Dance of the Reptiles

by Carl Hiaasen

  The argument that it’s morally indefensible to foul natural waters is futile against the outsized political clout of the polluters. Whether it’s a phosphate mine, pulp mill, or cane field, Florida’s leaders—Democrats and Republicans—have traditionally been happy to offer our rivers and wetlands as free sewers.

  However, the blowback—that dirty water is endangering the economy—is increasingly difficult to brush aside.

  That didn’t stop Bronson and McCollum from suing the EPA. They’re not doing it for the citizens of Florida; they’re doing it for the polluters.

  And they’re paying for it with your tax dollars, at a time when the state budget is strapped for revenue.

  Try not to think of this as pure crud. Just try.

  September 7, 2012

  Dolphins at the Mercy of the Clueless and the Cruel

  Earlier this summer, in the Gulf waters near the Florida-Alabama border, somebody stabbed a screwdriver into the head of a bottlenose dolphin.

  Sightings of the injured mammal occurred for a couple of days until it turned up dead in Perdido Bay. The crime, which remains unsolved, is notable for more than its extreme cruelty. Years ago it would have been unusual for a human with a weapon in his hand to get near enough to wound a wild dolphin. That was before people began following and illegally feeding the animals, a practice recklessly adopted by a few tour-boat captains in the Panama City area.

  The result was to train communities of dolphins to be not just lazy but dependent on handouts for survival. Instead of teaching their offspring how to hunt schools of baitfish, momma dolphins taught the little ones to wait for boatloads of tourists bearing buckets of chum.

  Dolphins are smart and opportunistic. When the tour boats weren’t around, they started bothering commercial fishermen, who, with their paychecks on the line, didn’t regard the voracious acrobats as fondly as visitors did. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government in recent years has prosecuted three fishermen for attacking dolphins. Guns are the favored method, and in one case a pipe bomb was thrown.

  The screwdriver killing is a first. Experts believe the mortally wounded dolphin came from a place near Orange Beach, Alabama, where feeding the protected marine mammals has become popular.

  In most places you seldom hear of a dolphin being struck by a boat propeller. The adult specimens always teach the calves how to keep a safe distance from the engines—you can see these lessons in progress when a pod comes together in your wake. Likewise, it’s uncommon in most waters for a dolphin to take a bait on a fishing line. They know better than to bite anything with a piece of barbed steel in it.

  Except when they’ve lost their natural wariness of humans.

  Increasingly, necropsies on dead dolphins reveal fishhooks in their stomachs or monofilament line tangled around their fins. Stephen Nohlgren of The St. Petersburg Times recently wrote of the troubles facing a resident group in Sarasota Bay. This summer, four dolphins were struck by boats. One was a calf that later disappeared from the pod and is presumed to have died.

  Local marine scientists haven’t seen such a spate of deaths in 42 years of research. The animals hit by vessels hadn’t been known to follow humans for food. However, dolphin feeding did become more common in the region after a red tide in 2005 wiped out many small-prey fish. In hunger, some dolphins learned to mooch around piers and charter boats.

  Nohlgren tells the story of an old-timer, the aptly named Beggar, who works a busy section of the Intracoastal Waterway in Nokomis, between Sarasota and Venice. Beggar accosts passing boaters who think he’s adorable and obligingly toss goodies from the bait well. So far he’s bitten 33 of his benefactors.

  It’s been illegal to feed wild dolphins since 1991, but despite the well-publicized penalties (jail time and fines up to $20,000), state and federal authorities have had trouble stopping it.

  The Panama City area remains the epicenter. Stacey Horstman, bottlenose dolphin conservation coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, says sometimes a single dolphin will be surrounded by 30 to 50 humans in the water. “A pretty tough scene,” she said.

  The evidence is plentiful on YouTube, where partiers with submersible cameras like to share their cross-species encounters. The dolphins in these videos behave more like raccoons at a garbage dump.

