Email from Jackie, September 14, 2011

Just wanted to let you know we are doing great, we have a post office box, a checking account with money in it ($200 from Sportsmen’s Club).  Vivian said SOLO is putting $1000 in this week.  Judy Baumgartner has got her fundraising ducks in a row and things are going very well.  Terry wrote a nice fund raiser letter and it will be mass mailed in the very near future.  Joyce King is passing the letters out to her Audubon meeting tonight so that is a big help too.   We have also talked about the possibility of having a big community gathering for Rodney Bamford Day in the spring, at Keystone Beach.  Joyce said there are some good folk singers who have offered to entertain for us and we could have speakers on water conservation, native plants, cook up some BarBQ and do some other fun things too.  Anyway, we’d like to pack the beach like 4^th of July and collect some donations for an entrance fee.  If you have any great ideas about this don’t hesitate to contact Chairman Judy or one of the officers.  We are also hoping everyone will participate in helping SOLO sell their tickets for their day on October 22^nd.  They have agreed to give at least ½ of their proceeds to the recovery fund so let’s get behind them and see if we can’t get even more people there this year than they had last year,  It was great last year and people loved going out to see where they camped at Immokalee when they were young and also SOLO had some excellent activities for the young and the young at heart.

I walked part of the creek with Frank looking for sinkholes and I only got 2 ticks to  his one.  I’m still itching.  The dog fennel was up to his belt so you can imagine what shortlegs was dealing with.  The thatch is really built up in the creek and that may be something we have to help remove at some time in the future.  Probably in the winter would be good when the green that is there dies too and it can all be either control-burned if that is allowed, or removed manually.  A lot of it is private property so there will need to be some coordination with the property owners to get it done.  The good news is we don’t think there are any sinkholes between Immokalee Rd and Camp Blanding.

SJRWMD Board Meeting Update – a tadpole’s view

The SJRWMD meeting was a long one today.  There were some budget items and contracts approved.  Information technology support faired very well in the budget.  One sort of sad thing was that they are letting the ARC janitorial staff go because they said they were outbid by $70,000.  As you may know, ARC hires the handicapped so these people who have been working to earn a living will probably now be needing more government assistance.   One bright star was it seems that our recovery project does have some top priority in the budget that has been sent forward.  No definite details but that is what I gleaned from the presentation. Also they made a resolution to lower the millage rate of taxation for 2011-12 to 0.3313 mills which is 26.52 percent less than the rolled back rate of 0.4509 mills.  The budget for the year adopted was $204,683,679.00.

There were several fairly large consumptive use permits allowed, particularly the City of Apopka, with what I felt were weak promises of reuse….Although it seemed to fall on deaf ears of Board members Karen Ahlers got up and made a very good objection statement about how  the lakes just south of us are suffering also and that we need to stop issuing these permits.  Kirby Green also said this was his last public Board meeting and to everyone’s surprise gave a  little environmental speech/caution to the Board about needing to reduce the withdrawals and, I nearly applauded when he gave a strong rebuttal to Joe G. who keeps claiming there is no more water used now than 30 years ago.    

Another government boondoggle sent down from Rick Scott’s office seems to be that  demands for calculating and documenting economic impact on over 100 rules in the works are being required by the Joint Administrative Procedures Committee.  the SJRWMD staff was asking for the Board to submit a certification of claim for exemption because they cannot possibly do all of this by October 1^st.  It seems this requirement is going to generate even more cost that could be going to things like recovery implementation projects but they will be spending hours and probably needing to hire specialists just to handle this task.  Some of the questions asked take 20 pages to answer and some questions seemed almost impossible to answer.

Tom Bartol gave an update on the MFL Recovery process and I saw where they had 19 one on one meetings.   At least 4 of us were in that group that I know of….so the others must have been the utility companies, golf courses, the farm bureau and????   Two Board members made comments about the value or lack thereof for having the non-technical people with the technical people meeting together.  This made me feel that the utility people had been talking with them since they made objections at the Stakeholder meetings.  One Board member even made a suggestion (tongue in cheek I thought) that he might have some solutions for recovery but not have the science to back it up.  I may have understood this wrong but the response to this was that they are really trying to include everyone so at the end we will all agree on what is going to happen and not have over expectations of the outcome.   This makes me even more convinced that we need Peter at the table representing our community.  Vivian got up and said proof of how successful the process will be known when we see water in the lakes.   I was going to speak at the end when they had public comment but the meeting lasted so long we had to leave at 3:30pm because Vivian had to be at City Hall at 4:30 for the SOLO meeting.  My hat is off to her for doing double duty today on water meetings.   

The River Keeper was there and I’m pretty sure Neil was going to make Public Comment.   Among other things I’m sure he was very unhappy about an “event” that happened where a contractor in Jacksonville allowed a lot of turbid water to be dumped into the St. Johns and only fined $3000.  The staff said the contractor was only fined that amount because as soon as he was reported he was very helpful and did more than was needed to fix the problem.  Mickle made comment that he thought SJRWMD fines were to high in general.  However, I believe it was Haman who said the contractor only did what he should have done before he was caught and wondered how many of them calculate and say “Doing the right think costs more than getting fined.  If I don’t get reported I don’t even have to pay a fine so I make a real good profit even though I illegally dumped into the St. Johns.”

That’s about all folks.  Don’t  forget our next Meeting is September 29^th, 6PM at the Woman’s Club.  You can also come to the Stakeholder meeting at Trinity Church  the same day 2-4pm if you wish as the public is invited to sit in the audience and will be allowed comments before and after the work group meets.  I am really honored and proud to work with this group.  You are the best of the best. 

Jackie