Water For Fighting

In this episode, Brett heads to the empire headquarters of Florida’s most prolific environmental professional, Jeff Littlejohn. Jeff is a principal at the National Stormwater Trust, OnSyte Performance, and the Florida Environmental Network (host of the Environmental Permitting Summer School in Marco Island); a Senior Advisor with the Adams and Reese Law Firm; and the Founding Editor of the newly revamped Florida Specifier.

They talk about growing up the son of Florida environmental royalty; how Top Gun and his step-father influenced his decision to attend the U.S. Naval Academy; what brought him back to Florida to work as an engineer; his sometimes controversial tenure at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; and whether he’s the Nicolas Cage of Florida environmental entrepreneurs.

To check out The Florida Specifier – Jeff’s latest endeavor, visit the website here: Floridaspecifier.com

To learn more about what Jeff is doing at the National Stormwater Trust, go here: Nationalstormwater.com

To find out how if Jeff can help you from his chair at the Adams and Reese Law Firm, email him here: J[email protected]

If you’re looking to see how Jeff and his team at OnSyte Performance are innovating the way we think of wastewater management in Florida, go here: www.onsyte.com

If you want to see what’s going on at the 37th Annual Environmental Permitting Summer School, look here: www.floridaenet.com

Please support our sponsors, RES and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

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Welcome to Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida, what the people will make it happen. I’m your host, Brett Cyphers. This week’s discussion is brought to you by Sea and Shoreline and Resource Environmental Solutions.(…) Sea and Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that’s on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at seanshoreline.com. And of course, REZ. REZ is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.(…) Alright, I’m happy to introduce this week’s conveniently timed guest, Jeff Littlejohn. Now, when I met Jeff, he was the Deputy Secretary for Regulatory Programs at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He’s now a principal at, and this is a long list everyone, National Stormwater Trust, a principal at On-Site Performance, Senior Policy Advisor at the Adams and Reese Law Firm, part owner of the Florida Environmental Network, and is now the founder of the Relaunch Florida Specifier. Now, that’s a mouthful, and we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get right to it. Jeff, welcome to Water for Fighting. Thanks a lot, Brett. I’m really excited to be here. I typically move from birth forward with podcast guests, but part of your childhood, and nearly every year since, is intertwined with the events of this week. It’s Environmental Permitting Summer School Week in Marco Island, or as I sometimes refer to it as, the Super Bowl of Environmental Professionals here in Florida. Your father, Chuck Littlejohn, started it all. And now you’re carrying that torch all these years later. Talk about summer school’s inception and what it means to you. It’s really meaningful to me and my whole family, Brett. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be in this position now to kind of carry the torch that my dad lit so many years ago when he started this whole thing with the chamber back in 1986 or 87, I believe. You’re right. It’s been part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. It was always billed as a family-friendly event. A lot of people that have been down there many years, if you’ve gone through a part of your life where you’re having kids, it’s a great place to bring them. And I think a lot of people have taken advantage of that. And we’ve really encouraged that over the years. And I was certainly part of that from the very beginning. I think the very first year would have been 1987 because I was 16.(…) And I remember that summer getting to go down there, and I got to hang out at the pool and the beach. And I never really understood what my dad did. So he was inside doing his thing, and I was just out by the pool. But there were always a lot of kids there, and it was always easy to meet other kids who had parents at the event. And it was really cool. I don’t remember Ryan Matthews early on, I think, in those first couple of years that I went before I went off to college. Because I think he was a lot younger than me, so he might have been in the kiddie pool. But I do remember, I just remember thinking, as Ryan and I have been talking about this lately, how cool it is that he remembers growing up there too as a kid and his dad going. And we’ve had those experiences and kind of bonded over that shared experience. And it’s really meaningful that we get to do it together now, knowing that our fathers were involved from the very beginning. And now we’re doing it together. It’s pretty cool. Yeah, I think that is cool. And myself off and on for the last 21, 22 years have gone. I find myself not on the beach or in the pool because obviously we’re down there to work more. When it comes to you, was there a point when you were younger, what was that point when you started to pay attention to what was going on inside of the building rather than out back? Oh, it wasn’t until I came back later as an environmental professional and went as an attendee. I mean, as a kid, it was just a fun place to go. Nice. Okay. Let’s press the rewind button a bit. Now back to standard operating procedure. You were born in Melbourne here in Florida, but you grew up in a bunch of different places, right? Yeah, that’s right. See, yeah. And I want to talk about not just your parents, but I also want to talk about your step parents a little bit. Because based on your choices of career, it seems like they’ve had a significant impact to you all the way around. First, let’s start with your dad and mom. Where are Chuck and Donna from and how did they get to Florida? Yeah, that’s an interesting story. I ended up calling my mom this week to make sure I had all the details right. She’s going to listen to this, I’m sure, and she’ll fact check me if I’m wrong about something. So my dad’s family is from Western South Carolina, Greenville, Clemson area. And if yes, if you Google it or didn’t know the Little John Coliseum, they’re at Clemson University is a relative. Oh, yeah. But anyway, that must of my family’s from there. But my little John Klan originated from there. But my grandfather moved my dad and his two sisters and my grandmother down to Fort Lauderdale in would have been the fifties for work. He was a World War Two Navy guy and ended up working for Sears as a store manager and opened up a lot of different Sears stores for the company. And one of those brought him to Fort Lauderdale. And that’s where my dad grew up mainly in his kind of middle school, high school years, graduated from high school down there. And and even after he went off to college and I got older and started coming home. And when I visit my parents, I got to go see the house where he spent most of his life down in Fort Lauderdale. It was pretty cool. My mom is from Waco, Texas. She’s from a large Catholic family. She was one of eight siblings. She’s got a very interesting story, too. She’s the oldest. So she tells me that growing up there, she almost felt like she didn’t have much of a childhood. She became a babysitter as far back as she can remember. So I think by the time she got ready to graduate high school and look for what to do next, it was get as far away from Waco as possible and have a different life. So after high school volunteered to go on a U.S.O. tour and she ended up going to Europe and all kinds of places, sing for GIs around around the world. At some point, she met a boy and followed him to Atlanta, Georgia, and he ended up being a roommate of my dad’s.

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He also ended up having a fiance. Oh, yeah. But anyway, this was I forgiven him because it got my mom to meet my dad and they ended up hitting it off. And she might say he was a rebound. I don’t know. I think that’s probably accurate.

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They started dating and she got a job there. And when he graduated, he took her back to Waco to get married in her hometown and home church. And then after that, they went down to Florida. Is your dad Catholic or no? No, it was my mom’s family. OK, they went back to Waco, Texas to get married. At what point you were I think you were. Oh, I wasn’t born yet. Yeah, no, they they just got married and then my dad got a job. This was in the late 60s, maybe 70. And he got a job at Harris Corp. Working in the Apollo program. So that’s what got them to Melbourne. That’s that’s how I ended up being born in Melbourne is he was working at Harris Corp. At the time as an engineer, you know, he just graduated from tech. He was doing kind of that industrial engineering thing. And I learned later from him that that just wasn’t just didn’t it wasn’t interesting to him. I think he thought he wanted to do that, but he didn’t like it for some reason. He ended up going back to college, went to UF to study environmental engineering. And so that’s where you know, you said I moved around a lot. I did. I think I moved two or three times while I was still in diapers. So went from Melbourne to Gainesville. He got his master’s there, I think, either right after he graduated or maybe even right before he was he graduated. He was recruited in the Law and Child Administration to come up to Tallahassee and join. I don’t think it was DER was his first job. I think he he was at a predecessor agency, but he was there right near the very beginning of the establishment of DER with some of those other old timers you’ve heard about Jay Landers and that he worked for Jay Landers. Okay. And so that brought us all up to Tallahassee. So I was still very young boy and up here in Tallahassee. He had the state job. My mom was going to FSU trying to get a get a degree in nursing. That’s kind of I think when the wheels fell off and our little family. Not that those types of things are fortuitous necessarily, but it does bring your stepfather Mac into the story. Sounds like an interesting guy. I know your dad. I do not know Mac, but I think he’s part of why you spent a lot of time moving around and also your attachment to the Navy, right? Yeah, that’s right. So he is very different from my father. He had been a corpsman in Vietnam deployed with the Marines. He was definitely his big guy, tough guy, wore a lot of that experience on his sleeve. He was a Navy guy for sure. So he came back from there and went to FSU on the GI Bill. His family is from the Panhandle. So I think he just FSU was a natural place to go. He was also in the nursing program. So yes, he was a Navy nurse. But I think if you were to try to imagine what that’s like, he was more his personality was a lot closer to the to the door gunner in full metal jacket than to like Gaylord Fokker. All right. That’s a picture. Yeah. Yeah. So a little closer to the door gunner. They both were in the same nursing school.

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Class.(…) And so they knew each other only because they were going to school together, taking classes together. But they were not together until after my my mom and dad had separated and divorced and a couple years later. And they were getting close to graduation. And I think that I made a connection. And it wasn’t long after that that we all got shipped off to San Diego, which was his first duty station after graduating became an officer. And they got married out in San Diego. And I went with them.(…) Well, let’s let’s try to contextualize your life in the middle of that now, because I mean, all that’s like, I love family dramas and and how how where people come from. And it informs how their their minds work a lot. But I want to focus on you a little bit in the midst of that. What were you like as a kid? What activities did you enjoy? I remember not having a lot of close friends. We moved a lot. You know, I was in San Diego as a six or seven or eight year old. We went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, nine, ten, eleven, went to Pensacola, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and went out to Houston, Texas for the rest of high school. And so I never really stayed in one place long enough to have very close friends. I’d meet some people in school or neighbors or whatever. And I end up having some friends. But I think because maybe because of all of the moving around or just my personality, I was kind of a bookish type. Right. I like to read books. I like I had an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64 and an Intellivision and a Betamax. So like I was in the like that’s the that’s your house was the place to be. Oh, in the 80s, we had all the all the latest tech. So but I played a lot of games. I read a lot of books and I don’t think you should cut this out. But I played Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, I was definitely a nerd. Yeah, I think it’s cool. But the academics, I think, was a huge part of how you ended up at Naval Academy. Right. I mean, they don’t let people like me in the Naval Academy.

