Kick Ass: Selected Columns

by Carl Hiaasen

  Explanation for road widening quite a stretch

  June 15, 1997

  By a slim vote, the South Florida Water Management District last week launched one of the nuttiest schemes in its long nutty history:

  Widening the 18 miles between the mainland and the Florida Keys from two lanes to three, with a fourth phantom lane to be prepared but left unpaved.

  The new paved lane will be northbound, ostensibly to improve hurricane evacuation. The unpaved Mystery Lane will run southbound, and nobody in authority has convincingly explained its purpose.

  Why scrape an extra swath along sensitive marshlands if it's not meant to be paved? Because it is meant to be paved, as soon as local opposition dies down.

  Widening the so-called Stretch isn't about hurricane egress or driver safety, it's about cramming more warm bodies into the Keys. It's about selling more rum runners, T-shirts and time shares.

  And, most significantly, it's about boosting road capacity to allow a wave of new construction along the islands.

  Those most eager for the project are commercial interests and land speculators in the Middle and Lower Keys. The people most adamantly against it are those who live in the Upper Keys and, ironically, drive the hairy Stretch more than anyone.

  Originally, the plan called for widening the entire 18-mile leg, which is now two-laned with intermittent passing zones. Opposition to four-laning was so fierce that planners devised a bizarre alternative—two lanes north, one lane south, and the unpaved "footprint" of another southbounder.

  In case of what? Unless you're traveling to the Keys by horseback or by wagon train, an unpaved lane is of little use.

  Nobody down here was fooled by the phony "compromise." Opponents remained vocal, but the county pushed ahead.

  A state hearing officer eventually approved the project. Incredibly, he ruled that expanding the main corridor into the Keys would have no secondary effects; not on the environment, not on growth, not on the quality of life.

  Just as Alligator Alley hasn't had an impact on traffic and crime in Naples and Fort Myers. Just as the Sawgrass Expressway hasn't disastrously urbanized northwest Broward. Much.

  Safety is a bogus issue. Widening a fast highway always draws more cars, and more cars mean more serious accidents.

  Supporters of a new Stretch also invoke images of hurricane stampedes as a reason to widen the road—a groundless argument meant to mask the true agenda: to bring in more people.

  The Mystery Lane is no mystery at all. Paving it at a near-future date will be easy, because the water management board will say yes. A slave to politics, the board virtually always says yes.

  For folks who live in already-crowded Key Largo, and who don't especially want the Turnpike in their front yard, the last hope lies with two men—Col. Terry Rice of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and former U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen.

  Lehtinen, a longtime advocate for the Everglades, plans to appeal the state's decision, on behalf of Keys conservation groups. He'll argue that four-laning the Stretch will imperil the water and wildlife of the islands.

  In the meantime, construction cannot begin without a green light from the Army Corps. Rice, the agency's chief troubleshooter on Everglades restoration, has serious concerns about the far-reaching effects of expanding the entry to the Keys.

  Rice is also curious about why the state agreed to the weird idea of a phantom southbound lane. "Why should we fill wetlands," he asked, "to make a lane they say they aren't going to pave?"

  Sounds like a ploy to run a big-city freeway straight into Key Largo, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the world's most expensive jogging path.

  The Everglades and Big Sugar

  Tainted bass a warning for all of us

  March 10, 1989

  What a winter for the Everglades. First the sawgrass catches fire, and now the fish are contaminated.

  Health agencies have warned anglers not to eat any largemouth bass or warmouth caught in Conservation Areas 2 and 3. They've also suggested reduced consumption of bass pulled out of the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.

  The reason: Samples of these fish show high and potentially harmful levels of mercury.

  Such a warning is unprecedented for any freshwater species in Florida. When bass (the state fish) are in jeopardy, it's a startling signal that something very bad is happening out in the black muck of the Glades.

  The story goes way beyond the culinary concerns of weekend fishermen. What's happening—invisibly, bewilderingly—is the poisoning of the source of our water and of the food chain that it supports. Animals that ingest mercury don't necessarily die, but they sometimes stop reproducing.

  The sprawl of the contamination is boggling. They're not talking about a backyard pond or a patch of marsh or even a whole creek. The danger zone encompasses more than 1,200 square miles of vital watershed.

  Tainted bass have been found as far north as Loxahatchee and as far south as the L-67 canal in Dade. The fish, about 70 in all, were collected with electronic stunning gear. They weighed between 2 and 8 pounds each. Experts were shocked at the amounts of mercury discovered.

  The government considers any level exceeding 0.5 parts per million to be cause for concern. Anything over 1.5 is unfit for human consumption.

  No wonder health workers were alarmed, then, when one of the sample Everglades bass tested at 4.4 parts mercury per million. Some sites yielded fish with levels averaging 2.5.

  Much has been made of these statistics because people want to know how much mercury is safe to eat. Fact: Bass aren't supposed to have heavy metals in their flesh.

  In humans, mercury poisoning can damage the central nervous system.The most famous and tragic outbreak occurred in the 19505, when mercury-laden effluent from a factory contaminated the fish in Minamata Bay, Japan. Thousands of people who ate the fish suffered severe mercury poisoning that led to blindness, paralysis and birth defects. More than 300 died.

