Officials give Marco Rubio an earful on region's water woes

Scummy canals, algae-closed beaches, absent tourists and lost jobs: Southwest Florida officials gave Sen. Marco Rubio an earful about the region's foul water woes.

Rubio was in town Monday as part of a multi-city tour to meet with officials about water issues, including how flows from Lake Okeechobee are affecting the Caloosahatchee and its estuary.

His visit came on the heels of one by Sen. Bill Nelson last week for the same reason: to discuss water problems and possible solutions.

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The group included state representatives, the mayors of Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach, Estero and Bonita Springs, Lee and Hendry County commissioners, members of various chambers of commerce, tourism officials, environmentalists and a charter captain.

Murky dark water and toxic algae have grabbed headlines lately, as municipalities and businesses have grown increasingly panicky about the impact of this brewing environmental crisis.

"It is absolutely affecting our economy," said Cape Coral Mayor Marni Retzer. "We have algae blooms throughout our canals and we have now closed our best-loved beach."

A grim-faced Bud Nocera told Rubio, “Fort Myers Beach (is) in a recession. ... Businesses are down anywhere from 25 to 40 percent. People are getting laid off. Businesses are closing," said Nocera, the island village’s chamber of commerce president. “Right now, today, that beach should be full of German tourists. It’s not. And you guys need to understand how bad it really is.”

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Sanibel’s Mayor Kevin Ruane echoed that. “You need to understand the severity of the problem,” he said. “We’ve got 161 cities now affected.”

At the meeting, to which the general public was not invited, Rubio focused on the Water Resources Development Act bill, which would authorize the Central Everglades Planning Project, due for a vote in September.

Rubio repeatedly turned questions away from other potential solutions — sending more water south of the lake, acquiring more property for storage, mandating septic repairs — back to the water bill.

“It’s been stuck in limbo for a long time,” Rubio said. “So that’s what I’m focused on 100 percent. My biggest worry is… if we add something new on top of it, my colleagues across the country are going to say, ‘Well, obviously this plan you want to pour billions of dollars into must not be very good, because you’re saying you’ve got to do something in addition to it.’

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“I’m worried about distracting and creating a diversion. …. Once we’ve got the process rolling, if there’s more to be done, we’ll move on. But I don’t want us to blow it, to mess up on our chance to get this done once and for all.”

Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation’s director of natural resource policy, Rae Ann Wessel, urged Rubio to assemble an emergency task force, “as a way to connect the dots, from the local communities through the state through the Feds, so there’s more communication and interaction. …

"This is an emergency, and it’s been going on for six months now.”

Yet some at the meeting left it invigorated.

"I thought it went really well," said Hendry County Commission Chairman Karson Turner. "There was a lot of energy in that room, and we know the senator  is listening to all parties and trying." One of the challenges before Rubio, Turner says, is getting constituents to understand "there’s no silver bullet. It’s a long-term process, but I'm excited about it. We've got some good momentum."

Although the public was excluded from this meeting — "Our goal was to come in and kind of update local leadership who are involved in this issue about what our goals are" — Rubio said he'd be open to a broader forum, and Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson said he'd like to convene an event for citizens and leaders alike.

Also on Monday, the South Florida Water Management District announced it was taking $2.6 million from its reserves to deal with South Florida's algae emergency declared by Gov. Rick Scott.

Southwest Florida won't see any of that money, though. It will go to several projects on the state's east coast, including water storage on public land and better management of stormwater runoff at publicly owned properties in the St. Lucie Estuary.