Bullsugar changes name to VoteWater.org, will produce clean-water voter guide
A phosphate mining spill in Tampa Bay. Red tide along 100 miles of Southwest Florida's Gulf Coast. A Lake Okeechobee toxic algae bloom about the size of Orlando. Central Florida springs being pumped dry for profit.
These are some of one year's worth of headlines about Florida's water. Here are more:
Manatees starving to death in the Indian River Lagoon in numbers never before seen nor sustainable. Billions of gallons of raw sewage spewing from aging pipes into Broward County canals and the Intracoastal Waterway. Biscayne Bay's once lush seagrass beds now just sandy moonscapes. The once thriving Apalachicola oyster industry now shut down from mismanaged water supply and over harvest.
It makes one wonder under whose watch it got this bad.
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How did Florida's water get so bad?
The short answer is to look to Florida's elected officials. For 120 years, some members of every level of government have forsaken the Sunshine State's lakes, rivers, springs and estuaries for the favors of special interests and campaign contributors.
Polluters' wants are prioritized over the health of manatees, fish, dolphins and humans. Corporate requests weigh more than conserving marine habitat. Developers are permitted to foul waters downstream. Agribusiness is allowed to hold too much water when it's dry, or dump all the water from their fields if the rains come.
The end result is hundreds of miles and thousands of acres of beleaguered, filthy, fouled waterways. The fish and wildlife living in them die and the health of the people living near or working or recreating on them is in danger..
What will clean the water?
The damage done is unconscionable, inexcusable and perhaps irreversible. What will it take to restore these once pristine waters close to their optimal quality?
VoteWater.org believes it can help. The nonprofit believes the path to clean water begins with county, state and federal elected officials.
"We want to be known as the public policy advocate for clean water in Florida. Our mission statement is to fight political corruption in Florida by galvanizing public resolve to end systemic pollution and mismanagement of our waterways," explained Blair Wickstrom, president of VoteWater.org's board. "Florida's water problems are political problems requiring political solutions."
What VoteWater.org will do as a "nonpartisan, grassroots initiative to help Floridians identify clean water candidates" is provide a voter guide for every level of elections, Wickstrom said.
The guides will tell voters which candidates accept donations from potential polluters and special interests. In 2022, Florida will vote for governor, the Senate seat occupied by Marco Rubio, and all of its congressional seats.
The policies the nonprofit wants candidates and elected officials to pursue include:
Hold major polluters accountable
Make human health a priority
Fully fund pollution monitoring and enforcement
Prioritize funding of sewage system upgrades
Buy more land for stormwater runoff storage and treatment
Protect marine ecosystem habitat.
Bullsugar becomes VoteWater.org
Bullsugar last week announced its name change VoteWater.org. The move was necessary for the group to effect change in waterways throughout the state, not just in South Florida, where Bullsugar's efforts had been focused since being founded in 2014, Wickstrom said.
"As we have seen over the last year, we have issues statewide. In our last election cycle, we wanted to expand our voter guide to include these other issues. So for us to effectively influence these other issues around the state, we needed to be actively involved. The Bullsugar name was somewhat regional in nature and somewhat problematic if trying to be influential elsewhere," Wickstrom said.
Bullsugar was the brainchild of Chris Maroney, who co-founded the organization with Kenny Hinkle and Kenan Siegel, all Martin County residents at the time. Maroney told TCPalm the group was dedicated to stopping damaging discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers and restoring clean freshwater flows back to Florida Bay.
The intent was to galvanize the northern estuaries to eliminate the sugar industry's political influence. The group had a bold, brash arrival on the South Florida scene for water policy.
Bullsugar's brazen name and poignant messaging wasn't completely welcomed by other clean water advocacy groups. The original founders have not been with Bullsugar for years, but their efforts were effective, Wickstrom said, in retrospect.
Friends of the Everglades tied to environmental organization
"Maroney told me then if the name Bullsugar was printed, it had won. It's name alone established that something is wrong and that the sugar industry is behind it. In that regard, Bullsugar was successful," Wickstrom explained.
He pointed to the 2018 gubernatorial election. Five of six candidates for the state's highest executive office vowed to not take money from the sugar industry.
"That was a big victory. Bullsugar became very influential and successful, but this is the nature of how things change and evolve. There are so many issues statewide now. For us to get involved in statewide elections, we couldn’t be solely focused on what is still the largest manipulator of state water management policy. So we haven’t given up on the single largest polluter in the state, but we will take what we learned with Bullsugar and make it more of a statewide effort," said Wickstrom.
VoteWater.org's new website will not be fully launched until Dec.3, and on Dec. 6, it will officially announce Gil Smart as executive director of VoteWater.org, Wickstrom said. Smart has been policy director of Friends of the Everglades since March 2021, and before that was an opinion columnist for TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers..
Wickstrom is also on the board of Friends of the Everglades and is publisher of Florida Sportsman magazine, one of the most read outdoors publications and websites produced in the state, founded by his late father Karl Wickstrom over 50 years ago.
I believe it will take only one or two election cycles for VoteWater.org to become a major player in statewide Florida politics. One day, if we're lucky, Floridians who truly care about their waterways, wildlife, fish and human health will disregard the politics of the two party system we live in and vote for the water instead.
Ed Killer is TCPalm's outdoors writer. Sign up for his and other weekly newsletters at profile.tcpalm.com/newsletters/manage. Friend Ed on Facebook at Ed Killer, follow him on Twitter @tcpalmekiller or email him at ed.killer@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Bullsugar changes name to VoteWater.org for statewide advocacy