  The Everglades scenario is not so extreme. The average person would have to eat a mess of tainted bass to be affected, but the health risk is larger for pregnant women and nursing mothers.

  Actually, the edibility of these fish is the least of concerns. The more urgent riddle is where the pollution is coming from and what it portends for the ecology of South Florida.

  "There is no theory at this point," says Frank Morello, a biologist with the Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. "It's just a mystery."

  The possibilities are far-ranging. Mercury can travel airborne from coal-burning power plants. It's also a common residue of agricultural fungicides, which have been known to be flushed into the Glades.

  Over time mercury accumulates in living tissue, and the high levels found in the bass suggest a serious long-term pollution. Sediment samples might provide some clues, if not answers. The trick is tracing the source of this slop and identifying the offenders.

  In a way, the invisible nature of the mercury threat makes it easy to underestimate. It's not like a red tide or a chemical spill. You won't see lots of bloated bass or dead panfish floating around the docks; in fact, you won't see much of anything.

  A sudden fish kill looks more dramatic, but it tends to be brief and contained. The slow poisoning of an entire ecosystem is more sinister and potentially more catastrophic.

  The hushed beauty of the Everglades is deceiving. It is so rich with life that we naturally assume all the life to be healthy.

  For now, mercury and all, there are plenty of lunker largemouth bass to be caught. But the way it's going, someday we'll be fishing for them with magnets instead of worms.

  News isn't so sweet for Big Sugar

  March 5, 1990

  The sugar industry, despoiler of the Everglades, got some not-so-sweet news last week.

  Powerful federal agencies have come down strongly on the side of U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen, who is suing to make Florida clean its water.

  A report of the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Army Corps of Eng
ineers and the Environmental Protection Agency says Everglades pollution is at "crisis proportions," and the state's plan to stop it is too weak.

  The prime pollutants are phosphates, and the chief culprit is Big Sugar. Because cane companies donate lots of money to politicians, their disgraceful irrigation techniques have been overlooked for years.

  Lehtinen ruined the party with his unprecedented lawsuit, which was filed 18 months ago. It charged the South Florida Water Management District with pumping filthy farm runoff into Everglades National Park. And it charged the state Department of Environmental Regulation with doing virtually nothing to stop it.

  The message of the suit was so simple: Make the growers quit fouling our water. It hardly seemed like too much to ask.

  But it was. The great state of Florida has spent more than $1 million in legal fees to fight the case. Makes you proud to be a taxpayer, doesn't it? The lawyers get rich while the water gets worse.

  All sides agree that the public will be better served if an agreement can be reached out of court. As usual, politics is mucking up the priorities.

  Gov. Martinez wants the lawsuit to disappear because it's politically embarrassing. The board of the water district (which Martinez loaded with farmers and developers) wants the lawsuit to go away because it could cost Big Sugar a fortune.

  Florida had insisted it would come up with a comprehensive plan to save the Everglades, if only the feds would back off. Given the sorry history of water management, it was difficult to be bubbly with optimism.

  Sure enough, the district's new Surface Water Improvement and Management plan was greeted by environmentalists with resounding derision. SWIM would give Big Sugar until the year 2002 to clean up its act, using 40,000 acres of public wetlands as filtering pools.

  Water managers said they didn't know what SWIM would cost, or how much of the expense would be borne by agriculture. Big Sugar's response: We'll be happy to help clean up our slop if Uncle Sam pays every penny of the cost.

  What a deal. It's like emptying a septic tank into your neighbor's bathtub, then demanding money before you'll mop it up—and finishing the job 12 years later.

  The sugar growers' arrogance is well-founded. Thanks to the state, they get all the fresh water they want. Thanks to the feds, they can sell their crop at artificially inflated prices.

  It isn't farming, it's glorified welfare. Naturally Big Sugar wants the public to pay for its pollution remedies—we've been paying, one way or another, for everything else.

  State agencies always had the power to halt the polluting, but never had the political spine to do it. The staffs of the water districts are handcuffed because board members are political appointees who know more about irrigating campaign treasuries than vegetable fields.

  The great thing about the U.S. attorney's lawsuit is that it forces the issue: Why should the Okeechobee growers be allowed to do what no other private industry can?

  Knowing what we now do about the slow death of the Everglades, it's appalling that the sugar debate has lasted so long. The ultimate price of such cowardly politics could be a future of rationed, tainted drinking water for our kids.

  We owe the Big Sugar companies zero; they owe us. They should filter the runoff on their own land, at their own expense, starting now.

  But they won't do it, and the state won't make them. That's why Lehtinen sued.

  It certainly got everyone's attention, and not a moment too soon.

  New wetlands plan rooted in bad policy

  May 20, 1991

  In a political retreat that could mean disaster for parts of South Florida, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new rules that would allow massive development of once-protected swamps and marshlands.

