Environmentalists can be such hypocrites. Especially the rich ones. Closet flimflammers.
Maybe you saw Paul Tudor Jones Tuesday at the Everglades Water Supply Summit.
Now, I wouldn't exactly call this multibillionaire a faux philanthropist. But I think it's only right that the people of Florida understand that the Everglades Foundation chairman and benefactor at the podium, the one hurling insults at Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam for coddling "polluters," was once slapped with a $2 million fine for destroying wetlands.
It happened in the 1990s, while the hedge fund king was building his $30 million "wildlife preserve" on Maryland's Eastern Shore. (Actually, it was a private hunting club, but when you're worth $3.3 billion, you can call it a botanical garden with a cranberry bog and a beanstalk if you want, nobody is going to argue.)
Jones' environmental planner, hired to create 10 duck ponds on the property, was convicted of knowingly in-filling 86 acres of wetlands without a Section 404 permit. Jones ponied up the $2 million, the planner got two years in jail.
Maybe Jones didn't think anybody would remember, and maybe I wouldn't have either if he hadn't jumped all over Putnam for praising Florida agriculture, including sugar growers. The last thing Jones wanted was for the summit to turn into a cheering section for ag -- even if growers did cut by half the flow of polluting nutrients into the Everglades. And even if that was more than double the amount the law calls for.
So what did he do? He exploded. His tantrum, his glib use of the word "bitch" to mimic a "Saturday Night Live" segment and show Putnam up, his comparing agriculture's "pollution" of the Everglades to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- the whole P.T. Barnum act was to convince Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature to stick ag for the cost of Everglades restoration.
Putnam had none of it: "A lawful $100 billion industry in the state of Florida that's supporting rural communities is hardly comparable to the Deepwater Horizon," he said.
The agriculture commissioner is way too polite to say it, but he had to be looking at Jones and thinking, now I know why they rarely let this big spoiled, embarrassment of a kid out in public -- a lawbreaker, to boot. I bet they can't get him stuffed back in his cushy jet fast enough.
Paul Tudor Jones isn't the only rich environmentalist who can't see The Cause when his personal interest is at stake. I first caught sight of this particular species of hypocrite-environmentalist bird 30 years ago in Martin County -- in the form of Nathaniel Reed.
Nat Reed has conservationist credentials up the wazoo -- Florida's first governor's adviser on environmental matters,former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, founder of 1000 Friends of Florida, and for many years a force on the South Florida Water Management District Board.
But like his mom and dad, Joseph and Permelia Reed when they came to Florida, Nat Reed was in the bulldozer business. He was a land developer.
In 1992, in between castigating county commissioners for allowing somebody else's development to go ahead, Reed perhaps decided the law did not apply to him. He pruned the mangroves at his Jupiter Island Golf Course in violation of two state rules. For each offense, or for illegally trimming the mangroves, Reed could have been fined up to $10,000 a day. But he wasn't.
Instead, he somehow got the law changed, arguing that property owners have a right to the use and enjoyment of their coastal views.
Reed never paid a dime. Broke the law, got the law changed to have his own way, came out smelling like a rose.
The Reed decision led to the 1995 Mangrove Trimming and Preservation Act. It substantially changed Florida's mangrove protection statutes, reducing the paperwork and permitting required to trim these coast-protecting trees. Not necessarily a bad thing.
But this is something I particularly remember when Nat's 1000 Friends organization complains in that hypocritical, stumbledy-bum way it does that growth management laws have been weakened.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
