Monthly Archives: March 2014

Lt. Governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera and the Indian River Lagoon

14 year old Natalie and new Lt Governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera

Last week, I took my fourteen year old niece, Natalie, to a meeting with me, to meet Florida’s brand new, only seven weeks old in the position of Lieutenant Governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami; he is the first hispanic ever to hold this office.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_López-Cantera); (http://www.flgov.com/meet-lieutenant-governor-carlos-lopez-cantera/)

The purpose of the meeting was to “educate” the new lieutenant governor about issues concerning the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon. I had Natalie for Spring Break and since she has been a member of River Kidz (http://riverscoalition.org) since she was ten, I figured I’d put her to work.

I said, “Natalie, just be honest and polite. Shake his hand, look him in the eye, smile and then tell him how you and your family were affected by the releases from Lake Okeechobee and the other canals last summer, the “Lost Summer.”

When it was our turn, Natalie went first. She did exactly what I had asked. She shook his hand, looked him in the eye and smiled saying:” My name is Natalie and I live in North River Shores. Last summer, because of the releases from Lake Okeechobee, my family and I could not use the new wakeboard we got for Christmas, because the river was off limits with toxic algae blooms. Also we did not go fishing like we usually do. The water was gross…”

At this point, as there were others standing around listening and waiting to meet Mr Lopez-Cantez too, I did my typical control-freak move and “nicely” butted in just to qualify a piece of information so my comrades couldn’t claim I was using Natalie for purposes of propaganda.

“Natalie, we should mention, that the other canals were releasing too; you know the C-23 and C-24; the C-23 is the one your sister did her Science Fair Project on…”

Natalie looked and me and the Lieutenant Governor looked at me. Natalie nodded her head, and Mr Lopez-Cantera honestly asked: “Don’t all the canals here connect to Lake Okeechobee?” Silence.

“I’m glad you asked, I said. It’s all very confusing.” I drew a picture as Natalie explained that C-44 does connect to the lake, but C-23 and C-24 do not. She also explained that the C-23 and C-24 are very polluting canals, but it has been only when the heavy releases from Lake Okeechobee come, on top of the releases from our local canals, that the river goes completely toxic.

I told a story that is well known. Prior to the releases from Lake Okeechobee, the South Florida Water Management District had taken samples of toxic algae, “microcystis aeruginosa,” a type of cyanobacteria, from Lake Okeechobee at Port Mayaca , and the Army Corp of Engineers knew this, before they opened the gates at S-308 and S-80 allowing the water to flow into the St Lucie Canal and St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon.

Images: (https://www.google.com/search?q=toxic+algae+st+lucie+river&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=tmA5U6yLIpTzrAGY7YGwDw&ved=0CHAQsAQ&biw=1598&bih=803)

I relayed that Mark Perry speaks on this situation often, reiterating again, that the river became toxic not while our own, although they be disgusting canals, were releasing, but only when the massive water from the Lake Okeechobee was allowed in…

The Lieutenant Governor looked surprised, “Who is Mary Perry? ” he asked. “Mark Perry is the executive director for Florida Oceanographic,” I replied. Mr. Lopez-Cantera wrote down Mark’s name.

Our fifteen minutes were up, I gave the Lieutenant Governor a booklet of aerial photos my husband and I took of the river during the summer of 2013; he did a double take when he saw the cover but it was time to go.

Nonetheless, he did not rush us off, and as we were getting up to go, he told Natalie about being a big wake boarder himself in Miami in younger days. We took a photo for Natalie’s album and then Natalie and I were off to walk the dogs and bake cookies since it was too windy to go to the beach.

I commend the Lieutenant Governor for coming to Stuart and meeting with local stakeholders to learn about the Indian River Lagoon, St Lucie River and Lake Okeechobee. I’m sure he has people pulling at him from all directions, but he came here.

As distasteful as politics is, at the end of the day, change for our rivers will come through the steady work of building relationships. By knowing our politicians, whether they be republican or democrat, the face to face experience makes it harder for them to forget us when the vote is before them.

I’m hoping when it comes time for a vote, or in the future when the possibility of sending the water south is real, Lieutenant Governor Lopez-Cantera, or what ever his position is at that time, will remember the nice kid named Natalie from Stuart, and her story about not being able to wakeboard in the toxic St Lucie River during the lost summer of 2013.

Endangered Small-toothed Sawfish and the Indian River Lagoon

Small-toothed Sawfish, Sewall's Point, 1916. Reported 18-28 feet, they were once common in the Indian River Lagoon. (Photo courtesy of Sandra Thurlow's archives and the Historical Society of Martin County.) — Small-toothed Sawfish, Sewall’s Point, 1916. Historically reported from 18-28 feet, they were once extremely common in the Indian River Lagoon. (Photo courtesy archives of Sandra Thurlow and the Historical Society of Martin County.)

I guess as much as I have just begun to really fight for our Indian River Lagoon/St Lucie River, many of its most spectacular creatures have been dying off for a very long time. For me, the most notable of these is the prehistoric, quiet, remarkable, and since 1999, “critically endangered,” small toothed sawfish whose numbers have been estimated to have been reduced by up to 99%, due mostly, to thankfully former, commercial fishing practices.

Many may not realize that this fish, the “small toothed sawfish” was the first marine fish determined as “critically endangerd” in United States’ waters, right here, along the Indian River Lagoon’s Treasure Coast!

Sources for this post:(http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/statusreviews/smalltoothsawfish.pdf)

(http://www.mrcirl.org)

(http://m.myfwc.com/research/saltwater/fish/sawfish/general-information/)

As a kid growing up in Stuart in the 60s, 70s and 80s, I would hear about sawfish and see pictures, but I never “saw” one, until recently believe it or not, when one was reported and photographed in the Stuart News, caught near the Ernie Lyons Bridge in Sewall’s Point. The creature was released, giving hope for its survival and comeback.

How incredibly cool, “Leviathan lives!”

As far as notes of interest: sawfishes are a family of rays and their mouth and nostrils are on its flat underside. Its skeleton is made of cartilage; they can live up to fifty years and don’t mature sexually until they are about ten. Bearing young only every other year, sawfish babies grow in eggs inside their mother and once they are fully developed, she gives birth to her “pups,” usually around 1-15 in number.

By far, the sawfishes most distinctive feature is its “rostrum,” or saw, which is covered with electrosensitive pores that allow it to sense even the beating heart of of its prey hiding in the mud or muck covered bottom. They can also dig with their unique appendage and slash/stun fish above them to ingest whole. The saw is also used to protect them from shark attacks but unfortunately “nets,” which were allowed in the Indian River from time beginning until 1994, caught possibly over time hundreds of thousands of these creatures “accidentally.” Most were simply killed, usually by cutting off the saw, and the dying fish left to sink to the bottom discarded. In its hey-day, more small toothed saw fish lived in the Indian River Lagoon than any other body of water on the planet.

