On World Water Day last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a new U.S. Intelligence report that water problems in some of the world’s most besieged regions could pose a threat over the next decade to the U.S. and the world’s stability. Meanwhile, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Florida is one of 14 states predicted to face “high risk” water shortage by 2050.
That’s the backdrop to “Water in Florida: Environmental Humanities Meet Public Policy,” a free public panel discussion on March 30 hosted by USF St. Petersburg’s Florida Studies Program. Along with journalists and former government officials, the panel will add another dimension by including the perspective of historians (UF’s Steven Noll and Jack Davis); an environmental writer/filmmaker (Bill Belleville); a poet (CL columnist and St. Pete Poet Laureate Peter Meinke); a painter (Margaret Ross Tolbert, author of 2010’s AQUIFERious); and a photographer (John Moran, whose photos have helped sound the alarm about Florida’s diminishing water resources).
In advance of the event, CL spoke about the state of water in Florida with Tolbert and three other panelists: Tom Swihart, administrator of the Office of Water Policy with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from 1996-2010 and author of the 2011 book Florida Waters: A Fragile Resource in a Vulnerable State; Bob Martinez, governor of Florida from 1986-1990 and mayor of Tampa from 1979-86; and Cynthia Barnett, an award-winning journalist whose most recent book, Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, was published last year.
CL: Cynthia Barnett, you write about the illusion of water abundance. What will it take to change that mindset?
Cynthia Barnett: I’ve written about government solutions, and it seems to me that government is just not enough, regulation has not been enough. I’ve written about the courts, this terrible legal battle between Florida, Georgia and Alabama over the Chattahoochee River, the Colorado River, you guys have been through the Tampa Bay water wars which was also a legal battle. And I’ve written about the big technical solutions, such as Tampa Bay Water’s desalination plant. It seems to me that none of this has been enough to combat the real problem, which is this illusion of water abundance, and in fact, the water sector I think has helped create that illusion. That’s why I came up with the idea of a water ethic. It’s not my original idea … but this solution rises above all of those others; it’s the cheapest, it’s the easiest, and it fulfills our obligation to the future. That is the idea of a water ethic, that citizens would come to understand water issues and embrace this ethic and it would be similar to how we’ve embraced other environmental ethics — for example, catch and release.
Two generations ago, catch and release was unheard of and fishermen said that would never happen, they would never do that, and now that’s very much of the fishing culture. Littering behavior is the same way. I write a lot about littering in the last chapter of Blue Revolution because to me that’s a good model, because in the 1960s more than half of Americans admitted to littering, which means that many more than that actually did, and now in about one generation just 15 percent of Americans litter. It’s just this huge ethical ecological change in one generation, and that’s what I think has to happen to water.
Water manager and regulators haven’t been enough, the courts haven’t been enough, technological solutions haven’t been enough, all of these things will be part of the solution. But what’s really needed is, water needs the rest of us. Even environmentalists haven’t been enough. Water needs all of us and that’s the idea of a water ethic in the culture.
CL: There are serious concerns that this state could be one of the most adversely affected by climate change.
Tom Swihart: Well, I absolutely agree with that. That's what the science says. Sea level rise is underway, and if sea level rises a meter, 8 percent of Florida would be underwater. We’re still learning more about hurricanes and climate change. As I understand it, there may not be more hurricanes, but a bigger fraction may be stronger, which definitely is bad news for Florida. And if you have hurricanes and put them a foot, or a yard, or a meter higher than sea level, that means they start a foot or three feet higher, so the potential for damage is magnified by that. I think it’s an enormous issue that the state is neglecting now.
CL: I've heard it said that at one time, for a Democrat to be viable statewide in Florida, he or she had to have business bona fides, while Republicans needed to show strong environmental credentials. That seems to have changed.
Tom Swihart: I think you’ve got a very interesting argument there. I really think you do. Governor Scott didn’t campaign as hard as being protective of the Everglades and Florida’s natural system as previous governors did — it wasn’t as big a campaign issue as in the last 12 years or maybe before. These are hard economic times and environmental support declines during times of recession. Maybe that’s it.
Bob Martinez: When I did Preservation 2000 and SWIM (the Surface Water Improvement Management act that protects Florida’s surface waters) and all those things, the Everglades Foundation, all that, we had a lot of money. So when you’re working with scarce dollars, humans are going to come first, whether it’s children’s care or education, and choices were made to assist people and defer acquiring land and defer maybe some programs that would be beneficial to the environment. On the other hand, while this is being done, there isn’t a lot of environmental activity going on, unfortunately, which causes higher unemployment numbers.
I think once revenues get to be normal again, I think you’ll see environment [priorities] bouncing back, but when money is short you’ll defer what you can and what you think will cause the least damage. There’s been some historic preservation that’s been cut back … but I do think the environment got a little more money this time than last year [in the budget], so it’ll come back. It’s a question of economics.
CL: How do we make people more aware of the perilous situation with water in Florida?
Tom Swihart: In my research for my book, I read a book by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. He was involved in some of the Everglades stuff. In his book he recounted as Secretary he went all across the country and didn’t make much progress with conservative programs, but Florida was the exception, and he pointed to Florida and maybe it’s because there’s been so much damage done by flooding and hurricanes in Florida. Floridians have woken up. Well, maybe we’ve fallen back to sleep, you know? I think we need to pay attention to water. It’s one of the defining attributes of Florida.
Cynthia Barnett: The Tea Party got very, very interested in ethanol subsidies and I thought that was an interesting example of how … if the average person knew how water really worked and what was happening to our water supply, they would care very much, and they would help ensure these changes get made. The best analogy would be to look at the early 1970s, here in Florida and nationally, this is when we went through an incredible period of change. That was the last time the average citizen and the average Floridian got really interested in water, and that’s when we passed the Water Resources Act in 1972, and nationally we passed the Clean Water Act, created the EPA, and all of these other environmental protections.
Margaret Ross Tolbert: It’s kind of horrifying how we take our water for granted. We use more than anybody else in the world, and I don’t really think people know they are, and I’m not sure they would intend to if they knew that. I’m not happy with the amounts of water that we’re projected to use [in the future]. Bill Belleville has often said that sometimes the only way to understand or to bring knowledge about these things to people is through art. I remember Rachel Carson said, when she was talking about the ocean, she was a scientist but she said the only way to fully understand the sea is through poetry … It’s kind of nice as an artist to have a refuge in art, at least. I don’t know see how environmentalists do it, it would be so depressing!
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2012.