SARASOTA – Fifty-five (55) businesses and organizations have joined forces from every corner of the state where local governments are in the fight of their lives to protect their waterfront economies from the toxic and invasive algae that runs tourists away from beaches and springs; empties hotel rooms, restaurants, and attractions; diminishes property values; destroys quality of life; and threatens public health.

Today the group sent a letter to Governor DeSantis urging him to use his line item veto power to stop the attack on local urban fertilizer ordinances that House Speaker Paul Renner snuck into the 2023-24 state budget bill, and to which Senate President Kathleen Passidomo gave a green light. The signatories include Alachua County, which also sent their own line item veto request letter and is committed, like so many other Florida cities and counties, to utilizing cost-effective tools to protect and restore water quality. Others have sent their own letters urging the same, including 1000 Friends of Florida and Waterkeepers Florida.

The chorus bespeaks the fact that the record demonstrates clearly that the State is not technically capable of protecting surface and groundwaters, but local governments are in the optimal position to address and repair Florida’s impaired waters.

Mark Perry, Executive Director and CEO, Florida Oceanographic Society (Martin County): “At a time when Floridians are loudly championing water quality improvements in the Everglades and coastal estuaries, this Fertilizer Ordinance Ban is in direct conflict with local efforts to reduce pollution going into our waters and the Governor’s goals stated in Executive Order 23-06.”

Amber Serena, Managing Member, Rainbow River Haven, LLC (Marion County): “As a waterfront business owner, I want the Nature Coast region to be a place where the wonders of natural Florida can be enjoyed and where visitors return year after year to support our local economies. Failure to stop fertilizer pollution isn’t just bad for our springs, it’s bad for business.”

Jim Durocher, Vice President, Friends of the Thousand Islands Sanctuary” (Brevard County): The Thousand Islands area of Cocoa Beach was a critter nursery ground historically, but now the whole ecosystem is starving from lack of seagrass, and choking on pollution.

Tim Glover, President, Friends of St. Sebastian River (Indian River County): “The Indian River Lagoon is dying a ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ We know fertilizer is part of the problem and the solution requires an ‘all of the above’ approach if we are to have any hope of saving it.”

Mark Kateli, President, Florida Native Plant Society (Seminole County) : “It is simply counter-productive to preempt local governments from being part of the solution. Do not discard an effective tool in this fight!”

George Foster, President, Creative Environmental Solutions, INC. (Hernando County): “Every application of fertilizer is a potential pollution event – in the summer rainy season it is a sure bet – which makes it so important to get and keep strong residential fertilizer ordinances on the books. Let’s quit peeing in our own pool.”

Emma Haydocy, Florida Policy Manager, Surfrider Foundation (Florida Keys/Monroe County): “It is imperative that this subversive attack on local water quality is defeated to help ensure clean water in Florida’s ocean and waterways and to protect home rule in communities throughout the Sunshine State.”

Amber Crooks, Environmental Policy Manager, Conservancy of Southwest Florida (Collier County): “The Conservancy of Southwest Florida has worked closely with local municipalities from Punta Gorda to Marco Island to protect our waterways from nutrient pollution via stringent fertilizer ordinances. We need every tool in the toolbox.”

Glenn Compton, ManaSota-88, Inc. Chairman (Sarasota County): ”Effective fertilizer ordinances are one of the most significant tools our communities can implement for the protection of aquatic and marine resources.”

Lauren Jonaitis, Senior Conservation Director, Tropical Audubon Society (Miami-Dade County): “We need the Governor to uphold his commitment to protecting water quality in Executive Order #23-06. Line item 146 in SB 2500 directly contradicts that commitment.

The Letter:

May 11, 2023

The Honorable Ron DeSantis

Plaza Level, The Capitol

400 S. Monroe St.

Tallahassee, FL 32399

Delivered via email to GovernorRon.Desantis@eog.myflorida.com

Re: Request for Line Item Veto of Proviso for Specific Appropriation 146

Dear Governor DeSantis,

We, the below-signed 55 organizations and businesses, urge you to veto the proviso following line item 146 in SB 2500 reading in part “…$250,000 in nonrecurring funds shall be used by the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) to evaluate the effectiveness of the timing of seasonal fertilizer restrictions on urban landscapes toward achieving nutrient target objectives for waterbodies statewide.”

Your veto will save the popular, non-partisan urban pollution control measures that have been adopted across the state over the last 16 years. Failure to veto this line will tie the hands of local governments from protecting their own waterfront economies by prohibiting new effective urban fertilizer ordinances.

UF/IFAS and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) have been recommending the avoidance of Nitrogen and Phosphorus fertilizer application during the rainy season since they first started publishing Florida Yards and Neighborhoods (FYN) Manuals in the early 1990s. Any stepping away from those recommendations has been tied to funding UF/IFAS receives from the turfgrass and agrichemical industries.

Governor, rainy season urban fertilizer management has been a non-partisan, common sense, science-based approach to protecting Florida’s environment and economy since 2007; over seventeen counties and well over 100 municipalities have embraced strict rainy season application bans in the last 16 years. No one, including UF/IFAS, which spent millions of state (FDEP) dollars studying the same between 2005-2011, has ever determined that avoiding fertilizer application before Florida’s heavy summer downpours is anything but the cheapest, easiest, and best way to stop urban stormwater pollution at its source. On the contrary, there is an enormous body of research supporting strict urban fertilizer management and substantiating their need for fertilizer limits more stringent than the FDEP Model Ordinance, present in the public records of each county/city that has gone through the ordinance adoption process. There is no reason to waste taxpayer dollars to restudy established fact.

