GUEST COMMENTARY

LYNNE LARKIN

You can’t kill it, you can’t reason with it, you can’t even fully understand it, but the great OSLO BOAT RAMP proposal is back.  Like a large, amorphous clog of toxic blue-green algae come to life, every time you think it’s gone, it pops up in another safe harbor with a new face stuck on its muck.  Like the creature from another famous lagoon, there’s always a sequel.  2011 was the most recent prior Act in this Shakespearean tragedy, but having lost that round, the County entered another request soon after to get the destruction done.

Recently our county commissioners have been attending meetings, rallies, and other gatherings to support saving our precious waterways, most importantly the Indian River Lagoon.  Our U.S. Representative in Congress, Bill Posey, claims to be doing great things for our Lagoon.  We’re all being given big group hugs from our local politicians and unwavering commitment to solve the pollution crisis we face.  Fish kills, toxic algae blooms, dying sea grasses . . . we’ve been re-awakened to the disaster on our shores by dedicated activists and scientists, with the help of good media coverage.  All the local politicians want their faces on that coverage so we think they are on our side.

Those big manatee-loving, ecology-minded elected representatives, bless their hearts, are hugging us all so hard we don’t really feel the dagger slipping in between our shoulder blades while the other hand reaches into our wallets.

U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, sent his chief of staff from Washington, D.C., to Vero Beach to successfully pressure the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to overturn the prior denial of the county’s requested permit to build the ramp.  Thanks so much, want another hug?

Our County Commissioners have re-submitted a proposal to bypass the scientific and ecological reports, they’ve voted to spend money defending that ramp building proposal in an administrative court hearing, and it was unanimous!!   Not one of our smiling “huggers” dissented.  Briefs have been filed by many of the groups trying to save our waterway, our wildlife, our economy, full of the data, the science, the reasons we need to preserve the best portions while we restore the ones that are much worse.  But the County is going to fight its constituents.

Another note:  There are surplus funds up in Tallahassee, but you don’t see Thad Altman or Debby Mayfield fighting to put them into Lagoon projects.  If we do get any funds, let’s see where they end up.  The politicians can name it a “lagoon project” and say spending money to “improve” the ramp fits the definition.  They could give money to someone who makes boat trailers, saying it helps keep better equipment on the water.  And all the while the politicians send out press releases on all the “good” they are doing for our waterways.

So next week, before a judge from Tallahassee, appointed with the support of anti-environmental business interests, the fate of our Lagoon once again is at risk.  Even though there are better options, even though it’s been denounced for years, we still have to fight.

The political machine in Florida is being run on private dollars from very big money donors.  That machine not only elects politicians, big and small, but also helps frame our judiciary, our oversight bodies, everything in the equation.  The hearing will be May 6.  And your tax dollars are going toward getting that disaster built, killing sea grass, endangering manatees, adding more pollution to an area that most needs protecting.

No matter how much science you set out, there is no stopping them.  We can hope that this isn’t the final Act.  The effort to tear up a precious and protected piece of our Indian River Lagoon, we have to stay on target.  It keeps coming back to life.