Gov. DeSantis: Remedy the Legislature's Failures or Lose All Rights to Claim Any Interest in Protecting Florida's Environment

Gov. DeSantis: Remedy the Legislature's Failures or Lose All Rights to Claim Any Interest in Protecting Florida's Environment

TALLAHASSEE, FL — Today, ahead of sine die, Sierra Club Florida sent an out-of-the-ordinary "veto request" letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The fact that the governor has been signing bills into law at lightning pace led the organization to send the veto request missive even before the end of the legislative session. Sierra Club's novel approach comes in light of the unprecedented onslaught of anti-environment and anti-democracy legislation that worked its way through the legislative session. Sierra Club was struck by the fact that one, or even a handful of vetoes from the governor would not be enough. As such, the governor will not receive traditional veto requests from the Sierra Club this year.

Instead, Sierra Club sees this legislative session as the ultimate opportunity for the governor to reveal his true colors. The letter sent today lists 12 anti-environment/anti-democracy bills that Sierra Club Florida staff, members and supporters worked assiduously to amend or stop. The governor must veto each and every one of these bad bills if he wants to continue proclaiming himself as a pro-environment "Teddy Roosevelt Republican."

Deborah Foote, acting Florida chapter director said, "Sierra Club is appalled by the Legislature's unprecedented attack on our state’s natural resources and the transparent, fair processes that Floridians have used to protect the environment and public health in the past. This then is the ultimate test for Gov. DeSantis. When he addresses this list of bills, he will show himself to be either the enemy of environmental protection and the public process or their champion."

"Floridians recognize the difference between talking a big talk and walking the true walk. We know the difference between greenwashing and the tangible protection of our environment and our people. This is a pass/fail test for Gov. DeSantis; he has the chance to save the day or continue with business as usual," said Steve Wonderly, Florida chapter chair.

Sierra Club sent the following letter to Gov. DeSantis: 

April 30, 2020

• HB 839/SB 856: Express Preemption of Fuel Retailers and Related Transportation Infrastructure will constrain municipal progress toward clean air and clean energy in the transportation sector. It prohibits local governments from eliminating polluting fossil fuels and leaves our energy future solely in the hands of an unresponsive state legislature.

• HB 919/SB 1128: Preemption Over Restriction of Utility Services locks in the status quo for fossil fuels and eliminates municipalities' ability to move toward clean energy in residential and commercial building codes. Preempting regulation of a subject without providing any new regulation guarantees that nothing will change. Under this legislation, localities will no longer be able to require electric utility service (increasingly sourced from clean energy) instead of fracked gas for new construction. 

The policy choices in this bill deprive consumers of lower cost housing and utility bills. Bill proponents advocating for "consumer choice" willfully ignore the legitimacy of individuals' choice to act collectively through their elected officials to address a common threat.  

• SB 896/HB 539: Renewable Energy attempts to greenwash methane (natural gas) by including it under the heading of "renewable energy." Methane, whether created millions of years ago, or in the past decade, is the second biggest contributor to climate change after CO2. Incentivizing its production by permitting cost recovery for the higher cost of "renewable" natural gas gouges consumers and will lead to increased fugitive emissions from landfills and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Section 1 of SB 896 provides that "solar facilities" are a permitted use in all comprehensive plan agricultural land use categories and in agricultural zoning in unincorporated areas does an end-run around local comprehensive plans and their provisions designed to protect local communities and to achieve the best use of the jurisdiction’s lands. It eliminates local input and control over industrial power plant siting. Further, automatically permitting these industrial scale power production installations (with no limit on their size) deprives local governments of their ability to point out inconsistencies with their comprehensive plan under the Power Plant Siting Act. Agricultural producers who know the importance of using land properly, and who work and pay taxes, deserve better than to be sacrificed to electric utilities' desire for a monopoly on solar energy.

Water

• SB 2516: Water Storage North of Lake Okeechobee will inappropriately use $50 million annually from the Land Acquisition Trust Fund to purchase pumps and pipes for aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wells on the north side of Lake Okeechobee instead of acquiring floodplains for water storage, treatment and conveyance south. ASRs are not true ecosystem restoration but rather only be a short-term water supply tactic; increasing sea level rise and the accompanying increase in total dissolved solids will require expensive reverse osmosis or similar measures to maintain even the ability to use the water for irrigation. ASR wells will not be able to pump water below the ground quickly enough during intense storm events to adequately diminish discharges to the east and west estuaries. ASRs would be a misappropriation of taxpayer dollars and kick the can down the road to delay the wetland restoration that is the only remedy that can accomplish Lake Okeechobee discharge reduction and water treatment and conveyance to actually restore the Everglades and Florida Bay.  

• SB 64/HB 263: Reclaimed Water continues the unwise practice of injecting treated wastewater into an aquifer for eventual potable use (see lines 90-93). There are millions of chemicals in the literature  and we test for only about 300 of them. We are inventing and using new chemicals all the time, and many find their way into the wastewater stream. These include contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) such as endocrine disruptors, nanoplastics, pharmaceuticals, personal care products and the metabolites of licit and illicit drugs.

Our drinking water standards and testing/purification regime (membrane filtration, ultraviolet/ozone and chlorine disinfection) is effective for controlling microbial contamination, but is inadequate for dealing with CECs which may have long-term chronic or cumulative effects. CECs injected into a drinking water aquifer for a decade or more will be just about impossible to remove if significant public health threats are identified. Public water systems may be able to institute an aggressive response (at great expense); private wells will not. 

We do not oppose injection wholesale. Using it to buffer against salt water intrusion, where the buffer will not be for potable use, for example, is acceptable.  But the risk posed by injection into the drinking water aquifer is unacceptable.

