Free Dance of the Reptiles by Carl Hiaasen

want to confront the water crisis. Experts say it could take years of heavier than normal precipitation to restore safe levels in Lake Okeechobee and saturate the aquifers sufficiently to stave off encroaching seawater.
    Shortages will hit some communities sooner, and harder, than others. Eventually, state water managers will be forced to take action on a bolder scale than rationing sprinkler use.
    Twice as many people are moving here as are moving out. The net population continues to expand at the dangerous rate of about 1,000 souls a day, and they’ll keep coming until there’s a full-blown water panic.
    By then, we’ll all be sucking air.
    March 8, 2009
    Public Spigot Stays Open for Water Bottlers
    You probably thought there was a serious water shortage in Florida.
    It’s why we’re spending billions to repair and repurify the Everglades, right? It’s why we’re not supposed to run our lawn sprinklers more than once or twice a week.
    But hold on. It turns out there’s a boundless, virtually freesupply of Florida water—though not for residents. The public spigot remains open day and night for Nestlé, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and 19 other corporations that bottle our water and sell it for a huge per-unit profit.
    The stuff is no safer or tastier than most municipal tap water, but lots of us buy it anyway. You know all the brands: Deer Park, Dasani, Zephyrhills, Aquafina, even Publix. Common sense would suggest that a company with a balance sheet like Coca-Cola’s or Pepsi’s ought to pay for the water they take, the same as homeowners and small businesses do.
    Nope. Every year, state water managers allow large bottling firms to siphon nearly two
billion
gallons from fresh springs and aquifers. The fees are laughably puny.
    For example, it cost Nestlé Waters of North America the grand sum of $150 for a permit to remove as much water as it pleases from the Blue Springs in Madison County. Every day, Nestlé pipes about 500,000 gallons, enough to fill 102,000 plastic bottles that are then shipped to stores and supermarkets throughout the Southeast. Even by Florida standards, the scale of this public rip-off is mind-bending.
    Protected by lawmakers, the bottling companies get a free ride—more precisely, a free guzzle of about 5.4 million gallons a day. Up until December, the Department of Environmental Protection kept no data on water-bottling operations and, of course, imposed no regulation.
    Three years ago, House Democrats sought a fee on bottled-water producers, but the bill was quietly drowned by Republicans in the Senate. Vermont and Michigan have already passed such a measure, and Maine is currently considering it.
    Now the issue is floating up again in that dreary annual IQ test otherwise known as the meeting of the Florida Legislature.Gov. Charlie Crist is pushing for a modest 6-cents-per-gallon tax on water taken by commercial bottlers.
    The governor’s office calls it a “severance fee” that would treat water like phosphate, oil, and other natural resources extracted by private companies. Crist predicts the tax would raise $56 million the first year, much-needed funds that could be used for projects like desalinization plants.
    Crist’s fee would also apply to water purchased by bottling companies from municipal supplies—basically tap water. Though bottlers don’t advertise it, some of the water they sell with fancy labels comes from the same treatment tanks as the stuff from your kitchen faucet, only it’s outrageously more expensive.
    Perceptively noting that the budget is in shambles and the state is desperate for revenue, even some Republicans have expressed support for cashing in on the bottled-water craze. In a charming understatement, Sen. Evelyn Lynn of Ormond Beach said “it’s somewhat of a contradiction” for Florida to let bottling firms have all the water they want while curtailing use by homeowners.
    However, Lynn wants to tax water bottles at the point of sale, meaning the money