One lesson of the past decade, in finance as well as nature, is that perfect storms do happen. When nukes are involved, the fallout can be literal, not just political. - Michael Grunwald
Miami-based Time Magazine writer Michael Grunwald offers the point of view that the renaissance of nuclear power is a myth. With such powerful evidence, one wonders why FPL is pursuing two new nuclear power plants at Turkey Point on the back of ratepayers. The answer is: the Florida Public Utilities Commission granted FPL the right to bill ratepayers in South Florida for the costs of planning, putting to work lobbyists and engineers in numbers that defy any opposition. Read, "Why No Nukes? The Real Cost of US Nuclear Power" from last week's Time Magazine, here:
Friday, Mar. 25, 2011
Why No Nukes? The Real Cost of U.S. Nuclear Power
By Michael Grunwald
The chaos at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant — explosions, fires, ruptures — has not shaken the bipartisan support in partisan Washington for the U.S.'s so-called nuclear renaissance. Republicans have dismissed Japan's crisis as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. President Obama has defended atomic energy as a carbon-free source of power, resisting calls to halt the renaissance and freeze construction of the U.S.'s first new reactors in over three decades.
But there is no renaissance.
Even before the earthquake-tsunami one-two punch, the endlessly hyped U.S. nuclear revival was stumbling, pummeled by skyrocketing costs, stagnant demand and skittish investors, not to mention the defeat of restrictions on carbon that could have mitigated nuclear energy's economic insanity. Obama has offered unprecedented aid to an industry that already enjoyed cradle-to-grave subsidies, and the antispending GOP has clamored for even more largesse. But Wall Street hates nukes as much as K Street loves them, which is why there's no new reactor construction to freeze. Once hailed as "too cheap to meter," nuclear fission turns out to be an outlandishly expensive method of generating juice for our Xboxes. (See pictures of an aging nuclear plant.)
Since 2008, proposed reactors have been quietly scrapped or suspended in at least nine states — not by safety concerns or hippie sit-ins but by financial realities. Other projects have been delayed as cost estimates have tripled toward $10 billion a reactor, and ratings agencies have downgraded utilities with atomic ambitions. Nuclear Energy Institute vice president Richard Myers notes that the "unrealistic" renaissance hype has come from the industry's friends, not the industry itself. "Even before this happened, short-term market conditions were bleak," he tells TIME.
Around the world, governments (led by China, with Russia a distant second) are financing 65 new reactors through more explicit nuclear socialism. But private capital still considers atomic energy radioactive, gravitating instead toward natural gas and renewables, whose costs are dropping fast. Nuclear power is expanding only in places where taxpayers and ratepayers can be compelled to foot the bill. (See pictures of the worst nuclear disasters.)
In fact, the economic and safety problems associated with nuclear energy are not unrelated. Trying to avoid flukes like Fukushima Daiichi is remarkably costly. And trying to avoid those costs can lead to flukes.
The False Dawn
In 1972 a federal safety regulator, worried that GE's Mark 1 reactors would fail in an emergency, urged a ban on containment designs that used "pressure suppression." His boss was sympathetic but wrote in a memo that "reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power" and "would generally create more turmoil than I can stand thinking about." Four decades after this bureaucratic pressure suppression, Fukushima Daiichi's Mark 1 reactors seem to have failed as predicted. And while newer reactors don't have those problems, 23 Mark 1 reactors still operate in the U.S., including a Vermont plant that was relicensed for 20 more years the day before the disaster in Japan.
When Karl Marx, who would have appreciated nuclear economics, wrote that history unfolds first as tragedy, then as farce, he got U.S. nuclear history backward. America's initial experiment was a cartoonish disaster, with construction timelines doubling and costs increasing as much as 1,000% even before the Three Mile Island meltdown. In the 1980s, the industry required bailouts before bailouts were cool. But the U.S. industry has matured and learned from its mistakes. It still runs the world's largest nuclear portfolio, and it hasn't had a serious accident since 1979. Meanwhile, global-warming fears have positioned nuclear power as a proven alternative to fossil fuels that works even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, producing 20% of our electricity and 0% of our emissions. No-nukes outrage has burned out, with a recent poll registering 71% support.
See why Obama's nuclear bet won't pay off.
Read "Nuclear Batteries."
The result has been an extraordinary political coalition. Right-wingers who don't accept climate science and didn't even want the word french in their fries now wax lyrical about French reactors that reduce French emissions. Left-wingers who used to bemoan the industry's radioactive waste and corporate welfare now embrace it as an earth saver. So Congress has approved lucrative subsidies for construction, production, waste disposal, liability insurance and just about every other nuclear cost. It also approved "risk insurance" to compensate utilities for regulatory delays, even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has worked closely with the industry to streamline its licensing process. And nuke-friendly states have required ratepayers to front the costs of any new construction — even if the reactors are never turned on.
Nevertheless, investors refuse to bet on nukes. The steady increases in electricity demand that were supposed to justify new reactors have been wiped out by the global recession, and energy-efficiency advances could keep demand flat. Natural gas prices have plummeted, Congress appears unlikely to put a price on carbon, and the U.S. still lacks a plan for nuclear waste. It also turns out that building safe places to smash atoms is hard, especially after such a long hiatus. The U.S. has lost most of its nuclear manufacturing capacity; it would have to import Japanese steel forgings and other massive components, while training a new generation of nuclear workers. And though industry lobbyists have persuaded the NRC to ease onerous regulations governing everything from fire safety to cooling systems, it's still incredibly tough to get a reactor built. (See top 20 green tech ideas.)
New nukes would still make sense if they were truly needed to save the planet. But as a Brattle Group paper noted last month, additional reactors "cannot be expected to contribute significantly to U.S. carbon emission reduction goals prior to 2030." By contrast, investments in more-efficient buildings and factories can reduce demand now, at a tenth the cost of new nuclear supply. Replacing carbon-belching coal with cleaner gas, emissions-free wind and even utility-scale solar will also be cheaper and faster than new nukes. It's true that major infusions of intermittent wind and solar power would stress the grid, but that's a reason to upgrade the grid, not to waste time and money on reactors.