All things considered, I think the small toothed sawfish should become our symbol for the Indian River Lagoon movement that really took shape in 2013. The Indian River Lagoon, like the critically endangered small toothed sawfish, after years of hiding on the bottom, is finally coming back, full of vim and vigor, to rightfully claim its former glory.

Restoration of the Kissimmee & Indian River Lagoon

ACOE Lt. Col. Greco explains restoration of the Kissimmee River at a River Coalition meeting in Stuart, 3-26-14. (Photo JTL)

At the request of the Florida and US government, the Army Corps of Engineers channelized the Kissimmee River between 1962 and 1970 to improve flooding that had specifically occurred in 1947. Almost immediately this channelization was recognized as problematic to Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries. In 1997 Congess approved efforts to restore parts of the Kissimmee to its natural design.

With ranch, agricultural and other land purchases that were made in the former flood plains, restoration is/was complex and difficult. Nonetheless the ACOE has completed an approximate twenty mile restoration. This is one of the few great accomplishments made so far to improve the misjudgments of the Central and South Florida Flood Project of 1948.(http://www.evergladesplan.org/about/restudy_csf_devel.aspx)

The problem with the Kissimmee was that it was straightened, let’s try to simplify what has led to the destruction/problems of the Indian River Lagoon by listing what has led to its poor health:

too much shoreline development, building the C-44 canal from Lake Okeechobee to the St Lucie a River, diking Lake Okeechobee, channelizing the creeks that are now the C-23 and C-24 canals, the channelizing of the Kissimmee River, dredging a channel in the lagoon and St Lucie River, runoff from agriculture and urban development that runs into the lagoon, automobiles and the thousands of Department of Transportation canals that also lead to lagoon, causeways that block the flow of water in the lagoon, marinas and boat traffic, fishing line and trash left to harm wildlife, rains that may carry mercury and other pollutants from thousands of miles away, inlets that have been dug and made permanent or at least not allowing the ocean to break through when and where it desired as it did for tens of thousands of years, the invention of synthetic fertilizer and septic tanks, suburbia, herbicides and pesticides and even laundry detergent, drugs and antibiotics that many of us take that seep into the waters of the lagoons causing disfunction to animal life like antibiotic resistant dolphins, (http://www.cehaweb.com/documents/2_000.pdf) the list goes on…

Fixing the Indian a River Lagoon is actually more historic and multilayered than fixing the Kissimmee River. Thankfully we know we have the will to make our government and to make ourselves fix it.

Impairment of the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon

Basins of the St Lucie River.

Something the every day person may not know because the communication feedback loop between state agencies and the public doesn’t really function, is that in 2002, the Department of Environmental Protection, a state agency, declared the St Lucie River, part of the southern Indian River Lagoon, “impaired.”

The 2002 report reads: “Anthropogenic impacts to the St Lucie River have impaired its function as an important estuarine ecosystem and resource. Stream channelization, wetland drainage, conversion, construction of drainage canal systems, urbanization, and agriculture activity have so completely modified the watershed that it can no longer function as a healthy ecosystem…although it was once one of the most productive in the world…” (http://www.dep.state.fl.us/southeast/ecosum/ecosums/SLE_Impairment_Narrative_ver_3.7.pdf)

A tremendously loss to say the least. Why did we have to wait until it was dead to do something?

Unfortunately that is the case, so what’s important to know now about this “impaired” status is that it triggered a program to help the water body called a Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) and Total Maximum Daily Loads, (TMDLs).

You may have heard of them.

So now that the water body is impaired, there is an action plan for the water basins limiting the total maximum daily loads of nitrogen and phosphorus that flow into the estuary.

Municipalities and counties will be held eventually responsible for the maximum levels of pollutants allowed to enter the water before the water would become “impaired.”

This gets confusing, I know. I think of it like this: how many cigarettes one is allowed to smoke before one is on the verge of dying of cancer…your total maximum daily smoke, before you become “impaired.” But what if you been smoking a pack a day for 80 years? Is there time to cut back? Shouldn’t you just quit?

Crazy isn’t it?

The real catch for the St Lucie River is that much of the water that runs into the river is from Lake Okeechobee through C-44. So even if the St Lucie met its TMDLs they would be destroyed by releases from Lake O.

The state is working on this problem and many others. This might take awhile to fix. They are figuring 5, 15, and 30 year implementations before they can really measure improvements…

Time is of the essence, but this is the best the state can do.

Hmmm…I’m not a smoker but I am so frustrated, I think I’ll go have a cigarette.

Seagrass loss and the Indian River Lagoon

Seagrasses' poor quality is apparent at shoreline near Jensen Beach. — Seagrasses’ poor quality is apparent at shoreline near Jensen Beach. (Photo JTL)

Seagrass is really the lifeblood of the Indian River Lagoon. For the most part it no longer exist in the St Lucie River. Seagrass is the where fish are born, hide and eat before they get big enough to move into the oceans or open waters of the lagoon.

Holistically the lagoon is in big trouble. In 2010 and 2011 a super bloom of algae never seen in the lagoon before started in the northern area in Volusia County and Brevard counties. By the time it ran its course 87% of the sea grasses in the Banana River had disappeared.

In 2012 further south into Indian River County and parts of northern St Lucie, a secondary bloom, a brown tide, had moved south killing approximately 44% of the sea grasses in these areas.

St John’s Water Management District: (http://www.sjrwmd.com/itsyourlagoon/)

Closer to home, the sea grasses in the southern lagoon have been repeatedly ruined by the fresh water releases from Lake Okeechobee and C-23 and C-24 during high rains.

Ft Pierce remains the healthiest area, however; the recent marina improvements and consistent talk of a port threaten that area.

Hundreds of manatees, dolphins and pelicans have died recently from what the agencies call a “mystery.” There is no mystery, we are killing the lifeblood of our fisheries and corresponding food chain.

It’s up to us to reverse this trend, and we finally seem to getting it. Fertilizer, septic tanks, agricultural and residential runoff must be improved and shoreline destruction corrected.

There is a better future if we make it happen.

__________________________________________

To learn more about seagrasses, Harbor Branch’s symposiums have documented IRL Seagrass loss for the past three years. See topics here. (www.indianriverlagoon.org))

Mark Perry, the Voice of the Indian River Lagoon

50 year anniversary Florida Oceanographic Society. — 50 year anniversary Florida Oceanographic Society, 2014. Nancy Perry, Jacqui TL, Mark Perry. (Photo Ed Lippisch)

Florida Oceanographic was started in 1964, the year of my birth. When my parents moved to Stuart, I was eight months old. After living with or near my grandparents, the family built a house on Edgewood Drive in St Lucie Estates. As soon as I was old enough to ride my bike, one of the coolest things around was Florida Oceanographic at the mouth of Krueger Creek, where Mr Rand, an eccentric, wealthy businessman lived or had the headquarters to his corporation.

