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DOJ Totally Screws Over Ron DeSantis on Alligator Alcatraz
The Florida governor has been left holding the bill.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Florida Governor Ewb
Ron DeSantis, President Donald Trump, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tour Alligator Alcatraz.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may be left footing the bill for Alligator Alcatraz—Donald Trump’s wetland-themed concentration camp—so the Department of Justice can sidestep threats from environmental groups that would shut the facility down, according to the Florida Phoenix.
In a filing Tuesday, the Department of Justice clarified that the ICE facility in the Florida Everglades wasn’t eligible to receive federal funding for construction—only for its day-to-day operation.
“Any potential future federal funding is reimbursement-based, calculated per detainee, and available only for operational costs—not construction or facility modification,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson wrote.
“As it likely will be structured, there will be no potential federal funding of the facility’s design, siting, maintenance, or construction, and no federal approval authority over whether the facility is built at all,” he added.
The filing was made as part of an ongoing legal battle brought by the Friends of the Everglades, Earthjustice, and the Miccosukee Tribe, who hoped to block the construction. The groups alleged that the expedited construction of a facility at the Big Cypress National Preserve had been done without complying with federal environment laws and regulations. A lower court had sided with the environmental groups, and the government appealed the decision.
The government’s appeal hinges on the question of federal funding: If the facility never received federal dollars, then it wouldn’t need to comply with federal laws.
In a separate filing Tuesday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier claimed that the Sunshine State had accepted the “risk” that the FEMA money reimbursement might “not materialize” at all.
But when Alligator Alcatraz was first announced, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed the facility would “in large part be funded by FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program.” The facility would cost $450 million a year to operate.
If the funds for construction don’t arrive—and it seems like they won’t—the Florida Division of Emergency Management might have to foot more than just the $245 million construction bill. So far, the FDEM has pulled together roughly $406 million to fund the state’s immigration enforcement efforts.
In September, DHS announced that it had submitted an application for a $608 million grant for Alligator Alcatraz to FEMA and been approved—but that didn’t mean that the money had actually been sent, DOJ lawyers claimed Tuesday.
FDEM Director Kevin Guthrie said earlier this month that FEMA told him the DOJ had held up the massive reimbursement.
Thousands of creosote-soaked railroad ties caught fire in Dunnellon, leaving residents to fear for their health and for the impact on the nearby Rainbow River. (Photo via Marion County Fire Rescue)
Have you ever seen an out-of-control fire?I have. Seeing flames leaping wild and high, spreading smoke and ash everywhere, was one of the scariest sights ever.
Now imagine seeing a fire like that next to your neighborhood, but it’s burning a form of toxic waste that leaves you choking for breath.
That’s what happened on Feb. 1, when tens of thousands of wooden railroad ties caught fire in the Central Florida town ofDunnellon.
“A large stockpile of chemically-treated railroad ties caught fire on Sunday morning in Marion County, sending huge plumes of potentially irritating smoke into the air,”WOFL-TV reported.
Because the ties were soaked in creosote, “it can produce heavy, irritating smoke,” the TV station reported. “When it burns, it can release toxins into the air, officials said. Due to this, the fire is also being treated as a potential environmental and public health incident due to toxic smoke and contamination risks.”
How tens of thousands of creosote-coated railroad ties wound up burning just a couple of blocks from the Rainbow River is quite a tale. It involves Florida history, corporate sneakiness, bureaucratic fumbling, and public outrage.
The neighbors in Dunnellon had warned local officials that a fire there would be a disaster — and then the very thing they warned everyone about happened.
Jiyoti Parmer via Sierra Club
“This is not how it’s supposed to work,” saidJyoti Parmar of the Sierra Club Florida, who started tracking the railroad tie company at its original location near Gainesville.
Yet this is the dysfunctional way things DO work in our state these days. And to heck with all the people who have to live with the results.
The flesh preserver
Here’s something for you to choo-choo on: A lot of Florida cities owe their existence to the railroad.
By the 1880s, rail had becomethe primary method for transporting people and goods long distances. Two men, both named Henry, became the state’s railroad barons: Henry Flagler and Henry Plant. The latter expanded his line down the state’s west coast, primarily in Tampa. Flagler, the more ambitious of the two, pushed his East Coast Railway down the Atlantic coast, from Jacksonville to Key West, building new hotels that boosted tourist traffic along the way.