Anyway, there aren't many utilities that can carry a nuclear project on their balance sheets, which is why Obama's Energy Department, a year after awarding its first $8 billion loan guarantee in Georgia, is still sitting on an additional $10 billion. A Maryland project evaporated before closing, and a Texas project fell apart when costs spiraled and a local utility withdrew. The deal was supposed to be salvaged with financing from a foreign utility, but that now seems unlikely. (See how fundraising helped shape obama's green agenda.)
The utility was Tokyo Electric.
Another Perfect Storm
Pundits keep saying the mess in Japan will change the debate in the U.S., but the BP and Massey disasters didn't change the debates over oil drilling and coal mining. And the nuclear debate seems particularly impervious to facts. Obama wants to triple funding for the already undersubscribed loan guarantees, but Republicans still accuse him of insufficient nuclear fervor. So don't expect the U.S. to copy German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who just shut down seven aging plants. GOP Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has already rejected the idea of "a nuclear problem," suggesting that "once in 300 years, a disaster occurs." That's true if you don't count Chernobyl and you're sure nothing will happen for the next 250 years.
The industry's defenders may ignore Fukushima Daiichi, but the industry will not. It's serious about public safety, and meltdowns are bad for business; no company wants to lose a $10 billion reactor overnight. But additional safety measures cost money: in 2003 industry lobbyists beat back an NRC committee's recommendation for new backup-power rules that were designed to prevent the hydrogen explosions that are now all over the news. (Comment on this story.)
It may sound unrealistic to require plants to withstand a vicious earthquake and a 25-ft. tsunami, but nobody's forcing utilities to generate power with uranium. One lesson of the past decade, in finance as well as nature, is that perfect storms do happen. When nukes are involved, the fallout can be literal, not just political.
This article originally appeared in the March 28, 2011 issue of TIME.
Showing posts with label Grunwald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grunwald. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Florida Seen as a Commodity Instead of a Resource. By Geniusofdespair
It makes me sad... so many reporters are so brilliant yet they struggle for work. Speaking of brilliant reporters, listen to Michael Grunwald, he nails Florida down but good. His arguments also support what we have been outlining as the issues to vote for Amendment 4. Don't see the video try this link.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Scam: Biofuels. By Geniusofdespair
The Clean Energy Scam
Award winning reporter, Michael Grunwald, wrote for Time Magazine about biofuels:
“But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.”
Award winning reporter, Michael Grunwald, wrote for Time Magazine about biofuels:
“But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.”
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Inter American Development Bank: food price inflation
On the last day of the Inter American Development Bank meeting in Miami, the take-away for the 6,000 attendees is clear: the US economy is in trouble and the effects on the hemisphere are to follow. But something else is happening, beyond the implosion of housing markets and the shattering of confidence in debt and the US dollar.
In Port au Prince, rioters have taken to the streets to protest cost increases in food. And not just Haiti. Food prices are spiking, in case you haven’t noticed at your supermarket lately.
AP reports today in advance of the World Bank spring meeting, “Rising food prices, which have caused social unrest in several countries, are not a temporary phenomenon but are likely to persist for several years, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says. He says strong demand, change in diet and the use of biofuels as an alternative source of energy have reduced world food stocks to a level bordering on an emergency.”
Here is what is going on.
First of all, the growth of Asian economies means that the cost of fuel will continue to rise, based on a limited and even dwindling supply of oil. Industrial food production, that depends on long-distance transportation cost inputs, is only efficient so long as fuel costs are low. That is no longer true.
The threat of further tightening of oil supplies, by any disruption, is forcing commodity markets upwards. At the same time of rising demand for fuel, US energy policies have encouraged alternatives—like growing corn for fuel.
Changes in seasonal growing cycles due to global warming are affecting crop productivity around the world at the same time a massive amount of acreage formerly dedicated to growing grains for food has been converted to subsidized fuel.
As Time Magazine notes, “The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol… in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade.” (“The Clean Energy Myth, Michael Grunwald, April 7, 2008),
These immutable facts; climate instability and unstable fuel supply argue for certain measures to be taken as soon as possible.
First of all, reverse the subsidies for ethanol based fuel from corn and sugar. Grunwald notes, “The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year.”
In Latin America, as in the United States, effort is required to change farm policies to from industrial food production to encourage growing local sources of food.
It is wrong to blame third world nations for failing to tame the conversion of environmentally sensitive lands to agriculture: in Miami, we are powerless to stop the conversion of agriculturally important lands to hardware stores and office space outside the Urban Development Boundary.
Power generation needs to be re-organized to maximize the generation of power at the consumer level, whether through the combination of wind, solar and other new technologies.
Paradoxically, this may be more easily accomplished in lesser-developed nations where industrial scale investment in infrastructure has not taken root. Big electric utilities like Florida Power and Light use renewable energy investments—at least in this state—as a fig leaf for plans to massively expand capacity.
The fact is, the rules of the game have changed. This may be hard to see, through the forest of the credit crisis.
Time’s Michael Grunwald writes, “The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations—and it’s only getting started.”
Inflation in the cost of food may have nothing to do with financial derivatives and the mistakes of Alan Greenspan, but you don’t have to be chief of the Federal Reserve to know that food costs are significantly adding to the economic storm.
In Port au Prince, rioters have taken to the streets to protest cost increases in food. And not just Haiti. Food prices are spiking, in case you haven’t noticed at your supermarket lately.
AP reports today in advance of the World Bank spring meeting, “Rising food prices, which have caused social unrest in several countries, are not a temporary phenomenon but are likely to persist for several years, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says. He says strong demand, change in diet and the use of biofuels as an alternative source of energy have reduced world food stocks to a level bordering on an emergency.”
