Quote of the Week
The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves.-Rachel Carson

Links for the latest information on the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill:
National response: http://www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill/

Check the latest news and conditions in Florida on these frequently updated websites:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/ Florida Volunteer opportunities: http://www.volunteerfloridadisaster.org/
Florida Association of Counties: lots of links and infohttp://fl-counties.com/Pages/Advocacy/Hot_Topics/Deepwater_Horizon_Oil_Spill_.aspx

See what's happening on the Gulf Coast

Did you know?
Plastics can last a thousand years in landfills, and can’t be incinerated because of the toxic fumes generated through incineration. Since plastics have only been on Earth for about a hundred years, with the exception of the small percentage that was incinerated, it follows that every molecule of plastic ever produced still exists somewhere on Earth or in its oceans, and it is affecting the food chains in all ecosystems.



Birds

The race is on to protect birds threatened by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Birds that would also be finding their way to other locations. Last month's oil rig explosion couldn't have come at a worse time for the thousands of brown pelicans, egrets and other birds nesting in islands and wetlands, according to experts from the California-based International Bird Rescue Research Center.

A team is now on location to care for birds caught in the oil slick. Jay Holcomb, the group's director, says it's impossible to predict how the birds will be affected, since the winds and tides will determine the movement of the oil slick."It's heartbreaking and stressful and it makes everybody really sad. The whole issue of the drilling and the leaking oil that no one seems to know how to stop it points to the vulnerability of our environment and our responsibility in taking care of it."

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Exhausted male osprey hitches a ride on tall ship in the Channel
The crew of the tall ship, Lord Nelson, was very surprised to find an unusual passenger had joined them in the English Channel. A male osprey appeared perched on the ship and hitched a lift for a day or so as the ship sailed around the Channel Islands.

The osprey appears to have been en route from Africa on migration but just wasn't fit enough to complete the last leg of his journey. As the Lord Nelson approached Jersey, the osprey flew off and was later reported to have taken refuge on a fishing boat on its way into port.

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Bird poisoning hits Britain and Ireland in the last few months. A horrific total of 6 eagles, 10 buzzards, 3 red kites, a Peregrine falcon and a sparrow hawk have all been poisoned in recent weeks across Ireland, England and Scotland. And these are just the ones that we know about and have been discovered.

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Six buzzards and two fox cubs poisoned

Police launch investigation into bird deaths in Sutherland

Florida Panthers

Unfortunate weekend for panthers shouldn’t reverse recent population growth
Three panthers in three days met untimely ends on U.S. 41, a highway that cuts right through the middle of panther habitat in Collier County. On Sunday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) found a 6- to 8-month-old kitten that was hit early that morning. Officials with the FWC believed the mother of the kitten could be close to the highway and stepped up law enforcement patrols in the area Sunday.

The panther population has increased five-fold since the 1980s, when the population had dwindled to 20-30. Its increase to a current estimate of 100 is a success story, but one tempered with the knowledge that an increasing population means more opportunity for vehicle collisions.

“Losing three panthers in three days saddens all who care for these endangered animals. However, we’re heartened when we have a good capture season like this past one, when we captured 11 new panthers,” said Darrell Land, the FWC’s panther team leader. “Panthers breed throughout the year, and our radio-collared females have already produced 12 kittens. The increase in panther numbers also means that more panthers are roaming the roadways in the Big Cypress area, and drivers should always obey the panther speed zones and slow down from dusk to dawn no matter where they might be driving.”

Land noted that two litters of kittens have been lost because of the death of their mothers in the past two months. Kittens are not able to survive on their own until they are big enough to capture prey at approximately 8 months old.

The natural expansion of the panther population means that panther sightings may start to increase throughout Florida; however, the majority of the population still resides south of Lake Okeechobee.

To help protect the large cats from increasing traffic threats, the FWC, Collier County and Lee County sheriff's deputies and the Florida Highway Patrol regularly enforce panther speed zones. Panther speed zones are well-marked, with speed limits reduced at night to 45 mph.