When Flagler’s train reached Miami,the town’s population was a mere 300. The railroad brought in so many people that in 25 years it became a bustling city of nearly 30,000.
While a lot has changed in rail transportation over the years, one thing has not: Wooden railroad ties support the metal rails. To prevent them from being attacked by termites and wood rot, they have beentreated with tar-like creosote since 1875.
And coal, as any backyard chef can tell you, can really burn.
Keeping track of Track Line
A creosote coating doesn’t mean the ties last forever. They have to be replaced. What if, instead of dumping them in landfills, the old ties could be used as fuel somewhere?
A Texas company set up shop in the town of Newberry to do just that. The company planned to grind used railroad ties into dust to be used as fuel in cement kilns nearby.
It would be the first operation of its kind in Florida, making this small Alachua County town a hub for railway recycling — whether they wanted to be or not. The company didn’t bother to get any permits from local or state government before it started work.
But grinding railroad ties produces lots of dust and fumes. Complaints from coughing people began pouring into the offices of Alachua County’s hazardous materials program. The head of the county agency drove over to Newberry to see what was going on.
“He was surprised to see a flurry of activity,”WUFT-FM reported. “Workers hauled in ties …, offloaded them to an open expanse and ground them outdoors, uncovered.”
David Malay via LinkedIn
The operation was run by a company calledTrack Line Rail, founded in 2020 by a former railroad official namedDavid Malay. He claimed to have gotten a verbal okay from a now-departed Newberry city manager to proceed with no permits or approved plans, but the city staff couldn’t find any paperwork to verify that.
In quick order, the city and county both took action to shut the operation down. City officials told Malay he had to submit a site plan and a development plan and gave him a deadline. He missed it, and they ordered him to close the Track Line site.
“When they told us to stop, we stopped,” Malay told WUFT. He appealed the decisions, but told another news organization,Main Street Daily News, that he didn’t think the outrage was justified, calling it “a bit of a witch hunt.” I guess he was feeling railroaded.
He asked the county commission to cut him a break, telling them he had a pending $130 million investment backed by a Track Line client that had just brought an additional concrete kiln into the area.
He talked of having spent $6 million on equipment and eventually hiring perhaps 50 people as a benefit to the town. A real estate agent who had worked with Malay called him a good corporate neighbor.
But the commissioners refused to budge. One said, “I have a problem with companies that think they can come into the city and begin operation … then use pressure tactics such as warning us of loss of jobs.”
After seeing which way the wind was blowing, Malay quietly left town.
Here comes the iceberg!
Dunnellon, a town of about 2,000, lies roughly 45 miles south of Newberry. The first inkling people in Dunnellon had that their town was now the center of the Florida railroad tie recycling industry was a legal notice that appeared in the local paper last fall.
The notice said that the Florida Department of Anything Goes — er, excuse me, Environmental Protection — was considering issuing an air pollution permit to Track Line to operate in the historically black neighborhood of Chatmire.
“Obviously, this is not just an environmental issue but also an environmental justice issue,” Parmar of the Sierra Club told me.
Cathy Redd via subject.
Chatmire holds about 400 people, many of them low-income folks in wooden homes and mobile homes who like the laid-back, rural feel of the place. Cathy Redd of Concerned Citizens for Chatmire told me most of it is in unincorporated Marion County, not the city limits. The area just got a central sewer a year ago, she said.
But the fact that this site was in the springshed of the Rainbow River meant that it got lots of attention. Thespring-fed river isa wildly popular tourist draw, attracting people (me included) who want to float or paddle down a sparkling waterway.
Bill White via subject.
The notion of cancer-causing creosote leaking into the soil and then making its way into the river “created alarms for everybody,” said Bill White, vice president of theRainbow River Conservation group.
Initially, White’s organization and others tried to stop the DEP from issuing any pollution permit to Track Line. Then they figured out that resistance, as they used to say on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was futile.
As long as Track Line checked the proper boxes on its application, the DEP would never reject its permit, White explained. The DEP would not take any action to protect the environment unless the company violated the terms of the permit.
“It was a real eye-opener for me,” he said. “I didn’t know things worked that way,” When he said that, dear reader, I had to bite my tongue reeeeally hard.
What many residents worried about was whether the site might catch fire. It was not an idle fear.
