Q&A Of The Day – Should The South Florida Water Management District Be Privatized? Part 1
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s entry: Long time listener. I wanted to contact you to ask for an opportunity for you to review and report to your listener base the pros and cons of South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) becoming an Investor Owned Utility (IOU). As a conservationist, I am concerned with the sewage effluent/raw water suggestions being injected below our precious Floridian Aquifer. And as practical realist, I realize that the opportunity to have private companies manage projects means timelines and budgets will get met. I value hearing your analysis and hope you will consider offering your insight.
Bottom Line: Florida’s water wars are anything but new, but they continue to escalate. You have the multiple decade Florida-Georgia battle over the Apalachicola, growing concerns over the bottling of water in Florida’s springs and of course the mack daddy of them all... The one that starts at Lake O’ and ends where the Everglades do. Lake O’s toxic algae crisis, discharges and the interconnected efforts to complete the Everglades Restoration Project. These issues all have one common theme that’s contributing to escalation of issues. Florida’s population proliferation and the struggle to attempt to strike a balance between the needs of our state and the need to responsibly manage our fragile peninsula.
As a fellow conservationist passionate about our waterways, I feel like we’re in a constant battle of two steps forward and one step back and over the years the South Florida Water Management District has been a consistent concern. Currently, I’m of the view that District’s board is the best and most environmentally responsible of any I’ve known. That’s largely because Governor DeSantis’s environmental priorities are evidenced in his appointments to the nine board members on the District. Previously the board was comprised of individuals comfortable with the status quo. This included the last-minute effort to attempt to thwart DeSantis’s plan of a southern reservoir for runoff water from Lake Okeechobee, before he became governor, by staging a last-minute meeting in Miami to sign off on a long-term lease with Florida Crystals for the land identified to be the reservoir. Had it not been for fast action by Congressman Brian Mast, and subsequent work of Governor DeSantis to replace the entire board upon becoming governor, the reservoir which is now being worked on for the runoff water to end east-west discharges from the lake wouldn’t be a possibility. Nor would the potential completion of the Everglades Restoration Project be in sight. And it’s actually for these reasons I feel there’s good reason to consider the plan to turn the South Florida Water Management District into an investor-owned utility.
Under the current structure, the South Florida Water Management District’s board is comprised of political appointments. They’re often as good or effective or as agenda driven as the Governor who appoints them. Thankfully, from my perspective, Governor DeSantis is a real-deal pragmatic environmentalist. As a result, the current board reflects that position. In my opinion, his predecessor Rick Scott, errored on the side of business over environmental concerns and the previous board reflected those interests. And herein lies the point. I don’t know who Florida’s next governor will be or what their priorities will be, and I’d prefer to not have the future of Florida’s waterways and The Everglades hinge near exclusively on that person’s priorities. I’ll pick up on that point in the second part of today’s Q&A.
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