Florida’s Governor is celebrating six years of attempting to “right the ship” regarding Everglades restoration, and is looking to the incoming Donald Trump administration to give Florida more latitude in spending and programming federal environmental funds.
“Send us the funds. Give us the authority. And let us get to work,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
Speaking at Juno Beach’s Loggerhead Marinelife Center, DeSantis said he wanted more federal collaboration and less obstruction from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Interior Department and the like, agencies he says have “hindered” Florida efforts.
“We don’t want to be bogged down by red tape,” DeSantis said. “We want to get it done.”
Lake Okeechobee, for example, is a USACE project primarily, and “they’re just not on the same schedule we are.”
On the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir Project and other projects, DeSantis wants the Trump administration to “delegate” project management to the state and provide block grant funding to get things done more quickly.
“I’m going to be with the President-elect tonight with some other Governors,” DeSantis added Thursday. “And I think his attitude when I’ve been talking to him recently is, ‘Tell us what you want. We want you guys to be successful. We want to empower the states.’ So we’re going to hopefully enter a period where we have really strong federalism, where states are able to lead on these things.”
DeSantis noted that Trump helped out before, and hopes he will be a “strong partner” during a period “where states are able to lead on these things,” allowing “tasks to be delegated to the state of Florida” where record spending is being committed to the environment.
DeSantis noted that $3.3 billion in projects were done in his first term, and that his administration “doubled down” on that, promising $3.5 billion in his second term and delivering substantially already.
“We basically almost accomplished that in two years,” he said, promising to be “strong stewards” of the environment, including $805 million in Everglades Restoration in the new budget as part of the “largest restoration in the country by far.”
The Governor looked beyond Florida for examples of federal mismanagement.
DeSantis said in California, beset by fires, the Army Corps is partially responsible for the problems, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom and “absentee Mayor” Karen Bass of Los Angeles.
The Army Corps, he said, sits on money sometimes until congressional authorization runs out for the expenditure.
With an ally returning to the White House, it appears possible that Florida may benefit from delegation.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Alexis Lambert likewise made the case that Florida has the “expertise, the urgency, and the determination” to get the job done more quickly than federal agencies. Lambert noted that Florida processes permits and regulates the projects “without unnecessary red tape.”
The state also wants to control red snapper season in the Atlantic, DeSantis noted, reprising a recurrent frustration.
“Another area we’re going to ask for some additional authority: You know, we manage the fishing for red snapper in the Gulf (of Mexico) and have been doing that now for a number of years. The feds manage the Atlantic,” he said. “I think I just did 102 days of red snapper (in the Gulf). The Federal government does two days in the Atlantic.”
“They don’t have accurate data. You talk to the fishermen, they see all the fish there and the federal government says there’s no fish there. So we would be able to manage that, I think, in a much better way,” he added regarding the Atlantic.
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