So far this year, 66 citations and nine warnings have been issued to motorists violating panther speed zones. Motorists should be aware that violators often receive fines exceeding $200 for their first offense, and any violation of more than 29 mph over the posted limit will result in a mandatory court appearance.

“The increasing number of panther road kills mirrors the increase in panther numbers,” Land said. “However, this does not indicate that the increase of collisions is causing the population to decrease. The FWC continues to work closely with the Florida Department of Transportation to develop measures that will increase motorist and panther safety along Florida’s roads.”

FDOT has constructed wildlife crossings, erected fencing and established special panther speed zones, which help lessen the danger to panthers on the roadways.
Panther research and management funding comes directly from the additional fees collected when individuals purchase the “Protect the Florida panther” specialty license plate. Money also goes to law enforcement to increase patrols in the areas where panthers reside in South Florida.

“We can all assist with helping the panther survive,” Land said. “Buy a specialty plate to help fund research, management and enforcement. Lots of people will be on the road this Memorial Day weekend, so please slow down in panther speed zones, particularly from dusk to dawn, when panthers are most active.”

To purchase a specialty license plate, visit www.buyaplate.com, and to find out more about the Florida panther, visit www.floridapanthernet.org.

Endangered Species

Turtle season off to slow start
Even taking into account the legendary pace of turtles, it was still a long wait for the first sea turtle nest of the 2010 season on Anna Maria Island. Nesting season began on May 1, but the first nest was not dug until the night of May 22 near Willow Avenue, following a false crawl the night of May 20.

It’s good news for Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shore Bird Protection.By this time, 100 nests usually have been laid, director Suzi Fox said, adding that a late nesting season like this one has happened a half dozen times in the past 15 years.Some speculate that sea turtles are swimming away from the expanding Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but Fox said it’s more likely that the unusually long, cold winter has affected the turtles’ food source, delaying their arrival.
Turtles began nesting on Longboat Key two weeks ago, and about 15 nests have been found between here and the Florida Keys, she said.

The false crawl was found on May 21 south of 73rd Street in Holmes Beach by AMITW volunteers, who demonstrated the staking process to new volunteers at the spot where the nest would have been dug if the turtle hadn’t changed her mind and headed back to the Gulf.
Meanwhile, bird nesting season is in full swing, with two snowy plover eggs on a well-tended nest in Anna Maria, Fox said, and newly-hatched chicks running around on the beach from Cypress to Seagrape.Beachgoers are asked to take care while in the area. If birds begin to squawk, it’s time to take a walk.

Everglades and Water Quality Issues

Four additional bridges promise to help restore the natural flow of the River of Grass.
The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled a plan to dramatically expand bridging on Tamiami Trail, long an asphalt dam across the Everglades.
Environmentalists were thrilled.

``This is huge,'' said Jonathan Ullman, senior Everglades organizer for the Sierra Club and longtime advocate for a ``skyway'' over the River of Grass. ``The Everglades now has a fighting chance.''

Tom Strickland, an assistant secretary of the Interior Department, made the announcement during an ``Everglades Summit'' in Washington, D.C., organized to boost support for a broader, $12 billion restoration project.

The plan calls for adding 5.5 miles of bridging to an $81 million, one-mile project finally begun last year after a 20-year battle. Four more bridges, ranging from a third of a mile to 2.6 miles, would replace other sections of the historic road, beginning about a mile west of Krome Avenue. Projected cost: $324 million.

Opening up the Trail is the last piece in the Modified Water Deliveries project, a handful of plumbing overhauls originally approved by Congress in 1989. The aim was to revive water flows to Northeast Shark River Slough, the headwaters of eastern Everglades National Park, which had been choked to a fifth of its historic volume.

