Florida environmental commission hasn’t met in 7 years. The state spends billions on cleanup | Scott Maxwell

Florida's Environmental Regulation Commission hasn’t met in 7 years, writes Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell. The state spends billions on cleanup. Gov. Ron DeSantis just announced another $1.5 billion. It'd be better to concentrate on prevention over mitigation.

Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced he wants to spend another $1.5 billion cleaning up the Everglades and on other water-quality issues.

By most counts, the money is needed. Here’s the problem: Florida keeps spending billions to clean up environmental messes, but does little to prevent the messes from happening in the first place.

Want proof? Well, consider that Florida has an “Environmental Regulation Commission” meant to help safeguard this state’s natural resources. That commission, full of gubernatorial appointees, could theoretically help protect this state’s water and land before costly repair projects are needed — but only if it ever took any action.

It has not. The commission hasn’t even met in seven years.

Not since February of 2017, when Rick Scott was still governor. It didn’t meet for the final two years of Scott’s tenure either.

This state has environmental protection backward. Instead of protecting our natural resources, we allow them to be fouled — and then spend billions of tax dollars trying to clean up the befouling.

Even odder, we then celebrate the cleanup costs. It’s like refusing to pay $10 for a protective case for your smartphone, watching it break repeatedly and throwing a press-conference party every time you shell out $500 for a new one.

It’s stupid policy and stupid math. Yet we see a lot of it.

Just last week — seven days after the governor announced the state was spending another billion-plus dollars cleaning up the environment — his administration also announced it wants to let a Louisiana company do exploratory oil drilling in the Apalachicola River.

This comes right after the state spent millions cleaning up the Apalachicola Bay.

Even the Republican state senator who represents the region called the idea “unconscionable.”

“It is unconscionable that efforts to drill for oil are happening at the same time that we are fighting for the revitalization of the Apalachicola Bay,” tweeted Leon County Republican Corey Simon.

It is unconscionable that efforts to drill for oil are happening at the same time that we are fighting for the revitalization of the Apalachicola Bay. 1/3

— Corey Simon (@csime90) April 30, 2024

Florida’s version of environmentalism (allowing pollution and then spending big to clean it up) works out well for the companies that get the cleanup contracts. And for those allowed to make the messes in the first place. That’s why Florida’s big business groups often celebrate the spending while opposing regulations meant to preserve and protect.

The people who actually care about our natural resources frequently offer suggestions for how those resources should be protected. Those suggestions are usually ignored.

Michael McGrath, lead organizer with Florida’s Sierra Club, noted that the governor even created a Blue Green Algae Task Force with a stated goal of “protecting Florida’s water and water-related resources.” The task force came up with a slew of recommendations on how to make that happen — most of which McGrath said were then ignored, noting “the governor and Legislature have only implemented 12.5% of the scientific recommendations.”

A bill designed to implement those protections — a bill literally entitled “Implementation of the Recommendations of the Blue-Green Algae Task Force” — died in its third Senate committee stop in 2022. The House version never even got a hearing.

But sure, let’s cheer spending another $1 billion on cleanup.

“It’s a sham for us to be pointing to the money rather than looking at the results,” McGrath said. “Rather than spending money on projects, studies, and control and mitigation efforts … the Legislature and the governor need to do a better job on passing legislation that prevents pollution at its source.”

Bingo. Prevent the pollution. Don’t allow it and then celebrate the cost of cleaning it up.

For decades, Florida leaders from both parties seemed to understand that. After allowing developers to run roughshod over this state during the boom years and turning the Everglades into a toilet, governors from both sides of the aisle seemed to wise up. Conservation efforts were mounted by everyone from Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles to Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.

But then came Rick Scott, who seemed to have a weird disdain for clean air and water. Under Scott’s leadership, the state shut down water-quality monitoring stations, slashed staff at the agencies that check for pollution, cut back on land-preservation programs, abolished Florida’s growth-planning agency and curbed enforcement actions — all in the name of making Florida more “business friendly.”

After Scott wreaked havoc, DeSantis vowed to be different, evoking images of a Teddy Roosevelt-styled conservationist.

Well, there’s no doubt DeSantis likes to spend public money cleaning up messes. But his efforts to prevent the messes in the first place have been anemic. Instead, he’s a fan of press conferences.

And also press releases — like one he sent March 21, 2021 announcing his newest appointees to the non-paid environmental commission mentioned above.

That “regulation” commission hasn’t met a single time in the three years since.

And here we are spending another $1 billion on cleanup.

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.