  A few months ago, a tour operator in Cape Coral and two more in the Panhandle got fined $5,000 for feeding dolphins. Vendors in Panama City continue to promote swim-with-the-dolphin tours while publicly saying that no feeding is allowed.

  What they don’t say is that the only reason any dolphin swims with a human is to sponge a handout. Contrary to myth, Flipper has no interest whatsoever in being your friend, unless the payoff is a juicy sardine.

  Still the congenitally clueless—tourists and locals alike—continue to flop into the Gulf and mess with these phenomenal creatures, dooming them to a future of begging, sloth, and worse.

  A dolphin that swims close enough to take a treat from your fingers is also close enough to be stabbed by a scumbag with a screwdriver.

  DRILL, SPILL, AND KILL

  May 2, 2004

  Pipeline to the Bahamas Spells Disaster

  Sometime in the near future, two companies will begin trenching heavy pipelines across the ocean bottom from the Bahamas to South Florida.

  Not only will the construction scar the reefs and disperse marine life; the pipes will be used to carry millions of cubic feet of natural gas, which ignites rather spectacularly when exposed to oxygen and a spark.

  Nonetheless, both projects have won hearty approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection, an agency that obviously needs to change its name.

  In endorsing the Bahamas-to-Florida pipelines, the DEP conceded that the drilling might cause “potential damage to the coral reefs and other important marine resources.” Yet those concerns were outweighed by the rosy conclusion that the pipelines “will help satisfy the growing demand for natural gas in Florida.”

  How these goofball schemes got the go-ahead so swiftly, and with minimal public input, would seem a mystery. But not really.

  The idea was to transport the gas in liquid form from Africa and other places to the Bahamas. There it would be converted to vaporized fuel and piped to Florida, for distribution along the eastern seaboard.

  One of the plans was first hatched by those fine corporate citizens at Enron and has since been taken over by an outfit called Tractebel. It calls for 90 miles of underwater pipe running from a gas plant on Grand Bahama all the way to Port Everglades.

  The second pipeline would cross 54 miles from Ocean Cay, near Bimini, to Dania Beach. The company that’s building it is a subsidiary of AES Corp, whose chairman is Richard Darman, a heavy Republican playmaker who was budget director when the first George Bush was president.

  Given the current George Bush’s chummy relationship with the gas and oil industry, it’s no surprise that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission breezily approved both Florida pipelines.

  Yet for one fleeting moment it appeared that the president’s own brother might throw a wrench in the works. In mid-March, Gov. Jeb Bush delayed a cabinet vote on the pipelines, saying he was concerned about the environmental impact as well as dangers to humans.

  Bush heard a presentation by Raymond McAllister, professor emeritus of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University. McAllister had stated that the pipelines could not be built without permanently damaging the reefs, and that leaks could create a potentially lethal hazard for boaters and beachgoers.

  Evidently, the governor’s worries evaporated after what pipeline officials characterized as a period of “education.” Whatever malarkey they told Bush in private, he apparently bought it. Two weeks ago, the cabinet approved both Bahamas pipelines with little debate. A third pipeline, to be operated by a unit of Florida Power & Light, will soon be up for a vote.

  Each company insists that its project will be safe, secure, and kind to the deep blue sea. A
ES and Tractebel say they’ll clear a path for the lines by drilling horizontally beneath the reefs, then fitting the pipes through the rock. To make things even more interesting, the segments must be laid through the Gulf Stream, against a current of three to four knots. No problem, the companies say. Don’t you fret about a thing.

  Right. They’re going to chew through 90 miles of ocean bottom and leave it just the way God made it. Who are they kidding?

  Here’s a well-known fact about coral reefs: Silt and sediment can kill them deader than a doornail. Nothing stirs up sediment like a humongous underwater drill, yet we’re supposed to believe that all that suspended debris—millions of tons—will be transported harmlessly away from the reefs.

  No way.

  The last bureaucratic hurdle for the pipeline builders is the Army Corps of Engineers, an agency that probably knows which questions to ask. Whether it is immune from the clout of Darman and the others is doubtful, however.

