The GOP yard needs to be bulldozed and re-sodded ... by gimleteye

The GOP has stopped, blocked and inhibited at every turn any effort to use state or federal regulation to protect water quality in Florida. Elected Republicans use specious arguments like "federal overreach" and when it is time to loosen state laws, they do things like exchange hard numerical standards for "narrative" ones.

Well it turns out those narrative standards are utterly failing at protecting public health and the environment. Public health, as in severe and permanent neurological diseases.

In DC, the GOP is determined to gut the federal protections of the Clean Water Act.

To get really sick -- perhaps not today but down the road -- you don't have to TOUCH cyanobacteria. All you have to do is BREATHE.

So don't "hold your breath" and vote for Republicans this November. Principled conservatives need to keep saying it like George Will and Bill Kristol have: VOTE DEM.

The GOP yard needs to be bulldozed and re-sodded. Only voters can do that.

https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/local/indian-river-lagoon/health/2018/07/18/blue-green-algae-101-what-your-ought-know/792429002/

Toxic blue-green algae is really cyanobacteria, plus other facts about blooms, microcystin

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Tyler Treadway  |  Treasure Coast Newspapers Updated 17 hours ago

Video: Blue-green algae through the years

The problem dates back to 1923. DACIA JOHNSON/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS

Wochit

Algae blooms from different sources are popping up throughout the Treasure Coast.

The green slime is polluting the St. Lucie River in Martin and St. Lucie counties and Blue Cypress Lake in Indian River County.

Here are some things you should, but may not, know about it:

It's not really algae

Blue-green algae is actually cyanobacteria, naturally occurring microscopic bacteria that, like plants, use photosynthesis to produce food from nutrients and sunlight.

A combination of things can cause normal levels of blue-green algae to explode into a full-tilt bloom: high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and septic tank leakage; long, hot days; and low salinity. 

The normally salty St. Lucie River estuary is susceptible to algae blooms only when there are high freshwater inflows from canals and Lake Okeechobee discharges.

Blooms can harm an ecosystem like the St. Lucie River by killing the tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain, oysters and sea grass. And when the bloom dies, bacteria eating the dead cells suck all the oxygen out of the water, which can cause fish kills.

Toxic threat

A species called Microcystis aeruginosa has been the primary blue-green algae in St. Lucie River blooms. It produces several toxins, including one called microcystin.

Microcystin can cause nausea and vomiting if ingested and rash or hay fever symptoms if touched or inhaled. Drinking water with the toxins can cause long-term liver disease.

Breathing in fumes from blooms with microcystin can cause respiratory problems, particularly in people with asthma or pulmonary disease.

More: American Council on Science & Health: Why algae's 3 toxins are so dangerous

An Ohio State University study found people living in areas with significant blue-green algae blooms containing microcystin are more likely to die from nonalcoholic liver disease than those in areas without the blooms. The study did not conclude blooms cause liver disease, especially not in particular individuals.

More: Ohio State University study links toxic algae blooms, fatal liver disease 

A growing number of scientists think another toxin in the algae, known as BMAA, can trigger diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.

More: Health risks of all blue-green algae toxins unknown, marine biologist says

Concentrations of toxins in blue-green algae are measured in parts per billion. The World Health Organization considers water with up to 1 part per billion safe to drink and more than 10 parts per billion to pose a health threat from recreational contact.

More: Health effects of blue-green algae need study, hospital CEO says

Other algae

Another blue-green algae found in the Indian River Lagoon, lyngbya often looks like masses of brown seaweed floating on the water, especially in the summer.

Lyngbya (LING-bee-yah) can be toxic to fish, plants and other marine creatures and cause a skin irritation known as “swimmer’s itch" in humans.

It grows rapidly in water with high levels of fertilizer and septic runoff, so blooms are a sign of an unhealthy lagoon.

