Florida Department of Tourism/Flickr
"Christ of the Abyss," in the waters off Key Largo, Florida.
It's not surprising that industry would seek a handle on the government agencies that regulate it, but the process is not usually so wholesale as what is happening now in Florida. The Tampa Bay Times reports that under Republican Governor Rick Scott, Florida's Department of Environmental Protection has been laying off experienced regulators and replacing them with the industry folks they used to regulate:
The DEP's deputy secretary in charge of regulatory programs previously spent a decade as an engineer who specialized in getting clients their environmental permits. Another engineer who worked for developers heads up the division of water resources. A lawyer who helped power plants get their permits is now in charge of air pollution permitting. An engineering company lobbyist became a deputy director overseeing water and sewer facilities.
And the DEP's chief operating officer is a former chemical company and real estate executive from Brandon. He's not an employee, though. He's a consultant who's being paid $83 an hour — more than [Secretary] Vinyard makes on a per-hour basis — to advise Vinyard and his staff on ways to save money.
The DEP "was never great," said Mark Bardolph, a 27-year DEP veteran — and onetime whistle-blower — who was laid off from the Tallahassee office. "But now it's all a political farce."
The mix of industry and regulation has been a question in Florida since January 2011, when Governor Scott appointed an environmental secretary straight out of manufacturing. Two years later, that secretary's department is being remade in his image.
H/t @hapkidogal
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It's great work if you can get it...
Amazing isn't it, how the controllers can control and regulate themselves ? Like an infestation that can Never be controlled properly, therefore, it will Never function properly ! Sounds like a Plan to Monopolize to Me, the gop/tp Plan !
What do you expect when you have a criminal in the governor's office?
Yes, Mr. Benen, your previous post about that Ship of Fools and its brain trust's idea that our POTUS is a fascist seems to be turned on its head in this post!
Rick Scott seems to want his Big Brother with him at every juncture in his term of office - talk about fasciste behavior! -Kevo
Ah, a return to the 'good old days', when rivers burned (Cleveland, Galveston, etc.) and chronic exposure to toxic fumes disabled factory workers long before they could retire (e.g. aluminum and petrochemical industries).
This is one way to solve Social Security and Medicare financing -- kill off the working class before they reach 60.
I never thought I would live to view President Nixon (creator of the EPA, Clean Water and Clean Air acts) as a leftie.
and make sure to ban abortion on the way so that they can be easily replaced.
The only reason they want an abortion and birth control ban is because whites aren't reproducing fast enough to keep up with the blacks and browns.
I believe this is known as infiltrate and conquer from within. Or, SOP per Republicans.
To provide context here's the EPA's Superfund activity list in Florida.
Mickey Mouse is not allowed to vote in Florida. Goofy is barking up the wrong tree.
Boy, self-deport, self-regulate, and according to Cheney you should __— yourself! It's all about me, me, me!
Ordinary people won't notice too much in the coming years, but there will be a cumulative effect that will degrade the environment in Florida and one day people will wake up and wonder where paradise went. What they will find is, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
There's any "paradise" left in Florida???
There is most certainly an abundance of paradise left in Florida. On Sunday, I went to Blue Springs State Park, a manatee refuge where a baby manatee had just been born the evening before. I spent New Years Day in the Everglades, a renowned watery wonderland unlike anywhere else in the world. Please try and keep an open mind to the problems at stake for our environment, as every state has their own special paradise.
And as a Floridian, allow me to invite you to visit the wonders and magic of the beautiful Sunshine State, or as I call it, the Water State. Clearly you missed them on the way to Disney World.
Visit the Sunshine State- while it is still above water and has breathable air!
THANK YOU RACHEL for posting the Florida's current environmental tragedy. I live in the middle of this infestation in North Central Florida. Water tables are going down, down, down.... Pollution percolating into the aquifer is going up up up .... while powers at be laugh all they way to the bank with their perks. We think maybe the think tanks and lobbyists want the springs of North Central Florida to stop flowing and the people who care about the environment to move away BEFORE they start moving to open new phosphate mines and new wells fracking for oil throughout North Central Florida. There must be some kind of plan behind the concerted effort to destroy the springs, rivers and upper Floridan aquifer itself. The lower (deeper) aquifer is salty and not suitable for agriculture. Sigh.
Yes thank you Rachel for taking notice of Florida's very thinly veiled pretense to protect the environment. My organization (Florida Clean Water Network) and Florida PEER have petitioned EPA to remove Vinyard from his post as DEP Secretary almost since he was appointed. EPA gives lip-service to caring about the blatant violation of putting an industry representative in charge of the very same agency that he recently sought permits from. While it is truly sad that so many DEP employees were off-handedly dismissed during the holidays like yesterday's garbage, the truth is that they weren't being allowed to regulate or enforce anything anyway. The agency has become a total waste of taxpayers money. Not only is DEP not doing anything pro-environment anymore, they are actually dismantling our environmental protections at a rate that even I (a very jaded but highly attentive professional) would have never imagined. Adding insult to injury, the EPA, Region 4 is allowing Florida to violate federal environmental laws, and rubber-stamping everything the state proposes. Water quality and quantity is in steep decline and still the special interests that are controlling DEP, the Governor's office and the state Legislature demand more weakening. Not only is our water and air quality being neglected, but public health is at risk, especially for children, minorities and low-income residents.
The newly appointed regulators do not need experience as they are taking their marching orders directly from the lawyers who have long worked for the industries that they are supposed to now regulate. As a Leon County Circuit Court judge stated in a final order back in 2004 for a case that we filed and won against the Florida DEP, "the Florida DEP has so neglected their duties that the industries that they are supposed to regulate are now running the agency". That's not a direct quote, but captures the essence of his disgust at what we revealed about the agency during our trial. That was 2004 and it has fallen into far greater dysfunction over the eight years that have passed since then.
Thank you Rachel, for your tireless dedication and commitment to journalism. These are serious problems, with long term consequences we cannot yet even begin to comprehend. It is articles like this that help people better understand our environmental situation, and an valuable asset to those working to protect it. Big props, way to drop some truth bombs.