Free Dance of the Reptiles by Carl Hiaasen Page B

estimates only about 10 percent of Florida’s farms and fewer than half the waste-treatment plants would be affected.
    Still, the outcry from heavy industry and agricultural interests was instant and predictable, as was the agency’s response: another delay.
    Both of Florida’s U.S. senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican George LeMieux, pushed for the EPA to back off, and polluters won a 15-month reprieve.
    Heck, it’s only water. Try not to think of the crud in it as fertilizers, pesticides, and human waste. Embrace more benign terms, like phosphorus and nitrogen. That’s what the industry lobbyists prefer.
    And while they haggle with scientists over how many numeric parts per billion is a tolerable stream of pollution, try not to worry about its impact on the public waters that your children and grandchildren will inherit and rely on.
    It’s not easy if you live along the St. Johns River, the St. Lucie waterway, the Caloosahatchee, or any number of Florida rivers and streams that for generations have been used to transport man-made waste. Nutrient pollutants spawn algae blooms, kill wildlife, choke out native vegetation, and cause nasty health problems for humans.
    Because of toxic freshwater runoff, the state’s southwest coast has experienced caustic red tides that littered the beaches with dead fish and sent coughing tourists scurrying back to their hotel rooms—and then to the airport.
    Among the many harsh lessons of the BP oil spill was that pollution—not regulation—is a more devastating job-killer. Florida’s upper Gulf Coast received a relatively small bombardment of tar balls, but it was enough to cripple tourism and the commercial fishing trade for months. It didn’t help property values, either.
    The argument that it’s morally indefensible to foul naturalwaters is futile against the outsized political clout of the polluters. Whether it’s a phosphate mine, pulp mill, or cane field, Florida’s leaders—Democrats and Republicans—have traditionally been happy to offer our rivers and wetlands as free sewers.
    However, the blowback—that dirty water is endangering the economy—is increasingly difficult to brush aside.
    That didn’t stop Bronson and McCollum from suing the EPA. They’re not doing it for the citizens of Florida; they’re doing it for the polluters.
    And they’re paying for it with your tax dollars, at a time when the state budget is strapped for revenue.
    Try not to think of this as pure crud. Just try.
    September 7, 2012
    Dolphins at the Mercy of the Clueless and the Cruel
    Earlier this summer, in the Gulf waters near the Florida-Alabama border, somebody stabbed a screwdriver into the head of a bottlenose dolphin.
    Sightings of the injured mammal occurred for a couple of days until it turned up dead in Perdido Bay. The crime, which remains unsolved, is notable for more than its extreme cruelty. Years ago it would have been unusual for a human with a weapon in his hand to get near enough to wound a wild dolphin. That was before people began following and illegally feeding the animals, a practice recklessly adopted by a few tour-boat captains in the Panama City area.
    The result was to train communities of dolphins to be not just lazy but dependent on handouts for survival. Instead of teaching their offspring how to hunt schools of baitfish, momma dolphins taught the little ones to wait for boatloads of tourists bearing buckets of chum.
    Dolphins are smart and opportunistic. When the tour boats weren’t around, they started bothering commercial fishermen, who, with their paychecks on the line, didn’t regard the voracious acrobats as fondly as visitors did. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government in recent years has prosecuted three fishermen for attacking dolphins. Guns are the favored method, and in one case a pipe bomb was thrown.
    The screwdriver killing is a first. Experts believe the mortally wounded dolphin came from a