Brown tide

Aureoumbra lagunensis, a true algae (not cyanobacteria) known as "brown tide," is more common in the northern and middle Indian River Lagoon as far south as Sebastian.

The aftermath of a brown tide bloom in mid-March 2016 in the Banana River, an arm of the Indian River Lagoon that stretches from Kennedy Space Center to just north of Melbourne in Brevard County, killed millions of fish.

More: Brevard County fish kill sparked by brown tide

Scientists suspect the bloom absorbed all the nutrients in the river, then died. Bacteria eating the dead cells sucked all the oxygen out of the water, and the fish suffocated.

Originally Published 12:29 p.m. EDT July 18, 2018

Updated 17 hours ago

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Voters, first things first: here is why pollution should be at the top of your list ... by gimleteye

Things are getting real, and real fast, in terms of the impacts of pollution on citizens. It's your life. It's your family. It's your world.

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and largely responsible for global warming. The sunny day flooding that is occurring in low-lying coastal areas will not stop, and it won't stop catastrophic losses to home and business values, until elected leaders start coming to terms with that pollution. If your votes are not for candidates who can honestly say they give a damn about climate change, you are damned.



There are other slow-motion fuses on pollution and toxics that have a direct impact on your life. Your family. Your world.

An oncologist in Brevard County, Dr. Julie Greenwalt, is trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government won't. She got cancer, with no history of the disease in her family. She began noticing that lots of her grade and high school classmates, who had all gone to schools near Patrick Air Force Base, also had contracted cancer at a youthful age.

Down here in Miami, there is a lot of money and attention and care placed by the community on cancer in our lives. There are corporate races and drives to raise money for hospitals. There are t-shirts and bracelets. But how many voters understand that cancer is a political event too and not just a matter of bad luck, or genetics?

Cancer is a political event because money needs to be spent, science needs to be gathered, and information needs to be disclosed to help people make informed decisions about toxics in their lives. Even toxics used by government in service of public health and safety.

How could this clearer?

"I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Dr. Greenwalt said to a Brevard news outlet. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."

Voters shouldn't need cancer to raise awareness about government officials, cover-ups on toxics or climate change denialism. Voters shouldn't need algae in a favorite swimming place that is linked to Alzheimer's.

Voters should elect representatives who do more than platitudes or demagogue about how creating "jobs" is more important than protecting your health, your families, and the world we share. First things, first.

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Laudato Si and all that ... by gimleteye

Next week, Pope Francis will meet with world environmental leaders in the Vatican, to discuss advancing the agenda of protecting the planet from climate change impacts. The Pope issued his encyclical, "Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home", in 2015. A small, powerful constituency -- primarily in the United States and tied to fossil fuel extraction industries -- pushed back, but Pope Francis is determined. The evidence on the ground of climate change is everywhere, notwithstanding the hostility of American conservatives and media machinery like the Murdoch Fox News empire. The Pope is paying attention to sea level rise; from the world's poorest regions, like Bangladesh, to developed nations like the United States and cities like Miami, which -- in addition to being the lowest lying region in a politically influential state -- is also one with the greatest income disparity.

Pope Francis may have read about the recent Republican gubernatorial debate in Florida, a slugfest in which the two top contenders -- Adam Putnam and Ron DeSantis -- focused on how they are respectively more like Trump than their adversary. Trump defines the environment and threats to it as unauthorized access to a golf course he owns. Putnam, as Florida Secretary of Agriculture, has been thoroughly compromised by Big Sugar -- represented by two billionaire families, the Fanjuls and the descendants of Charles Stuart Mott. DeSantis, a Congressman whose campaign Trump endorsed, is a fierce defender of the anti-environmental regulatory jihad.

Then, there is Republican Rick Scott. Florida's term limited governor is challenging Democrat Bill Nelson for US Senate; a race considered critical to Democrats' hope to regain majority control of the Senate. As governor, Scott twiddled his fingers while serial outbreaks of toxic algae spewed from the state's largest fresh water body; outbreaks attributable to a warming climate and the sugar industry -- his big campaign supporters -- and its dominance of water management infrastructure in the state. Some of that algae is being linked through air-borne convection to serious brain disease, like Alzheimer's.

