Water, water everywhere

One potential stumbling block got a little smaller when the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a scaled-back version of Senate President Joe Negron’s, R-Stuart, plan to create a water storage project south of Lake Okeechobee.

The $1.5 billion measure (SB 10), which relies on federal money to cover half the costs, is designed to reduce polluted water discharges from Lake Okeechobee that have been tied to toxic algae in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries east and west of the lake.

Negron, who has made the issue one of his top priorities, agreed to reconfigure the proposal after the House and some area residents balked at a $2.4 billion version that targeted farmland south of the lake for a reservoir.

Acquiring farmland remains on the table, but the plan now first would use a smaller amount of state-owned land to construct a deeper storage area.

A key philosophical difference remains: whether to increase state debt through bonding voter-approved money. The House has resisted that idea throughout the talks over Negron’s bill.

“We’re not bonding. Bonding is an issue,” House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, said.

The same day, Negron insisted that the project needs to include bonding to bulk up funding for the work.

“I think we need to have bonding authority in Senate Bill 10 to accomplish the goals in a short period of time,” Negron said. “And I think that issue of bonding for environmental purposes, I think that’s a settled question by the voters.”

The bill proposes $64 million for the water-storage project next fiscal year, delaying for a year plans to increase the state’s share through bonding.

Money for Negron’s water project would come from the state’s Land Acquisition Trust Fund, funded through a portion of an existing real-estate tax. Voters in 2014 approved setting aside money from the fund for land and water conservation.