At their urging, Marion County’s fire marshal toured the site and wrote a three-page report that talked about the danger should a fire break out. Then one did.
“It was like telling the captain of the Titanic two hours ahead of hitting the iceberg that he was going to hit an iceberg,” White said.
Marion County firefighters battle blaze. (Photo via Marion County Fire Rescue)
Burning questions
Nobody knows yet what sparked the spectacular Dunnellon blaze. There are lots of thembreaking out all over Florida right now — 650 so far this year, thanks in part to our worsening drought.
The blaze sent ashes and pieces of wood raining down on roofs and lawns in the nearby neighborhood. Redd got a call from her adult daughter at 5:30 a.m. to ask if she knew about the fire. It was all that people were talking about on Facebook, her daughter said.
“I looked out the door and saw flames all over,” she told me. If the wind had shifted and sent the fire toward Chatmire, she said, it could have wiped out everyone in her neighborhood.
The next day, people fired up about the fire crowded into Dunnellon’s City Hall to talk about how awful it was and what should happen next. I haven’t seen a transcript, but I bet somebody mentioned the old-fashioned practice of riding someone out of town on a rail.
“This catastrophe is a once-in-a-generation event, especially in a place like Dunnellon,” White said, noting that the town is so small, the mayor’s salary is $150 a month. “It’s beyond the normal scope of what this place has to deal with.”
Marion County had already ordered Track Line to get out of town, sending a notice of violation in October and a cease-and-desist letter in November. During a community meeting in December, Redd said, local officials announced that Track Line had agreed to remove all of its ties.
But by the time the fire started three months later, Track Line had hauled off only 20% of its pile, leaving tens of thousands still ready to fuel the flames.
Now not only are the remaining timbers being removed (to Alabama, if you’re wondering), but so is the soil under them, because of the creosote contamination. Themost recent DEP update to Dunnellon, dated last week, said 37 truckloads of soil have been hauled away for disposal.
The DEP is also paying a contractor to conduct air quality tests, which Redd said are badly needed because a number of Chatmire residents have gone to the emergency room with breathing problems. Meanwhile, I think everyone is holding their breath to see what effect this has on the Rainbow River.
CSX has been cooperative with local and state officials, which is smart since the timbers were piled on its property. One person no one has heard much from: Malay. I tried several times to reach him for comment, to no avail. He’s been as quiet as he was when he moved those timbers from Newberry to Dunnellon.
Marion County Commission Chairman Carl Zalak III via screen grab.
In fact, the next time you hear some dopey politician talking about cutting bureaucratic red tape, yanking away the power of local government, and allowing business to flourish in a rules-free environment, remind them of the Dunnellon disaster.
The local government tried to stop what happened before it happened, business showed no concern for anyone else, and the agency that’s supposed to protect the environment did not.
Maybe, if we remember these lessons, we can avoid another trainwreck like this one
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. In 30 years at the Tampa Bay Times, he won numerous state and national awards for his environmental reporting. He is the author of six books. In 2020 the Florida Heritage Book Festival named him a Florida Literary Legend. Craig is co-host of the "Welcome to Florida" podcast. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and children.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
An example of Florida wetlands. (Photo by Julie Hauserman/Florida Phoenix)
Florida environmentalists are sounding the alarm that the Florida Legislature once again appears poised to dramatically reduce funding for Florida Forever, the state’s main program for buying land for conservation.
Although the Legislature allocated $18 million last year, the House’s proposed FY 2026/27 budget defunds the program outright, while the Senate allocates $35 million, with that money directed to easements on private agricultural lands only, eliminating traditional land acquisition.
Instead, GOP lawmakers would direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the Rural and Family Lands Protection program, which allows agricultural landowners to permanently preserve their land from development.
Conservation easements not the same thing, environmentalists maintain
“While these conservation easements are good for cattle, provide linkages to wildlife, and keep these properties from being converted to subdivisions and shopping malls, they do not allow for public access,” noted St. Petersburg Democratic Rep. Lindsay Cross on the floor of the House last week.
“You can’t just park on the side of the road, sneak under a barbed wire fence, and take your family for a hike on a cattle ranch. What we are losing by not funding a program like Florida Forever and programs like the Florida Community Trust is safe access to our beautiful wild Florida for families and tourists who flock to this state.”