The thread tying together the Republican agenda in Florida and elsewhere is a willingness to dismantle environmental regulations that "drag" on business profits. Scott, for example, drove the final nail of the coffin in the state's growth planning agency. His willingness to abandon environmental enforcement, like wetlands destruction, has unleashed another wave of growth, sprawl, and highways into the Everglades. On another front, Gov. Scott has withheld information on cancer clusters including rare pediatric ones. This dismal course is mirrored by President Trump (eliminating protections for whales and sea turtles) and the empowerment of a radical anti-environmental agenda that masks severe risks to the public. Just one example:

Fearing a “public relations nightmare,” the White House and top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency worked together earlier this year to suppress a federal health study that revealed new evidence about hazardous levels of toxic chemicals in U.S. drinking water.

The study, set to be released by the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS)’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), found that a certain class of chemicals can pose a serious risk to human health at much lower levels than previously thought.

These chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, thyroid diseases, pregnancy complications, and other serious health problems, are present at dangerously high levels in water supplies near chemical plants, military bases, and other sites in multiple states, the study revealed.

Jeb Bush, who did his part as Florida governor to wreck decades of bipartisan consensus on the environment, dismissed Pope Francis' Laudato Si; saying that, in effect, the pope should stick to psalms while good business people took care of the economy. An observer of the Church wrote: "What strikes the Pope as self-evident is that the nature we have attempted to dominate, for the past several centuries, has now turned on us, like Frankenstein’s monster. As he put it in a recent press conference, "God always forgives; human beings sometimes forgive; but when nature is mistreated, she never forgives."

Although these thoughts have yet to register with Florida voters -- who seem to perversely detach their vote for Republicans from the terrible outcomes that Republican officials happily support -- the ones most severely impacted, like in Martin County where Lake Okeechobee is spewing toxic algae onto personal property and treasured waterways, are mobilized. A little further up the Florida Atlantic coast, another group is mobilized too. These are a group of young women who have contracted cancer. They shared neighborhoods, homes and schools near Patrick Air Force Base.

Dr. Julie Greenwalt is a cancer survivor and an oncologist with MD Anderson. She is organizing her community of friends and trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government, won't. ""I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Greenwalt said. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."

Maybe God's plan also includes waking up voters, by putting in front of us such insensitive, manipulative and power-hungry politicians who wrap themselves in the velvet robes of religiosity. They should be banished from our legislatures, but only voters have that choice and, so far -- at least as Florida is concerned -- , they have exercised it very poorly.

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Low voter turnout is unacceptable ... by gimleteye

Sometimes you just want to grab voters by their shirts and shake them: get to the fucking polls! Do your job as citizens!

In Florida's most populous county, the most important news of the day/month/year is not that a Democrat, a woman, a non-Hispanic won election to the county commission, defeating a Republican Hispanic woman who represented the lobbyist class and the development supply chain.

The news that should make EVERY citizen recoil in horror: in Miami-Dade County, an unknown number of immigrant children are being held in detention centers after being ripped from their parents by the Trump administration.

If you are not DISGUSTED, you are not American.

If you are not motivated to get off your ass and VOTE, well then: pathetic you.

Let's be clear: 15 percent of eligible voters participated in yesterday's county commission election in District 5. That means 85 percent did not. Disgraceful.

I look at it another way.

85 percent of district voters failed to connect their responsibility to vote and the tragic consequences of a Republican president, Donald Trump, and a GOP Congress that supports incarcerating children under the supervision of private corporations and hourly employees minting millions from this "service". "NBC News’ Julia Ainsley reports: "The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created 'tent cities' is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings."

