource management capabilities. Cut only where appropriate and consistent
with the district’s responsibilities and priorities.
Q.
What is the biggest Florida water problem? [[Or you could address also the
second-biggest, third biggest, etc. Up to you.]
The
biggest Florida water problem today is the fact that the capacities
of the districts have been curtailed to the point that they can no longer successfully
and effectively achieve their many responsibilities. They are underfunded and understaffed, which
will give the legislature a perfect opportunity to declare them Passé and
attempt to replace them with institutions of completely different responsibilities,
authorities and funding sources The
objective being, to replace them with new institutions that cannot and will not
be as effective as what the state had before 2010. This situation is the result of vast
ignorance finding itself in positions of great power with no knowledge of what
needs doing or how to go about doing it, and having to rely on those who do know
but who are guided only by short term, self-serving purposes and could not care
less about Florida’s long term future.
The
biggest problem tomorrow, is
obtaining enough sustainable and affordable water to meet the state’s future demands
and still maintain healthy natural ecosystems consisting of adequate and clean
flows for sustaining natural water bodies and the natural biological systems
that depend upon them.
Q.
What aspects of water management have gotten worst?
Frankly,
I can’t think of one aspect of water management in Florida that hasn’t gotten worse. The scenarios depicted above pretty well
describe what and why.
Q.
What aspects of Florida water management have gotten better?
Frankly,
I can’t think of one that has. The scenarios depicted above pretty well
describe what and why.
