It's all in the report. Read the University of Florida Water Institute report.
When Florida lawmakers get a good look at pages 6 and 8, a $500 million land buy to stop the pollution of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries is going to be a tougher sell than a family vacation at the Holiday Inn Kabul.
Those two pages work like a tag team.
Page 6 is the tattle-tale.
I'll spare you the technical explanation. What it says in everyday language is, nearly 80 percent of the water to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries is local basin run-off. That means only 20 percent has been coming from Lake Okeechobee.
Then page 8 comes along, first with the setup, then with the hammer.
The setup: It states, after completion of all the current projects -- IRL-5, C-43, the Restoration Strategies, and Central Everglades Planning Project (CEPP) -- lake discharges will be reduced only by 55 percent.
The hammer: But -- reducing 55 percent of the 20 percent of the water that the lake contributes to the estuaries means you move that 20 percent contribution to less than 10 percent of the fresh water that goes into the estuaries.
The bottom line is this:
Florida is already going a long way toward solving the lake-to-estuaries component of the water problem with the projects already on the table and land already owned by the state.
With all the demands on Amendment 1 money in the first year especially, and all the ready-to-roll projects needing a cash-infused kick start, it seems unlikely lawmakers will want to spend $500 million for land and $1 billion for a project.
Or listen to a stirred-up Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam hoisting the banner for retaining productive farmland and safeguarding the jobs and economic activity it brings in rural South Florida.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423.
