Why I believe Francis Rooney will help restore our water quality

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.