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COLLEEN JENKINSA legislator's suggestion to put water from the Suwannee and Apalachicola rivers on barges to South Florida alarms two colleagues.
The debate over proposed water transfers in Florida just got publicly personal on the Citrus County political front.
In an opinion piece in today's Citrus Times, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, and state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Crystal River, take aim at remarks made recently by state Rep. Charles Dean, R-Inverness, on a local television program.
Dean suggested taking water from the Suwannee and Apalachicola rivers and sending it to South Florida on barges. The proposal echoes a general concept favored by the Council of 100's special water policy task force, one that would send water from rural, water-rich counties in the north to water-thirsty, booming areas in Central and South Florida.
The state representative acknowledges he offered this stance as a potential solution to quench the water needs of some areas in the state. But that's about the only thing his fellow lawmakers got right in their piece, he said late Wednesday.
"I don't know what they've got up their sleeve about this thing," he said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times. "I've always supported local sources first."
"Local sources first" is a catch phase that refers to a 1998 state law that required local governments to exhaust their local water supplies and use alternatives like desalination and water reuse before pumping water from other regions.
Brown-Waite and Argenziano were primary sponsors of the legislation and fought for a couple of years to get it passed.
They argue in their op-ed article that Dean's plan is both economically unfeasible and environmentally irresponsible. Sucking water from these rivers would damage their estuaries, hurt the clamming and fishing industries, and cost taxpayers too much, they wrote.
In the piece and during interviews, they chastised Dean for failing to properly research the issues.
When contacted, both said the open letter was written to encourage Dean to unite with his fellow lawmakers, or at least to talk to them about such critical issues. Neither called Dean to discuss the water issue before submitting their opinion piece to local media.
"Charlie hasn't reached out to any of us," Argenziano said. "This is an issue that he needs to learn more about. We need his support on this."
The opinion piece, faxed to Dean by a reporter, clearly caught him off guard because the women didn't come to him first with their concerns, and because he thinks they are way off base.
"I don't know what their paranoia is about," he said. "If I've got something in my craw, I will call them and tell them about it."
Dean said he felt it was his duty as a state legislator to think beyond Citrus County's needs. But he supports the local sources first law and protecting his county's natural resources, he said.
His TV comments were taken out of context, he added. He said he would only support pumping water from some northern rivers when their water level is too high, thereby not harming the environment. When the rivers rise, he said, it would make sense to capture the extra water before it flowed to the Gulf of Mexico.
"To transport water by barge is nothing original that I came up with," he said. "It's done all over the world.
"The debate on water supply can't be ignored," he continued. "I'm not going to put my head in the sand. Am I guilty (for) trying to think outside the box?"
Not at all, Argenziano and Brown-Waite answered. But, they said, Dean's solution is more dangerous than viable for his constituents. The two women argued that it would take just one willing local legislator to unleash to the south the water they both worked vigorously to protect.
"The problem is once you turn on that water spigot, you have no control over it," Brown-Waite said.
- Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 860-7303 or cjenkins@sptimes.com