Marco Rubio Just Flummoxed By What's Causing Massive, Toxic Algae Blooms - It's A MYSTERY!
Former presidential candidate and current Sen. Marco Rubio (R) was in his home state of Florida over the holiday weekend, where he took the opportunity to check out algal blooms that have caused a state of emergency in two counties.
Polluted fresh water from Lake Okeechobee has caused massive, toxic algal blooms that are threatening the region’s health and economy. But Rubio’s response to the crisis largely failed to acknowledge why it is happening — and even included a suggestion that could be disastrous. “It’s a complex and painful thing to talk about and it’s a very difficult thing to deal with because it doesn’t have one singular cause and it doesn’t have one singular project that solves it all,” Rubio said in a statement, urging the lake’s managers to stop releasing water into the estuaries just north of West Palm Beach.
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“We have fought for years to try to get agricultural pollution treated,” Alisa Coe, an attorney with Earthjustice, told ThinkProgress. “It is not being dealt with, and now we are seeing the consequences.” Earthjustice has fought for years to clean up the lake. Sugar is a major industry in central Florida, and runoff from sugar fields has been tied to Lake Okeechobee’s pollution. In addition, the sugar industry has opposed a popular plan to buy back areas of wetlands south of the lake, which would allow for more flexible runoff plans. Rubio, incidentally, has received “multiple, six-figure” donations from the sugar industry, according to Alan Farago, president of Friends of the Everglades.
“His record in Florida is tirelessly working on behalf of Big Sugar to lower water quality standards,” Farago wrote this week. “In 2003, Rubio was a whip for Gov. Jeb Bush on a bill lowering Everglades water quality standards crowd-swarmed by sugar lobbyists. That new law was successfully challenged by Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe in federal court but caused a decade delay in water quality improvements, setting up today’s disaster.”
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/06/3795436/rubio-cause-and-effect/
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