Another part of growing up was going to St Mary’s Church. And as a kid I always looked up to the older kids and two of the most prominent were Mark and Chris Perry. Their parents lived in Snug Harbor and looked like movie stars to me. Mark and Chris were simply “cool,” while I was a little twerp. My mom always told me Mark worked or helped at Florida Oceanographic, this made me pay more attention to the water and research of such.

In time Mark became the head of Florida Oceanographic. I went away to University of Florida and other places for over 17 years and when I returned the new location of the institution on Hutchinson Island was even more compelling. Mark’s leadership had built the institution and given a voice to the Indian River Lagoon and offshore reefs in way never done locally before, inspiring a new generation of people.

To celebrate Florida Oceanographic, is to celebrate the life of Mark Perry. No one has given a lifetime of service to the areas’ lagoon and ocean in the way Mark Perry has. Fifty years later and he remains one of the people I still admire most and feel he has influenced my love and protective attitude towards our local waters; I bet he’s influenced you too. Go visit today and give Mark Perry a bear hug in the name of the Indian River Lagoon!
(www.floridaocean.org)

Aerials, “Never Forget the Lost Summer” St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon

On September the releases were at their worst. — Aerial photos of releases at St Lucie Inlet, Sewall’s Point and Jupiter Island at the height of releases from Lake Okeechobee. Area canals were also releasing at this time. This era became known as the “Lost Summer, as waters were toxic for almost three months and visibly disgusting the two months before. The releases themselves began May 8th and stopped October 21, 2013. (Photos taken in August/September by Jacqui Thurlow-Lippsich and Ed Lippisch )

These shocking photos taken last summer have helped to keep up the pressure on Martin and St Lucie’s counties legislative delegation and others in both Tallahassee and Washington DC for change along water bodies releasing into the St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon and future hope for future water storage and a flow way south.

Also, the Stuart News and Scripps Newspapers continues to post lagoon article almost every day. The business community, students, and retired, everyday people are still up in arms.

There are both short and long term goals to save the Indian River Lagoon and St Lucie River, but the public’s collective memory is the greatest hope for a better future as we advocate, partake, and lobby for clean water.

As you go out this weekend and Spring Break begins for our area young people, recall last year’s late spring, summer and fall when the public could not go out or into our area waters.

And when you have a chance, call your local, state and federal officials and nicely ask: “How’s it coming with those water issues, and when are you up for reelection?”

C-23 and its Destruction of the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon

Bessey Creek in 1965, is the exiting point for C-23 into the St Lucie River. The canal was built between 1959 and 1961. — Bessey Creek and a newly constructed C-23 photographed in 1965. The creek is the exiting point for C-23 into the St Lucie River. The canal was built between 1959 and 1961. As development of the surrounding lands has increased so has the pollution from the canal. (Photo archives of Sandra Thurlow)

There are three destructive canals that empty into the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon, C-44 built in the 1920s, and C-23 and C-24, built later, between 1959 and 1961. They all over time have destroyed the health and integrity of the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon.

C-23 is the canal that boarders northern Martin and southern St Lucie Counties. It was built by the Army Corp of Engineers as part of the Central and and South Florida Flood Control Project that came into being in a “second” gigantic round of federal funds invested in Florida after a hurricane and extreme flooding in 1947 because, basically, people had built and started farming in areas throughout south Florida that were wetlands or swamps. The goal of the canal was to divert waters that would have “gone south,” and possibly even north into the St John’s River to the eastern, coastal waters. As usual, the ACOE was very successful at the complete cost of the environment.

Thus the C-23 canal drains a 175 square foot basin that includes parts of Okeechobee and St Lucie Counties that originally did not run into the St Lucie River. Once drained, these lands were primarily developed into citrus groves and other agriculture . According to the Department of Environmental Protection, the “urban land use, at the eastern end of the basin, includes solid waste disposal; light industrial, and golf courses.”

C-23 is a filthy canal. It delivers suspended solids, nutrients, fertilizers, and pesticides such as ethion, norflurazon, simazine, bromacil. Metals such as copper and lead have also been found in the surrounding sediments with concentrations high enough to “constitute toxicity” to fish, seagrasses, and other animals. You may recall even recently in the news, a sheepshead, with a huge pink tumor caught right in this area. DEP (http://www.dep.state.fl.us/southeast/ecosum/ecosums/c23.pdf); Tumored fish(http://martincountytimes.com/fish-with-large-tumor-on-head-found-in-palm-citys-bessey-creek-near-st-lucie-estuary)

My middle school aged niece, Mary, lives across the canal in North River Shores; she chose to do her science fair project on the C-23 this year and found that the canal had the highest level of phosphorus of the three canals. As she grows up, her generation will be working to fix our and our grandparents’ over zealous accomplishments and mistakes. Although our federal, state and local government claims that we’re “working on getting the water right,” it seems like we could do more and a little faster to help them…

Killer Gerard Schaefer and the Indian River Lagoon

Blind Creek is located on Hutchinson Island just north of the St Lucie Power Plant. — Blind Creek is located on Hutchinson Island just northeast of the St Lucie Power Plant, in St Lucie County and is where serial killer and Martin County Sheriff’s officer, Gerard Schaefer, tortured and killed two young women in 1973.

The subject of serial killer, Gerard Schaefer, is one I certainly never indented to write about, but with Tyler Hadley’s murder trial in the paper every day I am reminded of another terrible murder story that occurred “in Stuart” along the Indian River Lagoon, North Hutchinson Island.

When I was nine years old, growing up in Stuart, a Sheriff in our county of 28,000 people was arrested for allegedly killing and torturing two girls on Hutchinson Island. Over time, it was learned he had killed over thirty women in towns across America. This smiling killer is one of the most atrocious serial killers of all time. He worked and lived right here; as mentioned, his name is Gerard Schaefer.

As with Tyler Hadley, it didn’t make any sense. Schaefer came from a “nice family,” in Wisconsin, was raised Catholic, graduated from Florida Atlantic University, in Broward County worked as a teacher and in law enforcement, he was married, his mother also apparently lived with the young couple. As time went on things didn’t go so well in Broward, so he decided to apply for a Sheriff’s position further north in Martin County.

What was even more bizarre for me to grasp in my youth, was the fact that this serial killer’s public defender, Elton Schwarz, also working in Martin County, ended up marrying Gerard Schaefer’s wife, twenty four years Schwartz’ junior, while Schaefer was in prison. After divorcing Schaefer and marring Schwartz, the couple was happily married for thirty years. (The Early Lawyers of Martin County 1925-1965, Thomas Thurlow Jr, 2011.) Schaefer, on the other hand, was murdered by a fellow inmate while in prison in 2005.

The Schafer trail went on for years, long past my high school days, and definitely tainted my teenage mind.

I don’t know if it made me any more careful, in fact it may have made me more defiant, as I remember jogging along North River Road’s sidewalk at night in Sewall’s Point and being reprimanded by Chief Savini, even brought home; but, I know for sure that it certainly affected the way I view authority and “the world.”

“Things are not always what you think they are; don’t trust what you see.”

