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Snake oil salesmen in the Senate
SNAKE OIL SALESMEN IN THE SENATE Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott ‘SLITHER’ out an unfunded bill intended to fight invasive species
BY DAVE PLOTKIN
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Two of Florida’s most reptilian politicians say they are “SLITHER”-ing out legislation to combat invasive species, but they aren’t funding the measure.
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are cosponsoring a bill called the Suppressing Looming Invasive Threats Harming Everglades Restoration Act, or “SLITHER.” (Yes, that’s really what they named it.)
The legislation supposedly provides for new technology to target and eliminate the non-native plants and animals that are threatening ongoing Everglades restoration. The senators say this includes remedies to remove the enormous Burmese pythons who moved to Florida sometime after you did.
If the proposal passes, says Rubio, himself an accomplished political chameleon, it will also make it easier “to measure the progress of state and federal investment in Everglades restoration.”
The South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force would apparently be responsible for overseeing the funds, but not much else is explained in the two senators’ statements. The text of the bill itself shows it would amend existing law to include a priority list of invasive species, but that no funding is provided for the directive, which is to be made using “existing amounts appropriated to the Task Force.”
Scott, who slithered to Florida from Texas after overseeing the largest and most cold-blooded Medicare fraud in U.S. history, was equally nebulous about the bill but, well … that’s how Rick rolls.
The bill, S. 3603, has a title that conjures up more questions than answers: “A bill to amend the Water Resources Development Act of 1996 to require the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force to develop a priority list for reducing, mitigating, and controlling invasive species within the South Florida ecosystem, and for other purposes.”
It amends Clinton-era water policy to include a priority list for the task force, “and for other purposes.”
So far, it has no companion bill in the U.S. House. Congress.gov indicates it was filed last Tuesday and read twice, before being referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. That’s all they have to say about it so far.
Undoubtedly, Burmese pythons are super-destructive to wildlife and human structures – Gov. Ron DeSantis even started a “Python Bowl” with the NFL last year to hunt them.
Florida is now home to more than 500 non-native plant and animal species, including the infamous “herpes monkeys” of Jacksonville, feral hogs everywhere, delicious lionfish, northern curly-tailed lizards and iguanas that freeze and plummet from trees every year – just to name a few. According to the National Parks Service, the Everglades alone is believed to host 220 non-native plant species and dozens of types of nonnative reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, mammals, mollusks and crustaceans.
How would SLITHER slither into existing environmental and agricultural regulations? Only the bill text can reveal that, but the inclusion of the Water Resources Development Act of 1996, signed by Bill Clinton, is a place to start. That act reauthorized the Secretary of the Army to carry out “specified projects for navigaFlorida is home to more than 500 non-native plant and animal species, including the infamous ‘herpes monkeys’ of Jacksonville, delicious lionfish and freezeprone iguanas.
tion, flood control, flood and storm damage reduction, environmental preservation and restoration, shoreline erosion protection, hydropower, and hurricane damage reduction” in Florida, the District of Columbia, and 16 other states – but that barely scratches the surface of its impact on Florida’s coastlines and the Everglades.
Scott mentions two past projects, “repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike and the EAA Reservoir.” The Hoover Dike is the 143-mile earthen dam encircling nearly the entirety of Lake Okeechobee. It’s managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and has been prone to spills and breaks since they built up its levees between 1932 and 1938. The Florida Legislature and then-governor Scott approved a plan to use state dollars to speed up dike repairs by three years.
The EAA Reservoir was initially planned to be completed in 2005, but was delayed to instead build it on land being acquired from U.S. Sugar closer to Lake Okeechobee. When that deal fell through, the project had nowhere to go. Work on the EAA Reservoir project isn’t scheduled to begin again until 2021. So Scott’s examples don’t exactly instill confidence.
Even though the bill doesn’t address how the new directives would be funded, Shannon Estenoz, COO of the Everglades Foundation, told the Fort Myers NewsPress she’s optimistic anyway.
“Invasive species are really important, I think the government has some really good people working on it and I’m really grateful to those senators for paying attention to it and wanting to empower those folks even further,” Estenoz said.
Though senators Rubio and Scott claim their legislation will protect the environment, failing to fund their proposal is cause for concern. Whether the bill will help the Everglades – or the corporate interests seeking to further exploit Florida’s “River of Grass” – is yet to be seen, but unfunded mandates in the name of environmental protection are as sneaky as a Burmese python plucking white-tailed deer from the mouths of native bobcats. news@orlandoweekly.com
