Sarasota - Friday May 6, 2022: The Sierra Club of Florida has issued a statement critical of Governor DeSantis' decision to sign a bill allocating $14 million from this year’s budget for red tide research and innovative mitigation technologies.
In the statement Sierra Club Florida Senior Organizing Manager Cris Costello said "The never-ending control/mitigation/cleanup treadmill not only fails to remedy the Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) problem, but actually makes it worse by letting more time pass without regulating the pollution that fuels HABs."
"Another $14 million to research/control/mitigation/clean-up is nothing to celebrate," maintains Costello. "After-the-fact ‘clean-up’ projects" are a waste he argues. The only way to end red tides is "to stop the sewage, manure, and fertilizer pollution from being dumped into our lakes, rivers, bays, and springsheds."
READ about the Governor's commitment to spend $14M to combat red tide here > https://www.wqcs.org/wqcs-news/2022-05-05/governor-announces-nearly-14m-in-funding-to-fight-red-tide
Costello makes the following points:
1. The Governor DeSantis administration’s failure to implement or even encourage or promote stopping pollution at its source makes our repeatedly toxic waterways inevitable.
2. The science is clear: Human activity intensifies red tide blooms.
3. Control and mitigation research and technologies and states of emergencies keep taxpayers on the “clean-up” treadmill, but do nothing to stop pollution at its source; you never get anywhere on a treadmill but rather you just spend your resources standing still.
4. ‘After-the-fact’ attention to harmful algal outbreaks is not what Florida needs.
5. Until pollution is stopped at its source, polluters will go on setting taxpayers up for a never-ending series of costly clean-ups.
6. It is time for Governor DeSantis to exchange the greenwash for direct, enforced, restorative regulatory action.”