Here is what is going on.
First of all, the growth of Asian economies means that the cost of fuel will continue to rise, based on a limited and even dwindling supply of oil. Industrial food production, that depends on long-distance transportation cost inputs, is only efficient so long as fuel costs are low. That is no longer true.
The threat of further tightening of oil supplies, by any disruption, is forcing commodity markets upwards. At the same time of rising demand for fuel, US energy policies have encouraged alternatives—like growing corn for fuel.
Changes in seasonal growing cycles due to global warming are affecting crop productivity around the world at the same time a massive amount of acreage formerly dedicated to growing grains for food has been converted to subsidized fuel.
As Time Magazine notes, “The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol… in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade.” (“The Clean Energy Myth, Michael Grunwald, April 7, 2008),
These immutable facts; climate instability and unstable fuel supply argue for certain measures to be taken as soon as possible.
First of all, reverse the subsidies for ethanol based fuel from corn and sugar. Grunwald notes, “The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year.”
In Latin America, as in the United States, effort is required to change farm policies to from industrial food production to encourage growing local sources of food.
It is wrong to blame third world nations for failing to tame the conversion of environmentally sensitive lands to agriculture: in Miami, we are powerless to stop the conversion of agriculturally important lands to hardware stores and office space outside the Urban Development Boundary.
Power generation needs to be re-organized to maximize the generation of power at the consumer level, whether through the combination of wind, solar and other new technologies.
Paradoxically, this may be more easily accomplished in lesser-developed nations where industrial scale investment in infrastructure has not taken root. Big electric utilities like Florida Power and Light use renewable energy investments—at least in this state—as a fig leaf for plans to massively expand capacity.
The fact is, the rules of the game have changed. This may be hard to see, through the forest of the credit crisis.
Time’s Michael Grunwald writes, “The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations—and it’s only getting started.”
Inflation in the cost of food may have nothing to do with financial derivatives and the mistakes of Alan Greenspan, but you don’t have to be chief of the Federal Reserve to know that food costs are significantly adding to the economic storm.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Tangled up in blue: a brief history of environmentalism in Florida, by gimleteye
Last week, Congress handed President Bush the first override of a presidential veto. The issue was the Water Resources Development Act-- and for Florida, what was at stake was reviving the federal half of Everglades restoration.
In 2000, Congress set out to solve the Everglades restoration riddle (in the last WRDA Act) that had been wrapped up in more than a decade of litigation relating to Big Sugar's pollution of federal lands.
It became one of the signature environmental efforts of the Clinton White House: putting aside the acrimony between the state and federal government and moving forward in Florida with concrete plans to restore the fabled River of Grass. Seven years later, cynics call it: the River of Gas.
In Grist (htttp://grist.org), writer Michael Grunwald--the nation's leading authority on the US Army Corps of Engineers--, was emphatic about the wrong-headedness of Democrats and Repulicans uniting to override a fatally flawed bill. Moreover he wrote, "... the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them."
The AP report on the presidential veto turned to Audubon. Grunwald repeats the quote, "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration."
Even before 2000 it was clear as day that the only review and accountability for Everglades restoration would be undertaken by the Corps itself, in conjunction with the state water management district whose board is dominated by representatives of land speculators, Big Sugar, and the Growth Machine. The 2003 promulgation of rules (ie. the board game) by which dozens of government agencies would interact to move Everglades restoration according to the will of Congress triggered objections by Sierra Club in Florida: objections that were met with frosty anger by Audubon.
It was as though the prevailing view in Florida on the environment was, "take what you can, live to fight another day, compromise always give you a chance for another bite at the apple." And never, never criticize your brethren in public.
If Marjory Stoneman Douglas is watching these events unfold from heaven, she is shaking her fists in anger.
Over the years, the public has come to believe that the Everglades have been saved. What would you expect, where environmental groups have signed off and blessed a process that will take so long, the cycle of retirement will claim original champions long before the results are in, and where the results will be measured at any rate by government agencies who have performed the contracting work?
Grunwald writes, "It's hard to see how this vote helps that (Everglades) cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement."
Audubon is the only environmental organization within Florida with the budget and staff to "track" the byzantine process that has unfolded from the promises of 2000. Even then, with only one or two staffers--often juniors for whom the Everglades is a stepping stone to further career advancement--Audubon and the environmentalists have been hopelessly outmaneuvered, except where it comes to AP and the mainstream press needing a quote.
There are other forceful and reasoned voices. But they are not heard, or, if they are heard they are shunted off to committees where obfuscation, delay, and caution rule.
The result has been a mess in Florida: endless platitudes about the balance between the environment and the economy have proceeded through the rampant destruction of wetlands, aquifers, coral reefs, pristine bays.
The Congressional override ignored the pent-up demand for Corps reform: a goal fervently sought by groups like Sierra Club in the Midwest and their leaders, like Mark Beokrem--who tragically passed away before he could witness today's unfolding history. Mark was a Mississippi and Missouri River advocate. He was part of an intrepid and fearless group of advocates who hoped, with all their hearts, that during their lifetimes that Congress would undertake reform of the US Army Corps.
Midwest Sierra Club and its allies argued that without reform of the Corps, the massive multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects now undertaken under a "green banner" would always be skewed to the worst kind of special interest domination, pressure and insider politics.
But if any of the Florida environmental groups involved with Everglades restoration were willing to stand on the issue of Corps Reform in the latest Water Resources Development Act, it is too late now.
The Everglades environmentalists would not postpone the unleashing of federal funding (although, as environmental tormentor US Senator James Inhofe has pronouced--authorization is not the same as appropriation).
Grunwald is 100 percent on target when he concludes for Grist: "Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them."
