Council rallies defenders to protect Florida springs By Kevin Spear Orlando Sentinel contact the reporter Florida Springs Council will pursue laws, legal options, and public education. With momentum growing for greater protection of Florida springs, more than a half-dozen environmental groups started the new year by announcing their formation of the Florida Springs Council. The council will pursue legislation, legal options and public education on behalf of cleaning up and protecting one of the worlds richest collections of springs. Many of them, including Wekiwa Springs near Orlando, are ailing from pollution related to sewage, street runoff and fertilizers. Backers expect the council will grow early this year to have 20 to 30 environmental groups with a combined membership in the thousands. Concern for springs has been growing for years, said Robert Knight, president of the Florida Springs Institute in Gainesville, which will host the council. This is a logical next step and its coming at a time when some key decisions are going to be made, and hopefully the Florida Springs Council can have influence on those decisions. Formation of the council was announced Jan. 1 by members that include Friends of Warm Mineral Springs, Ichetucknee Alliance, Kings Bay Springs Alliance, Our Santa Fe River, Save the Manatee Club and Wakulla Springs Alliance. They hope to recruit many more organizations, including major groups and ones that are relatively small and devoted to a single spring. A large number of groups working independently arent going to be as effective as when they work collaboratively, said Dan Hilliard, president of another council member soon to be renamed as Withlacoochee Aquatic Restoration. The biggest environmental topic for state lawmakers this year could be the constitutional amendment approved by voters in November, ordering the state to dramatically increase spending to protect water and natural lands. Knight said the new council wont engage much in the intense wrangling over how to spend amendment money and instead will push to resurrect a springs-protection law that lawmakers backed away from last year. The springs bill introduced in the Senate last year was a powerful bill that was totally watered down by the time the Senate passed it, Knight said. We cant accept that. The councils push for stronger springs legislation will be headed by Bob Palmer, a board member at the Florida Springs Institute and Ichetucknee Alliance. Legal work will be directed by Rob Williams, a Tallahassee lawyer who works with the Center for Earth Jurisprudence at Barry University law school in Orlando. Public education efforts will be overseen by Katie Tripp, principal scientist with the Save the Manatee Club in Maitland. We cant protect manatees without safeguarding their habitat and springs are essential for manatees, particularly in winter months, Tripp said. kspear@tribune. Copyright © 2015, Orlando Sentinel
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:27:19 +0000
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