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Yeah, I didn’t get a Dungeons and Dragons scholarship. No, I also didn’t put that on my application, though. I think that might have been a negative with my dad and my stepdad in the in the Navy and mom always working as a nurse. I was a latchkey kid and I don’t remember a lot of vacations. So yeah, schooling was was always relatively easy for me. I think I probably in a lot of places like my teachers more than I liked most of the kids I was going to school with. I wasn’t terribly outdoorsy. I did play soccer growing up and I was good enough to be kind of a bench warmer on the varsity team and in high school. And I think that helped round me out just enough to maybe be socially acceptable at some point later in high school. And that helped that helped with my application Academy.(…) Did you already know before you went to the Academy what you want to study in college?(…) The path that brought me there, obviously I was experienced or had some exposure to the Navy through my stepdad, of course, but it was really the summer of eighty six when Top Gun came out that I that I got the bug. Right. I just knew I wanted to be a pilot in the Navy and I wanted to have I wanted to be an engineer and and I wanted to relive that movie. Right. I mean, it was just it was a childhood fantasy for a 15 year old at that at that point in your life. I got a chance to go to summer camp for nerds basically at the at the Naval Academy the next year. And that just sealed the deal for me. I got to see the campus and it was a great experience. And but yeah, so I came home that next year going back to high school and immediately applied. I was appointed in eighty eight and then graduated from high school in eighty nine. Yeah. You mentioned the pilot thing and I think I’m not sure any 15 year old or or in that age range that saw Top Gun when we were kids had any other idea and they wanted to be a fighter pilot for the Navy. Your eyes had other ideas in that sense, right? Maybe genetically or maybe just because of all of the studying. But my eyes went bad. I think my sophomore year and not terrible, not not like disqualified from active duty kind of bad, but disqualified from pilot capability. You had to have perfect vision back then and you couldn’t get them your eyes surgically corrected back then. So yeah, I dropped out of the candidacy for for aviation. I think sophomore year. Not that you had to declare that early, but that was just my that was my calling back then is that’s what I wanted to do. And yeah, that changed when my site failed. That’s how I understood the policy to be used that you had a perfect eyesight and it can be corrected. Is that different? Yeah, I think it is. I don’t know when it changed exactly. But I do remember hearing later with a lot of disappointment, of course, that look at these lame kids now they can go in with crappy eyesight and get cut on and they’re they’re fine. They can become Africa. So yeah, it’s a little bit of if you can tell that yeah, there’s a little sour milk there. Definitely.(…) So you can’t be a pilot. So naturally, you choose the job that’s the exact opposite of flying around the air and that’s hanging around underwater. So I was I was a little disappointed. And when I learned from the docks that I couldn’t fly and of course, I knew the Navy had ships and that was the natural backup plan for 75 80% of the kids they’re going on ships and or submarines or something like that. I just didn’t feel like something that it was an exciting to me. And so I was looking around for other things to do and other opportunities. And there was a chance to compete for a spot to go to dive school as a midshipman, you know, as a student at the Academy. So I went the summer between my junior and senior year, I got a spot to go to Panama City Beach, Florida and go to to Navy dive school and it was it was a just a very, very cool experience. It was tough. It was a lot of fun to and I just really liked it. I liked the culture. They never made any top gun movies out of it, you know, about it but but it was a lot of fun. The culture was great. And I just liked the guys and the missions and it called to me from there. So that was what I pursued from that from that point on and a year later when I graduated I got a spot to go to to go back to dive school and become a dive officer. I want to take just a moment to talk about my friends at res. Florida is a treasure trove of natural wonders, but the cost of that treasure is our collective responsibility to restore and protect its ecological and water resources.(…) That’s my friends at res. The nation’s leader in ecological and hydrological restoration are at their best. When extensive Florida based team res provides top notch nature based solutions that uplift Florida’s ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. From water quality to hydrological restoration wetland mitigation to coastal resilience res addresses the complex challenges facing our state with our unique operating model of taking full responsibility for their projects performance over time.(…) Working with both the public and private sectors res is tackling the issues affecting Florida’s water and land resources, the most their long term cost effective and sustainable projects rehabilitate impaired ecosystems, helping them do the work nature intended. Cleansing water sheltering wildlife buffering storms and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Join res on their mission to restore and uplift Florida’s ecosystems. Visit www.res.us to learn more about res and their commitment to creating a resilient future for Florida. Alright, let’s get back to the conversation.(…) And talk a little bit about your jobs your duties in the Navy you were in EOD right that’s an interesting choice of jobs there. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I didn’t tell my mom that that’s what I selected for for maybe years later till it’s too late for her to intervene. So when the in the dive community in the Navy, you can you can choose to go on to additional training and learn how to diffuse military ordinance and going from kind of what you call salvage diving or traditional ships husbandry diving into into explosive ordinance disposal and again, I think it just the challenge and the, you know, being young and believing you’re immortal.(…) It just seemed exciting and I signed up for it and got a spot and went to that training and that led to all kinds of just, you know, fantastic adventures and stories and the training was was great, the opportunity to legally set off explosives, you know, for a job, I mean, just never seem real, most of the that experience, I had to pinch myself because it just it just felt like it’s too much fun to be deserving of that. I got to spend a lot of time overseas. I served in Europe, mainly in that in those in those jobs and got to go into Bosnia and clear land mines and pick up unexploded ordinance and, you know, got to do a lot of diving get to parachute. I mean, it just it was just it was awesome. Yeah, it has to be like super rewarding. Your mom does know that that’s what you do. Yeah, sorry, Mom. I withheld that from you. I survived it. So she doesn’t care anymore. So raise the question.(…) Why leave the Navy? And I think I know the answer. I think one point you said that you left for a girl. Did I get that right? I left for reasons.(…) The the next job that the Navy told me I was going to have was a what I considered a desk job in a in a pretty bleak part of the world in the Middle East. And this was in 2000. And I just thought, well, that’s the last place I want to spend the next three years of my life. Now,(…) you know, not knowing that the next year would become the epicenter of all kinds of activity. But but at that time, that just did not appeal to me. I also I served with a lot of guys who were married, some of whom had children. And I don’t remember a lot of very happy families. Yeah, you know, they and I, you know, and I grew up in a similar lifestyle. My dad didn’t deploy as much as as we were deploying, but moving around all the time and spending time from home. You know, they were very happy. Happy marriages and happy families. And I thought I knew I wanted to have a family. I, you know, I did meet my my future wife back then. And not that I necessarily knew. I mean, she would call me on this if I said, oh, I knew I was going to marry her. I knew that I wanted to have a family one day. And I knew that that that was not going to be pretty if I stayed in the Navy and in the Navy just it wasn’t exciting. Like the next thing for me wasn’t exciting. And I hate the way that sounds, as I say, because it almost sounds like I’m being selfish. Oh, it’s not fun anymore, Jeff. So okay, do something. You know, anyway, I, I also really wanted to become what I call a real engineer. I got an engineering degree from the Academy. But you know, when you’re in the Navy, you’re not, you know, with with few exceptions, you’re not using your degree. I mean, they’re, they’re, you know, English majors that fly airplanes and engineers that just fool around with the fact that they’re not going to be able to do that. I mean, it still looks like it’s an machinesative melody. I mean, so I, I spent my first kicked under like, oh, I you, people don’t even know me. They’re trying to be more that my science engineer it’s that just fool around with explosives and play. I saw myself as an engineer, I wanted to become one and I wanted to go home to Florida.

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But I think the that last one finally got my mom is where I’ll be stuck in in Hillsborough County She’s like, I don’t want to I just don’t want to move anymore And he loved it. I you know the dollar of the world. He said, you know, maybe I like yourself, but it gets tough I mean after after a while So you wind up back in in Florida and you want to do some real engineering was family The reason why you chose to come to Florida for sure. I mean I was born in Florida You know, I can’t say I was raised in Florida like in a traditional sense But my dad had always been in Tallahassee and you know, we didn’t really talk about this much But one of the things that I that I remember very fondly growing up is in the summer times I would always look forward to the chance to go and my dad would get me for a month or six weeks in the summer and And so I would fly from wherever we were living at the time back to Tallahassee And so if there’s any place that really felt like home growing up It was Tallahassee when I left the Navy edit and moved back to Tallahassee But I kind of knew I wanted to be in Florida. My my dad was still in Tallahassee He he married Cindy when I went off to college And so he was there with with Cindy’s daughters Jamie and Tracy. They were all in Tallahassee My mom and stepdad settled in Tampa where I had a brother who was still in high school at the time Uncles and aunts and so I just have a lot of family in Florida and it it felt like the place to go so yeah, when I got out of the Navy, I went back home and Stayed in Tampa for like a week before I just had to get out of there so I had done my resume already and sent it out everywhere and I just got a did a road trip and met with a bunch of engineering firms and I think I picked my firm and Agreed to a you know a start date in about a week and I think I was working like the next week Yeah,(…) and I guess I don’t want to gloss over too much of that because I mean it’s the reason why you came back was to to to do engineering but But I want to talk about your transition from being a working engineer to the that world of policy because your father(…) Famously involved in environmental policy in Florida for many decades. When did you start feeling?