But it has always been that way in Florida on the environment. Audubon, Jeb's favored environmental organization in Florida, has represented for many years the insider end of environmental politics, and for its part, Audubon has been pleased enough to be the lauded, praised and token presence on blue ribbon panels, in papal conclaves in the Governor's Mansion such as they have been in the past, including those of powerful Democrats like former US Senator Bob Graham or Congresswoman Carrie Meek.
It is a tribute, in a way, to special interests that control the Florida legislature and the Congress. They got what they wanted: the ceaseless growth of suburbs into wetlands, protected crops like sugar into the Everglades, destroyed aquifers, and water quality, and they got environmentalists to agree it was the best result possible.
(Grunwald's article from Grist is reprinted below.)
Michael Grunwald, senior correspondent for Time Magazine and noted critic of the Army Corps of Engineers, says yesterday's historic override of President Bush's water-bill veto isn't worth celebrating -- despite what many environmental activists think.
He was the toast of Congress earlier this year, but yesterday Bush was less popular.
Hooray! The Everglades and coastal Louisana have been rescued! Activists and politicians alike are giddy over the news that Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act yesterday. The override authorizes $5 billion worth of new Army Corps of Engineers projects for the dying Everglades and the devastated Louisiana coast, plus another $18 billion worth of new projects for the rest of the country. It was the first veto override of the Bush era, an unprecedented bipartisan rebuke to an anti-environmental White House. The Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Conservation Association are celebrating. So are the elected officials of Florida and Louisiana, even Bush-friendly Republicans like Senators Mel Martinez and David Vitter.
You'd think I'd be fired up, too. I wrote a book about the plight of the Everglades. I wrote an angry Time Magazine cover story about the plight of coastal Louisiana. I hold no brief for the global warming denier in the White House.
But this time, Bush was right.
This bloated bill will be terrible for the environment -- and it won't save the Everglades or coastal Louisiana. It will preserve America's dysfunctional approach to water resources, the same approach that endangered the Everglades and coastal Louisiana in the first place.
The enviros who bashed Bush for blocking it will now return to their usual bashing of the Army Corps, but they just blew their best chance to reform this destructive and counterproductive agency -- which just happens to oversee the restoration of the Everglades and the protection of coastal Louisiana.
To understand why this bill is so disastrous, it helps to recall the Army Corps scandals of 2000, when a slew of independent investigations -- by the Pentagon inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, the National Academies of Sciences, and me -- exposed how the agency was skewing its economic and environmental analyses to justify wetlands-killing boondoggles that kept its employees busy and its congressional patrons happy.
Corps leaders had launched a secret "Program Growth Initative" designed to boost their budget, ordering underlings to "get creative" with studies in order to greenlight projects. The most notorious was a $1 billion lock project on the Mississippi River; the Corps brass reassigned an honest economist who had concluded it made no sense, and sent a blizzard of emails ordering his replacements to concoct a rationale for it.
Traditionally, Congress has passed a WRDA bill every two years, larded with "earmarks" for Corps flood-control and navigation and beach-replenishment projects. These waterworks are a form of political swag on Capitol Hill; lawmakers use them to steer jobs and cash to their constituents and contributors, and to demonstrate their clout. But after the last WRDA bill passed in 2000, a small group of fiscal conservatives and liberal environmentalists led by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) came up with a new strategy for fixing the Corps: No more pork without reform. President Reagan used the same reform strategy in the 1980s, blocking WRDA for six years until pork-starved legislators reluctantly agreed to increase the local cost-share for Corps projects. The hope was that communities would lose their enthusiasm for boondoggles if they had to foot more of the bill.
After 2000, the tiny "Corps Reform Caucus" demanded two modest but significant fixes before any new WRDA bill could pass. The first would require independent technical reviews of all major projects, to prevent the Corps from cooking its books. The second would require the "prioritization" of Corps projects, so that America's water resources could be developed or preserved according to a comprehensive national strategy instead of an annual scramble for appropriations. The desperate need for prioritization became especially clear after Hurricane Katrina; as I've written in Grist, the Corps had spent more money in Louisiana than any other state, but had wasted most of it on white-elephant navigation projects requested by the state's congressional delegation instead of shoring up the flimsy floodwalls and vanishing wetlands that were supposed to protect New Orleans.
The reformers held tough for seven years, as pent-up demand for Corps earmarks grew. But this year the dam burst. The House passed a $14 billion bill with minimal reform; the Senate passed a $15 billion bill with minimal reform; Congress somehow compromised on a $23 billion bill with virtually no reform. When Bush objected to the price tag, right-wing Republicans like Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) joined forces with left-wing Democrats like Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to denounce him.
Will the Everglades get help, or continue to languish?
And green groups eager to authorize restoration work on the Everglades and Louisiana's coastal wetlands echoed the opposition of dredging contractors, shipping interests, beachfront developers, and farm groups eager for more traditional Corps projects. They helped provide the political cover for the overwhelming override of Bush's veto. "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration.
It's hard to see how this vote helps that cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement.
And the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them. Why should these be any different? Congress is much more likely to fund the new bill's $900 million levee project for Louisiana, which would destroy thousands of additional acres of marshes and cypress swamps that might otherwise help deflect and deflate the next Gulf hurricane. The bill even authorizes the billion-dollar Mississippi River lock boondoggle that embarrassed the Corps in 2000 -- except that the price tag has now skyrocketed to $2.3 billion.
Enviros have been justifiably outraged by Corps mismanagement of both the Everglades and coastal Louisiana restoration projects; neither has produced any significant ecological results. It certainly would be nice to have a greener agency in charge of reversing damage that was largely inflicted by the Corps in the first place. But that's not going to happen as long as members of Congress see the Corps as their personal plaything. The best hope for America's degraded ecosystems is a better Corps. Until then, you'll keep seeing ludicrous stories like this. And this. And this.
