Water started to be released Tuesday morning southwest from Lake Okeechobee, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seeks to stem a post-hurricane rise in the lake’s water level. The Army Corps had resumed flows Friday from the lake east toward the St. Lucie Estuary but held off on western releases because of flooding from Hurricane Irma that has slowed storm recovery in Southwest Florida.
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay cooked up a unique dish while filming in Florida: Burmese python. Ramsay joined Kyle Penniston of Miami on July 15 to hunt invasive pythons in the Everglades for an upcoming episode of his competitive-cooking television variety show “The F Word with Gordon Ramsay.“
Rep. Francis Rooney is going python hunting. The Naples Republican announced Monday he plans to take part in the South Florida Water Management District’s python elimination program on Aug. 10. The program aims to eliminate the Burmese python, an invasive species, which damages the Everglades ecosystem and its native wildlife.
The irony of the state Constitutional Revision Commission trying to avoid sunshine laws is almost too rich to describe. If allowed to happen, that would be a dark day indeed. But that’s exactly what CRC Chair Carlos Beruff is proposing, even as the commission continues a series of town hall meetings designed to take public input into the process. Beruff, who ran a bare-knuckles campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. Senate race but ultimately crashed when Marco Rubio…
Last year, Floridians endured one of the most active hurricane seasons in more than a decade. During Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew, those impacted received only a taste of what has earned our state the reputation of being a hot spot for tropical weather. Thankfully, the loss of life and damage was extremely minimal and the state’s emergency response went off without a hitch. What you didn’t read following the storms were stories about first responders’ inability to communicate. That’s because…
So far, 2017 has been unkind to proponents of buying land south of Lake Okeechobee. That’s the takeaway from two January Senate committee meetings that have been held on the issue. In the titanic legislative battle pitting landowners, minority residents from the Glades and state and water management district officials against Senate President Joe Negron and environmental groups, the Senate committee looking into the issue has heard testimony largely in favor of sticking the historic Everglades restoration plans first started in…
A recent Weather Channel documentary alleging Lake Okeechobee “pollution” drew a storm of controversy among Florida scientists, farmers – and at least one U.S. Congressman. “Toxic Lake: The Untold Story of Lake Okeechobee,” an online video posted last week, gives what many call an extremely inaccurate and incomplete picture of the environmental circumstances surrounding Lake O. The nearly 11-minute video places much of the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Florida’s sugar industry. In the video, Weather Channel reporter Kait…