  Under pressure from developers and farmers, the EPA recently redefined "wetlands" in a way that excludes up to 10 million acres nationwide. If the new definition is adopted, it could abolish federal protection for large sections of the East Everglades, and for thousands of acres of marshes bordering the conservation areas in southwest Broward.

  Developers have been drooling lasciviously over these unspoiled tracts, and now they'll be gassing up the bulldozers. The EPA says the definition of "wetlands" should be narrowed to meet three guidelines:

  • The land's soils must be composed of muck or peat;

  • The surface must be flooded by tides, or saturated by rains for more than 14 consecutive days during the growing season;

  • More than half of the plants growing in the area must be among the 7,000 species commonly found in wetlands.

  Unfortunately, those criteria can no longer be applied fairly in South Florida. Here, pristine wetlands have been invaded by melaleuca, Brazilian pepper trees and other water-guzzling exotics. Areas once rich in peat and soggy underfoot are now parched.

  Paving is no solution; replenishing is a better idea.

  The necessity of saving wetlands is so obvious that George Bush made it a campaign issue, and pledged there would be "no net loss" of marshes and swamps during his administration. It's distressing, then, to see the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the Army Corps of Engineers all cave in.

  The political pressure is overwhelming. In many places, the feds are the only serious obstacle for run-amok developers. Look at Broward. To describe the county's land-use policy as spineless would be kind; even calling it a "policy" stretches the definition. Anything developers want, they usually get. The Sawgrass Expressway is a shining example.

  When the government announced tough wetland rules two years ago, powerful people were upset. It screwed up their plans to turn the marshes and wet prairies of southwest Broward into a vast panorama of cheesy condos, strip malls and high-density housing developments. The holy mission to make Broward uglier and more crowded than Dade was temporarily put on hold.

  Now the feds have gone soft. Bowing to complaints that the current definition of "wetlands" includes land that isn't very wet, EPA chief William Reilly last week said: "We're only interested in saving genuine wetlands. There was a backlash over the previous policy because of what appeared to be overreaching … "

  Needless to say, the "backlash" didn't come from the masses. It came from folks with connections.

  Before the weaker definition of wetlands takes effect, the White House must approve it. Significantly, the Interior Department refuses to endorse the EPA's recommendation.

  In South Florida, the dynamics are simple. Developers are running out of land, and they will fight for every acre. Land-use attorney Don McCloskey beautifully articulates his clients' selfless philosophy: "Government cannot use my private property to save the world."

  So much for the Everglades, and for the underground aquifer that gives us water.

  The EPA's logic is politically convenient: Marshes that already are damaged don't deserve protection.To be deemed valuable, wetlands had better be wet, and free from foreign vegetation.

  The irony is classic Florida. Melaleucas originally were imported in a grandiose scheme to suck the Everglades dry. Though that plan was thwarted, it looks as if the stubborn exotics finally will get their revenge. The trees won't have to drink a drop, they'll just have to stand there.

  Developers gleefully will be counting them, one by one, to prove that their land isn't worth saving.

  Glades need a hero before options dry up

  January 12, 1992

  Big Sugar might help save the Everglades, in spite of itself.

  The longer that cane growers refuse to clean up their waste and the more unfiltered scum they pump into the watershed, the greater the public backlash. No cause has so enlarged and galvanized the conservation movement.

  Cheers went up when acting U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen sued Florida for letting growers pollute Everglades National Park. More cheers went up when Gov. Lawton Chiles recently settled the case.

  The agreement called for a modest cleanup that gives Big Sugar years to comply. The industry's arrogant response: 18 lawsuits against the Depa
rtment of Environmental Regulation and state water managers.

  People got mad—even people who didn't fish or hunt, who didn't care much about alligator nests or the sight of wild flamingos at sunrise. People who simply knew a scandal when they saw one.

  Big Sugar gets all the water it wants for practically nothing, dirties it with tons of phosphates, then spits it back at nature. That's not the only reason the Everglades is in trouble, but what's wrong can't be fixed until the cane growers get on board.

  "What we're talking about," said DER chief Carol Browner, "is a significant replumbing of South Florida."

  When the Everglades Coalition met this weekend in Key Largo, the conference drew nationally known conservationists, biologists, planners, lobbyists and water experts. There were lawyers, too—mean, tough, hungry lawyers. That's what it takes these days to battle the special interests.

  The mood was sober because the situation is dire. Half the original Everglades has been lost to drainage and development. Fish and mammals are dying from mercury poisoning. The number of nesting wading birds is down to 7,000 annually (in 1931 it was 100,000). Brazilian pepper trees have devoured 100,000 acres of native vegetation.

  Everyone agrees the Everglades is dying from pollution, droughts and urbanization. The worst predictions are coming true at the worst possible time. Just when Tallahassee awakens to the crisis, the state finds itself broke and panicky.

  Without heroes in the Legislature, there will be no money to clean up the Everglades. No money to find out where the lethal mercury is coining from. No money to purchase endangered wetlands. "It's kind of scary," said Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay. "The economics of growth may now be coinciding with the politics of decline."

  That's an amazing admission from a Florida politician, and maybe MacKay wouldn't have said it at a convention of home builders. But he's absolutely right.