But it's hard to imagine when there's going to be a better opportunity to improve the Corps than the one the environmental movement just missed. There's an eco-friendly Democratic Congress and a Corps-unfriendly Republican president. There's been a national backlash against earmarks, when the Corps is almost entirely funded by earmarks. The Corps and its congressional enablers recently drowned a city through bungled engineering, environmental ignorance, and misplaced priorities. And after enduring seven years without ribbon-cuttings, salivating lawmakers would have been willing to swallow almost anything that came attached to a new platter of pork.
Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them.
In 2000, Congress set out to solve the Everglades restoration riddle (in the last WRDA Act) that had been wrapped up in more than a decade of litigation relating to Big Sugar's pollution of federal lands.
It became one of the signature environmental efforts of the Clinton White House: putting aside the acrimony between the state and federal government and moving forward in Florida with concrete plans to restore the fabled River of Grass. Seven years later, cynics call it: the River of Gas.
In Grist (htttp://grist.org), writer Michael Grunwald--the nation's leading authority on the US Army Corps of Engineers--, was emphatic about the wrong-headedness of Democrats and Repulicans uniting to override a fatally flawed bill. Moreover he wrote, "... the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them."
The AP report on the presidential veto turned to Audubon. Grunwald repeats the quote, "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration."
Even before 2000 it was clear as day that the only review and accountability for Everglades restoration would be undertaken by the Corps itself, in conjunction with the state water management district whose board is dominated by representatives of land speculators, Big Sugar, and the Growth Machine. The 2003 promulgation of rules (ie. the board game) by which dozens of government agencies would interact to move Everglades restoration according to the will of Congress triggered objections by Sierra Club in Florida: objections that were met with frosty anger by Audubon.
It was as though the prevailing view in Florida on the environment was, "take what you can, live to fight another day, compromise always give you a chance for another bite at the apple." And never, never criticize your brethren in public.
If Marjory Stoneman Douglas is watching these events unfold from heaven, she is shaking her fists in anger.
Over the years, the public has come to believe that the Everglades have been saved. What would you expect, where environmental groups have signed off and blessed a process that will take so long, the cycle of retirement will claim original champions long before the results are in, and where the results will be measured at any rate by government agencies who have performed the contracting work?
Grunwald writes, "It's hard to see how this vote helps that (Everglades) cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement."
Audubon is the only environmental organization within Florida with the budget and staff to "track" the byzantine process that has unfolded from the promises of 2000. Even then, with only one or two staffers--often juniors for whom the Everglades is a stepping stone to further career advancement--Audubon and the environmentalists have been hopelessly outmaneuvered, except where it comes to AP and the mainstream press needing a quote.
There are other forceful and reasoned voices. But they are not heard, or, if they are heard they are shunted off to committees where obfuscation, delay, and caution rule.
The result has been a mess in Florida: endless platitudes about the balance between the environment and the economy have proceeded through the rampant destruction of wetlands, aquifers, coral reefs, pristine bays.
The Congressional override ignored the pent-up demand for Corps reform: a goal fervently sought by groups like Sierra Club in the Midwest and their leaders, like Mark Beokrem--who tragically passed away before he could witness today's unfolding history. Mark was a Mississippi and Missouri River advocate. He was part of an intrepid and fearless group of advocates who hoped, with all their hearts, that during their lifetimes that Congress would undertake reform of the US Army Corps.
Midwest Sierra Club and its allies argued that without reform of the Corps, the massive multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects now undertaken under a "green banner" would always be skewed to the worst kind of special interest domination, pressure and insider politics.
But if any of the Florida environmental groups involved with Everglades restoration were willing to stand on the issue of Corps Reform in the latest Water Resources Development Act, it is too late now.
The Everglades environmentalists would not postpone the unleashing of federal funding (although, as environmental tormentor US Senator James Inhofe has pronouced--authorization is not the same as appropriation).
Grunwald is 100 percent on target when he concludes for Grist: "Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them."
But it has always been that way in Florida on the environment. Audubon, Jeb's favored environmental organization in Florida, has represented for many years the insider end of environmental politics, and for its part, Audubon has been pleased enough to be the lauded, praised and token presence on blue ribbon panels, in papal conclaves in the Governor's Mansion such as they have been in the past, including those of powerful Democrats like former US Senator Bob Graham or Congresswoman Carrie Meek.
It is a tribute, in a way, to special interests that control the Florida legislature and the Congress. They got what they wanted: the ceaseless growth of suburbs into wetlands, protected crops like sugar into the Everglades, destroyed aquifers, and water quality, and they got environmentalists to agree it was the best result possible.
(Grunwald's article from Grist is reprinted below.)
Michael Grunwald, senior correspondent for Time Magazine and noted critic of the Army Corps of Engineers, says yesterday's historic override of President Bush's water-bill veto isn't worth celebrating -- despite what many environmental activists think.
He was the toast of Congress earlier this year, but yesterday Bush was less popular.
Hooray! The Everglades and coastal Louisana have been rescued! Activists and politicians alike are giddy over the news that Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act yesterday. The override authorizes $5 billion worth of new Army Corps of Engineers projects for the dying Everglades and the devastated Louisiana coast, plus another $18 billion worth of new projects for the rest of the country. It was the first veto override of the Bush era, an unprecedented bipartisan rebuke to an anti-environmental White House. The Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Conservation Association are celebrating. So are the elected officials of Florida and Louisiana, even Bush-friendly Republicans like Senators Mel Martinez and David Vitter.
You'd think I'd be fired up, too. I wrote a book about the plight of the Everglades. I wrote an angry Time Magazine cover story about the plight of coastal Louisiana. I hold no brief for the global warming denier in the White House.
But this time, Bush was right.
This bloated bill will be terrible for the environment -- and it won't save the Everglades or coastal Louisiana. It will preserve America's dysfunctional approach to water resources, the same approach that endangered the Everglades and coastal Louisiana in the first place.
