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Thursday, January 15, 2004 7:30PM
LCCC General Meeting
Colleen Castille – Secretary, Florida Department of Community Affairs
Ms Castille will speak to us about land management problems associated with both the Wekiva River basin and the Green Swamp.
Location: The Magnolia Room at the Everett Kelly Convocation Center on the campus of the Lake-Sumter Community College
Thursday, February 19, 2004 7:30PM
LCCC General Meeting
The Council will be hosting a panel discussion on the pros and cons of proposed roads through the Wekiva Basin. The panel participants and moderator will be announced later
Location: The larger room at the Eustis Community Center, 601 Northshore Drive, (entrance on Bay Street)
Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:30AM
LCCC Annual Meeting
In addition the election of new officers and a catered luncheon, the annual meeting will feature a talk by Dr. Peter Pritchard, a world-renown expert on turtles who is based in nearby Orlando.
Location: Trout Lake Nature Center, 520 E CR 44, Eustis
Thursday, April 15, 2004 7:30PM
LCCC General Meeting
Ray Bunton, Director, Division of Land Acquisition, St Johns River Water Management District, will speak to us about the District’s role in local land acquisition for environmental purposes.
Location: The Magnolia Room at the Everett Kelly Convocation Center on the campus of the Lake-Sumter Community College
LCCC Board Meetings are normally held the first Monday of the month i-n the meeting room at the Lake County Water Authority starting at 6:00 PM. All members are invited to attend the board meetings, but the date sometimes changes. Please contact Egor Emery or Lynn Abbey to confirm the date and time.
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Colleen Castille
Secretary, Florida Department of Community Affairs
January 2004 LCCC Speaker
“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”
- Words emblazoned on the desk of Colleen Castille, the Secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs, words by which she lives.
Colleen Castille was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush as the 13th Secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs in January 2003. Before assuming her present post, Secretary Castille served as senior cabinet aide to both Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher and later, Education Commissioner Frank Brogan. Most recently, Secretary Castille worked on behalf of Governor Jeb Bush as his chief cabinet aide, responsible for the Governor’s Cabinet agenda and overseeing the historic restructuring of the Florida Cabinet. Her professional history is representative of the passion and dedication necessary to stimulate leadership within Florida, making Secretary Castille a true vanguard for the Department of Community Affairs and the 16 million people it represents.
Secretary Castille is experienced in education, environment, state and local governmental operations, as well as community planning, have prepared her to manage Florida’s Department of Community Affairs. Her staff is charged with addressing the concerns of local officials and residents, thereby supervising community growth, environmental assessment, disaster planning, community rehabilitation, local and state comprehensive planning, as well as the provision of affordable housing.
The daughter of Air Force parents, Secretary Castille was born Colleen Marguarite Castille on April 9, 1959, in Fukuoka, Japan. Returning to the United States in 1961, Secretary Castille was raised in Miami, Florida, before attending Florida State University in Tallahassee. After receiving her degree in International Affairs, Secretary Castille returned to Miami to begin her political career. It was in 1986 that she worked on behalf of Bob Martinez as a coordinator in his gubernatorial campaign. Following the election, Secretary Castille returned to Tallahassee to immerse herself in Florida’s government.
When not visiting communities throughout the state or addressing the concerns of residents and local officials, Secretary Castille and Jessie Bostick, her husband and Georgia businessman, can be found enjoying the beauty of Florida’s wilderness. An avid kayaker, hiker, and outdoors enthusiast, Secretary Castille cherishes every opportunity to connect with wildlife and enjoy the beauty of Florida’s diverse environment.
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Dr. Peter Pritchard
LCCC Annual Meeting Featured Speaker
Hero of the Planet
- TIME Magazine, March 13, 2000
As the world’s oldest surviving reptiles, turtles aren’t enticing like whales or pandas; what they are is lucky to have Dr. Peter Pritchard for their champion. For nearly 40 years, Dr. Pritchard, working in Disney’s backyard, has striven to invest his beloved, “slightly smiling” creatures with the same iconic stature accorded locally to big-eared mice. His resumé includes degrees from Cambridge University in England and the University of Florida. He is also the founder and director of the Chelonian Research Institute based in Oviedo.
Chelonia is the Latin word for tortoise, a land turtle, but Dr. Pritchard’s interests extend to all 290 known turtle species. Through his efforts, the Arawak Indians of Guyana, SA, learned to tag sea turtles rather than turn them into soup; and, in doing so, preserved both themselves and the turtles from probably extinction.
Dr. Pritchard came to his love of turtles indirectly through the bones that his father, an anatomy professor, kept around the house. He has said that he knows of few animals more elegantly designed than a turtle. A respect for that elegance has fueled a lifelong passion for protecting turtles. His book, “The Encyclopedia of Turtles” is recognized as a standard reference among turtle scholars around the world. “Peter’s an icon – a link between the hard-core turtle scientists and the conservationist community,” said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International in Washington, D.C.
Along his way from a childhood fascination with bones to the Chelonian Institute, Dr. Pritchard realized that many species of land turtles are keystone species in their environments. They are burrowing animals, like alligators, gophers, and bears; and the burrows they excavate for their own use provide homes and refuges for numerous other species (an environmental fact well known to anyone who has read “Gopher Tracks” by LCCC’s own Susan Ryan!).
Saving a turtle saves its burrow which no amount of human conscience can recreate.
In the sea, saving on female turtle can have even more wide-reaching effects. Through his research, Dr. Pritchard has determined that a single female sea turtle may make many nests. The loss of even a few such fertile females can have geometric consequences for the survival of an endangered species like the leatherback.
