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Originally published in The Gainesville Sun by Guest Columnist, Jim Carroll on December 7, 2020

Florida’s waterways have been choked by blue-green algae and red tide for years, and are now on life support.

On July 2, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Clean Waterways Act” at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach. Relief for our waterways was on the way, he said.

What a laugh.

For starters, the Clean Waterways Act does nothing to reduce agricultural pollution – far and away the largest contaminator of Florida’s waterways. The law also does virtually nothing to reduce pollution from the state’s next largest waterway defilers, sewage systems and septic tanks.

Relief is most decidedly not on the way.

Agriculture accounts for more than twice as much of the pollution flowing into our waterways as the next two largest pollution sources combined (the aforementioned sewage systems and septic tanks).

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