The enviros who bashed Bush for blocking it will now return to their usual bashing of the Army Corps, but they just blew their best chance to reform this destructive and counterproductive agency -- which just happens to oversee the restoration of the Everglades and the protection of coastal Louisiana.
To understand why this bill is so disastrous, it helps to recall the Army Corps scandals of 2000, when a slew of independent investigations -- by the Pentagon inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, the National Academies of Sciences, and me -- exposed how the agency was skewing its economic and environmental analyses to justify wetlands-killing boondoggles that kept its employees busy and its congressional patrons happy.
Corps leaders had launched a secret "Program Growth Initative" designed to boost their budget, ordering underlings to "get creative" with studies in order to greenlight projects. The most notorious was a $1 billion lock project on the Mississippi River; the Corps brass reassigned an honest economist who had concluded it made no sense, and sent a blizzard of emails ordering his replacements to concoct a rationale for it.
Traditionally, Congress has passed a WRDA bill every two years, larded with "earmarks" for Corps flood-control and navigation and beach-replenishment projects. These waterworks are a form of political swag on Capitol Hill; lawmakers use them to steer jobs and cash to their constituents and contributors, and to demonstrate their clout. But after the last WRDA bill passed in 2000, a small group of fiscal conservatives and liberal environmentalists led by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) came up with a new strategy for fixing the Corps: No more pork without reform. President Reagan used the same reform strategy in the 1980s, blocking WRDA for six years until pork-starved legislators reluctantly agreed to increase the local cost-share for Corps projects. The hope was that communities would lose their enthusiasm for boondoggles if they had to foot more of the bill.
After 2000, the tiny "Corps Reform Caucus" demanded two modest but significant fixes before any new WRDA bill could pass. The first would require independent technical reviews of all major projects, to prevent the Corps from cooking its books. The second would require the "prioritization" of Corps projects, so that America's water resources could be developed or preserved according to a comprehensive national strategy instead of an annual scramble for appropriations. The desperate need for prioritization became especially clear after Hurricane Katrina; as I've written in Grist, the Corps had spent more money in Louisiana than any other state, but had wasted most of it on white-elephant navigation projects requested by the state's congressional delegation instead of shoring up the flimsy floodwalls and vanishing wetlands that were supposed to protect New Orleans.
The reformers held tough for seven years, as pent-up demand for Corps earmarks grew. But this year the dam burst. The House passed a $14 billion bill with minimal reform; the Senate passed a $15 billion bill with minimal reform; Congress somehow compromised on a $23 billion bill with virtually no reform. When Bush objected to the price tag, right-wing Republicans like Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) joined forces with left-wing Democrats like Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to denounce him.
Will the Everglades get help, or continue to languish?
And green groups eager to authorize restoration work on the Everglades and Louisiana's coastal wetlands echoed the opposition of dredging contractors, shipping interests, beachfront developers, and farm groups eager for more traditional Corps projects. They helped provide the political cover for the overwhelming override of Bush's veto. "If there is a cause that merits a historic vote such as this, it's fitting that the cause be to restore some of our most special places before they are lost forever," crowed April Gromnicki, Audubon's director of ecosystem restoration.
It's hard to see how this vote helps that cause, even if it gives Audubon something to brag about to clueless donors. The Corps already has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects. It needs 900 additional projects like Dom DeLuise needs a butt enhancement.
And the greens are deluded if they think their restoration projects will take precedence over the usual dredge-and-drain work favored by Congress and the Corps. There are already billions of dollars worth of authorized restoration projects for the Everglades and coastal Louisiana; Congress just hasn't been funding them. Why should these be any different? Congress is much more likely to fund the new bill's $900 million levee project for Louisiana, which would destroy thousands of additional acres of marshes and cypress swamps that might otherwise help deflect and deflate the next Gulf hurricane. The bill even authorizes the billion-dollar Mississippi River lock boondoggle that embarrassed the Corps in 2000 -- except that the price tag has now skyrocketed to $2.3 billion.
Enviros have been justifiably outraged by Corps mismanagement of both the Everglades and coastal Louisiana restoration projects; neither has produced any significant ecological results. It certainly would be nice to have a greener agency in charge of reversing damage that was largely inflicted by the Corps in the first place. But that's not going to happen as long as members of Congress see the Corps as their personal plaything. The best hope for America's degraded ecosystems is a better Corps. Until then, you'll keep seeing ludicrous stories like this. And this. And this.
But it's hard to imagine when there's going to be a better opportunity to improve the Corps than the one the environmental movement just missed. There's an eco-friendly Democratic Congress and a Corps-unfriendly Republican president. There's been a national backlash against earmarks, when the Corps is almost entirely funded by earmarks. The Corps and its congressional enablers recently drowned a city through bungled engineering, environmental ignorance, and misplaced priorities. And after enduring seven years without ribbon-cuttings, salivating lawmakers would have been willing to swallow almost anything that came attached to a new platter of pork.
Now that Congress has its pork, it's got no incentive to reform the butcher. It's sad that enviros helped make that happen, just because some of the bacon bits were for them.
Sleeping with the Enemy: Audubon practices greenwashing by geniusofdespair
The St. Joe company is being greenwashed courtesy of the Audubon Society. JOE and The National Audubon Society have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create The Audubon Center at West Bay being designed as the gateway to the West Bay Preservation Area. The Joe Company recently had their groundbreaking ceremony for their new 75,000 acre airport which would service the mega-developments they want to create. From what appears to be a press release found on Pr-inside.com:
"JOE and Audubon are also seeking to join with progressive strategic partners to explore the feasibility of creating a world-class environmental educational venue," said Rummell. "This nature center would offer a unique opportunity for environmental organizations, corporations and citizens to build a consensus about how we can live, work and play in a greener world."
Get me a barf bag.
I just found a clip on You Tube of Audubon’s Lobbyist, Eric Draper, speaking at the groundbreaking of the St. Joe airport.