“Turtles have big, gentle eyes and a slight smile on the face,” says Dr. Pritchard. “This is a good critter.”
Supplemental Information: Tim Padgett for TIME Mag
Ray Bunton
Director, Division of Land Acquisition
St John’s River Water Management District
Ray Bunton is the Director of the Division of Land Acquisition for the Department of Operations and Land Resources within the St. Johns River Water Management District. He is responsible for the purchase of real property within the District’s eighteen counties. This includes coordinating with the Florida Forever Program, local government acquisition programs and the Division of State Lands. He also supervises the appraisal process including the reviews and final value determination, negotiations with landowners and presentation of proposed acquisitions to the District’s Governing Board.
Ray has an extensive background in the real estate field. He joined the District in 1989 as a Land Acquisition Agent and prior to that worked in Putnam County and owned a real estate brokerage firm for twelve years.
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How Federal laws are made. It’s one of those things we all had to learn back in high school: First someone has an idea, then that idea is written up as a bill that wends its way through appropriate committees and, with a little luck, makes it to the floor of both the House and the Senate, usually in somewhat different forms. If the Representatives and Senators both approve the bill, it goes to a joint committee for language reconciliation and then to the President for a final signature, after which it becomes the “Law of the Land.”
End of the legislative process? Not hardly. Major pieces of legislation, like the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 must be interpreted before they can be implemented. It’s one thing to say that air and water should be clean and free from pollutants, but someone has to decide what “clean” means; what, exactly, is a “pollutant;” and where, when, and how often should the cleanliness measurements be taken? And who is responsible for fixing problems when they’re discovered?
These and many, many other definition, measurement, implementation, and enforcement questions are answered in what may be loosely termed “The Rules” which are developed by non-legislative divisions of the federal government, usually cabinet departments like the Environmental Protection Agency, or sub-departments like the US Army Corps of Engineers, most of which are under the control of the executive branch of the Federal Government. The fifty states then scramble, with varying degrees of urgency and success, to bring their laws and practices into line with “The Rules.”
In time-honored tradition, each Chief Executive, our President, appoints people of his choosing to his Cabinet and to literally hundreds of other political patronage positions within the executive branch . These appointees are responsible for implementing “The Rules” inherited from previous administrations. They are also responsible for changing those Rules to better reflect the vision of the President who gave them their jobs.
So, it’s no surprise that “The Rules” surrounding the Clean Air and Water Acts have undergone many revisions since their passage. Some administrations have acted to strengthen what they inherited, others weaken it, but at no time in their thirty-plus year history have these pivotal Acts of environmental policy been as threatened by Executive revisionism as they are right now..
In January 2003, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and US Army Corps of Engineers issued new enforcement guidelines which, if they become “The Rules,” will exclude millions of acres , currently under the protection of and regulation by the Clean Water Act from its provisions. On Labor Day, the current administration proposed changes in the Clean Air Act “Rules” which would exempt 17,000 aging power-generating plants from complying with extant pollution regulations.
Usually, the Lake County Conservation Council focuses its energy on local issues, like whatever happens to be spewing out of the Okahumpka incinerator or the fate of the Wekiva River Basin, but one of our strongest allies in the fight to protect Lake County’s resources has been the Rules of the Clean Air and Water Act. Right now, it’s difficult to predict the impact of the proposed Federal Rule changes on our local concerns, but we can be sure our battles won’t become easier to win.
Fortunately, national action networks have sprung up to defend both Acts. The Clean Water Network is taking the lead to protect the Clean Water Act. Since January, they have worked with members of both houses of Congress in sponsoring legislation which would give the current “Rules” the force of law (meaning they could not be disregarded by future Presidential administrations). Since Labor Day, A similar umbrella organization, Save The Clean Air Act has been forced to lobby for similar protective measures for the Clean Air Act.
Both of these national groups desperately need support. At their websites (http://www.cwa.org for the Clean Water Network and http://www.savethecleanairact.org for Save The Clean Air Act) they offer extensive background information about the proposed rule changes and suggestions for individual action against those proposed changes. The Conservation Council can write to our Federal legislators, asking them to hold the line against revisionism, but the political reality is that a letter from an organization, no matter how carefully written, means less than a single letter from a single voter. You can find form letters in support of initiatives to thwart the proposed rule changes at both websites; or, if you don’t use the Internet, we’ll have copies of these letters at our general meetings over the coming months.
Refining political reality, a form letter from an individual is better than no letter at all, but the most powerful weapon in the current political system is a unique letter from a registered voter. It doesn’t have to be long or fancy. A simple statement of your position: “Dear Representative (or Senator) __________, Please join with the efforts of the Clean Water Network (or Save the Clean Air Act) and stand firm against the Bush Administration’s efforts to weaken Federal environmental protection” plus whatever other thoughts come to your mind is guaranteed to get your legislator’s attention. If enough of us take the time to make our opinions known, then there is a chance that the political creatures who are our legislators will decide that it’s safer to support the Acts as they are currently enforced than to stand back and allow them to be gutted.
These proposed rule changes are not getting consistent attention in newspapers, much less on television. The best sources for information are on the Internet. They include:
Rolling Back Clean Water Act Protections Puts Fish and Game at Risk
Bush Administration Plans to Weaken Mercury Rule for Power Plants
Working to Keep the Promise of the Clean Water Act
Wildlife and Wild Places Under Threat
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Lake County,
FL
