Bruce Ritchie
As hundreds of environmentalists gathered for a rally outside of the Capitol on Wednesday, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli fired back that nobody “wants us to have dirty water.”
About 400 people attended the rally for clean water and Amendment 1, the water and land conservation funding initiative approved by 75 percent of voters in November. They called for the state to take action to protect waterways.
“You would be foolish to sit here and believe anybody wants us to have dirty water,” Crisafulli, R-Rockledge, told FloridaPolitics.com. “Obviously there are folks out there who think that’s the intention. They are sadly mistaken.”
A House water bill, HB 7003, goes before the House Appropriations Committee on its final committee stop. Some environmentalists favor a Senate water bill that they say doesn’t relax pollution regulation around Lake Okeechobee.
During the rally with representatives of more than 20 groups on Wednesday at the historic Capitol, speakers talked about the need to ban hydraulic fracturing to produce oil and gas and the need for protecting springs, beaches and wildlife under Amendment 1.
Most speakers did not mention specific laws or regulations. But a few in the audience held signs with slogans such as “Conservation Land, not Trust Fund” and “Use Amendment 1 as 75 percent of Voters Intended.
State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, told the rally that voters directed legislators through Amendment 1 to protect water resources and that “land acquisition absolutely has to be a part of that strategy.”
“I really appreciate the signs that say you are watching,” he said. “It really does make a difference.
Last week, Crisafulli told the Scripps/Tampa Tribune Capital Bureau reporters that he was against buying land from sugar farmers that would allow water from Lake Okeechobee to flow south into the Everglades, saying he’s a “proponent of agriculture.”
“I don’t think the state needs to own more land,” he said.
But on Wednesday, Crisafulli told Floridapolitics.com he wasn’t completely ruling out additional land purchases, such as wildlife corridors to connect conservation lands. But he thinks the state should first take care of the land it owns already.
“Certainly I understand there is need to connect corridors and do different things if we’re storing water or whatever it might be,” he said. “But even then I’m a proponent of leasing land or doing something from a standpoint of easements or that sort of thing versus owning more land.”
In recent interviews, Crisafulli has said that modernizing water policy will be a top issue in the upcoming legislative session starting March 3.
“My view is that first of all we do have to modernize it,” he said Wednesday. “Secondly, we don’t have a crisis. We need to avert a crisis and make sure we’re doing what we can from a policy and budget perspective to make sure we take care of a situation before it occurs.”
Bruce Ritchie (@bruceritchie) covers environment, energy and growth management in Tallahassee.