But the project has been mired by changes in plans, bureaucratic bickering and multiple lawsuits, most recently by the Miccosukee Tribe. The tribe believes a $17 million plan to clean existing culverts would have provided faster, cheaper relief to high water that drowned tribal lands and wildlife, including the endangered Everglades kite, north of the Trail.

Environmentalists and park managers have long contended that extensive bridging was needed to revive the natural sheetflow of the Glades.

The one-mile bridge is scheduled for completion by 2013. There was no formal timetable for the additions, but Gary Guzy, deputy director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told summit attendees that the Everglades ranked as ``the utmost of our natural-resources priorities.''

Kirk Fordham, chief executive officer of the Everglades Foundation, which sponsored the summit, praised the proposal as a landmark.

``As resilient as Mother Nature is, we all understand that she can benefit from our help,'' he said.
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ore

Port shut out the public: Controversial search for inland port site becomes more so
Port of Palm Beach commissioners were subdued Thursday in their public discussion of an inland port.

That's odd, because the site the board selected is no longer available and those backing the No. 2 site are demanding that the commission move them up to No. 1. Given the circumstances, the demand should have touched off much debate. But board members already had met to discuss the issue - in private.

Board attorney Greg Picken justified the closed-door session by citing the exemption to the open-meetings law that allows public boards to meet privately to discuss ongoing litigation. The port, however, has no ongoing litigation concerning the inland port. Mr. Picken said the board was justified nonetheless to conduct the closed session because of legal action to which the port is not a party but is a "real party in interest." Huh? He based that decision on a 2009 attorney general's opinion.

It's a long stretch. In the opinion Mr. Picken cited, the Broward County city of Pembroke Pines wanted to go into closed session to discuss a suit in which it was not a named party. The suit, however, was filed against a city employee "who is fully indemnified by the city and the city is responsible for the full cost and coordination of the defense."

The port's stretch is that it has an interest in a growth-plan challenge filed by the state - and settled two days before the port's closed session - against Palm Beach County. The land in question: 318 acres owned by Florida Crystals and ranked as the No. 1 inland port site. The settlement called for Florida Crystals to abandon its 318-acre site and seek to build the rail hub and warehousing district on an unrelated 850-acre site.

While the site change had an impact, it didn't give commissioners the right to cut out the public when discussing their options. With backers of the No. 2 site in St. Lucie County prepared to sue if the new Florida Crystals site replaces the old one, the port's decision to avoid the sunshine exposes the district to liability.

After answering The Post Editorial Board's questions about the session, the port backtracked on Monday, announcing that commissioners will meet Friday to publicly review the closed session, consider releasing the session's transcript and debate the inland port's changed circumstances. That appropriate step taken "in an abundance of caution" should not have been necessary in the first place.


Port of Palm Beach scraps 'inland' port'
The Port of, Palm Beach has scrapped its development deal to build an "inland port" cargo distribution center that was expected to bring thousand of jobs to western Palm Beach County.

The surprise decision came at a hastily called special meeting, amid threats of a legal fight and after a questionable closed-door port board meeting a week earlier about the development deal.

Palm Beach County officials were counting on the inland port to help jumpstart economic development in South Bay, Pahokee and Belle Glade, where unemployment hovers near 40 percent.

But the port board on Friday decided that changes to the planned location meant it couldn't stick with a deal to partner with sugar giant Florida Crystals to build the cargo hub on farmland near Lake Okeechobee.

The board on Friday also wasn't willing to go with a competing industrial site near Port St. Lucie, which back in December finished second to Florida Crystals for the inland port project.

The Port St Lucie backers have threatened' legal action over getting snubbed. "We are going to have to step back arid look at our options," said Jonathan Ferguson, who represents the Treasure Coast Intermodal Campus near Port St. Lucie.

Both Florida Crystals and the Treasure Coast group have said they would press ahead with their development plans even without a deal with the Port of Palin Beach.

More...