  Under their agreement with the state, the pipeline companies can’t sell or transfer the easement rights if the projects go bust. They will also be liable for up to $1.5 million for any damage done to the marine habitat. Unfortunately, because of the extreme distances and depths of the pipe, the damage is likely to be irreparable at any price. Dead coral tends to stay dead, and the sea life that depends on it never returns.

  Florida is home to the last of the continent’s living reefs, a fact we boastfully trumpet to lure tourists. It’s startling that Gov. Bush and the cabinet would so casually put this already imperiled treasure at risk for so little gain to the public.

  It’s even more disturbing that, with the future of our shores and ocean waters at stake, Bush would dismiss the concerns of scientists and trust the word of energy hustlers. They might call it an “education,” but it smells like a sellout.

  July 9, 2006

  Energy Policy: Political Tide Favors Big Oil

  On the same day that the U.S. House voted resoundingly to lift the 25-year ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, it also rejected a measure that would have boosted the minimum average gas mileage of American cars.

  That’s all you need to know about U.S. energy policy and who drives it. Consumption is king; conservation, an afterthought.

  Fourteen representatives from Florida supported the prodrilling bill, which would allow oil and natural gas rigs 50 miles from the Atlantic coast and Panhandle. Polls show that most Floridians strongly oppose offshore drilling, but lawmakers who voted for the legislation insist it’s the best possible compromise. A battle looms in the Senate, where Florida’s two senators—Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez—have vowed to block the bill unless tougher restrictions are added.

  There’s no dispute that the political tide has turned in favor of Big Oil. High gasoline prices and the worsening bedlam in the Middle East have galvanized enemies of the moratorium that has kept derricks far away from Florida’s ecologically fragile shores.

  The pot was sweetened when House leaders agreed to share a fat chunk of future gas and oil lease royalties with states that open areas between three and 100 miles offshore to energy exploration.

  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the royalty split could cost the federal government $102 billion during the next decade. Even the Bush White House, which is basically an arm of Big Oil, expressed dismay at the deal. Once that kind of heavy money starts flowing into the moist, eager paws of local legislators, be assured that energy lobbyists will get whatever they want, whenever they want it.

  Floridians fear a nightmarish spill like that of the Exxon Valdez, the tanker that lost nearly 11 million gallons of oil and fouled 1,300 miles of Alaskan coastline back in 1989. Such an accident would be devastating both to Florida’s marine environment and to tourism. Vacationers tend to avoid smelly black beaches littered with dead, tar-covered seabirds.

  The energy industry, and the politicians who pimp for it, say there’s no reason to worry. The technology of extracting and shipping fuel has improved, they say, and so has the safety record.

  Even if the platforms and tankers are better built, the infrastructure required to transport and store billions of gallons of oil is inherently vulnerable to acts of nature. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita hammered the Gulf Coast last summer, authorities responded to at least 595 oil, gas, and chemical spills in the region, according to a study by The Houston Chronicle.

  The leaks came from offshore platforms, storage tanks along the coast, and even fuel trucks that overturned in the storm surge and high winds. In all, an estimated nine million gallons of oil was released, contaminating homes, farm soil, waterways, and wetlands.

  An estimated one million gallons leaked from a Shell Oil facility in Pilottown, Louisiana.

  Another 1.4 million gallons spilled from a Murphy Oil plant near Chalmette. Another 991,000 gallons poured from a Chevron terminal near Empire, on the Mississippi River.

  The worst spill happened at Cox Bay in Plaquemines Parish, where 3.8 million gallons of sweet crude spewed from two storage tanks owned by Bass Enterprises Production Co. About 450,000 gallons slopped into nearby marshes.