What Trump and the GOP Congress are doing and supporting is un-American. If you failed to vote, that makes you complicit. Complicit, as in a crime. Complicit, as in I stood by and watched the world's great democracy sink beneath the tide of history.

By failing to vote, you are a stain on our history, our traditions, and our democracy.

So thank you, voters who did elect Eileen Higgins; the best candidate for District 5 in Florida's most populous county.

But for the non-voters here and throughout the nation, the next time there is an election, pin this fact to your choice to vote or not: one political party in the United States of America stands for ripping immigrant children from their parents because a "chaos" president thinks building a wall at our southern border will solve our immigration problems.

Now watch and listen to the consequences:

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Read this paragraph and let it sink in. By Geniusofdespair

...The problem facing America runs much deeper than Trump’s personal awfulness. One of our two major parties appears to be hopelessly, irredeemably corrupt. And unless that party not only loses this year’s election but begins losing on a regular basis, America as we know it is finished. - Paul Krugman (read the entire column)

Has that sunk in? Do I have to put a big black box around it? My heart is beating rapidly. What he said has taken me to a place I never wanted to go. Why? Because I believe it is true.

Who is Paul Krugman you might ask. Here is his bio in the New York Times:

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as an Op-Ed columnist. He is distinguished professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program and distinguished scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York. In addition, he is professor emeritus of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

In 2008, Mr. Krugman was the sole recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade theory.

Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1977. He has taught at Yale, M.I.T. and Stanford. At M.I.T. he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 27 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal. Mr. Krugman’s current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

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FL Congressman Brian Mast Ventures Where Few Have Gone Before ... by gimleteye

Algae laden drainage canal from Big Sugar lands

To hear Florida Congressman (GOP) Brian Mast lead from the front on the rampant pollution once again coating his district with deadly toxics is refreshing.  Congressman Mast has had enough. Last week he wrote to the US Army Corps of Engineers, urging a halt to all discharges "until the water quality is deemed safe ..."

Here is a brief background. GOP Gov. Rick Scott and the US Army Corps of Engineers are again permitting filthy, algae laden water to puke from Lake Okeechobee onto Florida's badly damaged estuaries and on the shores of property owners and businesses in Martin County on the east coast and Lee County on the west coast.

Yes, we've seen this movie before. It happened in 2013. It happened again in the bizarrely wet winter of 2015/2016. It's pathetic, where the third act involves taxpayers paying $3 billion for an Everglades man-made reservoir that is highly likely to fail at delivering clean water as promised. (Even the Army Corps has stated, as much.)

It will be a decade or longer before this act plays out. Meanwhile it's another season of algae spewing from Lake Okeechobee with toxins that can cause long-term brain damage to people.

The cause of the algae: water management practices that are designed with a primary purpose: keep Big Sugar profits flowing. Of course that is not what the public hears from astro-turf groups in the Everglades Agricultural Area, funded by Big Sugar, or from state propaganda outlets including the sugared-up Sunshine State News.

Mast's statement is interesting for another reason: in the United States, toxics regulation is designed to protect polluters not people. PEOPLE must prove that toxics are damaging to human health (remember, cancer and Big Tobacco?).

Big Sugar was NEVER required to prove its phosphorous pollution was safe for the Everglades.  It took PEOPLE and two decades of federal Clean Water Act litigation to hold government accountable. That's the same Clean Water Act that Trump and his EPA want to dismantle now.

While it may seem common sense -- that government agencies must prove safety of toxics to people -- what Mast wrote is heresy to polluters. In stating the obvious, that government shouldn't be promoting water management district policies that give people Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases, he's pushing against very powerful special interests whose wealth depends on turning other peoples' property and health into sacrifice zones. (Their biggest political assets: Rick Scott who is running for US senate, Adam Putnam who is running for governor, and Matt Caldwell who is running for Agriculture Commissioner.)

Mast's colleagues in the Florida Congressional delegation ought to join in holding government responsible for safety, first. When it comes to toxics, it is about time.

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