July 1, 2009, 9:31 pm
Gov. Charlie Crist signed Senate Bill 2080 into law Tuesday, which renews Florida’s water management districts and encourages more water conservation-based landscaping, but angers environmentalists over a provision allowing easier approval of water use permits.Crist is asking governing boards and executive directors of the districts to continue to include surface water and consumptive use permits on all board meeting and other public meeting agendas, despite a measure in the bill that delegates final agency action on such permits solely to the executive directors.
Florida is broken up into five water management districts — St. Johns River, Southwest Florida, Northwest Florida, Suwannee River and the South Florida water management districts.
It was the South Florida agency, which covers all of the southern Florida region and parts of Polk and Orange counties, that Crist singled out in a letter to Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning.
“I want to acknowledge the continued work of the South Florida Water Management District in completing the U.S. Sugar land acquisition which will preserve the Florida Everglades for generations to come,” Crist said. “I thank the members of the governing board as well as the dedicated staff of the district in ensuring a long-awaited goal of storing, cleaning and moving water from Lake Okeechobee to Everglades National Park. The Everglades remain a natural treasure and this administration remains committed to working with local, state and federal partners in protecting the River of Grass.”
