5 December 4-10, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | COMMENTARY: THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE BALLOT BOX Let’s pin down gubernatorial wannabes on their environmental stances. BY CRAIG PITTMAN H ey, Florida, congrats! We’ve j-u-s-t about made it through an- other hurricane season. But I should warn you that some- thing even scarier is coming: A gubernatorial election. Board up your windows! Batten down your lawn furniture! The politicians are coming, and they’re blowing Category 5 gusts of hot air! In 2026, we’re going to elect our next gov- ernor, and candidates have been jumping into the race like kids leaping into a cool Florida spring on a scorching summer day. So far, there are three Republicans and two Demo- crats vying for the job. The Republicans are Byron Donalds, a U.S. representative from Naples; Paul Renner, a former speaker of the House from the Jack- sonville area; and James Fishback, a business executive with no government experience whom Politico described as a “fast-talking, Spanish-speaking Davie, Florida, native.” Lit- tle-known Lt. Gov. Jay Collins from Tampa is talking openly about it but has yet to formally enter the primary. On the Democratic side, the competitors are former Pinellas County Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly, now pursuing the Charlie Crist party-switch path; and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, a former po- lice chief and sheriff. As if those six weren’t enough, there’s an independent candidate, Miami Sen. Jason Pizzo, a former Democrat who’s announced he’s running, too. Generally speaking, seeing seven candi- dates seeking the Governor’s Mansion could be a sign of how big a disaster the sitting oc- cupant has been. The Ron DeSantis administration is be- ing investigated by a Leon County grand jury in the Hope Florida scandal. He’s under scrutiny for voting to give $83 million to a campaign contributor in exchange for 4 acres of Destin land nobody wanted. His proposal to build golf courses in a state park last year was so deeply unpopular that the legisla- ture passed a law this year to prevent him or his successors from ever trying to do it again. Note that two of the three episodes involve DeSantis’ horrible handling of environmental issues. That’s why, I think, every chance we get in the next 12 months, we voters ought to quiz his would-be replacements about where they stand on that segment of the state’s re- sponsibilities. As we have seen repeatedly, the environ- ment in Florida IS the economy. The two are as inextricably intertwined as the tangled roots of a mangrove forest. Dirty Water When DeSantis was first elected in 2018, Flor- ida voters were concerned about toxic algae blooms that had lasted for months. DeSantis swore he’d cure this by appointing a panel of scientists to tell him about what to do. He appointed the panel — but then he and the legislature failed to follow most of its rec- ommendations. Now Florida is the No. 1 state for polluted lakes. A toxic algae bloom killed off so much seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon that more than 1,000 manatees starved to death. Florida’s longest river, the St. Johns, is coping with steadily increasing pollu- tion from septic waste. Even when the legislature passed a law or- dering special protections for our iconic springs, the agencies answering to DeSantis ignored it, noted Grant Gelhardt of the Sierra Club. Instead of attacking pollution sources, De- Santis cut a deal to pay millions of dollars to an Israeli company that dumps a hydrogen peroxide mix into algae-tainted waterways. But then the algae comes back and the Israe- lis have to do it over. Even the head of the Is- raeli company thinks this is futile. “DeSantis’ fight against algal blooms in Florida will fail,” he wrote on X, back when it was just plain Twitter. “There is no question that preventing raw sewage and runoffs from spilling into waterways must be addressed.” So, the first question everyone should ask the gubernatorial candidates is: What will you do to fix Florida’s rampant water pollu- tion problems? Lake O Woes I had a lengthy chat about this with Gil Smart of the Vote Water organization, who pointed out that Lake Okeechobee in particu- lar needs help. It was recently named the dirtiest lake in the U.S. Things have gotten so bad there that Bass Masters removed Lake O from its Top Ten Bass Lakes in the United States. Rather than clamp down on polluters poi- soning Lake O and other waterways, the Flor- ida Department of Environmental Protection has set up a series of voluntary “basin man- agement action plans” that all fail, Smart said. “That’s the state’s main tool for reducing pollution and it’s not working,” he said. “At what point do we stop saying, ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ and start doing something about it?” The polluters tend to be big campaign contributors, which guarantees they’re left alone. But the pollution is taking an economic toll on our tourism, fishing, and other indus- tries, so whoever takes over from DeSantis will need to make some hard choices. Last year, Donalds convened a water sum- mit that matched polluters with regulators — and refused to allow in either the press or the public. If he opened the meeting to everyone, Donalds argued, the poor polluters and the people regulating them would be too scared to talk honestly. To me, “honest talk” between polluters and regulators is less important than letting the public — the people paying the tax bills and drinking the water —- know what’s going on. But that leads to our second question for the candidates. On the Downlow DeSantis clearly missed his calling. Instead of politics, he should’ve gone into espionage. He persuaded the legislature to make his travel records a state secret, even though no governor ever sought such a Sunshine Law exemption. He held a Cabinet meeting in a foreign country, ensuring most Floridians couldn’t participate. Even worse, he’s repeat- edly cut non-public deals to give away public land to private interests. First came his attempt to allow a company to build three golf courses in Jonathan Dick- inson State Park, plus hotels and pickleball courts in other parks. That blew up in his face like a hand grenade. Then he attempted to swap land from the Withlacoochee State Forest with a Canadian golf course builder. An uproar ensued and the land went unswapped. More recently, he wanted to give some mystery developer 600 acres from the Guana River Wildlife Management Area. Once the public found out, the developer melted back into the shadows. Each instance of DeSantis trying to keep things on the downlow led to widespread out- rage. People love Florida’s preserves, and they don’t like seeing some ploy to give them away. That’s why I think the next question for the candidates has to be: Will you treat public land like it’s owned by the public, and not as your personal property to benefit friends? We want to return to the days when our precious state parks, preserves, and forests stayed public and stayed natural. This leads to the one area where DeSantis almost came across as a good guy. Undermining the Everglades For 25 years, when Florida politicians wanted to fool the voters into thinking they liked the environment, they talked about restoring the Everglades. “I pledge to spend millions on restoration of the River of Grass,” they’d promise sol- emnly. What they really meant was, “I’ll hand over millions in tax dollars to well-connected contractors to build what the plans call for, but I won’t do it fast and they’ll take their time, too.” That’s why the Everglades restoration has gone billions over budget and years beyond its original deadline. But not even the most cynical would have built a new pollution source like an immi- grant detention camp in the Big Cypress Na- tional Preserve. That would undercut all the restoration work that’s already been done. Yet DeSantis did it, and without even checking its environmental impact. Environmental groups accused him of be- traying the Glades. But DeSan- A toxic blue-green algae bloom south of Jacksonville in Fleming Island in 2025. St. Johns Riverkeeper photo/Facebook | METRO | >> p6
