Panel OKs $140 million for Everglades restoration

TALLAHASSEE — A Florida Senate committee voted Monday to require that a minimum of $140 million in the state budget go toward Everglades restoration.

The move comes on the heels of Gov. Rick Scott declaring a state of emergency over polluted water moving south out of Lake Okeechobee.

It also addresses concerns that money set aside for the conservation, management and purchase of wild lands was being used for purposes only tangentially related.

The amount is less than the $200 million minimum funding level pushed by bill sponsor Joe Negron, R-Stuart, a sum already approved by House committees.

But the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on general government cut Negron’s proposal by $60 million while adding in $5 million for restoration projects near the home districts of the committee chair and another senator on the committee.

The $140 million would come from the Land Acquisition Trust Fund, created by a 2014 state constitutional amendment that guarantees $10 billion over the next 20 years will go toward land management and purchases.

But in last year’s budget, much of the funding from the amendment went to salaries and operating costs of environmentrelated state agencies.

Negron’s bill would require that, after debt payments, a minimum of $200 million would go to Everglades restoration, plus another $75 million to springs restoration.

However, state Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, chair of the committee, amended Negron’s bill to cut tens of millions for the Everglades while adding $5 million to clean up Lake Apopka.

State Sen. Wilton Simpson, RTrilby, filed a separate amendment guaranteeing $5 million for the Crystal River, just north of his own district.

“Things are being done toward the cleanup of the quality of the water,” Hays said. “We’re trying to, as much as we can, get the [pollutant] levels reduced.”