Water grab or bold idea? Either one promises a water fight

By MARK LANE
FOOTNOTE

Last update: 01 October 2003

Any water fight is to be entered into advisedly. Water control is an issue like race, like abortion, like free coinage of silver. It lends itself to harsh, irrational and stark divisions. It nurtures conspiracy theories. A hundred secondary issues are pulled into its orbit.

Yet Florida seems spoiling for a new water fight. It could divide North and Central Florida against South Florida, rural Florida against urban Florida, new Florida versus old Florida, slow growth versus fast growth and local government versus state government.

Some blandly assume Republican versus Democrat, but that's doubtful. No party can straddle these divisions. A water war is immune to party discipline.

"This is as close to North versus South as you're going to get since the Civil War," Jim King quipped to reporters last week.

Sen. King, R-Jacksonville, is an old pro with an old pro's sense of where this can head. He's also from North Florida. Not many people in North Florida run on a platform of promising to spur faster growth in Miami.

Talk of a new water fight is being spurred by recommendations made last week by the Council of 100. The council is powerful collection of executives from Florida's largest corporations. It has been giving policy advice to governors since the Farris Bryant administration.

Few governors have been more comfortable with its policy advice than Gov. Jeb Bush. And the feeling is mutual. Some of Bush's biggest contributors are members.

The Council of 100 recommended that Florida's water management districts be subordinated to a new state-level Water Supply Commission with members appointed by the governor.

The water management districts would still tax, permit and regulate water quality. But Tallahassee would set goals, policy and ultimately say where the water will flow.

Another recommendation -- and one that particularly sets off alarm bells in North and Central Florida -- is for some kind of a statewide water pipeline system, "water distribution system" as the report blandly calls it. Something that could, for instance, move water from Volusia County wells to encourage new home building in Melbourne. Something that could pour the Suwannee River into Tampa Bay condos.

The report talks about tapping "water-rich areas" of the state. But there are no areas in the state with a water surplus, only parts of the state that will run out of water later than others.

This threatens to build an infrastructure at public expense so we can use more water faster, enrich the South Florida developers who are active and contributing to political campaigns right now and let future worry about future.

It sounds suspiciously like a use-it-up-now-or-somebody-else-will-make-money-on-it economic model.

Gov. Bush has not explicitly endorsed these recommendations. But he is doing what he always does when advancing a controversial policy. He characterizes critics as being too mired in the past to appreciate "bold ideas."

I won't argue with him for characterizing the plan's recommendations as "bold ideas." They certainly are. But that doesn't make them good ideas.

Water is destiny. The flow of water determines the flow of people. The flow of people determines the state's future.

People who would be too bold in dispensing this resource for short-term profit deserve no particular credit. They risk our economic future. They risk our environment.

Sometimes the line between bold ideas and heedless ideas is little more than spin.

mark.lane@news-jrnl.com

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