Last Friday evening, I hosted a meet-and-greet for U.S.
House of Representative candidate Francis J. Rooney. One of the reasons I’m
endorsing him for this important position is because I fervently believe that he will work
hard when he gets to Washington to fix our well-publicized water quality problems.
I got a little emotional as I told the crowd this. You see, Matlacha
is an island and water is crucial to our very existence and always has been. Sure, people come to
Matlacha Island to visit Lovegrove Gallery & Gardens and the other
galleries, studios and artsy boutiques that have earned us the title of the "New Key
West.” But many other people visit us to enjoy fishing, boating, kayaking, canoeing and dining
on shrimp, oysters and freshly caught seafood in our wonderful waterside restaurants, not to mention the beautiful scenery that
stretches out in every direction from our mangrove-lined shores.
The old timers who settled our island in the 1930s told
extraordinary tales about the fishing they found when they arrived here with
little more than the clothes on their backs. It was the Great Depression, and they had nothing. Most lived in their cars. “If you didn’t fish, you didn’t
live,” explained one of the island’s original settlors, a man by the name of Ernie Long.
George and Gay Kuhns came here from Buffalo in 1929. They didn't know how to fish, but learned real fast. But you didn't need much skill in those days. They told tales of scooping up 2,000 shrimp in just an hour using little more than a
net. One night Gay caught 38 snook in less than two hours. Not to be outdone, George caught 49 more. Many snook weighed in at as much as 50 pounds! The mangrove shoals were a haven for fish then, but the water
quality has deteriorated drastically since that time.
Many old timers blamed the Sanibel Causeway for the decline
in fish populations. Others cite overfishing. As our local population has
burgeoned and hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to our beaches and waters
every winter season, there are naturally going to be less fish to catch. But all that nutrient-laden, foul freshwater that the
Army Corps of Engineering releases into the Caloosahatchee River whenever Lake
Okeechobee reaches more than 14½ feet in depth also plays a role. Perhaps even the
major role.
One thing’s certain – the river, its estuaries and the waters
surrounding Matlacha Island have been getting progressively more polluted ever
since the federal government built the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake
Okeechobee. But let's be real. The dike is here to stay, and when the water in the lake
gets too high, the excess has to be released somewhere and right now, that means the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers.
But it does not have to be like this. More than 200
Everglades scientists tell us that the excess lake water can and should be sent to holding areas
south of the lake where it can be cleaned, filtered and then sent into the Florida Everglades, which is where it flowed naturally before the dikes were ever built. And Francis Rooney will not rest until the release of
polluted water from into the Caloosahatchee River is stopped.
Francis appreciates just how important water quality is to
our quality of life and tourism-based industry (in which 1 in 5 (or more than 57,000) Lee County jobs is in leisure and
hospitality). In fact, he and his family came to Southwest
Florida in 1987 because of our waters. Back then, he got in the habit of
bringing a small sailboat down every winter. He has a 100-ton captain’s license, has raised his family on the water, and been boating in our waters for
nearly 30 years.
Over that span, Francis has witnessed, first-hand, the steady deterioration in the
clarity and color of our waters and the decline in sport fishing and our oyster
and scallop industries. But here’s why I’m impressed with Francis Rooney. He
realizes that it will take a concerted effort by both our state legislature and
the U.S. Congress to fix the problem. The bottom line is that in the year 2000…16 years ago…the
federal government agreed to split the cost of the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan (CERP) with the state of Florida,” said Francis on Friday
night.
“Some of the 68 projects involved in the CERP involve buying land in the
EAA south. Others involve building retention and treatment reservoirs on the
north and various ancillary projects. But to this point in time, our
representatives have not been able to get the feds to come through with the
money they committed 16 years ago.
So, we need a business strategy to
organize…to get the money. Senator Rubio made a pretty good comment in the Tampa Bay Times not long ago. He said
‘look…as long as the people of South Florida send Congress mixed messages and
can’t get a good story together that’s clear and understandable, the other 49
states are going to continue to take all of the water money.’”
Now that makes sense. After all, there are limited dollars
for projects like ours and we’re competing with folks from all over the country
for the funding needed for the Everglades Restoration Plan.
We need a clear,
simple message that Congressmen from land-locked places like North Dakota and Wisconsin
can easily understand. “Once we get their attention, we can start bringing those
guys down here and show them what we’re talking about,” Francis said at the
meet-and-greet. They can get a picture of the Grand Tetons. It’s a little
harder to get a picture of the River of Grass."
Like Francis, I'm confident that once we get them down there, they will see the beauty in our estuaries, in our flora and
fauna and the water. And they’ll understand why we’ve got to keep that grass
wet with clean, fresh water…why we have to get Lake Okeechobee cleaned up so
the water that’s coming out of it is not polluted and damaging to the estuaries
and the Caloosahatchee.
On Friday, I told Francis that I’m expecting quick action to
fix our water quality problem. Although he knew what all of us wanted to hear, but he did the honest thing and gave me and everyone else who turned out
to meet him a reality check. There is no quick fix. Remedying our clean water woes is going to take time. There's no way around it.
Not only haven’t
we gotten any money or favorable action from the federal government in 16
years, but the work contemplated by the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration
Plan will take years to complete. It will also take equivalent funding and
equal cooperation from the State of Florida. Francis plans on working jointly
with Governor Rick Scott, Senate President Joe Negron and our own state
senator, Lizbeth Benaquisto.
“But my job, as your federal congressman, will be to do everything
I can do to bring all of these stakeholders together in order to get the federal
money needed in order to do the fed’s half of the CERP. I think I can do it and
I’m going to dedicate every moment of my time, if I’m the congressman here, to
getting that done…for our community, for our businesses.” I believe he will too. That’s
why I’m supporting his candidacy. I hope you will too.
