Another workshop so the DEP and Water District can explain their confused rationale for lowering once again the minimum that can be taken from the rivers without significant harm. But that harm has already been done. The rivers are past that harm, but Florida water managers are not stopping. They are taking just a little bit more.
The conflated issues they bring to the public pulsate and deflate until they finally spit out the number they want: in this case it is about one thousand cubic feet per second more water that they say it is OK to take out.
They spent around $200,000 of your money to send the rationale to some people who agreed with them and said the plan is good. They list the names of other organizations who imply that taking this water is OK.
But their plan is not good, and it is not OK.
They say they want only 8%, but Dr. Bob Knight says it is really 28%. Science is science but one can change the outcome by leaving out certain factors, using different time periods, using different models in different ways, and using different data.
Our authorities want a number at the end and then manipulate ways and means to reach that end.
Several people spoke against the new MFL, and several asked pointed questions of the two presenters (DEP and SRWMD), which they repeated when they got no answers.
OSFR was represented by Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, Kristin Rubin and your historian. Others giving comments and asking questions were Stacie Greco, Lu Merritt and Bob Palmer. In the audience also was Steve Gladin, who did not speak but who earlier had given them a document showing that the state’s calculations were severely inaccurate.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
