Post-election reax: DLC wins big; growth concerns trump 'dirty money'

In Florida’s primary election Tuesday, incumbent Miami-Dade Mayor (and VoteWater endorsee!) Daniella Levine Cava cruised easily, with 58 percent of the vote. Our other endorsee, Cindy Lerner, is headed to a November runoff as neither she nor incumbent Raquel Regalado got 50% of the vote in the race for the county commission District 7 seat.

Further north, in Martin County, we were thrilled to see dirty tricks and dirty money backfired!

Six-term county commissioner Doug Smith, who raised $178,000 and is infamous for using “ghost” candidates to close primaries, got slapped (electorally) by challenger Eileen Vargas. Reckless growth was the top issue.

Likewise, in the City of Stuart, two incumbent commissioners, Becky Bruner and Troy McDonald, were defeated handily by Laura Giobbi and Sean Reed, respectively. Again, growth was far and away the biggest issue.

And in St. Lucie County, incumbent county commissioner Linda Bartz lost the District 3 race to challenger Erin Lowry, even though Bartz raised twice as much as Lowry. Guess what one of the big issues was?

Despite big spending by the “sprawl” industry, voters in these communities said they’ve had enough. The wind is blowing in a new direction — and other "pro-growth" elected officials and the industry itself better heed the warning.

We call Bullsugar: Plans to ‘improve’ state parks must be stopped

By now you’ve likely heard: There’s a plan afoot to build three golf courses on more than 1,000 acres at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound, Martin County, and remove the Hobe Mountain Observation Tower. It’s part of a Florida Department of Environmental Protection  “Great Outdoors Initiative” which would also involve building 350-room lodges at Anastasia State Park (St. John’s County) and Topsail Hill Preserve State Park (Walton County), and other “recreational opportunities” with less of an impact at other parks around the state.

FDEP will hold public meetings around the state on these proposals next week, including one on the Jonathan Dickinson proposal from 3-4 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, at The Flagler of Stuart. We’ll be there, and hope to see you there too.

The Jonathan Dickinson plan — in our backyard — is among the stupidest ideas we’ve ever heard. The impact on clean water could be immense; the impact on wildlife habitat could be worse.

With only one week’s notice for these meetings, the state seems to be trying to sidestep the public, but it won’t work. The Facebook group “Protect Jonathan Dickinson State Park” gained 13,000 members in just a few days, people are already protesting outside the park and more is coming.

The Florida Wildlife Federation has an action form so you can voice your displeasure to elected officials.

And you can email Sen. Gayle Harrell directly at [email protected], and Rep. John Snyder at [email protected] and tell them to demand the golf course proposal at Jonathan Dickinson be scrapped — for good.

We call Bullsugar 2: Use new STA to reduce discharges, not to clean sugar runoff

As first flagged by our friends at Friends of the Everglades, something dubious is afoot with the stormwater treatment area (STA) being built adjacent to the proposed Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) reservoir.

The expectation has always been that the 6,500-acre EAA Reservoir STA would take and treat water from Lake Okeechobee, meaning fewer harmful discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers and more clean water flowing south to the Everglades.

But recently officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District revealed they have something different in mind: Instead of using the new STA to take additional water from the lake, they want to use it for existing flows (both EAA runoff and lake water) that are currently going to two other STAs, STA 2 and STA 3/4.

That wouldn’t help the lake, wouldn’t reduce discharges, and wouldn’t mean more clean water going south.

Can you say “bait and switch?”

But why? Maybe because water flowing south to the Everglades soon needs to be cleaner than it is now. SFWMD officials have assured us that although the STA’s are not yet meeting the tough new standards, don’t worry. They will.

This scheme suggests the opposite — that to meet the standards, they need the new EAA Reservoir STA.

And the benefits we were promised go up in smoke.

Friends fired off a letter to the SFWMD basically saying: Figure out another way. The new STA, wrote Executive Director Eve Samples, must be “used for improving ecological function, not simply additional infrastructure for treating existing pollution from sugarcane production.”

Let’s hope water managers get the message — because it’s one we’ll be repeating again and again until they do.