Wednesday, April 22, was Earth Day, a decades-old celebration of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle marked by festivals devoted to composting and solar panels. It’s a perennial reminder of the small sacrifices we can make to reduce our personal impact on the environment.
But on the day after and for years to come, we continue to be faced with threats of environmental catastrophes, some of which are as much a consequence of decisions made by the people we elect as they are of our own actions.
Weeks ago, we wrote about a potential swath of land the state may purchase from U.S. Sugar. The land, just south of Lake Okeechobee, would be used to treat fertilizer-laden floodwaters from the lake, and clean water would flow into the Everglades, which it would help restore. Right now some 615 million gallons flow each day, untreated and via canal, to the St. Lucie River and eventually to the Indian River Lagoon, where that fertilizer feeds algae that hurts the ecosystem there.
“The southern end of the lagoon is getting polluted horribly,” Johnston said. “Algae blooms, all kinds of fish kills and everything else.”
The state has been planning on the land buy since 2008, but is now reluctant. U.S. Sugar, now reluctant to sell, is saying it wants to put a massive housing development and office park on the land. Opponents to the land deal even hired actors to stage a “protest” against the deal in South Florida.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.