Eric dismisses me, he treats me like a pillar: You know it is there because you have to walk around it. He has seen me dozens of times once in a room with half a dozen people for hours, but I am still just a pillar. I don't even get a nod. Too bad I don't have St. Joe tatooed to my forehead, I would get manly handshakes.
Want some idea of what goes on: Go to You Tube FPL’s River of Gas (at second counter 02:20, see what they say about Eric Draper). It is no wonder Draper tried to undermine these activists against FP&L, I heard they have someone from Florida Power and Light on the Audubon Board.
Speaking of Audubon’s Eric Draper, Washington Post’s Michael Grunwald, reported (in an article written June 26, 2002 about the Everglades):
"Critics such as Browder -- a former Audubon official -- accuse Audubon of shilling for a deeply flawed plan, providing cover to anti-environmental politicians to maintain a seat at a stacked negotiating table. Audubon officials say they are aware of the plan's shortcomings, but can address them more by working with project leaders than by accusing them of bad faith. Of all the groups in the coalition, Audubon has the most people, money and access to policymakers; Eric Draper, its lobbyist in Tallahassee, believes other groups resent its influence."
"People are going to criticize me for hanging out with Republicans and wearing a suit, but I have to be as good as the sugar industry's lobbyist," Draper said. "When you're the lead organization and you get stuff done, people get angry with you."
Barf bag again.
Later in the article Grunwald reported:
“This spring, the tensions within Florida's environmental movement exploded after Audubon helped engineer a bill ensuring state bonds for Everglades restoration. The problem was that GOP legislators had tacked on language limiting the ability of citizen groups to block development permits. Audubon cut a deal to water down the permit language -- which will not affect Audubon -- but supported the overall bill. More than 100 local groups urged Gov. Jeb Bush to veto the compromise. He didn't, and many environmentalists blame Audubon.”
Yes, you might say this was 2002 but Draper is still there doing his thing in the present with St. Joe: "shilling" and "greenwashing"... the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Readers: Here is a definition of greenwashing because it is going to become more prevalent now that everyone is going green. It is a pejorative term that environmentalists and other critics use to describe the activity of giving a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices. The term first arose in the early 1990s. Environmental groups that accept perks (nature centers for instance) for lending their name to companies doing un-environmental activities are greenwashing the offending company.
"JOE and Audubon are also seeking to join with progressive strategic partners to explore the feasibility of creating a world-class environmental educational venue," said Rummell. "This nature center would offer a unique opportunity for environmental organizations, corporations and citizens to build a consensus about how we can live, work and play in a greener world."
Get me a barf bag.
I just found a clip on You Tube of Audubon’s Lobbyist, Eric Draper, speaking at the groundbreaking of the St. Joe airport.
Eric dismisses me, he treats me like a pillar: You know it is there because you have to walk around it. He has seen me dozens of times once in a room with half a dozen people for hours, but I am still just a pillar. I don't even get a nod. Too bad I don't have St. Joe tatooed to my forehead, I would get manly handshakes.
Want some idea of what goes on: Go to You Tube FPL’s River of Gas (at second counter 02:20, see what they say about Eric Draper). It is no wonder Draper tried to undermine these activists against FP&L, I heard they have someone from Florida Power and Light on the Audubon Board.
Speaking of Audubon’s Eric Draper, Washington Post’s Michael Grunwald, reported (in an article written June 26, 2002 about the Everglades):
"Critics such as Browder -- a former Audubon official -- accuse Audubon of shilling for a deeply flawed plan, providing cover to anti-environmental politicians to maintain a seat at a stacked negotiating table. Audubon officials say they are aware of the plan's shortcomings, but can address them more by working with project leaders than by accusing them of bad faith. Of all the groups in the coalition, Audubon has the most people, money and access to policymakers; Eric Draper, its lobbyist in Tallahassee, believes other groups resent its influence."
"People are going to criticize me for hanging out with Republicans and wearing a suit, but I have to be as good as the sugar industry's lobbyist," Draper said. "When you're the lead organization and you get stuff done, people get angry with you."
Barf bag again.
Later in the article Grunwald reported:
“This spring, the tensions within Florida's environmental movement exploded after Audubon helped engineer a bill ensuring state bonds for Everglades restoration. The problem was that GOP legislators had tacked on language limiting the ability of citizen groups to block development permits. Audubon cut a deal to water down the permit language -- which will not affect Audubon -- but supported the overall bill. More than 100 local groups urged Gov. Jeb Bush to veto the compromise. He didn't, and many environmentalists blame Audubon.”
Yes, you might say this was 2002 but Draper is still there doing his thing in the present with St. Joe: "shilling" and "greenwashing"... the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Readers: Here is a definition of greenwashing because it is going to become more prevalent now that everyone is going green. It is a pejorative term that environmentalists and other critics use to describe the activity of giving a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices. The term first arose in the early 1990s. Environmental groups that accept perks (nature centers for instance) for lending their name to companies doing un-environmental activities are greenwashing the offending company.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Everglades: Well at least the New York Times Cares. by geniusofdespair
Effort to Save Everglades Falters as Funds Drop
By ABBY GOODNOUGH - New York Times -11/2/2007
MIAMI, Oct. 31 — The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering.
Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry.
The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.
Supporters say the effort would get sorely needed momentum from a long-delayed federal bill authorizing $23 billion in water infrastructure projects, including almost $2 billion for the Everglades.
But President Bush is expected to veto the bill, possibly on Friday. And even if Congress overrides the veto, which is likely, grave uncertainties will remain.
The product of a striking bipartisan agreement just before the 2000 presidential election, the plan aims to restore the gentle, shallow flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, in south-central Florida, into the Everglades, a vast subtropical marshland at the state’s southern tip.
That constant, slow coursing nurtured myriad species of birds, fish and other animals across the low-lying Everglades, half of which have been lost to agriculture and development over the last century.
