Florida has water problems. Yet Ron DeSantis keeps putting campaign donors on environmental boards | Commentary
Sunrise on the St. Johns River near State Road 520. The St. Johns basin defines the boundaries of the state water-management district that includes most of metropolitan Orlando. Leaders have long expressed concern about the region's long-term water supply - as well as quality issues. But Gov. Ron DeSantis has not yet put a strong environmental voice on the government agency that oversees the district. (GEORGE SKENE/ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Imagine you are Florida’s governor.
You know your state has been flush with environmental problems, including toxic algae so rancid and deadly that it shut down coastal communities and killed marine life.
You’ve vowed to be the greenest governor this state has seen in years.
So who would you pick to serve on your water board?
The head of the Florida Springs Institute — a man with advanced degrees in environmental chemistry and systems ecology who dedicated his life to clean water?
Or a former legislator who now runs Jacksonville’s chamber of commerce — a guy who once filed a bill to block inspections of septic tanks that might leak human excrement into the state’s groundwater?
If you’re Ron DeSantis, you choose the latter … and shatter any pretense of being an environmental champion.
But DeSantis didn’t stop there. He also reappointed a land developer and campaign contributor to the to the St. Johns River Water Management District — the agency charged with protecting Central Florida’s water supply.
Existing members include a garbage-company exec and a real-estate lawyer.
You could find a greener group of people at a Styrofoam convention.
I started DeSantis’ tenure with high hopes and columns of praise. DeSantis called himself a “Teddy Roosevelt conservationist.”
But as reality sets in, DeSantis looks like just another politician more interested in political favoritism than environmental expertise.
“We are not seeing an appointment of a true environmentalist,” said Lisa Rinaman, head of the nonprofit St. Johns Riverkeeper. “We need people who can dig deep into the details. Right now .... they’re all business interests.”
Whitey Markle, chairman of the Suwannee/St. Johns Sierra Club Group, offered a starker assessment: “Having greenwashed himself as 'The new Teddy Roosevelt,’ Governor DeSantis has shown by his actions to be another Rick Scott.”
DeSantis could’ve selected any of several green choices for this board — if he actually wanted one.
Rinaman, former Gov. Bob Graham and others favored Robert Knight, president of the Florida Springs Institute.
"No one in Florida knows more about natural springs than Bob Knight,” said Paul Owens, president of 1000 Friends of Florida. “The district and the 5 million people who live within its boundaries would have benefited from Bob’s expertise and his lifetime commitment to environmental stewardship — especially when our aquifer and so many Florida waterways are threatened by our state’s surging growth.”
In 2012, Dr. Bob Knight fought a proposed cattle operation near Silver Springs in Marion County that wanted to pump 13 million gallons of water every day from the Floridan Aquifer. Knight has fought for water issues in this state for many years. (George Skene/Orlando Sentinel) published on 6/20/2012 (George Skene / Orlando Sentinel)
Yet instead of Knight or another qualified environmentalist (the Springs Institute’s associate director also applied, along with dozens of others), DeSantis chose Daniel Davis, a former homebuilders advocate and legislator who now leads of the Jacksonville chamber of commerce.
As a legislator, Davis didn’t score many headlines in the Sentinel. But one read: “Environmentalists worry about certain bills in Legislature this year.” The piece featured Davis’ efforts to block the state from inspecting septic tanks on homes going through certain renovations.
(A key point: Properly functioning septic tanks keep poop and pee out of your water supply.)
Davis wanted to exempt homes from septic tank inspections if the renovations didn’t include new bedrooms. He called the idea “common sense.”
As you probably gathered from the headline, some clean-water advocates disagreed. Even the Legislature’s own staff analysts wrote that, if Davis’ bill had passed, “homeowners may experience more failures.” (“Failure” isn’t a word you want to hear when talking about human excrement.)
As then-legislator Lee Constantine said at the time: “"I don't know why anybody should be afraid of an inspection, other than they think their septic tank has failed."
In a state with many bad ideas, this one wasn’t the worst. But it obviously wasn’t a strong credential for being a water-quality advocate either.
The governor did NOT pick the guy who actually knows water issues and devoted his life to protecting clean water.
Instead, he chose a former legislator who now leads the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.
An environmental agenda, indeed.flgov.com/2019/08/23/gov… twitter.com/Scott_Maxwell/…
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Davis said he understands concerns about the St. Johns board lacking a true environmentalist. “I get it,” he said.
But Davis (known as "the builders’ man” back when he served on the Jacksonville City Council) vowed to be a good steward. "The St. Johns River is incredibly important to Jacksonville. She’s our crown jewel. I will absolutely do my due diligence,” he said. "I promise, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Rinaman called Davis a “nice, approachable person,” but still expressed concern about DeSantis focusing more on business interests than the environment.
Three hours later, DeSantis announced another appointment to a different water management board. This time it was a homebuilder who gave tens of thousands of dollars to DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaign.
These aren’t one-offs. They’re the trend.
Sure, DeSantis earned praise early on from environmentalists — and me — for shaking up the water district in South Florida. But down there, the big business interest he was ticking off was Big Sugar — a long-time foe who’d backed his Republican primary opponent. Elsewhere, we haven’t seen such courage.
We’ve seen construction experts on construction boards and doctors on medical boards. So why wouldn’t you put scientists and environmentalists on environmental boards … unless you didn’t want to hear what they have to say?
DeSantis still can still make more appointments on the St. Johns. Rinaman holds out hope. Isn’t there room for a chamber exec and environmentalists? That would at least send a message.
Unfortunately, the message DeSantis has sent so far is that it’s business as usual in Florida.
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