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That need to edge in that direction. It wasn’t for many years later I was doing engineering for for company called isominger and stubs engineering in Palm Beach County You’re very niche a small engineering firm is a great fit for me I don’t think I would have done well going to a big production engineering company because I was a brand new engineer at 30 years Old right? I would have been in the cubbyholes or cubicles with with 22 year olds and and I don’t know that that would have gone Well, but but Charlie isominger. He was my mentor my first job my first boss out of out of the Navy and(…) And he was great. He just threw me right into into project management and and and helped me become a real engineer He was not I shouldn’t say it’s not fair to say he wasn’t a policy guy But I think he was focused on serving the client in engineering But he did encourage me to get involved in professional associations And so I joined the Florida engineering society very early and(…) To my in my career and and then I volunteered on one of the committees there’s a policy committees at Florida engineering society and one of them was an environmental committee called CEQ conservation and environmental quality committee and I and and and so Here’s kind of the the part of the connections that begin to happen. So my dad was a lobbyist at that time. He had left DER left it was(…) doing lobbying for the chamber and for lots of other folks including Florida engineering society and He served the conservation environmental quality committee as a policy and advisor and lobbyist when I joined that committee I got to see my dad as a as a lobbyist and I begin to really understand for the very first time What it meant what policy meant and and I begin to slowly Understand the benefit maybe in client service Knowing what maybe changes are happening at DEP or things like that And I you know I would pick those up at those at those committees and then what it meant When I would see him over Thanksgiving or Christmas is now I could have a conversation with him and it wasn’t just complete Chinese arithmetic coming out of his mouth. I could start to understand what he did started to make more sense Still wasn’t terribly interesting to me though at the time I didn’t want to become a lobbyist or become a policy guy What I wanted to be is a regular engineer and have a family It wasn’t long after I moved to Palm Beach County that the January came, you know came home Our family was from South Florida. We we reconnected down there and started a family down there How did you end up in? Tallahassee eventually was it when you ended up at DP or was it before? No, it was actually before then(…) This would have been 2007 or 8 maybe a year earlier than that but right around then we had a client in North, Florida We were spending some time up in North Florida working on that project was actually showpoint Marina Not too far from here And I think we had had one kid Maybe just had our second kid and we had decided that she went to FSU and and you know I’ve got lots of family in Tallahassee We both decided it seems like at the same time that hey Wouldn’t it be better to raise a family up in Tallahassee than down here in Palm Beach County? No offense to the Palm Beach County folks, but we like the small town feel better and yeah My Charlie Aseminger supported the move and we opened up a small Tallahassee office a one-man Tallahassee office And I was working up here What kind of projects were you working on when you when you had your office up here in Tallahassee? Well show show point Marina was was a big project that occupied a lot of my time I spent my time between design and permitting and and that that project needed a lot of both But I was still working on projects that I’d started in South Florida And I picked up a little bit of work here and there up here But that was if you remember back in that time frame That was when the real estate economy was really starting to slide into the ditch and there weren’t a ton of Development projects up here and so did it you know just kept chipping away at at the work And so at some point you end up at DEP. I spent a little time there We were there at the same time with Herschel Vineyard who recruited you to do that How did that happen? Was it him or was it someone else? Yeah, that’s a that’s a great story You remember that committee I mentioned earlier that conservation committee at FES So we had an annual meeting We Florida Engineering Society had an annual meeting of that committee up here in Tallahassee And people that served on that committee around the state would drive up and and we did that So we could have a face-to-face with with some of the leadership of DEP And so this was the the CEQ meeting in early 2011 I think it would would have been February Herschel Vineyard had been appointed maybe a week earlier And I don’t know if you remember but the transition team I think accepted Most of the resignation letters from most of the senior leadership at DEP So he he basically inherited an agency with not a lot of of the leadership positions filled And so he he came to the committee meeting and kind of introduced himself and described his vision For the agency and made an appeal to those of us who may be interested in in serving May have been because he was talking a bunch of engineers, but he also said I’m looking for some Engineers I want to you know want to do some good work and describe that vision and it called to me So after the meeting was over I I picked up the phone and called my boss and told him what I had Heard and told him that I really liked what I heard I kind of described it and I said hey Would you support me throwing my name in the hat just to you know I might get an interview I might get to meet the guy no chance he’s going to hire me I think I was 39 and had no gray hair And I was sure that he would want a gray haired wiser person than me maybe with with a more even Temperament than me I don’t know I didn’t know what he was looking for but I threw my name in the Hat and got an interview and that’s how I actually met him was it awkward I was there a little bit Later I think it was a year after he started at at DEP was it awkward going into a place where You’re kind of playing that whole turned over apple cart rebuild it back into something that Functioned differently I never thought about it that way Herschel and I have shared lots of those Memories of those early days at DEP and the way the way I think I would characterize it I think The way he would characterize it too I think we both felt like I don’t know why wide-eyed or Kind of deer in the headlights we didn’t know what the rules were neither of us had spent any time in State government I think I think when I interviewed that was my first time in the douglas building I mean I didn’t know anything about DEP and suddenly I’ve got that job and I think Secretary Vineyard kind of felt the same way like wow this okay so this is the restroom you know how does This work you know what what is my day supposed to be over here so I think we I think we we had an Understanding I know he he spent some time with the newly elected governor Scott about his vision Herschel had a vision for what he wanted at the agency in it again that was a vision that Resonated with me he expected us to find ways to reduce unnecessary burdens not not enforcing Environmental laws but finding ways to enforce them more efficiently so that those those burdens could Be lowered focusing more on you know the outcome than the process and those were you know as an engineer All of that stuff I just I ate that up all right let’s pause for a moment to talk about my friends at sea and shoreline as we in florida wonder what the future holds when we face the storm season Ahead sea and shoreline is working to protect our coastline communities against severe storms By installing a variety of green and gray infrastructure solutions to make our cities And counties more resilient these solutions include seagrass restoration mangroves oyster reefs riprap oyster breakwaters and something called a WOD which stands for wave attenuation device By installing their patented WODS sea and shoreline can help protect our communities against sea level rise And storm surges by diffusing wave energy stopping shoreline erosion and even rebuilding shorelines Through sand accretion to learn more about how sea and shoreline can protect your community Visit sea and shoreline.com all right let’s get back to the conversation(…) And I guess maybe that’s why I perhaps attribute that that potential awkwardness is neither one of you were government folks or a lot of those government people that have been around for a bit before then and so you walk in it’s like you have an idea what you want to do is like but you don’t know how to do it I think interestingly I mean that became the subject of depending on the week it seemed like the subject of some controversy for you for Herschel what was your approach because I don’t think it was like you were being intentionally controversial like hey we’re going to do this thing that’s going to make someone upset on a on a given moment what was your mindset going into some of the changes that you specifically were working on at the department well you’re right and your characterization of kind of how we were I think covered sometimes by the media but but our our attitude my attitude I’ll speak for myself I was focused on how to get to answers faster you know yes or no I felt like you shouldn’t have to you know get into an unending back and forth with the agency trying to get to a permit decision so you know I also learned through that process with the difference between something that I could just say by decree and it could happen and then and then things that the lawyers would say oh no that that would take rulemaking so you can’t do that so anyway I did I did stumble around a lot in in that world but one of the things that I learned that I could control I tried to pull on those levers and one of the one of the very earliest ones and I think it may still be policy today is on the request for additional information I said all of the the permit processors you get one and then your second one needs to be signed off by your supervisor and you know by the time we get to the third one I’m asking a division director to sign off on it and and I’m the only one that can improve a fourth RAI and I there were no four RAIs that never happened so I think that sent the clear message that I wanted you know I wanted us to get to to answers faster I wasn’t putting my finger on the scale I never asked anybody to you know say yes more often I just wanted to get them to get to answers another thing that we did is we really looked hard at where we were spending our time and energy and one of one of the areas that I felt like we were really spending our wheels is pursuing what I would just call paperwork violations you know folks that had filled out their annual report incorrectly and we would launch the the salvo at them and send lawyer letters and and drag them through the knot hole and charge them 500 dollars and I thought that that didn’t it just didn’t sit right with me there wasn’t any environmental impact associated with a paperwork violation but we were spending the majority of our time maybe 80 of our enforcement effort was on those types of activities so I said let’s get out in the field and communicate with the folks that we regulate we called it compliance assistance and and that was one of those things that I think became controversial I was convinced I continue to be convinced that that’s a better way to regulate if folks that have questions feel like if they call the regulatory agency and it may result in a bad letter from a lawyer you might not call anymore so you just don’t felt like a cops and robbers type of type of relationship but when we got out in the field kind of put our left our enforcement or inspector hat in the car and just started working with people we found that there was just a lot of confusion and a lot of of lack of knowledge about what was expected of them by us and in that interaction I think we we improved our relationships with the folks that we regulated and and I and and that was one of those things that for some reason you know was controversial the fact that we had less penalties or less fines collected or the the feeling that if you go out in the field and meet with a mom and pop and help them understand what the paperwork requirements were that that’s somehow being too cozy with the regulated I never understood why that was controversial but that was controversial yeah I think it was and and some of that carried over to our work at the northwest water management district I think maybe incorrectly people were correlating the number of fines and maybe those decreasing with a correlative decrease in compliance with the rule of law and I don’t think that was the case I know it wasn’t the case at northwest florida no but I don’t think it was a case of dpi no definitely not and and I really was bothered by that characterization of our mission as if our job was to penalize people and and I think I even was allowed once to write an op-ed I think it was my one and only op-ed when I was when I was a dv but I I remember writing an article about equating that to and the you know I’ve never been a teacher but in the in the profession of education you certainly wouldn’t reward teachers on how many f’s you hand out right it’s you’re going to measure your performance as a teacher by how successful your students were and and I felt like that a regulated community that had a close working relationship with the regulator that worked together on solving issues that worked together to avoid violations that would that would create better outcomes for the environment and I and I think that that that bears out and even as I was leaving we started to see some changing in the discussion at epa for example they they began a compliance assistance program not not long after I left and I was happy to see that I think it is a better way to work with the regulator and the regulated other they’re just so few I mean this is not the 1970s with the rivers on fire and people intentionally piping their wastewater out into the environment this is a day and age where the vast vast majority of people and companies want to do everything they can to maintain compliance but we have a very complicated set of environmental regulations and not everybody has a full environmental staff or can avoid or can can afford a high-priced environmental attorney or consultant to help them and and in those cases they sometimes just make mistakes because they don’t know yeah and when did you leave the department I forget which which year it was I think I was already gone by then almost certainly it was 2014 so I joined right before the session in 2011 so it would have been March of 2011 and I left in June of 2014 was that how it was always going to go that you want to go in and get a get a taste for it have a you know maybe have a little fun possibly and then move on or was your expectation I’m gonna do this for for a long time if I enjoy it I didn’t really have a set expectation on how long I would stay I mean I told secretary vineyard you you can count on me for at least two years I’m not going to just come in and leave in six months I think I had convinced my family and myself that I could gut it out for at least four years I didn’t quite make four years but it was definitely hard I mean we as much fun as we had it was constant activity a lot of travel a lot of time away from the house and the family and at that time I think my kids when I when I left the ep I think my kids were five no seven five and three so we’re very they were all very young and my wife was at home with them and I was just away a lot it was it was hard on the family there there was another component to my decision as well you know the governor was coming up for reelection I think secretary vineyard I’m not sure that anybody in the public knew at the time but I think he’d pretty much let everybody know he was done at the end of the term so there wasn’t much time left for his term either my dad had been telling me for a year or so that he he was really ready to retire and I wanted an opportunity to work with him I never worked with him I mean I’ve worked around him I’ve been I’ve seen him work but I as a kid I got to see him in the summers but I never really had a time where I could spend a lot of time with him professionally and and I wanted to have that experience before he retired and so you know he and I talked at some point after session and and we just decided this was a good time did you enjoy that I really did I think I had about a year before he hung up his spurs and and really wrapped everything up his partner Doug Mann was still he worked for several years after that they were fantastic mentors I I’d never intended to become a lobbyist I’m not sure that I could even say I ever really became a lobbyist and certainly not in the way that my dad or Doug Mann were right but it was very cool to have a chance to work at little john man and associates that have been around for at that time maybe 30 years and and learned that trade from them before before he left uh and then you know it was just it was a great experience well lobbying or not you’re easily the most prolific person I can think of when it comes to the number of businesses side hustles full hustles I don’t even know what you call them that you’ve gotten yourself involved in I ran through some of them I think most of them in the intro did I miss any other secret businesses you own or or jobs that you have not that I’m willing to disclose in this format there you go no that was everything so individually you know I think they’re all interesting um some of the things that you’re working on I think are really cool is there a theme to the the collection of them or is it kind of like that Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage thing you don’t know how to say no to a job I have I’m really blessed with the opportunity to do things that I want to do and that I like to do and I rarely work long on things that I don’t enjoy and and I and I realize it’s a luxury I mean I try even when I’m tired or I feel like I’ve got too much on my plate I I try to remember I reflect that a I chose this you know this is my fault there’s nobody else who said yes but but these are things that I am passionate about and I do truly enjoy and it helps me stay energized which is why I think I am doing as much as I’m doing is I’m having a lot of fun I’m working with people that I really respect and I really enjoy working with and I really enjoy the issues and so I’m there isn’t a thing I’m working on right now that I could happily say bye to so I so I don’t I just I just work for you just add on to it well I mean let’s I mean let’s run through at least some if not I want to at least a little bit on all of them because I think they’re all worth talking about first what’s the National Stormwater Trust and what makes it special I really love this company so National Stormwater Trust as the name implies it it’s a stormwater focus company I spent a lot of my time working on this issue I think a lot of people that would listen to this realize that stormwater is a hot topic in Florida and we we’ve recognized that and I think a lot of people in our industry recognize that we’re not going to be able to develop Florida the way we have the last 40 years and so we really do need new tools in the toolbox National Stormwater Trust brought a pretty cool new tool to the toolbox in Florida that we call smart ponds and so we we we got a smart pond technology approved by the water