Republicans have hailed rural lands protection easements as a way to prevent future development of land while allowing agricultural operations to continue contributing to the state’s economy, all while not imposing burdens on taxpayer by having to maintain state-owned land.
GOP Rep. John Snyder from Stuart is chair of the Agriculture & Natural Resources Budget Subcommittee. He says that over the past two years, there has been a “false” battle between Florida Forever and Rural and Family Lands programs.
“At the end of the day, Floridians expect this Legislature to use the money that we are stewards over to dedicate a portion of that to preserving beautiful real Florida forever,” he said in response to Cross. “To make sure that the lands that make this state what it is can be put into a place of trust, where for generations to come Floridians have the ability to look and reap the benefits of that.”
House Budget Appropriations Chair Lawrence McClure said last week that criticism about defunding Florida Forever without discussing the other conservation efforts that his chamber is spending money on is “cheap conservation.”
“The role of ‘Family Lands’ has a tremendous track record of conserving lands while keeping it in production, right? So, government can specifically say, ‘This is how we want to conserve it.’ But the taxpayer’s not going to own the burden of maintaining it,” he said.
McClure added that there are definitely places that the state should protect to the fullest extent possible “with feasible purchases,” such as state parks. “I think that there’s a balance that needs to be had and this year’s budget contemplates that balance.”
“I think there is a philosophical opposition among some legislative leaders to fee-simple purchases because they see it as taking land off the tax rolls and imposing a management burden on the state for the future,” said Paul Owens, president of 1000 Friends of Florida.
“But that perspective downplays the benefits that come with fee-simple purchases of public access and the possibility of expanding park plans and wildlife management areas and preserves in the future.”
Democratic House Leader Fentrice Driskell said she doesn’t have a problem with directing money towards the Rural and Family Land program but is disturbed that the House has zeroed out funding for Florida Forever.
“It’s concerning to me because it seems to be a shift in policy priorities that is out of alignment with how we’re supposed to spend those funds,” she said.
In discussing Florida Forever last week, Rep. Cross noted that the program had been funded at around $300 million regularly under previous governors, like Jeb Bush.
The popularity of Florida Forever
The Legislature created the program in 1999, a year after more than 72% of Florida voters approved a conservation constitutional amendment. As Cross stated, the program was regularly funded with Bush at the helm at $300 million annually.
Those funding levels dropped after the Great Recession, and then the program was totally defunded under then-Gov. Rick Scott. Since its inception, the state has acquired more than 907,000 acres, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.
In 2014, 75% of Floridians passed another constitutional amendment requiring that the state set aside $10 billion in tax money over the subsequent 20 years to purchase environmentally sensitive land.
Those sentiments haven’t changed in 2026.
A public opinion survey conducted earlier this month by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy found that 78% of Republican voters and 83% of Democratic voters supported $100 million in state funding for Florida Forever in next year’s budget.
While House Republicans appear to have their own philosophy on how best to use state funds, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ doesn’t take the same approach. The governor proposed $115 million in his 2026-’27 FY budget unveiled last December, as well as $200 million for the Rural and Family Lands program.
Paul Owens with 1000 Friends of Florida credits the governor for “recognizing the importance of maintaining and sustaining consistent funding for Florida Forever,” but adds that even if the state were somehow to fund at that amount this year, it’d be a relative drop in the state’s economic bucket.
“Even at $115 million dollars, that’s a relatively modest commitment to Florida Forever when you consider that’s a tenth of a percent of the state’s $115 billion budget, so Florida has room in its budget to properly fund and sustain Florida Forever,” Owens said.
Failing to do so could result in some important environmental properties being “lost to development in the meantime,” he added.
The environmental community in Florida isn’t throwing in the towel just yet. The Florida Wildlife Federation is among the groups calling on their supporters to contact state legislators to restore the program to its $300 million level.
In their proposed budgets, the House has proposed $300 million for the Rural and Family Lands program; the Senate, $200 million.
The legislative session is set to end on March 13.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
Mitch Perry has covered politics and government in Florida for more than two decades. Most recently he is the former politics reporter for Bay News 9. He has also worked at Florida Politics, Creative Loafing and WMNF Radio in Tampa. He was also part of the original staff when the Florida Phoenix was created in 2018.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
CRAIG PITTMAN