Talk about gaping omissions -- please, Miami New Times.
I'm sorry to be writing this. I've loved the Miami-proud, left-of-center Miami New Times for a long time now -- doesn't matter that politically, Sunshine State News leans in the other direction.
But I can't sit silent and let the MNT's Wednesday celebration story, “State Finally Passes Everglades Restoration Reservoir Bill After 20 Years of Fighting Big Sugar,” drop another cowpad on the rising pile of Everglades Foundation/Trust/Coalition's fake Everglades history.
MNT might as well have written about the history of the United States and left out the Civil War.
No mention -- not a word -- about what happened south of Lake Okeechobee between 2006 and 2008. The New Times makes it as if 20 years passed with environmentalists trying with all their might against the world to get a southern reservoir ... and now, finally ... finally.
No mention of the original A1 Reservoir, nicknamed "the environmental Stonehenge." It would have been the world’s largest free-standing reservoir and every bit as large as the one Negron was plotting out last year.
Started in 2006, the A1 was priced at a total $800 million. It would have been nearly the size of Boca Raton and hold more water than 100,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Its 22-mile perimeter wall would have stood three stories tall. Completion: 2010.
Think of the water it would have held in devastatingly wet 2013 and 2016.
But two years and $272 million into construction -- in May 2008 -- work on the A1 was abruptly halted.
Want to know why? Want to know the reason Everglades Trust President Kimberly Mitchell, MNT's single source for this story, conveniently failed to mention it?
Because it was environmental special interests that history cites as the No. 1 responsible party for halting construction of the EAA reservoir.
The same reservoir envisioned by Senate Bill 10.
It was a lawsuit filed by three plaintiffs -- the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.
Read Environment & Energy's story, "Lawsuit halts conservation reservoir," published May 16, 2008. It begins, "Construction of a reservoir meant to preserve the Everglades will be halted by a lawsuit from environmental groups that say the state needs to legally commit itself to use the water primarily for preservation."
And in 2010, when downplaying the impact of the reservoir as the lawsuit played out in the courts, the late former Everglades Trust Executive Director Thom Rumberger was defending the plaintiffs' position: “The reservoir is unnecessary and expensive,” he said.
Gov. Charlie Crist, meanwhile, thought the reservoir wouldn't be needed anyway when the U.S. Sugar Corp. buyout was complete. So he prompted the South Florid Water Management District to kill it. The structure was dismantled like an Erector Set.
The fingerprints of Paul Tudor Jones' Everglades triumvirate are all over this ongoing ruse.
Consider: All plaintiffs in the lawsuit that made Senate Bill 10 necessary this session receive funding from The Everglades Foundation.
According to the Foundation’s 2014 990, the latest tax filing available on its website, Florida Wildlife Federation, an affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation, received $70,000; the Sierra Club Foundation, $100,000; and the lead organization in the suit, the Natural Resources Defense Council, $35,000.
There is little doubt lawsuit leader NRDC was required to participate in the Foundation’s weekly coordinating conference call, which, according to the Fort Myers News-Press, is a requirement for groups receiving funding from the Everglades Foundation.
Somebody please start to get this story right, I beg you.
People want to know why I go so crazy over The Everglades Foundation/Trust/Coalition's faux environmentalism.
Revisionist history is why. Good newspapers like the Miami New Times falling for Kimberly Mitchell's humbuggary is why. The ongoing agenda to shift all blame for CERP delay and weather events and all manner of water woes to the sugar industry is also why.
In the autumn of my life, I don't choose to tilt at these windmills, I pick up newspapers or dial up the news and they choose me.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
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