management districts and DEP and we’re starting to add that type of technology into stormwater facilities here in Florida I think our claim to fame where we really showed up on the map is when we approached DOT in 2019 and won a big contract to upgrade DOT’s existing ponds into smart ponds and people are still surprised when I tell them that we have that that opportunity so so now we lease ponds from DOT take those pond permits to the water management districts ask for the upgrade to a smart pond get all of that entitled in a permit and in doing so we are we’re also generating water quality credits that we have arranged a way to transfer those credits to third parties through it through an ERP and we were the first folks to figure out how to make that happen and I think it’s it’s a pretty cool new tool it gives us an opportunity to upgrade a big regional DOT pond and make it more efficient and generate regional water quality benefits and then and then transfer some of those to folks in the watershed and it’s been fun working on on that because it’s kind of groundbreaking and on the cutting edge of I think where we’re going and I’m happy to see that provision is built into the new generation of stormwater regulations and so that I think that’s a an endorsement in some way by by DEP that this is a this is a way that we can really cost effectively lower nutrient loading and when a watershed through through programs and projects like this it is but I think for me personally it’s the the next one that captures the imagination for me more and not just because I work with you a little bit on it and that’s on-site performance talk about that a little because it was one of the the the great white whales of springs and we had a huge number of springs in in north florida you know in northwest florida as well and dealing with septic tanks dealing with wastewater utilities in sparsely populated areas is a real challenge in terms of making it worth the cost talk about on-site little and how it’s kind of changing the way that people think about that I I do love what we’re doing at on-site and if if I could go back to my DEP experience for just a second one thing that I was certain I never wanted to get involved with when I was a DEP is anything to do with septic tanks I just I knew and this is a like you said a white whale really tough issues right you’re talking about folks that you know have a septic tank they’re legally entitled to it now we find out because we’ve allowed too many in a given area we’re creating problems and now we we as a government are asking them to come back and change and that that’s really tough and this company is a wastewater technology company that really is just marrying existing types of technologies in a new and unique way and bringing it to the marketplace in a in a really novel way and and I’ve enjoyed becoming a part of it so the short version of what it is and how it works and why it’s cool is the company has miniaturized a wastewater treatment plant into a form factor that can be used or sized for a single family home and and so this is not an advanced septic tank this is a miniaturized wastewater plant and it is it is controlled in in real time remotely through a connection the internet in a SCADA system by a licensed operator just like a large wastewater plant when we piloted the technology with DEP we were talking with them about the opportunity to permit a system of these individual units in the hundreds or thousands potentially by virtue of their network connectivity and their central control and their and in a common ownership arrangement you know could you DEP permit or issue a permit to a city municipal utility and under that permit allow them to retrofit hundreds or thousands of septic tanks under a single permit and DEP love the idea because I think they recognize this this puts a professional operator in charge of that of the compliance of that unit in a in a wastewater permit that gives DEP a lot of enforceability to ensure that the the effluent limits are met and all the conditions are met and they were very comfortable issuing permits to wastewater operators you know to municipal wastewater utilities they were struggling with how to deal with you know homeowner owned equipment like septic tanks so so the the model just fit and we’ve enjoyed some success getting that model out in the field places like the city of Apopka or Lake County it’s been a lot of fun. One of my own misconceptions going in learning more about what you were up to is the comparison to the typical modern but we call it you know the advanced on-site septic unit and it sounds for someone like myself who is going into it as layman doesn’t understand the distinction between the two but there’s a huge difference and I think you talk a little bit about that in terms of there’s a centralized brain are there any other distinctions and the treatment itself is also better right? I don’t think it would be fair to all of the equipment technology companies the technology companies in the space to say that we are head and shoulders higher performing. I think there are some units out there that have done very well in testing comparing test numbers to our results I think there are some that are that are pretty close but I think the main difference is we are continuously monitoring and operating the equipment and every month sampling the effluent and taking the the grab samples to a lab and having it tested by the lab and turning those lab results to dp so it just it has to do with how much testing we’re doing and how much verification of that performance. It’s one thing to go through a testing program achieve high marks in a controlled environment and then go deploy those units out in the field not knowing how the homeowners are going to actually use them and what we learned as we’ve deployed units in the city of Apopka homeowners are amazingly varied.(…) How much wastewater they generate even you know from home to home certainly and even at the same home from from week to week or month to month and and being able to have a computer on board that’s seeing all of that and making those changes in real time and then having a real human professional operator that oversees it we’re making changes to the to the plant recipe and process all the time. Okay job number three is your senior advisor at the abs and reese law firm with a mutual friend of ours and former secretary your former boss and mine Herschel Vineyard. How did the two of you get hooked up? That’s also a little a little bit of a story well first I greatly respect Herschel Vineyard and I’ve always enjoyed every opportunity to work with him for him. My job number three before I joined Adams and Reese was I was still at little John Mann and associates only there was no Doug Mann anymore and there were no associates it was it was just me and I haven’t ever been a 100% full-time lobbyist but I had a handful of clients there including the Florida Engineering Society and the Florida Ports Council those are fantastic clients and I want to continue to help them but I was a solo practitioner in a lobbying firm of one and also trying to do other things too and administrative and kind of you know paperwork burden associated with owning a lobbying company is it’s not it’s not insignificant so when Herschel joined Adams and Reese he let me know that they could find a home for me over there even with my kind of unusual work situation(…) they were not afraid of me having you know other things going on at that firm and and that was really different I’d been approached by a couple of other firms over the years about maybe joining them or bringing my book into another lobbying firm but there was never it wasn’t just that there wasn’t an appreciation for what I was doing there was really a kind of an intolerance for this idea that I can do all these other things on the side but but at Adams and Reese they’ve got a very entrepreneurial mindset and I think the head of the government relations practice group at the time happened to be a professional engineer that owned an engineering firm as well as working at Adams and Reese and that really appealed to me and of course working for Herschel appealed to me so yeah I closed the books on Little John Mann and essentially just moved everything over to Adams and Reese and I’m doing the same thing there as I was at Little John Mann. Okay now now I’m gonna move on to job number four where you decided to dive straight into the multimedia news business by buying the Florida Specifier pretty well known it’s been around for I think like four decades maybe even more it’s a you know an industry paper for environmental professionals here in Florida and now you’re trying to work with a a crack young team of folks to work with you to expand its reach expanded utility as well what on earth were you thinking when you said let’s do this? The way you described that or asked that question I’m not sure yeah I’m not sure I really did fully think about it. I certainly didn’t need more on my plate but I will confess that Ryan Matthews and I who are both partnered on at Florida Environmental Network where we produced the summer school with that company you know we’ve been thinking over the years over the last few years about how you know is there anything else we can do to grow the summer school and the answer as long as we remain in Marco Island is kind of no you know we’re really kind of busting at the seams down there there there’s no way that I’m you know want to continue to grow that thing to the point where we’d have to move it to Orlando or something like that so you know how do you how do you do more fun stuff like that and you know I didn’t want to do a second class in Marco that didn’t make any sense but we we were trying to you know we were brainstorming and this we learned from the the then current publisher of the specifier that there was an opportunity to to get involved in that paper talked to Ryan and we thought sure we could we could maybe maybe there’s some synergy here with the types of issues that we talk about at Marco and the people that were that are involved in communicating those issues and topics through panels and panelists and speakers and and get them involved in you know providing content and essentially doing kind of what we’re doing in Marco but have that content delivered every other month to your mailbox and that was kind of the kernel of the idea still not sure it’s still not sure sure yeah I think it reinvented itself every few days or so right but it seems like kind of how I’ve seen it in you know my the small part that I play which by the way listeners if you’re not enjoying the sound of my voice you’re going to be in real trouble because in addition to taking over the the print edition the editorial board of the paper which I’m a part of with you and Ryan it’s going to do another podcast but it’s going to be more direct issue related news related and and so I think the maybe the idea is as we add things to it that you want to see as you said before you can only have environmental permitting summer school once a year or it’s too much but can you do these other bits where you kind of have summer school all year round where people have these things that they can turn to for Florida professionals to know about what’s going on and what people are up to yeah I think that’s exactly right Brad I’m I’m very excited about what we could the potential to provide content like this have you really because you’re you’re the the one with the talent and the and the great voice for this format you’re you if you can get really compelling content by talking to people and and through conversation you know whether it’s one-on-one or in groups like we have down at Marco I think people really appreciate the when you’re when you’re done with all the powerpoint presentations and you’re just having a conversation yeah right you’ve got experts maybe they come from different different parts of our industry and they all have their expertise they all have an opinion and through those conversations I think we we can really unpack some some issues and and I think just think that’s very valuable I think that’s one of the reasons people like to go down to Marco is they want to have that time to meet with people and and it’s not just the networking I think it’s really just that unscripted those unstructured conversations in the hallway and things that happen after again after the presentations are over and you’re just in a discussion mode with the panel and if we can create place where people can go online and get that kind of content we can push that kind of content out to people I think I think I think people would appreciate that I know I would yeah I agree let’s move to the the kind of closing out you and I you know spend a fair amount of time I think it’s important though and I think that it’s your fault because you have like 7500 jobs but let’s get to that final race to the end what professional accomplishment are you most proud of so far it definitely has to be my time at DEP I thoroughly enjoyed my job as a consulting engineer at the time I was in it I had no idea that kind of my horizon was limited by where by where I was and when I went to DEP just the opportunity to work the issues I was working and meet the people that I had a chance to meet there and then work with those kind of high quality people there and and the people we got to to work with in that role there’s just no substitution for that kind of experience there would be no other way to go from where I was 10 years ago to where I am now without that job and again the the the issues and the people and the the kind of the mind expanding experience that that was it’s hard to imagine a better place in my career than that and I looking back I mean it was definitely hard but it was also it was hard work but it was a lot of fun I like the positive outlook there and so I focus in on that for for a second for the next question which is of that time there as fruitful as it was was there was there something that you left on the table that you wished you’d either done differently while you were there and had the choice or that if you’d been given a little bit more time that you would have done a little differently oh that’s a hard one I I think that jobs like that at least the way the way I experienced it it felt like we were always dealing with issues coming from every direction and and it almost felt a little bit like crisis management all the time as opposed to being able to set the team you want create a very high functioning cohesive team we were we were trying to do that in the face of a lot of just kind of constant distraction I learned a lot about leadership at that job I mean I had spent some time in the navy but I never had an opportunity in any prior role to to work with and serve and also supervise that many people and I I think back to the those deer in the headlights moments when I felt overwhelmed and I had a I had a mentor at DEP I haven’t mentioned his name yet I want to make sure I do Mike Halpin I don’t know if you remember Mike I do he was such a great man and just a wonderful resource really a fantastic and intuitive leader and he he was the difference between me kind of struggling that whole time and not having any fun and not getting nearly as much done as I wanted to and and getting I think we got a lot done could we have done more absolutely maybe I put a should have put Mike in my spot and I could have I could have done something different you know I wanted to get the 404 assumption program done while we were there I don’t think we had an EPA that had any interest in that but we took a run at that I mean there were a few things that I I certainly might have done differently knowing kind of how things went but no I don’t really have any regrets and and I don’t I don’t think I I don’t think I had any left in me by the time I left so I’m gonna say no that’s a fair answer okay it’s a long way of saying that but it’s fair answer are you optimistic about the future of the environment in Florida I am no I am I I know that humans are very innovative and as long as you don’t prevent them from thinking creatively and working the problem I think we can do a lot of great things and I and I think this is a what Florida has it’s really great I mean I know we have environmental issues here but we also have a very enabling environment for problem solving and I think we’re going to solve a lot of our a lot of our own problems I mean if humans can solve the great horse manure crisis of 1893 I think we can we can manage to find a way to clean up our water(…) is there anything that keeps you up at night about the environment that you don’t know I mean engineers are great at solving problems is there something out there that you’re I don’t know how we’re gonna do that yeah I’m afraid about the way we talk to each other nowadays I’m afraid of that in the public discourse we are not being effective I don’t like inefficient or ineffective policies that are being driven by either ideology or being driven by a public perception rather than than reality right I so I do hope that we can find ways to communicate with each other more effectively I don’t think you know hot topics in the media are the best way to do problem solving I think we have to roll our sleeves up if we’re going to actually solve problems we have to actually talk to each other in a in a meaningful and productive way and I think that’s that’s hard what advice would you give to a young person who’s thinking about entering or has just entered the environmental field that’s another good one never stop learning I think you should get out on the skinny part of the limb and try new things I don’t again I think we’ve got to innovate our way through a lot of the issues we have and I think that humans are really good at that and and you should encourage young people in your organizations wherever you are to to think outside of the box maybe talk to people that you disagree with but really talk to them don’t just disagree with them if people are interested in learning more about how you can help them which of your three odd thousand emails is the best one for folks to reach I’ll put it I’ll put you know all your info on the episode notes but which one do you prefer probably Adams and Reese is the easiest place to get to me uh Jeff dot little john at at arlaw.com there you have it and I’ll put it out there for you folks as well Jeff little john thanks so much for coming on the show I’ve enjoyed it Brett thank you well that’s it for this episode thanks for listening to Water for Fighting this podcast has been brought to you by Res and Cn Shoreline don’t forget to check the episode notes to visit their websites and learn more about how they can help you if you’re enjoying the show please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you use and don’t forget to leave a five star rating and review you can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, probably even twitter at FL WaterPod and you can reach me directly at flwaterpod at gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and or what you’d like to know more about production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios thanks to Carl Sworn for making the best of what he had to work with and to Dave Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance a very special thank you goes out to Bow Spring from the Bow Spring Band for giving permission to use his music for the podcast the song is called “Doing Work for Free” and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold join me next time for another amazing conversation with someone who has helped shape water and environmental policy in the Sunshine State until then keep your whiskey close and water closer