• SB 426/HB 267: State Preemption of Seaport Regulations neutralizes the recent Key West ballot measures to protect the environment on which the city's economy depends by limiting the use of their port to ships that have fewer than 1500 disembarkations, have the best safety and environmental records and have no more than 1,300-person capacity. By overturning the solid majority of Key West voters who supported the limits, Florida's legislature has shown contempt for the democratic process and endangered North America’s only living coral barrier reef.

Land

• SB 487/HB 1274: Growth Management increases by 500% the acreage threshold that qualifies as a "small scale comprehensive plan amendment." Amendments of 50 acres or 100 acres in rural areas would now qualify as "small scale." This kind of amendment requires only a single hearing by the local governing board; no review by DEO or any other agency is needed. This statutory change follows on SB 1494 (2019) which eliminated the cumulative 120-acre cap for small scale amendments. While small scale amendments are not supposed to include text changes to the plan, they do involve text changes related to the Future Land Use Map. With this larger acreage qualifying for small scale amendments, potential major changes will occur in multiple 50 and 100 acre amendments with no state oversight.

• SB 1876/HB 421 and HB 1101: Relief from Burdens on Real Property inserts subsurface rights and mineral estates into the definition of "real property." This inclusion will give an oil or gas developer a legal wedge to force a locality or the Department of Environmental Protection to refrain from actions that would "inordinately burden" the developer's property by preventing fracking or other oil or gas exploration and production.

For local governments, this could include their objection to issuance of a permit for drilling within three miles of their corporate limits under 377.24 (6) F.S. 

If the oil/gas industry is denied a permit to drill, they will, pursuant to 70.001 (4)(a) F.S., be able to submit with their claim an appraisal of the value of oil or gas thousands of feet below the ground that "demonstrates the loss in fair market to the real property." This threat would potentially put millions of tax dollars at risk and will force localities to risk either bankruptcy or the impacts of drilling on drinking water supplies, public health and climate change and sea level rise.

Air

• SB 88/HB 1601: Farming Operations is clearly biased in favor of "farm operations" and against any party that may be injured by them who seeks justice at court. The bill is designed to gut the class action suit against Big Sugar for harms to western Palm Beach County residents caused by smoke and ash from the outdated practice of pre-harvest sugar field burning eight months each year by changing the state laws on which that case will be decided. The bill:

• limits standing to sue to those within half a mile of the burning despite the fact that smoke plumes extend more than 26 miles

• limits any damages to the amount a plaintiff's property value is diminished despite there being absolutely no nexus between property value and the health impacts of and medical costs for asthma and COPD

• restrains the court from holding a farm liable unless the plaintiff proves (using a higher than usual standard of proof for civil cases) that the farm did not comply with state or federal laws or best management practices — when there may be no laws involved (civil cases are about harms suffered by individuals while criminal cases involving laws are about harms suffered by the state)

• prohibits punitive damages unless the plaintiff can show the defendant was guilty of the same conduct within three years of the conduct that spurred the suit

• provides that the plaintiff has to pay fees, costs and expenses if they lose (a provision calculated to chill any appetite for suing Big Sugar)

Democracy

• SB 90/HB 7041: Election Administration increases the size of the no solicitation zone from 100 to 150 feet and provides that nothing may be given to those in the zone, including water, food or a chair except by election staff. Since low income and minority neighborhoods are often subject to longer waits to vote than other areas, this provision is cruel — especially since the election staff has other things to do besides bringing water or snacks to voters. 

The bill reduces access to drop boxes and imposes new costs on election operations. It limits the ability of volunteers to collect ballots from the ill and infirm to deliver them to drop boxes or to voting locations. It reduces the duration of vote-by-mail requests and imposes new signature confirmation requirements.

• SB 61/HB 1238: Percentage of Elector Votes Required to Approve Constitutional Amendment or Revision would increase the required majority from three fifths (60%) to two thirds (66 2/3%). It would also limit the majority required to repeal a constitutional amendment to the majority that was required to adopt it thereby making it even more difficult to adopt constitutional amendments while making it easier to repeal those already adopted.

• SB 699/HB 1890: Campaign Financing would limit contributions to a political committee formed to sponsor a citizen initiative to amend the state Constitution to $3,000. The cap on contributions would be lifted on the day the Secretary of State determines that sufficient signatures from at least half the congressional districts in Florida have been collected and the initiative is given a ballot position.  

Sponsoring a citizen's initiative under this bill would mean gathering 885,397 signed petitions in at least 14 congressional districts in a period of a year and a day (2,236/day) with no contributions over $3,000.00 and no ability to collect major contributions to fund petition gatherers or an ad campaign to advertise the initiative until all the necessary signatures are collected.

The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that the circulation of initiative petitions represents core political speech and merits the highest level of protection.  Campaigns run on money; starving the initiative campaign of money means an issue will die because there isn’t enough money to pay for fast and broad petition circulation rather than because it is a bad idea.  

Since we are still days away from sine die, we hope that some of the above may not actually make it to your desk but some already have; as such, we send this out-of-the-ordinary veto request in advance of the session’s adjournment to ensure that you receive our message before you sign even one more damaging bill.

By vetoing one or only a few of the bills on the list, you may correct one or more legislative transgressions, but limited action will not afford you the right to call yourself a "green" governor. Floridians will recognize the difference between greenwashing and the actual protection of Florida's environment and its people. 

A true environmental champion will recognize the opportunity before him, and will use his power to veto each and every one of these bad bills.

The Legislature has forsaken Florida's environment, its people, and what should be inviolate: American principles of democracy. It is up to you, Gov. DeSantis, to remedy the Legislature's failures.

Sincerely,