  Energy companies said they hadn’t anticipated—or prepared for—the vast spillage caused by the hurricanes. It was not a confidence-inspiring response. Given Florida’s lively history of hurricanes, residents here deserve to know where all that oil being raised offshore will be stored, and whether those facilities will be able to withstand a storm stronger than Katrina, a Category 3 when it made landfall. Even if oil taken from Florida waters is transported directly to Louisiana or Mississippi, the risk of a catastrophic spill at sea can never be eliminated.

  Exploration for natural gas, which is odorless and colorless, poses a lesser threat to waters and beaches. Yet even the feds admit that the drilling operation raises tons of sludge containing potentially harmful heavy metals.

  Thanks to a last-ditch push by Florida representatives, the House bill that passed June 29 prohibits drilling closer than 200 miles from the west coast. The 50-mile buffer along the east coast and the Panhandle may be expanded to 100 miles by the Legislature, but it must be renewed every five years.

  Some of the GOP lawmakers howling for offshore drilling have scoffed at the resistance in Florida. They say the energy needs of America must come first and that exploiting the Outer Continental Shelf will help free us from dependency on foreign oil.

  What a crock. Offshore drilling will provide short-term boosts in supply, but little relief from our perilous reliance on oil producers in the Mideast, South America, and the Eastern Bloc.

  Inevitably, rigs will go up somewhere off Florida’s coast, but only a dithering fool would believe that the price of gasoline will come down.

  Those same folks who’ve been getting rich from Dick Cheney’s energy policy will get richer, while Floridians are left to hope and pray that these geniuses do a better job of protecting our waters than they did in Louisiana and Mississippi. The odds stink.

  July 20, 2008

  Drilling Offshore Won’t Help Us Much

  Raise your hand if you actually believe that offshore oil drilling will bring down gasoline prices at the pump.

  Raise your other hand if you believe in Peter Pan, unicorns, and variable-rate mortgages.

  Last week, President Bush strode into the White House Rose Garden and announced that he was nullifying the moratorium on offshore oil drilling that his father initiated 18 years ago following the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

  “The time for action is now,” proclaimed the younger Bush, though of course the gesture was largely symbolic. The moratorium stays in place until Congress decides not to renew it. And Congress, declared our fearless leader, is “the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources.”

  Wow. And we thought the gas crisis was more complicated. Apparently, it’s the fault of those merciless fiends on Capitol Hill who continue to persecute the poor energy companies. Those companies, by the way, curre
ntly lease more than 90 million acres of public land for exploration. According to a House report, only about one-quarter of that leased acreage is being used.

  Naturally, some “obstructionist” Democrats want the oil companies to explain why they aren’t drilling in all these other places before they start drilling off the coasts of Florida, California, and along the eastern seaboard.

  It seems like a good question, but the president had nothing to say on the subject.

  Listening to Bush and now John McCain, you’d almost forget that the oil companies already do lots of offshore drilling. In fact, they currently have access to more than 71 billion untapped barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie beneath coastal waters. That means four-fifths of all known offshore deposits are available to industry exploration efforts, according to the federal Mineral Management Service.

  So why aren’t they concentrating on the oil leases that they already control? Another good question, and one for which the explanations are typically murky.

  Politically, what’s happening is simple. The energy companies want to score big before their two guardian angels, Bush and Dick Cheney, leave power. With the public pounded by gas prices surpassing $4 a gallon, industry lobbyists see a golden opportunity to dismantle the offshore moratorium.

  Still, even if the restricted zones on both coasts were opened to drilling and the yield were good, it would be years—probably decades—before the pump price of gasoline might be affected.

  For seaside communities, the prospect of drilling has always meant weighing the risks against the possible rewards. In both Florida and California, which suffered a horrendous spill at Santa Barbara in 1969, most residents have opposed near-shore oil exploration.

  The current moratorium on drilling, which affects the lower 48 states, was imposed to protect not just coastal environments but tourist economies that depend on clean seas and clean beaches. Florida, with its dangerously narrow economic base, can’t afford a major spill. One Valdez-type accident in the Gulf of Mexico could foul miles of beachfront with tarry gobs; the news video alone would cost the state millions in hotel bookings.