Today most people don’t even remember serial killer Gerard Schaefer, but I think as uncomfortable as it is, it is important that we do. Presently as Tyler Hadley is on trial in neighboring Port St Lucie, we are faced to confront demons even here along the beautiful Treasure Coast.

And most important, by remembering, there is a better chance that history will not be allowed to repeat itself.

Link to 2010 story by Stuart New’s Tyler Treadway: (https://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/nov/28/former-martin-county-deputys-killing-spree-in-of/?print=1) Subscriber link: (https://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/nov/28/former-martin-county-deputys-killing-spree-in-of/)

The “Vertex of Lake Okeechobee” and It’s Effect on the Indian River Lagoon

Five county property lines within Lake Okeechobee — There are five county property lines within Lake Okeechobee; the vertex is where all lines meet-Glades, Henry, Palm Beach, Martin and Okeechobee.

My parents live in Indianlucie, in Sewall’s Point. Since I was a kid there has has been a sign in the back yard that says “Dade County.”

In the late 1800s what we know today as “Martin County” was Dade, later becoming Palm Beach and finally, piecing together northern Palm Beach and southern St Lucie, in 1925, Martin County.

Palm Beach County had always had more power, and they still do. In the early 1920s the people living in northern Palm Beach County got tired of being shortchanged on services and convinced Governor Martin to support a county named for him, and Martin County was born.

In spite of the name, Lake Okeechobee of course alway bordered the county east of it, and Palm Beach had “always” used the land of the lake to maximize the state distribution of highway funds.

That was until state representative of Martin County, William Ralph Scott of Stuart, initiated a bill to divide the lake among its adjacent counties, “creating a more equitable distribution of state funds for road creation and maintenance so that the lake was shared with all five counties along its boarders,” and thus the property lines of the lake were changed in 1963. (see MicroSoft map above.)

It’s no surprise that all bordering counties confirmed the “justice” of this change and supported its ratification, with the exception of Palm Beach County!

As we continue fight over water in the future, it will be interesting to see if Representative Scott’s vertex can help the Indian River Lagoon and St Lucie River with an ironic new vortex, whose lines are coming together, named the “Water Wars…”

The Almost Great “Port of Stuart,” along the St Lucie/Indian River Lagoon

1911 Seawall's Point Land Company map — Portion of 1911 Sewall’s Point Land Company map showing area off of Sewall’s Point and Stuart where the great “Port of Stuart” was being developed.

The headlines of the South Florida Developer on December 29th, 1925 bragged about a Stuart along the St Lucie/Indian River Lagoon very different than the one we know today:

“Port of Stuart, Florida’s New Gateway. “

“The Opening of the St Lucie Inlet to the commerce of the world will bring to Stuart and all Martin County that belated recognition to which it is rightfully entitled by virtue of its strategic geographic location.”

“W.B. Shearer, recognized international authority on ports and waterways, makes the positive statement that of all the East Coast’s four hundred miles of waterfront, the harbor at Stuart is the the only port with natural advantages suitable for a naval base…”

“St Lucie Ship Canal Locks- the first link in the chain of waterways that will eventually form a navigable canal from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico is the “St Lucie Ship Canal” now 95% complete. It’s completion will open up the fertile western portion of Marin County…”

As these headlines show, the “Port of Stuart” was not just a dream, in the early 1920s, it was a becoming reality. Details of the port still exists in dusty federal, state and local documents. If it were not for the Great Depression of the late 1920s and the difficulty for the ACOE in dynamiting the Anastasia rock from the bottom of the St Lucie Inlet, it could have been a reality.

So how could this be? Today an idea like this would be heresy!

Well, Captain Henry Sewall, for which the peninsula of Sewall’s Point is named, was one of many responsible for this “heresy.” Not only had he led locals to open the St Lucie Inlet by hand in 1892, he had served as county commissioner, and state representative.

In 1910 Captain Sewall and his powerful business friends, including adventurer Hugh Willoughby, founded “Sewall’s Point Land Company,” as Captain Sewall had inherited the tip of Sewall’s Point and large portions of waterfront and other lands along Stuart through his family linage to the famous Miles-Hanson Grant.

According to Sandra Thurlow’s book: “Sewall’s Point, the History of a Peninsula on Florida’s Treasure Coast,” after the formation of Sewall’s Point Land Company, the men got right to work building the Sunrise Inn on Old St Lucie Boulvard, and miles of roads in today’s Golden Gate; (see map above), government, bonds were held by the county and a turning basin at the tip of Sewall’s Point was dredged; this fill created today’s Sandsprit Park.”

A turning basin at Sewall’s Point? You’ve got to be kidding.

They were not.

Even poetry was written for the dream, ironically by beloved environmentalist, Ernie Lyon’s father:

Just One Place for the Harbor
by Harry Lyons
1924

“Brave sailors in Atlantic storms,
A harbor need for aid.
They skirt the coast of Florida,
Lest commerce be delayed.
When hurricanes sweep o’er the deep,
And ships grave perils face,
‘Tis the duty of all mariners,
To seek an anchorage place.
You’ll find the place for a harbor here,
Where the old St. Lucie flows.
There is room for ships at Sewall’s Point,
Where the Indian River goes.
No where else is there such an inlet,
Down below or up above.
There is just one place for the harbor!
Stuart the town we love!
From Stuart to Fort Myers at last,
We’ll have a waterway,
When the canal is finished,
And they’re hastening the day.
Across Lake Okeechobee,
From the Gulf of Mexico,
Oil and phosphate, fruit and lumber,
Into Stuart soon will go.”

Sewall died in 1925 and the bottom fell out of the real estate market around 1926. Around the same time, two devastating hurricanes put the nail in coffin of the Stuart Port at the St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon.

It is interesting to note that the St Lucie Canal, C-44, between Lake Okeechobee and the St Lucie River was completed not only for transportation and trade, but for flood control of agriculture and people working south of the lake. The prosperity associated with the canal for the local people of Stuart never came and the canal ended up being a major factor in the destruction of their beloved waterways…

Well time goes on, new dreams come and go; new fortunes are made and lost. But for old times’ sake, one can stand at Sandsprit Park, and look out to Sewall’s Point remembering perhaps Stuart’s biggest dream, the lost dream, and for many, a dream well lost, the dream of the “Great Port of Stuart.”

*Thank you to my mother, Sandra Henderson Thurlow, for sharing her historic articles to make this write up possible.

Inspiration’s Luminescence on the Indian River Lagoon

Morning's Light on the Indian River Lagoon — Sunrise along the Indian River Lagoon, Jensen Beach. (Photo JTL)

light, noun: “understanding of a problem or mystery; enlightenment”

If you have ever had the chance to drive along Indian River Lagoon in the early morning or at sunset, you have probably been taken by it’s light.

No matter how “bad” the health of the river itself can get, at sunrise or sunset, there is the river’s glorious illumination. It’s one of those otherworldly gifts in a life that is often otherwise quite commonplace.

In the new or fading light of the Indian River Lagoon, we are renewed, and find our inspiration to fight, and to save it.