The plan calls for new reservoirs and other storage systems to capture excess water during South Florida’s rainy seasons, guaranteeing an adequate water supply for cities and farms as well as the Everglades. That provision helped win the support of the powerful sugar industry, whose farms have long encroached on and polluted the Everglades, and of Jeb Bush, then the governor.
Mr. Bush is the younger brother of President Bush, and supporters of the restoration hoped his close ties with the White House would guarantee its early success. But while Jeb Bush invested heavily in the project, federal enthusiasm seemed to fade after its champions in Congress, including Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack of Florida, left office and the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and other crises emerged.
A changing economy, too, hurt the plan. It passed in a year with a record budget surplus, but the climate changed sharply after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Some state officials say the plan, which involves dozens of complex engineering projects, also got bogged down in federal bureaucracy, a victim of “analysis paralysis.”
Some environmentalists believe that having Jeb Bush in Tallahassee even hurt the restoration because the White House effectively handed it off to him. As a result, pressing state priorities — enough drinking water and flood control to accommodate rapid population growth in South Florida — took precedence over restoring a clean flow of water to Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem.
Nathaniel P. Reed, a conservationist who was an assistant interior secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said that Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political strategist, supported the restoration because he thought it was good politics — “the Bush brothers saving a dying ecosystem,” Mr. Reed said. With Mr. Rove gone and the clock running down on the president’s tenure, he said, the Everglades are more vulnerable than ever.
“Everything now depends on 2008,” Mr. Reed said. “Everglades restoration depends on electing a president who can reignite the national consciousness that this great program should not fail.”
So far, though, most presidential candidates have yet to utter the word “Everglades.” In the only mention that has made news, Fred D. Thompson, a Republican, suggested he might allow oil drilling there.
While the Bush administration says it remains committed to the restoration, critics say its actions suggest otherwise. Although the cost of the effort was to be split evenly between Florida and Washington, the state so far has spent about $2 billion and the federal government only $358 million, though it has also helped finance some projects planned before the 2000 legislation.
Moreover, earlier this year, the Department of the Interior asked the United Nations to remove Everglades National Park from its list of endangered World Heritage sites. While largely symbolic, the removal sends the message that the Everglades no longer need help, said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida.
“I have to deal in a world of perception and symbols,” Mr. Nelson said, “and when I’m begging each year for appropriations for Everglades restoration and suddenly the perception is, ‘Well, the Everglades is making a lot of progress,’ it’s tying my hands behind my back in trying to get the federal share.”
Florida, too, has done things to jeopardize the effort, said former Senator Graham, a Democrat who started the movement to save the Everglades in the 1980s. In 2003, the Legislature, under pressure from the sugar industry, postponed enforcement of strict pollution limits in the Everglades until 2016.
“It’s so important to avoid doing anything to send the signal that there’s less than full commitment in the state where the Everglades is located,” Mr. Graham said. “Frankly, there are people in Washington looking for any sign of lack of commitment in Florida.”
Florida has another perception problem, Mr. Graham said, in that it continues to permit development in environmentally sensitive areas — sometimes even in the restoration footprint. Although the state has bought 55 percent of the land needed for the restoration, crucial land remains private.
Meanwhile, the South Florida Water Management District revealed in September that farmers had missed a phosphorus reduction target for the first time in 11 years, despite the recent construction of 45,000 acres of filter marshes to reduce contaminants in agricultural runoff.
“That is a very loud warning bell that some additional work is needed,” said Charles S. Lee, advocacy director for Audubon of Florida.
State officials say that despite financing challenges, they have made significant progress acquiring land, building filter marshes south of Lake Okeechobee and restoring a more natural water flow to the Kissimmee River, south of Orlando, which is the headwater of the Everglades ecosystem. The state has also broken ground on a reservoir it calls the largest public works project in the world.
Supporters of the restoration have praised Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointees to the water management district’s board and to the state agency that regulates development. But Mr. Crist, a Republican who took office in January, is facing a budget crisis due to the real estate slump. “Florida remains committed,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “But we do have to face facts. We do have some economic challenges.”
Like many others, Mr. Crist is pinning his hopes on the federal bill that provides $23 billion for water projects, including wetlands restoration in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and beach replenishment around the country. The bill finances several projects that are crucial to restoring a clean flow of water through the Everglades.
It went to President Bush last week, and he has pledged to veto it because, he says, it is stuffed with political pork. Other critics agree, and say the bill does not ensure that the most crucial projects, including those in Florida and Louisiana, would get the highest priority.
They also say the bill should have included major changes to the Army Corps of Engineers, which executes the projects but has been accused of misjudgments in engineering, design and the degree of potential harm to the environment.
Corps officials have said the long delay in passing the water bill has hurt their ability to function well, but the critics say the problems are deeper than that.
“This is just a recipe to keep the corps as dysfunctional as ever,” said Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent at Time magazine who wrote “The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), the most exhaustive recent book on the subject.
Echoing the criticism of many scientists, Mr. Grunwald also said the plan does not go far enough to restore a natural water flow to the Everglades and depends on dubious technology for storing billions of gallons of water.
“Until they fix the plan, until they fix the corps and until we get a handle on growth management in South Florida,” he said, “it’s going to be hard to make a lot of progress in the Everglades.”
So, too, will progress be difficult without support from lawmakers outside Florida. Rising land and construction costs have pushed the total estimated price to more than $10 billion.
Mr. Nelson took Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the committee in charge of the water bill, on a tour of the Everglades in September. He has also been known to carry jars of polluted Everglades muck around the Capitol to draw the attention of his colleagues.
Mr. Grunwald said focusing on Everglades National Park and the surrounding ecosystem, not providing water to farms and suburbs, is crucial to reviving national interest in the overall plan.
“It’s the Everglades that’s the national treasure,” he said. “That’s why the guys from Iowa and Montana are going to support this thing.”
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