Our Senators must hear from us NOW!  The message is clear.  

Here’s the message:

“I am one of 4.2 million voters who voted yes for Amendment 1. I believed when voting for the amendment that it would increase funding for Florida Forever, land conservation, springs, and the Everglades. Please support amendments on the Senate floor to use Amendment 1 funds for land conservation

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Audubon Florida
Fourth Week of Session: March 2015
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It Gets Worse

Ignoring the voters on Amendment 1 and repealing a requirement that the discharges into Lake Okeechobee meet water quality standards are now joined by a House bill that will unravel what’s left of growth management policy and another House bill promoting farming in state parks.

Budget Bills Short Water and Land Conservation

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees completed work on state budgets and remain far apart on a range of issues including how to spend voter approved Amendment 1 dollars. Both budget bills shift routine agency expenses such as administration and wildlife law enforcement into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund. Appropriations bills go to the full House and Senate on Wednesday.

HB 5001 and HB 5003 – House Appropriations and Appropriations Implementing Bills

The House uses Florida Forever bonding authority to generate $200 million for water resource development projects, easements on agricultural lands, springs land acquisition and restoration projects, water quality projects of Kissimmee River restoration. Of the funds the House budget announcement suggested that $10 million could be used for projects on the Florida Forever list. All $200 million is conditioned on the HB 7003 – the water bill – becoming law.

SB 2100 and 2102 – Senate Appropriations and Appropriations Implementing Bills

The Senate does not use bonding and only provides $2 million for Florida Forever. The bill does match the $20 million for Kissimmee River restoration in the House Bill and funds Everglades related water quality along with projects to support the C-44 and C-43 reservoirs to help coastal estuaries.

When the Senate Appropriations Committee considered the bill Senator Thad Altman (R-Cape Canaveral) offered and then withdrew an amendment to fund Florida Forever at historic levels. Altman promised to return to the issue when the bill hits the Senate floor. Senate Democratic Leader Arthenia Joyner (D-Tampa) also offered an amendment to shift $80 million from other capital expenses to Florida Forever. She withdrew the amendment but promises to return to the issue on the Senate Floor.

For more information on Amendment 1, please click here to see an article from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Take Action Now

Call your Senators and urge them to Use Amendment 1 Funds for Florida Forever. Click here to find the contact information for your State Senator.

Call their Tallahassee office and say, “I am one of 4.2 million voters who voted yes for Amendment 1. I believed when voting for the amendment that it would increase funding for Florida Forever, land conservation, springs, and the Everglades. Please support amendments on the Senate floor to use Amendment 1 funds for land conservation.”  

Below is a list of some of the Florida Forever projects that could be completed with Amendment 1 dollars. If a project is in your Senator’s district, please mention the project by name and tell the person on the phone that you want to see this land protected.

HB 7003 and SB 918 House and Senate Water Bills

The Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee amended SB 918 to include the offensive Lake Okeechobee water quality program changes from HB 7003. Audubon now accepts that that it is likely that a final bill will include repeal of the requirement that discharges into Lake Okeechobee meet water quality standards.

Agency leaders are united with sugar growers and Lake Okeechobee watershed agricultural landowners in concern that the requirement to meet water quality standards leaves theSouth Florida Water Management District vulnerable to litigation. They believe that the recently adopted Basin Management Action Plan’s projection of reducing 1/3 of the phosphorous entering the lake is enough.

Audubon’s Eric Draper presented the committee with maps showing the structures that are discharging stormwater from as far away as the Orlando suburbs. Committee members seemed shocked to hear that along with the 1/3 phosphorous reduction that little of the 600,000 tons of nitrogen coming into the lake and being released to coastal estuaries is going to be reduced under the state’s plan. Audubon is now proposing that the Senate bill be amended to include deadlines for meeting the nutrient reduction targets.

Parks to Farms?

A bill that paves the way for landowners to gain ownership of neighboring parcels of state parks, forests and wildlife management areas sailed out of the State Affairs Committee last week. The bill also adds agriculture to existing uses of parks – making farming equivalent use to conservation and recreation. PCB SAC 15-02 was proposed with just a two day notice and passed with three opposing votes. The bill requires state land management agencies including the Florida Park Service to identify lands that could support low-impact agricultural uses while maintaining the land’s conservation purposes. A key legislator discussing the meaning of “low-impact agriculture” referenced citrus groves.

Audubon proposed excluding state parks from the list of lands to be sold off or farmed and will try to get this change made if the bill progresses.

Growth Management in Trouble Again

The Economic Development and Tourism Subcommittee filedPCS/HB 933 consolidating at least a half dozen growth management bills into a single piece of legislation which would undermine statewide and local community planning. The effort circumvents the deliberative committee process for individual bills.

PCS/HB 933 ties some reasonable provisions intended to clarify certain areas of law with others that are simply terrible public policy.Particularly disturbing is the first section of the bill which strips local governments of the authority to make development decisions on certain agricultural parcels for the benefit of a single politically-connected developer in Palm Beach County.

PCS/HB 933 combines six bills into one by including language dealing with “constrained agricultural parcels” (HB 1175), DRI program elimination (HB 579), sector plans (HB 933), Regional Planning Councils (HB 873), “connected city corridors” (HB 1159), and a new required private property rights element in local comprehensive plans (HB 551).

Additional language limits mobility and impact fees, addresses stabilization of properties impacted by subsidence and sink holes, and prohibits local governments from requiring developers to pay for vegetation removal. **Content for this report on PCS/HB 933 was borrowed from 1000 Friends of Florida. 

Audubon commends 1000 Friends of Florida for their leadership on Growth Management policy.

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