We already know that “strong” residential fertilizer ordinances protect water quality and the businesses, property values, and quality of life that depend on it. Veto the proviso to specific appropriation 146 for the boat captains, waterfront hotels and restaurants, tourists, and everyone who calls Florida their home. Ensure that the urban fertilizer programs we know lead to improved water quality continue leading us to a healthier and safer Florida for all.

The proposed $117.03 billion budget is significantly larger than the $114.8 billion Freedom Budget proposed by your administration. In the coming fiscal year it will be critical to ensure that taxpayer dollars are allocated responsibly, and this $250,000 study would be ineffective, unnecessary, and fiscally irresponsible.

The Florida Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Firestone demonstrated that a Governor can veto the smallest identifiable, discrete appropriation for which it is also possible to identify the fund from which the funds are appropriated. Your veto can be limited to the $250,000 which is funded exclusively from the General Revenue Fund and is explicitly set aside for the UF/IFAS study of the effectiveness of seasonal fertilizer restrictions in the last paragraph of line item 146 of the Budget (SB 2500).

Uphold the commitment to protecting water quality you made in your Executive Order #23-06. Veto the proviso following line item 146 in the General Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2023-24.

Sincerely,

Alachua County Board of County Commissioners

Anna Prizzia, Chair

ASBRO, LLC

E. Allen Stewart II P.E., Manager

Audubon of Southwest Florida

Gerri Reaves, President

Biscayne Bay Marine Health Coalition

Dave Doebler, Chair

Bonita Jetski Inc.

William Hanson, President

Brevard Indian River Lagoon Coalition

Craig Wallace, Chairman of the Board

Catalyst Miami

Zelalem Adefris, CEO

Climate Reality Project, North Broward and Palm Beach County Chapter

Susan Steinhauser, Co-Chair

Conservancy of Southwest Florida

Amber Crooks, Environmental Policy Manager

CREATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS, INC.

George Foster, President

Democratic Environmental Caucus of Florida

Judy Freiberg, JD, Vice President

Earth Action, Inc.

Mary Gutierrez, Director

Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida (ECOSWF)

Becky Ayech, President

Florida Conservation Voters

Aliki Moncrief, Executive Director

Florida Oceanographic Society

Mark Perry, Executive Director and CEO

Florida Rights of Nature Network

Tiffany Grantham, Vice Chair

Florida Springs Council

Ryan Smart, Executive Director

Florida Wildlife Federation

Sarah Gledhill, President & CEO

Friends of Artur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge

Josh Weller, President

Friends of St. Sebastian River

Tim Glover, President

Friends of the Everglades

Eve Samples, Executive Director

Friends of the Thousand Islands Sanctuary

James Durocher, Vice President

Friends of the Wekiva River

James Adamski, President

Grove Surf + Coffee

Peter Gottschling, Owner

Hernando Audubon Society, Inc.

Tom St Clair, PhD, Conservation Chair

Hernando Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society

Janet Grabowski, President

Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute

Haley Moody, Associate Director

Island of Key Largo Federation of Homeowner Associations

Dottie Moses, President

Kissimmee Waterkeeper

John C. Capece, PHD, Waterkeeper

La Mesa Boricua de Florida

Maria Revelles, Co-Director

League of United Latin American Citizens Council #7259

David Sinclair, President

League of Women Voters of Florida

Cecile Scoon, President

MAINZER’S DELICATESSEN

Cheryl Oswald, Owner

ManaSota-88, Inc.

Glenn Compton , Chairman

Martin County Democratic Environmental Caucus

Carol Ann Leonard, President

Nature Coast Conservation

DeeVon Quirolo, President

Our Santa Fe River. Inc.

Joanne Tremblay, President

Peace Myakka Waterkeeper

Andy Mele, President and Waterkeeper

Pelican Island Audubon Society

Richard Baker, Ph.D., Chair

Progress Florida

Mark Ferrulo, Executive Director

Rainbow River Haven LLC

Amber Serena, Managing Member

Rebah Farm

Carol Ahearn, Owner

River Rise Resort LLC

Jane Blais, Owner/Manager

Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

Matt DePaolis Environmental, Policy Director

Save the Manatee Club

Patrick Rose, Executive Director

Scuba Marco

Jeffrey Dawson, President

Sea Turtle Conservancy

David Godfrey, Executive Director

Sierra Club Florida

Emily Gorman, Chapter Director

Sierra Club Land Water & Wildlife Campaign

Craig Diamond, Volunteer Co-Lead

Space Coast Audubon Society

James Stahl, President

START (Solutions To Avoid Red Tide)

Sandy Gilbert, CEO

Stone Crab Alliance

Karen Dwyer, Ph.D., Co-founder

Surfrider Foundation

Emma Haydocy, Florida Policy Manager

Tropical Audubon Society

Lauren Jonaitis, Senior Conservation Director

VoteWater

Gil Smart, Executive Director