OPINION: Protecting our water supply
THE MIAMI HERALD (AP) – 5/28/10 1:12 AM
BY JULIE HILL-GABRIELJHILL-GABRIEL@AUDUBON.ORG
When constructed in 1928, the Tamiami Trail was a monument of progress, for the first time connecting Tampa and Miami by road. Like many ideas fulfilled in the name of progress, the Trail had unforeseen effects on people, birds and other wildlife.
Imagine billions of gallons of water held behind a dam in the Everglades, drowning tree islands and marshes to the north, while south of the dam, Everglades National Park is so dry that wading-bird populations decline 90 percent, and salty water in Florida Bay inundates the southern tip of Florida. That dam is the Tamiami Trail, and the ecological nightmare caused by the Trail has just found a solution...

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Corps, residents agree at Stuart meeting: Lake O water needs to go south The Army Corps of Engineers and Treasure Coast residents upset with discharges of dirty water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River Estuary actually agreed on something at a public meeting Tuesday night: That the water needs to go south instead.

“Would I like the water to go south?” asked Col. Alfred Pantano, head of the Corps Jacksonville District that includes South Florida. “Amen.”

Pantano said the Corps has to release water from Lake O to prevent possibly devastating and deadly flooding if the Herbert Hoover Dike fails but is prevented from sending water south by:
A court order that strictly limits pollution in water sent to the Everglades.
A lack of water treatment and conservation areas south of the lake.

Threats to the endangered Cape Sable sparrow and snail kite that higher water levels would cause. “The solution is obvious,” Pantano said. “We need a way to clean, store and convey water south out of the lake. But the reality is that none of that infrastructure exists today. It just flat out isn’t there.”

Karl Wickstrom of Stuart, head of the Rivers Coalition Legal Defense Fund, asked Pantano if the proposed purchase of U.S. Sugar Co. land south of Lake Okeechobee “would provide the facilities you need. Is anything as important as acquiring that land?”

Pantano replied that “having the land is not everything, but it would be huge. And having the right land is key.”

In the meantime, Pantano said, the releases into the St. Lucie that began March 27 would “continue for the foreseeable future.”

At the current rate of 1,170 cubic feet per second, or about 756 million gallons of water a day, it will take 50 days to lower the lake one foot, Pantano said; and the lake currently is two feet higher than it should be at this time of year.

“My alternatives, right now, are limited,” Pantano said. Waving a copy of a Corps handout from 2006 that stated 19 projects approved in the 2000 Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan would be completed by 2010, John Mauer of Stuart told Pantano, “The reason you can’t send water south is because the Corps hasn’t done anything in 10 years. The state did its part (to raise matching funds for the projects), but the federal government didn’t do its part.”

Stu Appelbaum, chief of the Corps’ Everglades Division, replied that although projects were approved in 2000, Congress didn’t readily appropriate money for them.

Pantano added that the projects south of Lake Okeechobee “are the big-ticket items, the ones that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Enhancing Water Storage and Treatment
The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) has been working with a coalition of other agencies, environmental organizations, ranchers and researchers since 2005, to enhance opportunities for storing excess surface water on private, public and tribal lands.

Managing water on these lands is one tool to reduce the amount of water that is delivered into Lake Okeechobee and discharged to coastal estuaries for flood protection purposes.

This program complements water storage options available through public facilities such as reservoirs, restoration projects and stormwater treatment areas.

The Dispersed Water Management and Treatment Program encourages property owners to retain water on their land rather than drain it, accept regional runoff for storage, or do both. Through this program and regional public projects, more than 126,350 acre-feet of water storage has been made available in South Florida.

There are more than 30 participating landowners providing water retention and/or storage ranging from 1 acre-foot to 10,000 acre-feet. The total includes more than 47,700 acre-feet provided by Kissimmee River Floodplain Restoration. To put this in perspective, 450,000 acre-feet of storage equates to approximately 1 foot of water off of Lake Okeechobee.

Planned projects that have been assessed for implementation may provide additional storage in the future, pending funding. It will take both dispersed and regional projects to achieve objectives.

