The President of the Florida Senate, Senator Joe Negron (R-Stuart) has run into fierce opposition over his plan to fight green slime from Lake Okeechobee by creating a new reservoir. The proposal would make the new retention area smaller but deeper.
He is now offering a scaled back version with a smaller price tag. The price would be revised from $2.4 billion to $1.5 billion with the state bearing $750 million of the cost. Negron said, “The amendment is just a recognition, again, of what the No. 1 goal of this legislation is. And that is to have additional southern storage to reduce and, hopefully, one day eliminate the discharges,” he said. “That’s the indispensible component of this issue.”
The new reservoir plan goes before the Senate appropriations committee ... but it's still a long shot. The House Speaker and the Governor oppose it as well as Florida’s “Big Sugar” Industry.
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