Our local Lorax: Chuck O’Neal
I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. — Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
The year 2020 will probably go down as one of the divisive in the modern American history.
But amidst all the rancor and division, one Central Floridian found an issue almost everyone agreed upon — the need to protect clean water.
Chuck O’Neal managed to get 89% of voters to support a clean-water charter amendment in Orange County.
The amendment, which gives citizens the legal right to fight pollution, was a unifying one in a state with a lousy track record for protecting natural resources.
And for that reason, the Orlando Sentinel has selected O’Neal as one of the finalists for its Central Floridian of the Year award for 2020.
In selecting O’Neal, the Sentinel continues a tradition of honoring people who work tirelessly to protect natural resources in a state that often paves first and thinks about consequences later. The Sentinel’s very first honoree — back in 1983 when the award was a statewide affair for “Floridian of the Year” — was Everglades champion Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Kay Hudson, one of several readers who nominated O’Neal, sees some of the same qualities in O’Neal that the Sentinel saw in Douglas. “He just keeps working. He doesn’t flap. He has an end goal in mind: taking care of our water,” Hudson said. “And not just in Orange County. This is a huge step forward to protecting the environment for the whole state.”
It’s also a step many mocked him for trying to take.
In mailers and social-media posts, Florida’s chamber-of-commerce network disingenuously described his “rights of nature” amendment as a “fringe” theory meant to give pigs and rivers the right to sue people.
That was nonsense. What the amendment clearly said was that humans have the right to sue people or corporations who “intentionally or negligently pollute” Orange County’s rivers, lakes and streams.
The idea was hardly radical. It gives citizens a way to fight pollution when politicians don’t.
“This issue was not confusing,” O’Neal said. “If it was confusing, it would’ve been a 50-50 split on the ballot. You don’t get to 89% without Democrats, Republicans and NPAs voting for it during what was probably one of the most hyper-partisan elections of our time. It was just such an affirmation.”
O’Neal, 64, grew up in Winter Park and watched as Central Florida evolved from a sleepy citrus community to one of the planet’s most popular tourist destinations. He watched some of that evolution from the front lines during a stint as a worker on Disney’s monorail system.
But O’Neal knew he wanted to work for himself. So after graduating from Duke University, he tried out a number of professions, including producing a local cable TV show in the 1990s that spotlighted pets at local shelters that needed adopting.
He finally settled on the business he runs today, an investment company that rehabs houses and leases them specifically to pet owners — a niche market O’Neal discovered full of grateful tenants who knew their rental options were limited. O’Neal and his wife, Doris, have three cats themselves.
But protecting the environment is O’Neal’s main passion. And when he learned of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denied an environmental group the right to sue over fouled natural resources in California — because the court found there was no law that expressly gives people the legal “standing” to do so — he worked to change that.
“There needs to be bill a fundamental change in the way that we view nature; that nature has a right to exist,” he said. “Because unless something has a legal right to exist, then you sit back and watch the natural world be destroyed bit by bit.”
In other words: O’Neal wanted to give people the chance to speak for the rivers, trees and air we all need.
In that regard, he’s very much like the title character from Dr. Seuss’ 1971 classic, The Lorax, the fluffy, raspy-voiced creature who declared that someone needed “to speak for the trees.”
O’Neal is our local Lorax. And not just local. Since Orange County led the way in November — with help from the League of Women Voters, where O’Neal led the natural resources committee — leaders in 30 other cities and counties have launched efforts to enact similar rights-of-nature laws.
That’s what O’Neal’s League buddy, Kay Hudson, meant when she said O’Neal is impacting the entire state.
O’Neal said citizens deserve the right to protect natural resources because politicians often refuse to do so. “Any bill that goes to Tallahassee that has any possibility of impacting anyone’s bottom line by even a dollar gets eviscerated,” he said.
He’s right. Many Florida politicians are happy to spend billions of tax dollar awarding contracts to firms to clean up pollution but are uninterested in laws and regulations that prevent the pollution in the first place.
O’Neal says protecting the resources isn’t just better for humanity, it’s more fiscally responsible.
Still, some business interests hate the idea. And last year they convinced Republican legislators to tuck a provision in a bigger water-quality bill that tries to ban cities and counties from enforcing “rights of nature” laws. It was a wily move. Even though many Democrats opposed the ban, they supported the overall water-quality bill.
So now, O’Neal and his army of volunteers with Speak Up Wekiva are fighting again. The environmental advocacy group has sued the governor over that bill, arguing state lawmakers can’t tell local communities how and whether they can protect their own natural resources.
The courts will render the final verdict. O’Neal is confident and hopeful they will prevail. But for now, he will keep on fighting and speaking up … just like the Lorax.