Tallahassee’s Dolphins and the Sadness of the Indian River Lagoon

The last time I was in Tallahassee was I eighteen and there to cheer on the Florida Gators.Today I was there to visit the Capitol and the city looked very different with thirty plus years under my belt.

I noticed the city was actually quite beautiful, very southern, with magnificent, awe inspiring oak trees, tall stately buildings, and dolphins.

At the back of the Capitol, which today almost acts like the front of the Capitol, there is a large statue called “Stormsong” composed of stainless steel dolphins. The animals seem to soar joyously in invisible waves.(http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/17019) The large piece is beautiful.

The statue is by Hugh Bradford and is a “celebration of Florida’s wildlife.” A public private partnership, from Florida’s Bush administration, that was started in 2000 and completed in 2008, made the work possible.

As breathtaking as the statue is, I could not help but be saddened knowing that the dolphins who live in my home town of Sewall’s Point in Martin County are probably the sickest in the state. These dolphins suffer from suppressed immune systems, multiple sicknesses and more than anywhere else, lobomycosis. This has all been written about and documented by Dr Gregory Bossert previously of Harbor Brach Oceanographic Institute. His research states that it is believed the filthy fresh water releases from Lake Okeechobee exasperate an already toxic water system in the southern Indian River Lagoon.
(http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.228.1.104)

On top of this the northern and central lagoon has had a UME or “unexplained morality event” since 2013 and over 90 dolphins have died, “mysteriously.”
(http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/mmume/floridadolphins2013.html)

It is time for the Capitol’s politicians to look deep within themselves and out the widows and start working for the irreplaceable wildlife in our state instead of against it.

Pioneer Churches Still Praying for the Indian River Lagoon

Stained glass windows from St Paul's Episcopal Church of Eden, later St Paul's' Church of Walton, now at St Mary's Church, Stuart. (Photo Sandra Thurlow) — Stained glass windows from St Paul’s Episcopal Church of Eden, later St Paul’s Church of Walton, now at St Mary’s Episcopal Church of Stuart. (Photo JTL)

According to my mother’s book, Historic Eden and Jensen on Florida’s Indian River, there were a number of pioneer churches along the Indian River Lagoon.

One that strikes a special cord for me is St Paul’s that was built in 1898 but destroyed in the hurricane of 1949 as pictured below. (Photo courtesy archives of Sandra Henderson Thurlow.)

Thankfully the stained glass windows were saved, and today they are the backdrop for the altar at St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Stuart that was built in 1949, the year of the storm.

According to My mother’s Jensen/Eden book,”there were no churches for the earliest settlers of Jensen and Eden to attend,” but it was the African American community of Tick Ridge, along Savannah Road, that built the first in 1890. This church eventually took on the name “St Peter’s African Methodist Episcopal Chapel,” and is located between the Savannas and the Indian River Lagoon. A newer church, a CME, or Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, stands on the same location today.

A second church rose in 1899, also in Tick Ridge; it was baptist in denomination.

In 1898 the beautiful All Saint’s Episcopal Church and Cemetery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_Episcopal_Church,_Waveland_(Jensen_Beach,_Florida) was built, still stands today, and is the oldest longstanding church in the area according to its Wikipedia write up; this is the church that can be seen on the west hill just north of Rio when traveling on Indian River Drive.

In 1903 the Eden Union Congregational Church was built and is still standing in old downtown Jensen; it the one with the really cool concrete blocks and once was painted bright yellow; and finally, the Community Church of Jensen was organized in 1938, eventually moving to its stunning and “heavenly” location on one of the highest sites in the county, Skyline Drive, Jensen Beach.

In the hard times of Eden/Jensen pioneers, people set priorities and organized to worship. In one form or another, most of these churches are still standing today. What an accomplishment to the spirit of the men and women who built and loved our area and have passed on.

I believe with out a doubt, they’re all still praying, and and thank God they are, because we all know, the Indian River Lagoon needs nothing short of a miracle!

All on Board for Fertilizer Ordinances-Indian River Lagoon

The River Kidz protest HB 421, Fertilizer Preemption, in 2011, Town of Sewall's Point. (Photo Nic Mader) — The River Kidz protest Florida HB 421, that would have preempted the fertilizer ordinance of Sewall’s Point. (Photo Nic Mader, 2011)

Fertilizer has certainly been a hot topic over the past few years and for me this movement is one of the great hopes that the Indian River Lagoon has a chance of surviving.

Fertilizer ordinances, specifically those with “black out periods,” started on the west coast of Florida over a decade ago as activist around Tampa Bay and Sarasota decided to fight for their waters. They have had great success after great losses and now Tampa Bay has more sea grasses than it did before World War II, due mostly to its BE FLORIDAN program that the National Estuary Program is now trying to bring to the IRL. (http://www.befloridian.org)

Although there had been talk years ago of fertilizer ordinances on Florida’s east coast, they really didn’t catch on until the Town of Sewall’s Point adopted a “strong” fertilizer ordinance, a “black out period,” or no fertilizer use during the rainy season (June-November, for SP) in 2010. I am proud to say I was a big part of that movement with the support of the Sewall’s Point Commission.

It was Commissioner, to be Mayor, Jeffery Krauskoph, in 2009, who gave me the idea to push for such an ordinance in the Town of Sewall’s Point. The City of Stuart had actually passed the first in the area, however; it did not have a “black out period” and the Sewall’s Point ordinance does.

Ironically, last night the City of Stuart was petitioned by fertilizer activists from Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St Lucie and Martin counties to push for a “stronger” fertilizer ordinance and Stuart in fact adopted, by first reading, the Martin County ordinance, a “strong” fertilizer ordiance.

The perils of fertilizer were first majorly documented in the research of the National Reasearch Council’s, Clean Coastal Waters, Understanding and Reducing the Effects of Nutrient Pollution, in 2000. Dr Brian LaPointe and and Dr Margaret Leinen of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute both sat on this national committee and Dr Leinen even testified before Congress. (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9812)

The book scientifically states ” the problems caused by nutrient over enrichment are significant and likely to increase as human use of inorganic fertilizers and an fossil fuels continue to intensify.” The scholarly publication notes strategies for “control” and tells the story of synthetic fertilizers created after World War II and how they transformed not only agri-business but suburbia, and how this, hand in hand, with over development, has lead to the steady demise of our beloved coastal estuaries. In many cases, such as the Gulf of Mexico, fertilizer from farms along the Mississippi River have created “dead zones.”

I am on the board of Harbor Branch’s Foundation and I once asked Dr Leinen, (who now is now the Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Dean of the School for Scripps Institute of Oecnograpy in California,) “if you testified before Congress on this problem, why didn’t they listen; why didn’t they do anything? ” She smiled at me and kindly and replied, “Jacqui, politics often overrides science.”

