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Economic Club of Florida Tallahassee, Florida
05/28/1998| Carol M. Browner, Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Remarks Prepared for Delivery Economic Club of Florida Tallahassee, Florida May 28, 1998 Thank you Fran. And thanks to the Economic Club of Florida for inviting me to speak today. It is wonderful to be here. And I must say, I'm always delighted to be back home in Florida and with so many friends. I congratulate the Club for its 20 plus years of educating and informing Florida's business, government, and academic communities about the pressing issues of the day. A lot has happened in the life of this club. The end of the Cold War. The start of the Information Age. The largest and longest economic expansion in U.S. history. The near elimination of our 30-year-old deficit. And who would have thought 20 years ago that a baseball team from Florida would win the World Series? During that time, we also have passed some of the nation's toughest environmental and public health protections. And we can say, by any measure, that we have made great progress in cleaning up our environment. Rivers are no longer catching fire. We have prevented billions of pounds of toxic pollution from entering our waterways. And nearly two-thirds of our waters are now safe for swimming and fishing. Our air is cleaner and healthier. Two-thirds of Americans now live in areas that meet EPA's standards for healthful air. In Florida, we also have had our successes: the comeback of Tampa Bay where sea grasses and marine life are on the rebound; the protection and conservation of hundreds of thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive land; and a new recovery plan for the Everglades. All this environmental progress over the past 25 years -- and at the same time our nation's gross domestic product has grown almost 100 percent. Despite what some have said, a healthier environment has not come at the cost of economic progress. In fact, the Clinton/Gore Administration has proven that the two go hand in hand. Today, we have robust economic growth and some of the strongest environmental and public health protections in history. The Clinton Administration's comprehensive plan to restore and protect the Florida Everglades is one of the nation's best examples of the inextricable link between the health of our environment and the health of our economy. The fresh water that is so critical to the survival of the Everglades ecosystem also supports some six million south Florida residents and many thousands of businesses. It sustains a huge, productive agriculture industry. It is essential for the fish, wildlife, and recreational areas that are so important to south Florida's 13 billion-dollar annual tourism economy. And it is absolutely critical to south Florida's quality of life. I, as many of you know, am a native of south Florida. I was raised on its fresh air, fresh water, and its spectacular natural heritage. And I often wonder -- will the fabulous quality of life I enjoyed be there for our children and grandchildren? In the 1960s, when I was growing up in Miami, I lived on 71st Street SW -- right on the edge of the historical Everglades. Today, you can go west another 100 blocks. More than a half century of building canals and levees, massive pumping stations, and manipulating water levels has allowed relentless development to eat away at the natural areas, to suck the water from the heart of our Everglades, to destroy the water-purifying wetlands. And like it or not, South Florida's population will continue to grow. Ten years from now, more than another half million people will be living in the area. That's more people needing water to drink and homes in which to live. The Miami Herald has just published a series on the rapid disappearance of Florida's water -- page after page of true and troubling stories: The loss of 46 percent of the state's wetlands, and half the Everglades. Near Tampa, salt water intruding on fresh water at the rate of five inches a day. New homes equipped with mini water purification plants to filter salt and minerals from groundwater. "Water wars" between counties. Algal blooms from polluted agricultural runoff. We cannot wait a minute longer to act. Some people say it's even too late. To them, I reply in the words of the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the Everglades' most passionate and effective protector: "There is a balance in man... One which has set against his greed and his inertia and his foolishness; his courage, his will, his ability slowly and painfully to learn, and to work together." That is the kind of determined optimism that must continue to drive all of us as we work together to restore our Everglades. The only Everglades. The Clinton Administration plan recognizes that the Everglades' problems come from many corners -- and so, too, must our solutions. It recognizes that if we are to make progress at all -- industry, agriculture, tribes, environmentalists, and every level of government must all participating in the Everglades' survival. With unprecedented federal resources -- 1.5 billion dollars over seven years -- the plan calls for strategic land acquisitions to protect and restore the heart of the Everglades. In the next few weeks, we will be taking another step to complete the historic acquisition of the Talisman property originally announced by Vice President Gore last December. Another step to heal the ailing River of Grass. While we are today, in fact, discussing appropriate trades for Talisman lands that should remain in farming, if we should fail to reach agreement for appropriate trades, we remain committed to purchase all of the Talisman property outright. The Clinton plan expands and accelerates restoration projects and much-needed research. We already are nearing the final stages of our study to replumb the Everglades, a plan that when completed will allow the heart of the Everglades to once again pulse with water. We've taken our first steps. I have stood on a levy outside Everglades National Park and helped break ground on the first major project to redirect water to the Everglades and Florida Bay. We are on our way. We have the will, we have the commitment, we have the technology to reverse the harmful water management practices of the past half century. The Everglades restoration plan is the right approach. We are so convinced of this, that it now serves as a model for a much larger effort -- the President's Clean Water Action Plan. This is our national