Peter Schorsch
Longtime Hendry County Commissioner Janet Taylor published a scathing condemnation Wednesday of incoming Senate President Joe Negron’s plan to buy up farmland south of Lake Okeechobee.
In a blog entry for the Huffington Post, Taylor said the proposed $2.4 billion land purchase was “a plan designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of another proud African-American community.”
Negron’s plan involves buying up about 60,000 acres of land south of the lake to store and treat water that later will be pumped into the Everglades and not the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.
The $2.4 billion price tag would be split between the state and federal governments, and Negron has proposed the state issue bonds to cover its share of the cost.
Environmental groups including Audubon have come out in support of the project, which they say will reduce toxic discharges from Lake Okeechobee which have wreaked havoc on Treasure Coast waterways.
Taylor, a Clewiston Democrat, said the “radical environmental activists” supporting the plan “aren’t interested in following the science, which shows that 95 percent of the water and the nutrients come from the north of Lake Okeechobee, not the south.”
“In their pursuit of our land, they have called for the destruction of the agriculture industry, the flooding of our fields, and even the unthinkable by suggesting on social media that a Herbert Hoover Dike failure might be the best thing,” she said.
Taylor also blasted Negron for developing the plan with environmental special interests, even though he “never stepped foot on the land where he wants to store his dirty water.”
Taylor’s full blog post is available at The Huffington Post.
8 comments
Louis
September 9, 2016 at 8:48 am
What this woman is leaving out of her critique is that regardless where the water comes from nature intended it to flow south. Not east and west into saline estuaries.
Mike J
September 9, 2016 at 8:59 am
True. But nature also didn’t even intend for the St Lucie to connect with the Atlantic, either. Should we close that man-made opening off?
Restoring flow south is a good idea. “Storage” south of Lake O that lots of people are calling for is not such a good idea when you’re talking algae. Lake O isn’t deep, but it’s much deeper than what we can construct south of Lake O, and shallow storage increases algae growth (greater sunlight penetration). What we need is more water moving.
Cassandra Jackson
September 11, 2016 at 3:03 pm
There is no benefit to the Everglades in a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee. The Army Corps of Engineers are currently working on reservoirs north of the lake. They, as well as environmentalist groups who rely on science, reject the notion that a reservoir south of the lake would do any good.
Lou
September 11, 2016 at 3:41 pm
Really? Care to share sources for that claim?
Lou
September 12, 2016 at 4:52 pm
The parallels between sugar and Tabbaco are too many to not notice. They both pay off politicians. They both fund fake science. They both use professional propagandists to lie.
All in their naked greed for more.
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