I stood there and had one of my “realizations…”

On a positive note, what I love about fertilizer ordinances the most, is that the “people” have embraced them as they realize the fertilizer problem is something they can directly and positively affect. As the public puts “skin in the game” for the direct benefit of their rivers, springs and estuaries, they expect this of their politicians as well. This is the beauty and and power of fertilizer ordinances; it is politics on its most revolutionary level, that of “the people….”

At this time, “strong” fertilizer ordinances have been adopted in the Town of Sewall’s Point; Martin County; Indian River County; St Lucie County; Orchid Island; Indian River Shores; Vero Beach; Brevard County; and are at first reading or being “worked on or discussed” in Stuart; City of Port St Lucie, Jupiter Island; Ocean Breeze; Fellslmere; Palm Shores; Melbourne Beach; Sebastian; Rockledge; Satellite Beach; New Smyrna Beach; Cocoa Beach and most likely a handful of others. Marty Baum, the Indian River Keeper, and others to be commended for taking the time to travel and advocate.

Like wildfire, communities along the Indian River Lagoon are taking into their own hands a part of the puzzle to save their lagoon. And the dolphins, manatees, seagrasses and and fish are smiling and hoping that this is just the start! As Dr Grant Gilmore said at the 2013 Harbor Branch Symposium, “it is the people, not the government, that will save the IRL.”

What is the WRAC and Can Martin County Become the Bull Gator for the Indian River Lagoon?

WRAC the jaws behind the SFWMD? (Photo courtesy of Clyde Butcher) — Right now agriculture interests are perhaps the most powerful force, “the bull gator,” of the SFWMD’s WRAC. (Photo courtesy of Clyde Butcher.)

bull (bo͝ol) n. 1. The male of certain large animals, such as the alligator, elephant, or moose that periodically fights upcoming bulls to maintain position or dominance. 2. An exceptionally large, strong, and aggressive person.

Perhaps the most important part of understanding our Indian River Lagoon water issues, is being honest about which interests have the most influence, who has the power to change things, and learning to take advantage of opportunities to become a competing bull gator at the table of water management.

Understanding the Water Resources Advisory Commission is a good place to start. The WRAC is a body that is appointed by the South Florida Water Management District’s Governing Board and represents a broad range of business, agricultural, environmental, tribal, governmental and public interests. It is an advisory board in essense to the SFWMD. (http://www.sfwmd.gov/portal/page/portal/xweb%20about%20us/wrac)

The Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission are members of the SFWMD Governing Board. The Governing Board is appointed by the governor.

WRAC’s number one bull gator is not named “Alfred the Alligator,” but “Agi. How can I say this? Well I have served as an alternate for three years.

Monthly, I have sat through the long meetings with detailed scientific presentations by the SFWMD on water issues; it’s enough to leave your mind completely fried by lunch time but incredibly insightful. The real fun starts when all the members are allowed to give their opinions and concerns. Unlike many public arenas, the WRAC allows its members to speak passionately and openly on their interests. The agriculture community is very powerful on this committee and represent status quo.

Historically the WRAC is relatively new, I believe created in the 1990s, however; Florida’s flood districts, (under various names,) the state of Florida, the Federal Government and Army Corp of Engineers have worked and advised each other how to drain lands in South Florida since the late 1800’s.

This was originally done to help the state’s fledgling agriculture industry. But the agriculture and draining machine grew up and went too far destroying the natural system of Sorth Florida.

In the 1970’s under Governor, Rubin Askew, the water districts were restructured and received an additional mission to “flood control,” that of restoring the Everglades. And in 1994, the “Florida Forever Act” made clear the public expected their government to preserve Florida’s natural future. (River of Interest, Water Management in South Florida an dthe Everglades 1948-2010,” 2011)

This new mission to restore and not just to “drain and maintain” is struggling to find its footing, as history is a heavy cloak to change. This change will only come through the people–mind you, WRAC is an extension of “the people.” The WRAC is a key.

Last Thursday in a rare and appreciated opportunity for Martin County, the SFWMD/ACOE allowed the county to hold its “After Action” meeting during the WRAC. Almost five hours were dedicated for the purpose of critique.

The Commission first allowed Gary Goforth and Kevin Henderson, from Martin County, to present on how “more water could have gone south,” during the horrific summer of 2013. Then the SFWMD gave its response of why “it couldn’t.”

Basically, the District expounded upon their many “constraints” to sending more water south: the EAA’s legal flood protection; water quality standards; a consent decree from the Federal Government requiring phosphorus levels to be 10 parts per billion once they reach the Everglades; limited capacity in the Storm Water Treatment Areas (STAs ); preference for EAA water over Lake Okeechobee water; flood protection of the east coast and towns south of the lake; the FWC, endanged species, and a restrictive Tamiami Trail, were the most obvious.

Representatives form the agriculture community were some the first to speak in support of the SFWMD’s presentation. In one case, the “water game” was cited, a game that is used to teach how difficult is is to manage the water. “I challenge any of you to have done better,” in essence, was said. The room was silent.

Then the conversation continued and something interesting happened.

Representatives other than Martin County started asking questions of the top gators…

“How far does the EAA have to keep the water level down in its fields? Could the EAA grow rice or another crop that would allow for more water on the fields? “Could the water go another way? ” Perhaps naive, but there was a clear voice to look for answers for the plight of the estuaries reflected in the questions of many on the commission.

It may not seem like much right now, but I do believe Thursday’s meeting was one that could allow Martin County to evolve from years at the table as a baby gator into that of a bull. As the only way to remain “on top” is to have the support of your fellow alligators….

The Black Bobcats of the St Lucie Region and Indian River Lagoon

Melanistic bobcat caught in Martin County (Photo Busch Wildlife Center) — Captured melanistic bobcat from Martin County (Photo courtesy of Busch Wildlife Center, 2007)

The Martin County Difference” is an expression that one often hears from locals that means exactly what it says, “things are different here…”

Not only are the different, they are exceptional. We have the beautiful St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon, a four story height limit, a strong urban service boundary, great public schools, a strong fertilizer ordinance, public beaches and black bobcats…

When I was a kid growing up in Stuart, one sometimes heard stories from the kids that lived in Indiantown or Palm City about “black panthers.” And someone who had seen them would swear on their mother’s grave this to be true. Supposedly these stories had been around for many, many years coming down from parents and grandparents.

More recently in 2008, my first year on the Sewall’s Point commission, the town had at least three “normally colored” bobcats and multiple kittens. The sightings were very exciting but scared some residents who had moved here from up north so I started reading about bobcats in great detail. Eventually we had Dan Martinelli of the Treasure Coast Wildlife Center speak before the commission and things calmed down but my fascination with these beautiful creatures did not.

I talked about bobcats a lot during this time and in the course of a discussion, one of my husband’s physician friends who lived in Palm City, with great excitement told a story of seeing a black bobcat in Palm City walk across his yard. That same year one of the Guatemalan landscape workers in the town, knowing I loved animals, struggled wide eyes to tell me about the black panther he had seen walking along a fence, close to Lake Okeechobee and the St Lucie Canal, that he had seen while fishing with his son.