Surface water storage benefits include:
1. Ongoing Lake Okeechobee and estuary ecological improvement projects are enhanced by providing an alternative to storing water in the lake and reducing the volume of discharges to estuaries and coasts.
2. Stored water may receive nutrient removal treatment, improving water quality.
3. Groundwater recharge opportunities are expanded.
4. Habitats for native plants and wildlife are improved when wetlands are rehydrated.


Energy

FPL Mirrors focus sun to heat water for electricity
Florida Power & Light Co.'s newest solar-energy plant will have enough mirrors to cover 80 football fields. But those mirrors will focus sunlight onto surfaces that add up to about the size of a single football field.

That 80-to-1 concentration of solar power will generate temperatures of more than 700 degrees — hot enough to make electricity for 11,000 homes.

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Sen. Bill Nelson's hard-charging reaction to the gulf oil disaster ran into a wall, a reminder of how influential the industry remains.
Nelson and two other Democratic lawmakers, eager to show the public they are going after BP, wanted a quick passage of a bill to increase a cap on damages from oil spills to $10 billion from $75 million.

But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a supporter of continued oil drilling, objected. That sidelined the bill for now because Nelson and his allies were seeking passage under unanimous consent rules.

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Florida Oil Spill Hotline
Florida has set up a toll-free telephone line to provide residents and visitors with information about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Gov. Charlie Crist announced activation of the line — (888) 337-3569 — on Thursday.
Operators are on duty to answer questions about the state's response activities, volunteer opportunities and health, safety and protective tips.

Babcock Ranch developers hope special session will help expedite construction
A special session of the Legislature on oil drilling could provide the boost the developers of the Babcock community need to start construction of a solar cell farm to power the development.
That’s the hope Tom Danahy, president of Kitson Babcock is holding onto after two years of trying to get the Legislature’s help to manage the costs of building the world’s largest solar cell farm in Charlotte County.

“If we can get this started there are jobs that will be created immediately,” Danahy told members of Cape Coral’s Council for Progress this morning.

The developers want the Legislature’s approval for FPL to pass on the higher costs of building the 75-megawatt plant, Danahy told the Cape Coral Council For Progress this morning. Constructing a solar farm involves upfront costs for FPL, Danahy said, so it will impact customers.

But there’s been a reluctance in the Legislature to do anything that would raise taxes or increase costs, Danahy said.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has said he wants to reconvene the Legislature on May 24 to discuss oil drilling off Florida.

The plant will be three times the size of the FPL plant in Arcadia and will be the largest in the world.

It is being designed to provide the power for 19,500 homes and apartments and six million square feet of commercial, retail and civic space.

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Miscellaneous
Former U.S. Attorney Lehtinen steps down as Miccosukee Everglades lawyer For more than 20 years, former U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen and the Miccosukee Tribe have made a formidable team in pushing for the cleanup of the Everglades.

On Thursday, they broke up, with Lehtinen filing court documents late in the day that said he was withdrawing from representing the tribe "for reasons unrelated to Everglades matters."
Lehtinen also wrote, "The Tribe is expected to litigate as aggressively as previously, and tribal positions remain unchanged," but other advocates for the Everglades said the split was not good for their cause.

"We're a small group and without Dexter and resources and energy of the Tribe and their consultants, it's going to be very difficult," said John Childe, attorney for The Friends of the Everglades. "Not many people have a handle on all the issues as Dexter."

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Sierra Club – Good News!

Greetings All,

Success! Governor Crist has vetoed HB 1565 Rulemaking by Rep. Dorworth as we have asked. Sierrans burned up the internet with around 4000 requests for a veto of this bad bill that would have allowed the legislature to have the final say on any rule that would have even a minimal fiscal impact on private or public entities. This would have resulted in an unacceptable delay, or more likely, an insurmountable hurdle for any meaningful actions on behalf of Florida’s people and environment.

Thank you for all that you have done and continue to do for Florida’s environment.

David J. Cullen