In this episode, Brett gets a visit from his friend and President of Sea & Shoreline – Carter Henne. They talk about growing up outdoors and on the water in Polk County; how his desire to create sustainable marine ecosystems drew him first to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and then Sea & Shoreline founder Jim Anderson; the things we’ve been getting wrong about seagrass restoration in the past and how that’s changed; and a look at some of the work he’s doing to now to protect coastlines and natural systems that extend far beyond just seagrasses.

On a lighter note, they also discuss the importance of securing boat’s motor before reaching the middle of a lake as well as the world of competitive underwater bicycle racing (yes, that’s a real thing).  If you want to hear Carter’s alligator stories, you’ll have to ask about those in person.

To check out the things Carter and the good folks at Sea & Shoreline to make Florida better, visit their website here: https://seaandshoreline.com

To check out some stories about the great work Sea & Shoreline are doing to restore manatee habitat in the Crystal River, go here: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/full-circle/saving-our-springs-a-day-with-the-underwater-gardeners-at-sea-and-shoreline and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HscircgSUFU and here: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/gma3/video/rehabilitation-efforts-protect-dying-groups-manatees-98730763 and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwANZ9GOI2Y and here: https://www.chronicleonline.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-l-state-officials-tour-waterways-under-restoration/article_bd29bf3b-bcca-5cf4-9900-c35af44b7d40.html

Want to see Carter’s team feed manatees? Go here: drive.google.com/file/d/1QmpruTsRWwX8TsejsopOgj0-Hhf6EH5C/view

You can also see what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are doing to restore vital habitat here: https://floridadep.gov/dear/water-quality-restoration/content/impaired-waters-tmdls-and-basin-management-action-plans

What is the Southwest Florida Water Management District doing to help this habitat?  Plenty – so check out their partnering efforts here: https://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/projects/swim/crystal-river-kings-bay

 Please support this episode’s sponsor, RES.

 RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

[Music]

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Welcome to Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida, where the people make it happen. I’m your host, Brett Seifers.

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This episode of Water for Fighting is brought to you by Resource Environmental Solutions. Res is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

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Alright, I think you’re all going to like this week’s guest a lot, Carter Henney. He’s a Polk County guy who I describe as a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Steve Irwin. He’s a marine biologist with an entrepreneurial spirit. He spent some time in his early professional life working at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Carter’s now the president of Sea and Shoreline, and I’m psyched he agreed to give me some time while he was in town.

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Carter, it’s great to see you here in Tallahassee. Welcome, sir. Hey, happy to be here. Thank you. So, you were born in Winterhaven, and we have a lot of Polk coming through this, I’m using my quote fingers here, studio. But your story, like many people’s, like my family’s as well, did not begin in Polk County necessarily. Talk to me about your parents a little bit. They’re from Indiana, or at least they met in Indiana? That’s right, and it’s not surprising that you’d have people from Polk. It’s pretty much the center of the universe, according to us. Yeah, so family, my parents met at Indiana University. My dad was going there for optometry school at the time, and my mom was going through law school. And, you know, just like every good college romance, they met in the laundromat and struck it up, and that was it. I want to go back just a little bit further, just because it’s an interesting story, and I’ll tell people as well, it’s like, it’s a long winding tale for you. But I liken you kind of to a mix I was thinking about the other day, I was like, how to describe Carter Henning. I think it’s a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Steve Irwin. And we’ll get to some of that later. But I think some of that personality comes probably from your grandfather. He was a professional baseball player and a bunch of other things as well. Tell me about him a little bit. Yeah, that’s right. And that’s actually how my dad was born and grew up in Polk County. My grandpa was hired on as the first faculty member of Polk State College, Polk Community College at the time, now Polk State College. He went on. So my dad grew up in Polk County, went to Winter Haven High School, went to the same high schools as my dad. My dad actually went to Polk State College or Community College at the time, then to USF. And then I guess there was only two or three optometry schools in the country at the time. And one of those was at Indiana University. And that’s how he ended up there. And then my mom, she’s from, I think it’s Kindleville. My little sister’s Kindle. And then she grew up basketball fans, whole family, big Bobby Knight folks. And it just was a natural fit for her to go to Indiana. Yeah. And it’s funny. It’s like obviously, you know, basketball is life up there. But you and I talked not long ago about yourself. And you played some sports, but basketball wasn’t one of them. Is that sacrilege? Like was your mom heartbroken?

