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A sampling of published articles
Florida’s algae crisis has garnered embarrassing national headlines this summer and brought our waterways to the brink of ecological collapse. But it could finally jolt elected officials to take decisive action to save our state. Or not.
Even as the slimy, smelly mess kills fish and manatees, chokes the channels and beaches on both coasts, and shutters businesses that rely on tourism and fishing, precious few have called to change the policies that produced this disaster.
Use our waterways as open sewers? That’s Florida’s way of life.
Let the campaign contributions of polluting industries dictate environmental policies? Check.
Relax environmental enforcement, ignore gross violations? Done.
Generations of goo composed of nutrients from agricultural waste (including waste from sugar fields and dairies), urban run-off (including sewage), and pesticides have piled up on the bottom of lakes, in springs, and along the shorelines of rivers and canals, and jelled into a toxic stew. Extreme heat and excessive rainfall (fueled by climate change) have worsened the algae blooms.
It’s obvious that we need to reverse course and let this beautiful, fragile state heal itself.
How? By enforcing environmental regulations. By stopping the unregulated flow of agricultural pollution into our waterways. By replacing septic tanks and repairing sewer lines. By buying out sugar fields south of Lake Okeechobee and letting the water filter through the Everglades to emerge cleaner into Florida Bay.
And we have to stop saying that we can “balance the environment and the economy.” We can’t. Nature’s side of the balance sheet is depleted.
We’ve destroyed entire ecosystems, dredged, drained, and burned down everything in our path, sucked up a millennia’s worth of water, and altered our climate system -- all in a few centuries -- and species are going extinct.
Forget balance -- we’re at the end of nature, to quote environmentalist Bill McKibben. It’s time for decisive action.
Case in point: Miami’s own Biscayne National Park, our nation’s only marine national park, created to protect and preserve an extraordinary tropical paradise of emerald islands set within aquamarine waters and containing the only coral reef system in the continental U.S. Its aquatic biodiversity has been likened to Yellowstone. Yet it’s in dire straits. And opposition from the boating industry and commercial fisheries, and some elected officials, has now put its rescue plan in peril.
Like most every natural splendor, Biscayne National Park was wrenched from the hands of industry and commerce -- in this case, an oil refinery and cargo port in southern Biscayne Bay, as well as massive development and marina projects to rival those of Miami Beach. Plus a bunch of causeways.
Without citizens who stood up for preserving the beauty and bounty for future generations, the coral reefs would have been blasted, the mangrove shorelines ripped up, and the tropical islands bulldozed.
Today’s threats are equally devastating. In addition to the pollution from urban run-off and the FPL nuclear power plant, overfishing and heavy boat traffic have stripped the park’s waters bare. The populations of 17 different species of fish are down by 70 percent. Snapper and grouper are rarely seen.
Worse yet, ocean acidification, a by-product of more than a century of burned carbon finding its way into our oceans, threatens the very existence of the coral reefs.
The National Park Service developed a modest rescue plan that sets aside a 10,500-acre marine preserve (about 16 square miles of a 225-square-mile park) to allow the coral reef and its key fish species to recover in peace. To do that, commercial and recreational fishing (for all but lionfish), as well as lobster and crab traps, would be prohibited in the preserve. In five to ten years, the number of fish and invertebrate species could increase 20 percent, a start toward recovery.
But the National Marine Manufacturers Association and the American Sportfishing Association deem the proposal overreaching and a threat to “Florida’s culture and lifestyle.” South Florida’s Republican congressional representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo, along with Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, also oppose the preserve, saying they prefer a wait-and-see approach. They’ve introduced bills in Congress to stop the Department of the Interior from implementing the preserve plan.
They want the National Park Service to work with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission -- which has always opposed the preserve -- to develop more “reasonable” alternatives. The problem is, we’re running out of time, as well as natural resources left to protect. And that’s true statewide.
The “go slow” approach to the proposed preserve and the algae crisis means nothing will change -- which really means that everything will change, though for the worse.
When you’re at the end of nature, you’re at the end. Time to act.
Or as the anglers would put it, time to fish or cut bait.
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com