According to my reading there have been more reports of melanistic bobcats in Martin County than anywhere else in the country, mostly near the area of the St Lucie Canal, Lake Okeechobee and Loxahatchee.

If you want to find these reports, google “melanistic bobcats martin.” These posts are not entirely scientific but they are documented. They say there have been sightings for the past 80 years.

Although I never seen a black bobcat, popular lore says the exist, I believe it, and it’s certainly better documented than Sasquatch who many of my high school friends claimed to see too.

What an incredible place to live! The “Martin County Difference!”

__________________________________________________________________

According to the Florida Wildlife Commission black panthers do not exist but black bobcats do!

FLORIDA PANTHERS:(http://www.fws.gov/floridapanther/panther_faq.html)

FLORIDA BOBCATS:(http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/mammals/land/bobcat/)

The ACOE’s “Periodic Scientists Call” and the Indian River Lagoon

S-80, Connecting Lake Okeechobee to the St Lucie Canal or C-44 — S-80 connecting Lake Okeechobee to the St Lucie Canal or C-44 controlled by the ACOE. (Photo JTL)

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell

I used to think it was the Colonel of the Army Corp of Engineers who single handedly had control to open the gates at S-80 and S-308 to allow the waters of Lake Okeechobee to flow into the St Lucie River, Indian River Lagoon. (http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/Missions/CivilWorks/LakeOkeechobee.aspx)

But since February of last year, I have gotten more insight.

As an elected official, I am allowed to sit in on the Army Corp of Engineers “Periodic Scientists Call” that occurs about once every two weeks. Last year I was invited to sit in with Martin County and I have attend ever since.

No experience has helped me understand the south Florida water process as much as consistently sitting in on these calls.

The call is a meeting of the scientific stakeholders to give their input to the ACOE before the Corp makes its “guidance” for Lake Okeechobee, and usually the following Thursday, after, meeting with the SFWMD, a “recommendation.”

As you can imagine, the call is run by the US Army, so it is very systematic and the language is filled with acronyms and science jargon. For the first six months, I was basically a silent idiot listening to a foreign language. But slowly I have been catching on.

Thankfully some things are totally predicable. For instance, every call the first thing that is accomplished after reading the rules of the call, is that the roll call is taken. I like to listen to who is there: ACOE? Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission? City of Sanibel? Ft Meyers? Martin County? St Lucie County? NOAA? Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection? Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services? SFWMD? Broward County? Highlands County? Osceola County? Tribal Nations? Lee County? Ding Darling? Congressmen and other elected representatives? Members of the public? Other?

Then a leader from the ACOE gives a short power point presentation that reviews rainfall; precipitation outlooks by the SFWMD and NOAA; Lake Okeechobee inflows and outflows; operational band standing; SFWMD position analysis; Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule (LORS); and then finally a “guidance” for a “decision.”(http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsReleases/tabid/6071/Tag/2128/lake-okeechobee-regulation-schedule.aspx)

Next, each stakeholder, one at a time, gives an update on their specialty and makes their case for their interest. Public members are then allowed to speak and and the again the ACOE leader goes through everyone one more time to see if if anyone has new comments based on the other just shared.

The calls are scientific and unemotional. However, there times of tension and difficulty like last year when the ACOE began releasing to the St Lucie River, Indian River Lagoon and Caloosahatchee on May 8th and continued steadily, then intensely, through September 21, 2013. This tension may start up again soon, as the lake is higher than they wish for this time of year and it has been a wet winter. The “decision” should become public today.

I have to say that after sitting in on all these calls, the Army Corp often holds back when the LORS chart, and maybe even the SFWMD, says to “release.” But in the end, the inevitable occurs.

Although I appreciative of the hard working men and women who run the ACOE, I do think the overall system fails to take into account the long term survival needs of the natural system which includes “us,” and favors the security of resources of the sugar industry and agriculture south of the lake. It is easy to fall back on “flood control” each time the lake rises, and dump east and west, but the system is more far reaching and has greater demands than just that. The water they are dumping, 1.7 billion gallons on average a day, is simply wasted due to an outdated system. (FOS, Mark Perry)

On a deeper level, the intertwined culture of the SFWMD, the ACOE and agriculture, especially the sugar industry, is one going back over 100 years. Their connection runs deep and is a cultural one, one that has allowed them to control water and politics for their own interests in South Florida, past and present.

But times change and world views evolve. Personally, I am pushing for a future a little less Orwellian, and a little more respectful, of our natural resources and Mother Nature.

Sugar, the Indian River Lagoon, and the Changing Hurricane Winds of 1928

Historical marker of mass burial site for Florida’s 1928 hurricane, near Port Mayaca, Indiantown. (Photo by Evie Flaugh)

If you drive west from Stuart, on Highway 76 towards Port Mayaca, you’ll eventually see a large graveyard on the left hand side of the road. It is well kept and reminiscent of an old Florida, a Florida of pioneers, the Klu Klux Clan, and the Indian Wars. Large oak trees line the property and the unusually massive grave stones stand like sentinels to a time long past.

At the entrance is a memorial sign dedicated to the approximately 3000 people who were killed in the Florida hurricane of 1928. An earthen dike, barely holding back the waters that had naturally flowed south for thousands of years, breeched, killing mostly black agricultural migrant workers, while flooding sugar, vegetable farms, and personal property built in the path of the natural flow way south of the lake. Thousands of bodies were laboriously buried in mass graves, one in Martin and another in Palm Beach County. (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/okeechobee)

African American, Etonville writer, Zora Neale Hurston, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston) writes in her classic novel, Their Eyes were Watching God, about migrant workers “looking back” as they were running to escape the furry of the 1928 hurricane.

“Above all the drive of the wind and the water…and the lake. Under its multiplied roar could be heard the almighty sound of grinding rock and timber and a wail….people trying to run in raging waters and screaming…The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles an hour winds has looses his chains. The sea was walking the earth, with a heavy heel.”

All work for blacks during the late 1920s was difficult and filled with the prejudice and hardship of the Jim Crow Laws. In the sugar industry there were complaints of “controlling” black harvest labor, aided by law enforcement, debt peonage, forced labor and even killings.

Today when people speak about the hurricane of 1928, the death of the workers south of the lake is credited as the source for pushing for “flood protection.” This is not full disclosure.

The truth of the matter is that the storm was also an opportunity for the struggling sugar industry, south of Lake Okeechobee, not only to “protect” their poorly treated laborers, but to rally local, state and national government officials to support legislation to “invest” in the area against future flooding for the benefit of their fields, and the future riches of the industry. (Source Raining Cain in the Glades, Hollister, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo5704198.html)

This was no easy feat and insanely expensive in a time around the U.S. Great Depression. Politicians and businessmen were creative and put emphasis the Okeechobee Waterway for “navigation, “rather than focusing solely on “flood protection.” At the time, navigation funds were much easier to get from the federal government than funds for “drainage” or flood control of the newly created Okeechobee Flood District.