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Yeah, no, she wasn’t heartbroken because my older brother, he was good at it. So he played basketball. I played some sports, obviously, baseball, basketball growing up. And we would go, my grandpa would take us up to the University of Kentucky where he played for basketball camp. I remember just long, long, long road trips going up to Kentucky with him in the fast lane, everyone going around us in Atlanta traffic.

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But we got to play with the players and because of his relationships at the time, I think Calipari was the coach there. And just got to see the behind the scenes aspect of it, which was really nice. Nice. But let’s get to you a little bit. You mentioned a little bit of sports, but I want to talk about what you were like as a kid. Beyond the sports, you had to spend a lot of time outdoors. So I’m the middle child. My mom or my parents had three children and she affectionately refers to us as the three black sheep of the family. I’d say I’d probably take most of that honor. Yeah, she wanted us outside. So I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood. I was the middle child of our own family. And all the other neighborhood kids were, I don’t know, probably two to 10 years older than us and or older than me. And so it was just general goofing off. There was a cul-de-sac. And at the time in central Florida, not every lot was developed. Some had trees on it and there was some swamps behind it and some retention areas. And we go back in and tree forts and just general little kid stuff. It was on a big hill. Surprisingly, it was on the edge of Eagle Ridge. And so we’d get skateboards or bicycles or roller blades and figure out how fast we could go and what we could break and just general messing around. At some point, though, I think you’d mentioned I think you were about maybe 11 or 12. You said you moved to live on a lake itself. Which one was that? Yeah, that was Lake Daisy. So that was awesome. So growing up on a neighborhood off the lake was fun. My dad would take us down fishing to the local boat ramps. But then it was in your backyard and you could do it. And then that’s when it became something that I not only liked to do, but I could do it whenever I wanted to. And I could get good at it. And so I was just constantly in the water. Started out with a John boat. Had a John boat with a motor for about three days and or see me three hours and the tiller handles PSA. If you put a motor on a boat, make sure it’s all the screws are tightened down so it hangs on to the transom.(…) But yeah, so sank the motor and I was back down to Ores. So now it’s like I’ll skip I’ll skip board real quick for that. It’s like, do you the folks that you work with now, you all spend a lot of time on boats. Did they have to double check when when you’re in charge of a boat that you use draft motor on? Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve been known to mess one up. Right. So speaking of water, speaking of fishing, speaking of being on the boat, you actually started you say the first fishing club ever. And it was in Florida or is it beyond that? So going back to sports,(…) I always our entire family is incredibly competitive at weird things. And I’ve got that competitive gene. All my friends were going to play football in high school. And I said, well, I’ve never played football before. All the cool kids are doing it. There’s cheerleaders. Let’s let’s do it. So bad idea. I remember being on special teams of defensive end and special teams. I really just defended the water bottle mostly. But the special teams was just a kick in the pants. And I remember going south. This is ridiculous. You better pick a sport that you’re good at. And the only thing I was good at was fishing. And so I went to the I think it was Dean of Students at the time and a couple of buddies. And we started the first high school fishing team or club in the country at the time, which was just a ton of fun. We would go out anyone from canoes kayaks to full scale bass boats. We had cheerleaders the way the fish in the Dean of Students would boil peanuts and drink Bushlight on the edge of the bank. And it was just really, really good. And it went from just our high school to the following year. We got other schools in Polk County and then regional and then statewide. And then some of the folks actually that were original members went on to professional bass fish. And some started teams in colleges. And now it is where it is today, which is really cool to see. Yeah. I mean, we talked about that a little bit on the phone. I was most astounded by how much the purse was of this fishing competition. You said some guys wanted to be pros. Like being pro at fishing happens to be pretty lucrative if you’re any good at it, right? Yeah, it’s crazy.(…) You’re in high stakes. I mean, it’s just man versus beast out there. And it’s just it’s awesome. What was that? What was that first, like three and a half million dollars? Two point eight. Two point eight. Two point eight.(…) So you can read more about it on it’s been all over Barstool Sports. It’s been over all kinds of different magazines lately and a couple lawsuits filed out of it. But we’ll see.

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So speaking of your time on the wire, this is in high school, even a little bit before, did that have an impact on your mindset? Was there something going on at the time where you’re like, hey, this may be something that I want to do for a living, not just the fishing itself, but in terms of how you saw the natural world around you? Yeah, that’s a great question. So I’ve always been a little bit quirky and always excited about the outdoors and really curious and trying to understand it. And when you’re fishing, fishing isn’t hard. It’s just recognizing patterns and then recognizing with enough conviction that you’re changing what you’re doing. So it’s just really repetitive. And growing up in Polk County, the mantra was we had 100 lakes within city limits and you would see lakes in some sort of development or natural or whatever the case may be. And you got to see these repetitious cycles of clean water and habitat being overly developed and poorly managed. And so you get to see all these different cycles. And that was always really curious to me. I knew I wanted to work outside. I didn’t know what that looked like. But just the beauty of what we do and working in the environment is there’s really no right answers. There’s less wrong answers and then just figuring out teasing away the gray. And that’s what I love to do. Is that what took you to USF then? You studied biology at USF, right? Right. Was that something that fed you into that or was it still, hey, biology gives me some options in terms of just being in a scientific field? Yeah, so my dad’s an optometrist.(…) There was a heavy campaign pressure to become an optometrist. There’s nothing wrong with the sport or the profession. I’m sorry, dad. It just wasn’t for me. And I knew that in my heart of hearts, but I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be outside. And one of the smartest things I’ve ever done was a ridiculously stupid thing is just sit in my dorm room by myself, probably with a couple libations. And just like every other college student trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. And what I did was I started with a blank sheet of paper and started at the top. And I kind of wrote what my attributes and what I was good at and what I was passionate about. And then on the next line, I would try to write jobs that I thought had those qualities. And then I just kept going down into a triangle, upside down triangle, lower and lower.(…) And I got to the end and became a professional fisherman or a farmer. I really didn’t have a conviction on whether I wanted to be one or the other. So I just googled fish farming and just fell in love with aquaculture and farming fish. And I knew it would take me outside. I knew it would feed my creativity side. I knew it would from my intellectual side. And it was a growing industry and I thought I could make a mark at it. And so through school, I didn’t specialize in marine bio or botany or environmental. It was kind of, hey, if I can’t get this aquaculture thing going, then I can fall back and become an optometrist. And really that helped me out in my career because I took a lot of intensive chemistry, biochem and a lot of those courses. And also I was like, I’ll tell people, if you see Carter in person somewhere, I want to get into too much for now. But I asked a question because I’m talking about your time in college. And I talked to one of your colleagues before you and I sat down to talk. And they said, hey, ask Carter about the alligator story. And I said to you on the phone, hey Carter, tell me about the alligator story because I want to talk about that. And you said which one?(…) And so folks out there, if you get a chance to, I don’t know what the statute of limitations is for alligators situations. But if you see them, make sure you ask Carter about to tell you about at least one of them.

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So back to the story of large, you’re finishing up at USF. You’ve decided the kind of person you want to be professionally.(…) And then it took you to, was that Fish and Wildlife right out of college? So it was actually during college. My second junior year, I was reading the high school news or the college newspaper. I saw that there was a scuba diving tournament that was coming up. So I participated in this scuba Olympics tournament. And there I met a lady that was, her name’s Maki. So shout out to Maki. That was the microbiologist at FWC down in St. Pete. She introduced me, just kind of telling her what I wanted to do, like big picture. And she says, oh, my roommate is the intern coordinator for FWC’s fish hatchery down in Port Manta T. I’ll introduce you. And I just kind of sleep at night. I was just beside myself, excited, doing all the research. Lo and behold,(…) I ended up being an intern there. And then they hired me shortly thereafter. Had a job coming out of college, making just all kinds of contacts from around the state and globe. And it was just incredible experience to learn aquaculture from just true masters at it. Yeah, I like how you tried to gloss over that competitive scuba diving as though I had no idea this was a thing. I thought competitive scuba diving was trying to find sunken treasure or something like that. Tell me, because you won an event, right?(…) Tell me about what competitive scuba diving is and the competition that you were involved in directly.

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Yeah, that’s so I have no idea why the spirit moved me on this. It was a one and done. It was the gold medalist for underwater bicycle racing. So you got that on the mantle. So the underwater scuba diving was Olympics was swim across the pool and not deviate. You’d swim through hula hoops. And so you had to get your buoyancy right. There was a blow up balloons and lift something. And then there was a tow, where you had tow an unconscious diver. And then what I was in was the underwater bicycle racing.

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True story throughout my life is if everybody’s playing one game, I’ll figure out some other game. And so I was watching these guys, guys and girls trying to ride their bikes underwater. And they can’t get any traction because there’s no, there’s no buoyancy. And so I stood up out of the water on top of the bicycle, got traction. And by the time anyone figured out what was going on, I was three quarters of the way through the race.(…) Yes. So you described several events, all the ones that you didn’t win that I can see the the real application of it. What’s the real world application of the bicycle race underwater? It gives you something to talk about on podcast.

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Yeah, I say congratulations to you, sir.

