Central Florida’s insatiable thirst for water to dump on its collective front lawn has real causualties — as evidenced in this short video, showing bulldozers destroying a cypress forest in order to make way for the new Yankee Lake water siphoning facility. When complete, the plant (which was approved, despite massive citizen outcry, by the St. Johns River Water Management District) will be able to suck as much as 55 million gallons a day from the St. Johns River. Watch it before you water your lawn:

– Posted by Anne Schindler

If you haven’t been down by the river in the past few weeks, here’s a grim look at what your missing. Andy Leverett, the college winner of the St. Johns Riverkeeper’s 2010 PSA Video Contest put together this video montage of the putrefaction in the river. Watch it on an empty stomach. And if you think of it, give Rep. Ander Crenshaw a call and let him know what you think of his recent attempts to undermine river cleanup efforts.

– Posted by Anne Schindler

A New York magazine story this week details the life of Bernie Madoff at a federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina, nicknamed “Camp Fluffy” by inmates. The title of the story is “Bernie Madoff, Free at Last.” A subhead explains, “In prison he doesn’t have to hide his lack of conscience. In fact, he’s a hero for it.” Madoff’s comments and actions behind bars are told to Steve Fishman by Madoff’s fellow inmates (Madoff refused an interview).

The story portrays Madoff as unrepentant for his Ponzi scheme investment fraud. “Fuck my victims,” the biggest con ever in the history of the world purportedly told a fellow inmate. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.”

It was surprising to see a familiar face in a graphic that accompanied the article, “Weekends (and years and years) at Bernie’s.” It featured a head shoot of Madoff in the middle of the image looking out from behind bars, encircled by the head shots of 11 other prisoners in Madoff’s prison family. They include Carmine Persico (former head of the Colombo crime family), Franklin C. Brown (former vice-chairman of Rite Aid) and our very own Thomas G. Manuel (who is pictured in sunglasses in the lower left of the graphic). The former St. Johns County Commission chairman is serving 21 months in Butner for demanding a $60,000 bribe from a developer.

The St. Petersburg Times reports that Tampa’s Ford Amphitheatre to be renamed the 1-800-ASK-GARY Amphitheatre.

— Susan Eastman

Despite the belly-up redfish and the floating mats of toxic algae, everything is just dandy in Florida waterways. Must be; why else would U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Jacksonville) be trying to kill financing for a measure to help clean up the state’s polluted lakes and rivers? 

The text of an amendment that Crenshaw is currently attempting to attach to a must-pass appropriations bill would effectively block so-called numeric nutrient standards, which the federal Environmental Protection Agency has said the state must implement to limit water pollution. State regulators at DEP have dragged their feet on this for years, because officials there are in the same deep pockets as Crenshaw. You can contact Crenshaw’s office to tell him what you think of his sneaky, 11th hour attempt to keep Florida’s waters polluted here.
You can read more about Crenshaw’s fealty to polluting interests in the 2008 Folio Weekly cover story “Crenshaw’s Oil Stain.”

 

– Posted by Anne Schindler

After reading a Flog post on the thousands of dead fish reported in the St. Johns River, a reader who asked that his name not be used,  took this picture with his iPhone while walking from the Everbank to the St. Joe building along the Northbank Riverwalk. Although it’s only one carcass, the shoreline of the river is littered with the bodies of good-sized fish and they can be spotted floating belly up  in the river.

“I guess if you’re drinking, the city’s not that bad” — and other pearls of wisdom from Jacksonville’s Hitler (aka musician Goliath Flores) in this must-see short.

– Posted by Anne Schindler

The political action group MoveOn.org is organizing a nationwide emergency vigil tonight to mark the 50th day of the Gulf oil spill. Locally, the vigil will begin at 6 p.m. at the  St. Augustine Beach Pier. Participants will light candles at sunset.

At the vigil, protestors will demand BP do whatever is necessary to contain the spill. They will call on BP and the Obama Administration to move aggressively to prevent further environmental devastation. They will read aloud stories of people whose lives and livelihood have been ruined by the spill and provide information on how to donate to groups working to rescue wildlife threatened by the oil.

— Susan Eastman

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) reports that water samples taken from the St. Johns River near Naval Air Station  Jacksonville tested positive for Aphanizomenon. That’s Latin for the electric blue-green algae that multiplies under the right sweltering conditions into (a toxic) river-swathing and life-suffocating blooms.

The FWC kindly provided a colored map with the fish kill reports it’s received illustrated by red dots: Fish Kill Mapped. (If map seems to be taking a long time to open, change size to 100 percent.) Note the heavy concentration of dead fish reported in the densely populated area from Matthews Bridge south to about Julington Creek.

— Susan Eastman

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has received reports of  thousands of dead fish — catfish, bream, black bass, a large mouth bass, shad, bluegill, eel, snook, a stingray, brim, red drum, gar, redfish and mullet  — in the St. Johns River and its tributaries in the past week.

Dead fish have been reported along an 85-mile length of the river from Lake George north to Naval Air Station Jacksonville.

Although tests to determine the cause of the kill aren’t complete, FWC scientists suspect an early outbreak of toxic blue-green algae.

Algae blooms are common in the St. Johns River during the summer, But just because the blooms are routine doesn’t mean they’re part of a healthy river’s natural purging.

The electric green blooms are fed by excessive nitrogen and phosphorous washing into the river and feeding its phytoplankton until they grow into oxygen-hogging and light-blocking mass. The overload of nutrients come from fertilizers used to keep lawns a pristine green and fertilizers pumped to feed the growth of farm crops, as well as from simple things like dog poop left on the ground that washes into storm drains and then into the river along with oil washed from roads. One of the biggest contributers to nutrient overload is the effluent dumped into the river from manufacturers such as paper mills and from breaks in the sewage system.

Anyone who sees a dead fish should report it to the FWC hotline at 800-636-0511.

— Susan Eastman