These funds came to fruition in the construction of the “Cross State Canal,” also known as the “Okeechobee Waterway, “which links the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee, to the St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon and conveniently doubles as a giant drainage canal for the sugar industry, diverting as much a 92% of the flow of water south of Lake Okeechobee.

You may have seen an arch in Rio that says “Gateway to the Atlantic.” That arch was built in celebration of he Cross State Canal…

Local people at the time had no of idea the greater repercussions of such to their greatest local resource, the St Lucie River, Indian River Lagoon. We still sit open mouthed today when S-308 at Port Mayaca is opened by the Army Corp of Engineers, and our area’s river resources are destroyed. Certainly we have our own local canal and runoff problems, but Lake Okeechobee’s tremendous waters, all the way from Orlando, are most destructive.

It’s exhausting. The Cross State Canal was completed in 1937, and we in Martin County have been fighting ever since, the changing winds of Florida’s hurricane of 1928.

Florida’s Legislative Session, How Can it Work for the Indian River Lagoon?

"Save our River," River Kidz FDOT recycled art sign, now in Washington DC, office of Congressman Patrick Murphy. (Photo JTL) — “Save our River,” River Kidz FDOT recycled art sign, now in Washington DC, office of Congressman Patrick Murphy. (Photo JTL)

After six years as a locally elected official, one thing is clear. I still do not really understand how the Florida Legislature works or how to make it work for me, but I’m getting there.

I thought with the Legislative Session convening, today, March 4, 2014, I would try to share what I do think I know or what I think I have figured out.

First of all, the basics. The legislature is composed of two “houses:” the House, that consist of 120 members http://www.myfloridahouse.gov

and a Senate, that is composed of 40 members http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Senate. Each represents a district according to population.

The House leadership includes Speaker of the House; Speaker pro tempore; Majority Leader; Minority Leader and committee chairs. These House seats come up for reelection every two years. Not fun.

The Senate leadership consist of the President of the Senate; President pro tempore; Majority Leader; Minority Leader and committee chairs. Senate seats come up for reelection every four years, so you can at least get something going before you have to jump back into the reelection circus.

There are term limits for both the house and the Senate but because they are defined as “consecutive” you can take a break and then jump back in….

So what have they been doing? Well, recently they have been in Tallahassee and had “House and Senate Interim Committee Meetings.” The dates of those meetings were as follows: September 2013, 23-27; October 7-11; November 4-8; December 9-13; January 2014, 6-10; 13-17; February 3-7; 10-14; and 17-21. So what do they do at these “interim meetings?” In their committees they formulate the bills that individuals will sponsor and try to get passed starting today, March 4th, when the session officially begins. This year the last day of session is May 2nd. So it is two months of “mayhem …”

A bill can start in the House or the Senate but it has to have a “companion bill” to move forward and be voted upon. Hundreds of bills are brought before the legislature each session but only a fraction will make it into law. You can imagine there are many different interest throughout our varying state…

As the session continues, it is difficult to keep track of everything and bills usually get packaged along with others, sometimes with others that have nothing to do with them. As a locally elected official, this frustrates me as I feel every bill should be considered separately as local ordinances are. Well, this is not the case, and allows for negotiating– better said, “if you help me, I’ll help you,” which at the end of the day is not so bad. What is bad, is that the people, the voting public, have almost no way of keeping up with all this hop-schotching, so we are 100% dependent on our elected officials and those watching out for us at home. To complicate issues further, elected officials are pressured, and blackmailed, mostly by their own party, to do what they need to do to make a deal work or “we won’t let your bill be heard” or “you’ll never get to chair a committee,” especially if you are a freshmen or relatively new to the pecking order.

It takes years to develop the seniority to do what you want, so to speak. Senator Joe Negron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Negron a good example, as he served in the House before he served in the Senate, then he became the head of the Appropriations Committee (they all sit on committees in some capacity ) and his recent position has a lot of influence and power. Senator Negron could not have started the “senate Select Committee on the Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee” years ago; he has earned his position to do such.

So how do you stay on top of all this politicking ? It is kind of like holding an angry cat. Hold on tight but be prepared to get scratched. Go on line to the state website and get on email alerts and call your local delegation: here in Martin, St Lucie and Indian River: Senator Joe Negron; Representative Gayle Harrell and Representative Mary Lynn Magar; Representative Debbie Mayfield; Representative Larry Lee, and tell them you expect them to support St Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon policy and whatever else is important to you; tell them you appreciate what they are doing, and that you are paying attention to reports in the newspaper as far as how they vote. Most of all, be supportive so they support you. And be sure to tell them “good luck not getting scratched.”

Cinnamon Toast and the Indian River Lagoon

In the late 1960s, one of the best things about Christmas, was that old Christmas trees reinforced our fort under the old oak tree, we pretended was a ship, along the St Lucie River. I remember going to my neighbors, the Schramm’s house, with all their brothers and sisters, to have cinnamon sugar toast for breakfast around this time of year.

Mrs Schramm’s cinnamon toast was like nothing I had ever had: butter, sugar and cinnamon on Wonder Bread toast. Delicious! Little did I know, that one day I would be criticizing the sugar industry for not doing enough to help us save the Indian River Lagoon.

Recently, I have been reading the book, Raising Cane in the Glades, The Global Sugar Trade and the Transformation of Florida, by Florida International University professor, Gail M. Hollander. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo5704198.html

The book is credited as the first “to study the environmental transformation of the Everglades within the economic and historical geography of global sugar production and trade.” It is an “environmental history,” a discipline that is becoming more studied and written about: how we as humans effect change in our environment.

The book’s history is amazing and so far the story that has hit me the most is one about Mr Bohr Dahlberg who in the late 1920s owned Southern Sugar Company before it went into “receivership” and was purchased by Stewart Mott who created the United States Sugar Corporation. http://www.ussugar.com/downloads/ussc-history.pdf

Although Mr Dahlberg’s company went broke by 1928, the year of the great hurricane, he managed to break the Democratic hold on the “South” and form relationships with Republicans across the country for the benefit of the sugar industry in South Florida by supporting the successful presidential campaign of Herbert Hoover. Mr Hoover was a man who came to the support of those who had supported him, and it is he who authorized the building of the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee, to protect the sugar industry’s lands and the labor. The dike was completed in 1933 and changed forever the fate of the Everglades, the St Lucie River, and the Caloosahatchee River.

The politics of this book will make your jaw drop. Expressions such as: structure of the world system, national and global importance for presidents, national interest and world unrest, supposed and real issues of national security, using drainage and navigation to nationally fund the Okeechobee Flood District, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Cross State Canal that opened up the major draining of Lake Okeechobee into the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon.

All of this happened thirty years before I ate that cinnamon toast at the Schramms; there are fifty more years of politics that have come into play since then! The whole thing is rather daunting, but whether a kid, or a 50 year old today, I think the Sugar Industry owes the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon something, after all we take their drainage and I ate all that toast as a kid.