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So, how long did you spend at Fish and Wildlife? A little over two and a half, three years. I think the entrepreneurial spirit, which you always had, I think it was you meeting someone in particular that you’re still involved with to this day, wasn’t it? That’s right. Working outside and had a little bucket full of fish, feeding redfish, and I just love it. I still love it. It was such a cool job. This older gentleman in a semi truck pulls up and waves me over and I thought he got stuck or something. I didn’t know what was going on. He rolled down his window and he said, “You’re the only one I ever see running around out here. Do you want a job?” I said, “How much you paying?”

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And he told me it was a little more than I was making a state. I said, “Well, what do you do? What do you want me to do?” And he goes, “We grow seagrass.” And I said, “Holy cow, this could be really, really fun. Get to travel around.” I knew I wanted to work out in the outdoors and I knew I wanted to make a difference. I thought by farming fish, you take pressure off wild caught fish and jumped on it. I’m a kid. I love boats. I love barges. I love equipment. I love habitat and being outside. The job kind of entailed melding all of those skill sets together and just never looked back. How wide was that? Because you were still in the Port Manatee area with Fish and Wildlife at the time? Correct.

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Was Jim working beyond that area? I know he’s in, would Apollo Beach or Ruskin? Right. Ruskin. So he was leasing out some sod farms from Tico at the time, growing sod, and doing some seagrass experiments at the time. So Port Manatee had great salt water and he was trying to figure out, or I don’t want to say perfected, but he was well on his way to becoming…no one else was growing seagrasses at the time. He just dug a hole out in the middle of his sod farm, pumped seawater into it, and started growing seagrasses. So he was a great mentor. There is no box even to stay within the lines. So he’s just a super creative guy and able to tie just so many different facets together. It’s just really cool to work with him. He was like a literal farmer though by trade before. Beyond just the sod and experimenting with the seagrass, it’s kind of interesting. You talked about your checklist and I don’t think that’s by accident that you mix farmer and fish together. So tell me about the evolution of…it’s no accident that you had farming and fish and then you end up with Jim Anderson. But tell me about the evolution of that technology. How involved were you with him? How long was he at it when you joined the scene? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it would have been…I joined the scene probably in 2012 and he started in the mid-90s. And we’re not even close. I think we’re pioneers of it and some of the world leaders. We’ve been growing corn as a civilization thousands of years and yet it’s still so risky that the Fed subsidized crop insurance for it. And we’re not there with corn and we’re darn sure not there with native plants and seagrasses. I think it’s just incredible.

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Our organization is spending so much time trying to hone in on our craft and just apply it from a multidimensional vector. Whether that’s water quality or wave attenuation or light. There’s so many different variables out there. It’d take many people, many lifetimes to really hone it down. And Jim, he’s got a bug for it. He can’t help himself. He’s got a tinker with it and it’s really cool. Were you kind of the educated salesman under that scenario when you were teaming up with him? Well first, let me start at the beginning.(…) You mentioned the technology that he was working with in terms of breeding seagrass to be better and better. Talk about those activities, what he was up to, the breed of seagrasses to make them feel better. Can you talk about the evolution of that and what he’s using? And then talk about how you work to move that forward into wider use.(…) All plants act a little different, just like anything. There’s short people, there’s tall people, there’s wide people, there’s skinny people. Some of that is learned over time, but some of that’s in the different genetics.

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Jim kind of took a Mendel’s Peas approach to it, kind of basic and rudimentary. But then we started learning that, man, some of these plants grow in different conditions. We’re always trying to further the science, trying to de-risk this occupation and looking for plants that grow in poor water quality conditions, bringing them back to the nursery, and then breed them, cross-breed them, whatever. With other plants, based on whatever conditions they are, I’m really excited we’re dealing with native plants, right? We’re not doing anything crazy here. I’m really excited to see where that goes. It started mostly in the freshwater side. It’s moving more and more into the saltwater side. It makes a difference. One example is about four years ago. We did a job and we planted seagrass in, I think it was about 68 to 72 parts per thousand salinity.

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We guaranteed our work and planting in saltwater that’s double the strength of the ocean.

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We bombed. Man, we crashed. We did not do good at all, but we warranty our work. We went back to the drawing board. What the heck happened? We’re not going to do the same thing again. We started looking in that watershed and we found plants that were growing under those conditions. We brought those back to the nursery, grew those plants out, then planted them back out at scale and had great survival rate. So it’s just one example. I’ll give you dozens of others. Let’s stick with that for a minute because I read plenty of articles and columns. I’ve even heard people in person here in Tallahassee say the survival rate of seagrass planting, whether it’s for mitigation purposes or restoration purposes or otherwise, is exceedingly low. I think I was hearing something like in the 30s. I’m not sure if I remember anything. But the work that you and Jim have done to that point,(…) you’re getting much better numbers than that, right? 100 percent. Not 100 percent survival, but much better numbers. So our survival rates are really dependent on the project. So what we try not to do is we are a scientific organization. Yes, we love working with scientific partners. That’s not our goal. Our goal is not to produce white paper research, even though we’ve been involved with many papers. Our goal is to get plants where they’re currently not. And in doing so is you’ve got to figure out why the plant is not there to begin with. It makes no sense to plant seagrass where it’s not there already without knowing why it’s not there. It could be a recruitment issue. It could be a wave issue, light overgrazing, sediment issue, agronomy. It could be a million different things. But if you’re not addressing the root causes of why it’s not there, you’re not going to have any success. Just going beyond the narrative that it’s all one thing or, you know, it’s a game of net sums. One factor that kills seagrasses and it’s not one factor that’s going to get seagrasses back. There are no silver bullets when it comes to biology. If anyone tells you there is, hold on to your wallet. But that’s one of the struggles that folks in government have. I spent 20 years looking after taxpayer dollars, spending taxpayer dollars. And in the end, I think people are OK with money being spent, but they want to know that they got what they paid for. And the danger there is spending millions of dollars on something that doesn’t make it. But you’re saying a lot of folks are just looking at it the wrong way in terms of how they employ those things. You were dealing with underlying causes before doing it? Yeah. So, scene-shoarline, fast forward now, scene-shoarline started off in 2014.

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We’re primarily doing, I call it 90 percent of our business with seagrass mitigation. Mitigation seagrass planting is much different results on hold than restoration. And the difference is it has to be there. So it causes practitioners to look at those underlying causes. Right. The problem with it, though, is it’s expensive in a lot of cases. And so now fast forward to today, we’re 90 percent restoration and 10 percent mitigation is because we’ve solely focused on bringing costs down by looking at what factors and what projects are good to where you can fix minimal, you know, small, small dollar factors to get seagrasses back. And so when we’re talking about restoration or planting seagrasses as a whole, it’s just looking at those underlying causes and figuring out how bad do you want seagrasses there? You know, what what links are you going to go? And if seagrasses, if you’re planting projects like that project that described with really high salinities, how do you have those reasonable assurances that you that you are going to be successful? And that’s the fun part of the job. What do you what do you attribute the more recent advancements or recent attention toward this type of restoration? It’s not something you know, and you and I have been around each other for about a year, even during that period of time, it seems like that people are thinking about this type of restoration as though it were second nature, whereas before it may not have been. And what do you attribute the kind of increasing success, whether it’s you or anyone else, like the increased success in terms of getting folks to pay attention to what you do? It’s just a business decision at the end of the day. In mitigation, you’re not in control of whether some entity is going to impact seagrasses in some way. So the projects being so spread out, it’s just a high dollar amount. And so what we did is we made a conscious decision, hey, we’re going to lower our costs and we’re going to make up for those net margins by doing a lot of restoration projects and doing them very, very well. And by lowering the cost, I remember doing seagrass mitigation projects for half a million dollars an acre. And you’re not going to fix anything from a rest restorative impact. You just can’t make that return on investment work. But sub 100,000, sub 50, some 30, you know, depending on what the project is, well, now you’re talking about single digit return on investments between three to five years and sooner than a lot of cases. And that is why that business, conscious business decision is why we started to just do more restoration.

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Talk about the improvements in how you deployed the seagrass. I’ve seen your operation in person where you’re dealing with substrate that shouldn’t be there in advance. You’re using interesting new tools. Talk about that kind of technology, not just we’ve talked about what Jim Anderson did in terms of the right plant and bending it to the right place. Talk about like some of that technology as well in terms of like how you plant it, the secret sauce, at least for seagrass, if you can. First and foremost, every project is different. They all have different parameters around them. We’ve had a lot of success just focusing on the agronomy. Tell me what agronomy is first. Yeah.(…) So soil sciences. So getting your soil right, you know, if you get the ground right, it becomes a lot, lot easier. And at the end of the day, seagrass is still a plant. It’s a cool plant. It’s hard to grow. And it’s really important. Provides a lot of ecosystem services. But at the end of the day, we shouldn’t overcomplicate it. It needs nutrients. It needs substrate. And it needs light. That’s the three things. And so looking at the substrate as a parameter that we can control, whether that’s bringing the dredging or vacuum dredging sediments out, in a lot of cases, in soft sediment, manatees, turtles, ducks, deer, cows, people trampling, you name it, they’ll break the rhizome or the roots of the plant and cause it to wither away. And if in the case of manatees, if it’s really, really soft ground, well, the manatee just pulls the entire plant out instead of the leaves breaking off and then sprouting new leaves. And so just really paying attention to that mindset of get the ground right and make sure everything else is fine. And it all comes together. Is that a part of the days when there were worse success rates? Because people didn’t deal with those underlying conditions to make sure that they were right. So when you planted, manatee didn’t just come by and pull it straight back out of the… Yeah, exactly. And so we’ve been really working hard on figuring out what soil compaction levels are necessary for seagrass or submerged aquatic vegetation as a whole. So it doesn’t rip out and it doesn’t create anoxic conditions. In a lot of these areas, they’re not fun areas to work in. They’re upland cut canals. They’re canals that get just inundated after every red tide. They get a fish kill in there, creates anoxic conditions, low dissolved oxygen, creates fish kills, creates conditions where you get these cyanobacteria blooms and it builds up over time.

