But, there's got to be a better way. Prosecute criminals who violate environmental laws. Don't name them to state boards, as Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT did when he illegally appointed the former St. Augustine City Manager to the board of the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, as a putative citizen representative, when he is Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's paid "independent contractor," drawing $1500/month from the Sheriff for an apparent no-show sinecure.
Republicans love white collar criminals. They reward environmental crimes.
Let's make wrongdoing government officials, whether elected or appointed, pay.
Simply making the City of St. Augustine or other government pay fines is not enough. When WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS, erstwhile unethical City Manager of the City of St. Augustine put a landfill in a lake, he laughed at activists. He would turn to the City Attorney and laugh when I spoke about his pollution, which John Henry Hankinson, Jr., former EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator, said threatened a coquina pit lake, "an open sore going straight down into the aquifer and the groundwater." HARRISS was a sadist, and a satrap. The first time I spoke at a City Commission meeting, in April 2005, on civil rights violations, he threatened me, pointing his finger at me and saying "I could have you arrested for disorderly conduct." Ms. Sue Neely gave an affidavit confirming it, through HARRISS and Commissioner SUSAN BURK lied through their teeth about it,
In March 2006, tatterdemalion, apparently coerced and blackmailed St. Augustine City Commissioners passed a slimy resolution in the midst of a pending criminal investigation, backing him, expressing full confidence. This chilled informants and obstructed justice. Sheriff DAVID SHOAR (for whom HARRISS helped raise some $250,000, along with. Michael Gold) did nothing about his mentor's environmental crimes. This case was fixed.
WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS never had to pay a dime, though it ultimately cost the City tens of thousands in fines and some one million dollars to move the contaminated solid waste from the Old City Reservoir to a Class I landfill, which he gave written instructions to resist.
There's got to be a better way. Put wrongdoing polluters in jail. Prosecute polluters. They're criminals.
(I also like my father's cleverly Draconian idea, after Union Carbide killed and maimed thousands with its methyl isocyanate pollution. in Bhopal, India. For polluting plants: make the managers live on-site, with their wives and kids. Then it will be safe for residents near polluting chemical and nuclear complexes, like those in what we've treated as National Sacrifice Areas, like Oak Ridge, Tenn. and Hanford, WA.
Environmental crimes must be treated as crimes.
Incarcerate the criminals.
Enough lawbreaking.
Enough appeasement.
But from D.C. to Tallahassee, our gooberish gullible governments go all soft and squishy on other governments whenever environmental crimes are committed.
From News Service of Florida:
DeSantis rolls out environmental proposals
September 11, 2019
Jim Turner
TALLAHASSEE --- Gov. Ron DeSantis wants lawmakers to double fines for sewage spills into waterways and to lock an environmental-funding pledge into state budgets for at least the next three years.
The proposals are the first of a series the governor said he will make ahead of the 2020 legislative session, which starts in January. Lawmakers will return to Tallahassee on Monday to start holding committee meetings to prepare for the session.
Doubling fines for sewage spills would eliminate what DeSantis described as a “slap me on the wrist” approach to penalties for local governments. Civil penalties are now up to $10,000 a day, DeSantis said during an appearance Wednesday at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida Nature Center in Naples.
“What we end up seeing happening is, you have some of these municipalities, it’s cheaper for them to pay a fine and spew all this sewage into the waterways, because it’s the cost of doing business,” DeSantis said. “They’d rather do that than invest in the infrastructure they need to make sure the waterways surrounding them are safe and clean.”
DeSantis noted, for example, spills that have occurred into Tampa Bay.
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, proposed a similar measure targeting spills during the 2019 legislative session.
Fine’s proposal, aimed at Brevard County for a sewage spill into the Indian River Lagoon in 2017 that lasted 35 days, sought to impose a $2 fee for every gallon of raw sewage released. Fine’s proposal did not pass.
DeSantis also would like the Legislature to plug $625 million a year into the next three state budgets for environmental projects.
The amount would equal what he requested heading into the 2019 session and allow him to claim victory for his previously stated goal of $2.5 billion over four years in funding for the Everglades, natural springs, combating blue-green algae and red tide outbreaks and carrying out other water projects.
The total would represent a $1 billion increase over what was spent the previous four years under former Gov. Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator.
Noah Valenstein, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, said recurring funds would ensure ongoing efforts aren’t slowed by “a pause as you wait for more funding.”
Most of the money would continue to come from a 2014 voter-approved constitutional amendment that requires 33 percent of revenues from a tax on real-estate documentary stamps to go to land and water conservation. That money goes into what is known as the Land Acquisition Trust Fund.
Since the passage of the amendment, legislators each year have directed at least $200 million to the Everglades, $64 million to a reservoir in the Everglades Agricultural Area, $50 million to natural springs and $5 million to Lake Apopka.
With more than $906 million available from the trust fund for the current year, lawmakers at the end of the 2019 session repeatedly pointed to exceeding DeSantis’ environmental-spending request by about $55 million.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said Wednesday he’s excited to work with DeSantis on the environmental proposals.
“Our character is defined by its waters, its rivers, the Everglades, that river of grass, the beaches. Water is central to who we are and what we are as a people,” Bradley said. “If we were to neglect those precious natural resources that God has given us, then the people of the state of Florida would be angry, and they would have a right to be.”
Bradley has in the past proposed using the trust fund money to increase funding for the restoration of the St. Johns River, its tributaries and the Keystone Heights lake region in North Florida, as well as the Florida Forever land-preservation program.
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