Florida, remember to vote for your environment | Opinion
With the elections coming up in November we Floridians need to consider the damage 20 years of Republican rule has wrecked on our habitat. Florida’s environment is facing many crises and we need to vote for leaders who will help us defend it instead of promoting uncontrolled development and profits for their corporate supporters. Two local races present just such contrasts between the Republican incumbents and their Democratic challengers. Let me tell you about them:
Margaret Good (D) vs Vern Buchanan (R) for U.S. House District 16
Margaret Good is an dedicated champion of the environment. In just two and a half years as a member of the Florida House, Margaret sponsored bills on two major issues: water quality and alternative energy. Her innovative stormwater bill set limits for nutrient runoff into our waterways and procedures for monitoring and enforcement. This major source of water pollution in our lakes, rivers and oceans and accelerant of red tide has never been regulated before in Florida. Margaret got it done!
To encourage solar energy use in Florida, Margaret sponsored a bill to set up a net metering program for schools and government offices that would allow them to efficiently and affordably convert to solar energy by selling excess power back to the electrical grid. This is an excellent model for moving away from fossil fuel consumption as we will need to do over the next several decades to slow global warming. The bill creates education and internship programs to promote solar energy job growth, including programs specifically for veterans, to help grow the renewable energy sector which is ripe for investment in the Sunshine State.
Margaret co-sponsored bills to save Florida Forever funds for land acquisition from being swept for other purposes, for a statewide water resource assessment and for standardization of local wastewater inspection requirements and reporting.
Margaret is the kind of hard working and insightful advocate that Florida needs to confront and solve its many environmental issues. She promises to take this energy to Washington and fight for Florida on the federal level. We should vote for her and let her go to it!
Vern Buchanan has sponsored one significant environmental bill in his almost 14 years as a representative of some of Florida’s most environmentally sensitive coastal counties. At the time of the BP oil spill when inaction would have been politically untenable, he sponsored the original moratorium bill on oil drilling in the Gulf. Since then he has expended no political capital on achieving a permanent ban.
He has recently voted to allow new drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Otherwise Buchanan’s anti environmental record has been consistent. He has voted to roll back Clean Water Act protections leaving many of Florida’s rivers, lakes and wetlands exposed to polluters. He has voted against research funding for renewable energy and for allowing increased spraying of pesticides in bodies of water. He has proposed no plans for effectively managing Florida’s natural resources in the future. Has he been a dedicated defender of Florida’s environment? No he has not! Let’s let him retire to his yacht!
Andy Mele (D) vs Will Robinson (R) for State House District 71
Andy Mele is a long term activist who has used his passion for the environment and background in environmental science to successfully advocate for water quality issues in his native New York and in his current home on Florida’s west coast. As a member and executive director of the Waterkeepers, a national water pollution watchdog group, he successfully advocated for regulation of PCBs in the Hudson River and banning new sales of highly polluting two stroke outboard engines.
Still a Waterkeeper in Florida, he has done intensive research on how and where Mosaic’s leaky radioactive gypsum stacks are polluting our water supply and how nutrient rich stormwater runoff from farms and lawns affects red tide growth. He is also an advocate for wetland protection and meaningful mitigation standards. Andy’s ready to help us fight for the health of our beautiful coastal environment. We should vote for him and let him do it!
When Will Robinson ran for state representative from District 71 in 2018 he touted himself as an environmental advocate but he has not lived up to that claim. He has sponsored no significant environmental legislation and has a straight anti-environmental voting record: For prohibiting local plastic straw and sunblock bans, for weakening wetland mitigation standards and for Sen. Bill Galvano’s destructive toll highway system.
Maybe Will’s claim referenced his family’s sale of the land for the wonderful Robinson Preserve to Manatee County for a reasonable $10 million. It was a good deal that allowed creation of a great conservation and recreation area on the Manatee River, but Will has traded on this legacy long enough. He his largest supporters are developers, real estate corporations and Mosaic and he advocates for them.
Most of the local Democratic candidates have thoughtful environmental platforms. I urge you to check them out and as Andy Mele likes to say ‘Vote like your life depends on it!, because increasingly Floridians, it does.
Jane Sellick is vice president of the Manatee Democratic Environmental Caucus.