blueprint to clean up and restore the nation's waters. We have made great progress cleaning up the nation's waters from point sources of pollution -- the pollution that comes from the end of a pipe. But today -- as we have seen in the Everglades, the Applachicola, the Gulf of Mexico -- the biggest source of water pollution is not factories but runoff from cropland, parking lots, construction sites, and other urban and rural areas. This plan for clean water will provide $2.3 billion to address polluted runoff from agriculture and urban areas, as well as the loss of wetlands, and the restoration of our waterways. One-third of our country's waters is still polluted. Micro-organisms such as pfiesteria and cryptosporidium contaminate our waters and threaten our health. In the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi, there is literally a 6,000 mile dead zone -- no shrimp, go grasses, no vegetation. One out of every three freshwater fish species is threatened with extinction. This plan is needed now if we are to fulfill the Clean Water Act's promise of cleaner, healthier, safer water for the nation. The Clean Water Action Plan will give Americans the tools, flexibility, and resources they need to clean up their waters community by community and watershed by watershed. This plan will build on this administration's philosophy of bringing people together to find common-sense, cost-effective solutions, so that together we can take action, and together we can finish the job of cleaning up and restoring our nation's waters. To make progress on clean water -- and all the difficult environmental and public health challenges that face us in the coming century -- we are counting on what has long made this country great -- our creativity, innovation, our ingenuity. We are rewarding those willing to do more than just an adequate job -- to go further, to push the envelope, and to create new technologies and new ways to prevent pollution. And we are forging partnerships -- between industries, governments and communities -- partnerships that get the job done. This is a new generation of environmental and public health protection. And it is what we need to meet one of the greatest challenges in history -- global warming. If we don't meet this challenge, if we don't pass this test, all our efforts to restore the Everglades and provide Americans with clean water will be in vain. More than 2,000 of the world's experts on the global environment have told us that climate change could mean many things, including sea level rise and more severe weather. The oceans will rise, perhaps by several feet over the next century -- swamping many coastal areas. Right here in Florida, the sea is expected to rise 18 to 20 inches by the year 2100. This would flood cities and cropland, and threaten supplies of drinking water with the intrusion of saltwater. It could cost up to $9 billion just to replenish the sand eroded away by the rising seas along Florida's coasts. Nine billion to recreate our beautiful white sand beaches. We've heard many people in the U.S. -- and around the world -- say we can't fight global warming. It will harm our economies. It will be all pain and no gain. But we know the opposite to be true. We know we can meet this challenge in ways that will grow our economy and competitiveness -- not tear them down. Right here in Tallahassee, the city government is doing something to prevent emissions of nearly 15 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. How? By upgrading the light bulbs on city property. And the taxpayers here will save some $325,000 in electricity costs -- each year and every year. That's just one city. The state of Florida will be reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 800 million pounds a year -- and its annual utility costs by $17 million -- when it finishes upgrading the lighting at state facilities. Across the country, we have developed partnerships with more than 5,000 U.S. organizations and businesses -- some of the biggest companies in the country -- to use energy more efficiently. Just in 1997, these partnership programs together prevented the release of more than 60 million tons of carbon dioxide. At the same time, these measures saved businesses and consumers more than $1 billion. Unfortunately, on two fronts, the naysayers are on the march. Some in industry are developing a strategy to discredit the immense body of science and confuse the American people about the very real need for timely, sensible action -- all of this in an effort to preserve the status quo and some might say their profits. On another front, a budget resolution has passed in the Senate that slashes funding for our efforts to address global warming, the Clean Water Action Plan, and most of the nation's other urgent public health and environmental challenges. Some in Congress also would rather try to discredit sound science and scare the public with dire predictions of economic calamity than take responsible, common sense steps to protect public health and the environment. We have seen this with our updated public health clean air standards for soot and smog. We have seen this with tobacco. Time and time again, the claims proved false, the attacks failed -- but the costs have been high: delayed public health and environmental protections, higher costs, and unnecessary political rancor. Now we see it again with global warming. These people are on the wrong path. Addressing the challenge of global warming is not about ratcheting down our economy. It is about investing in new technologies that make our industries more efficient, more profitable -- and cleaner in the process. It is about developing America's technological leadership. If we have proven anything in the last five years of environmental and public health protection, it is this. We have some of the strongest protections in the world, and our economy is soaring. But is our work done? Can we rest? Certainly not. Just last week, smog settled in over much of Florida, creating a state-wide ozone red alert day -- the first ever. We must remain ever-vigilant. This is a time to work together so we can ensure that the world we pass on to our children is safe, healthy, and economically vibrant. We must not rest until the job is finished, until all our children and their children and the generations to come have the opportunity to grow up with water that is safe to drink, air that is clean, and here in Florida, with the Everglades once again pulsing with life. Thank you. |
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