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And without restoration, those problematic areas become regional problematic areas because, hey, nutrients, but mostly the cyanobacteria blooms, they drift out of there and they colonize new areas. And it just spreads like wildfire, like a cancer. Yeah. Tell me some more about that because you’re doing some work in and around the Indian River Lagoon area. What’s your take on the thing that’s the biggest problem? Is it things like that, that what you just described? How do you view the way forward there beyond the type of work that’s the direct work that you do? Is it those places, those tributaries that lead to lagoon? How do you see it? Yeah. The Indian River Lagoon does not have a 256 mile long problem. It has 256 one mile long problems. Thinking about it from a segmented standpoint is really important. For instance, Sebastian Inlet, just north of Sebastian Inlet. Beautiful water quality. Seagrass isn’t above a quarter inch tall. You can’t blame it on water quality. And there’s a couple other spots like that in the Indian River Lagoon. But in other areas of the Indian River Lagoon, you can’t see your toes at the beach. It’s just really poor water quality. What’s really interesting is talking about it from a, traditionally, it was a chicken or the egg. I think of it as a chicken and the egg issue. So I think without some sort of habitat or seagrass is out there, no matter how many water quality projects you do, the seagrass just doesn’t magically pop back. If it did, it would already be in Sebastian Inlet. However, if you don’t do those water quality projects, then seagrasses aren’t going to come back on their own regardless. And so we spent a considerable amount of effort and time and working with partners on the Indian River Lagoon. We had teammates out there planting today around Tucker Cove and Fort Pierce and setting up seagrass nurseries over there(…) to better identify where recruitment is the rate limiting step for seagrasses out there. And we can’t control the spigot coming out of Lake Okeechobee as seeing shoreline. But we darn sure can find and identify areas that are ready to be restored and start working on them. Like the old adage, when’s the best time to plant a tree? 50 years ago. Right. Right. So what are we waiting for? Let’s go. Talk a little bit about that in the meantime, because some people are like, great, the plant a tree method of great, we just need 50 years. But you’re not waiting for that. There are folks that are doing work now. There’s been legislation in the past, House Bill 1379 is the most clear example of efforts to restore Indian River Lagoon and other places as well in terms of water quality. But in the meantime, you all have actually done some work in terms of from your own nurseries and feeding manatees. Right. I know there was trouble with getting enough biomass to manatees in some of these areas. Were you all involved in some of that work? Yeah, it was actually a ton of fun. If you had told me in college, we’d be feeding manatees. I’d tell you crazy. But, you know, all these systems interact with each other. So when a lot of the manatees or a couple of the manatees that were cold stressed from the Indian River Lagoon got transported to Homosassa State Park. And we have a flagship project going on there between Crystal River and Homosassa. We now have so much grass growing that there’s just abundant and the manatees we would bring plant or leaves to Homosassa State Park, feed manatees and set up a schedule. And it was really cool to give back and participate in such a way that it was just a feather in the cap, I guess. It was fun. Sure. I think in terms of and I saw the place myself when you talk about the right conditions for the SAVs to flourish, you got that, though, in that Homosassa Springs area. Right. In terms of you, you get the substrate right. You get the plant right. You get the conditions right. And you plant and you get better off in the end than when you when you start. Like it’ll propagate itself after a while. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that’s part of what we’re trying to achieve is a snowball effect. So no matter how low we can reduce our costs for planting seagrasses, if it doesn’t do its thing on its own, it’s never going to be cost. So Crystal River, for example, they set out to do 92 acres of upland cut canals just completing that now over a period of seven years.

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And right before their 100 year anniversary as a city. Now the grass is spread to over about 350, 350, 400 acres of 800 acre bay. And that’s awesome. That’s what you want. You want to double, triple, quadruple the investment. And if you design the project, right. That’s what’s supposed to do. Yeah. No, that’s and that’s at least in my mind when I put on my government agency hat is like, hey, what am I getting for the expenditure? And you tell me I’m going to keep getting a positive impact. And at least it certainly keeps the conversation going the right way. Let me get away from seagrass and SAVs for a bit and manatee and fish and inverbit habitat into what you are doing to help protect. I’ll call it human habitat in terms of wads. Tell me what a wad is and tell me how the work you’re doing there is helping to protect communities and for. Yeah. So it’s funny in an effort to protect and grow more seagrasses, we’ve gotten ourselves into all kinds of predicaments. So in the beginning, we were just a seagrass planting company and then we realized we had to do more sediment amendments. And so now we do tons and tons of high area, low volume dredging. Well, in some areas, they don’t need dredging for seagrass recruitment. They’ll need wave attenuation protection. So one of the things that we’re really excited about is working with wave attenuation devices, creating longshore or offshore breakwaters, planting seagrasses or incorporating some natural habitat behind it and spacing it out at a distance to where boats and can still pull up to the sandbar and then providing that green, gray engineering with nature, whatever you want to call it, whatever the buzzword of the year is, providing that clean infrastructure to protect, to A, increase sediment behind them. So protect, get more sand back and then protect, wave it from hitting the shore all while having sea turtles or terrapins, everything fish, everything moves, passes through them, but you still get that offshore breakwater. I’m excited about it. I think it’s probably, it’s coming up as beach renourishment projects become trickier and trickier from a sediment acquisition standpoint. I don’t know that we’re going to be able to bulkhead the entire state of Florida off. Right. And then I don’t think it’s the solution everywhere, but I think it’s a big solution in a lot of areas that the state of Florida and the world’s changing and it’s moving faster and faster. And what we did in the past isn’t going to be necessarily the roadmap for the future. I’m not saying that we should throw out the entire playbook, but we need to start really thinking about new technologies, new platforms that are going to protect us and then still have some semblance of habitat and recreation. So we’re really excited about them. What is a good example of one of those kind of success stories where maybe you used the wads where you got some of that sand accretion because I look, I saw a lot of places. We have a lot of coast in Northwest Florida where I’ve dealt with where you’re losing significant amount of, I’ll call it real estate. It’s not for sale, but actual land that human and land animal habitat that’s disappearing. Is there a place where you’ve done work where you’re starting to really start to see some of those successes?

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Yeah. A couple areas that I can think of is one Simmons Park in South Tampa Bay.(…) One is Sunken Island. Sunken Island was a bird rookery that every time the beach nesting birds would lay their eggs on the beach, another ship would come in and all the eggs would wash off. Where’s Sunken Island? Oh, sorry, Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay as well. And then right now there’s one being put in actually for a seagrass mitigation at the Skyway Pier or Skyway Bridge right there in the mouth of Tampa Bay. Got a couple proposed in all around the state and throughout the Southeast right now. It’s a new emerging technology that’s gone through all the peer review literature and wave modeling and all that. So if you want to see one, please just let us know and reach out to us. We’d be happy to show you around. Yeah, the cool thing about them is that they’ve got a relatively small footprint with the ground, so you don’t have to have all the sloping you need for a traditional riprap. So the seagrass mitigation or impact, potential impact is a lot less. So that’s what turned us on to them.

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Yeah, and I’ll definitely put your contact stuff. We’ll put the website, all that in the episode notes. I’ve seen some of it firsthand, but I’m looking forward to seeing the living shoreline, the barriers, the wave attenuation. I want to see that in person. I haven’t had a chance yet, so I’m looking forward to that. What’s the professional accomplishment? It may be philosophical, maybe an actual project, but what professional accomplishment are you most proud of? By far and away, it is going from a staff of three to around 100 in a short amount of time, less than 10 years. I love hiring people, and I know as a business owner, you do more with less, and we certainly do that. But when we hire, it means that we’ve got the biology right, we’ve got a clear roadmap, and we’ve got a pipeline to continue that out. And we are lean and mean and bootstrap this thing since the beginning to 100 people now. And so every time we take a hire very serious, we want to hire super confident people,(…) really top notch people, and just feels good that you’re on the right track. I could talk all kinds of projects, but hiring is it for me. I like it. What, if anything, keeps you up at night in terms of Florida’s environment? Is there something out there that you’re like, gosh, I’m not sure how we’re going to tackle this one? You know, Florida’s environment is kind of the tail of two cities. I think that most people in Polk County don’t know what a gopher tortoise is, and they never will. And it’s not great. We’re developing at such a rapid pace. On the flip side of that, there’s plenty of conservation land, never enough. We would love to have more. I’m terrified that if folks at an early age don’t appreciate the natural resources, they won’t, when it comes time to purposefully tax themselves for restoration or conservation. They won’t, because they have no background or no history into it. But on the other hand, I think water quality is going to work itself out. I think there’s so much glaring need for it that there’s going to be more emphasis on public-private partnerships, on creative funding, on whatever that mechanism is.

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It’s going to come along. And when private sector, the public sector, and the NGOs, and the community and public all get around trying to solve this mission, which it seems like this governor’s spent an incredible amount of time, energy, and effort and money on water quality environment, I think we’re marching in the right direction on that. But yeah, it’s probably not going to be a whole lot of gophers. Yeah, I mean, I guess you answered two questions. One, because the other question is, are you optimistic about the future of the environment floor? Sounds like you’re both. So I think that’s, you know, a lot of folks that are similar to being in your shoes, which is like, hey, there’s some real challenges. Obviously, Govertors is a huge one, especially where you and I grew up, but certainly beyond. It’s like, but are you really optimistic about that? The funding speaks for itself, right? But are you optimistic about how things look 10, 20 years from now? Yeah, it just moved, right? Like old Florida, you know, I grew up in Polk County when the citrus industry was still around. There’s no relative citrus industry now. And it’s just different. There are, are there a bunch of clean lakes in Central Florida? Yeah. Are there a couple of dirty lakes? Yeah. And that could be said throughout the state. What’s that book? Elaine Remembered. They talk about chasing the fog. Florida’s started out changing a long time ago, and it’s going to continue to change. If the residents aren’t enjoying Florida’s beauty, you’re not going to drag me out of the state kicking or screaming. I love Florida. I was born here. I’m a Florida guy. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just moved. What advice would you give to young people, young Carter Henny, that’s looking at or thinking about going into whether it be public service in the environmental sphere or the private sector? What do you tell them? Go. Do it. I can’t tell you how many times I tell people what I do. And they say, Oh, I wanted to be a marine biologist, but found out name your answer.(…) And that’s fine, right? I think more people don’t become it or follow their dreams is they, they just don’t get those internships. They don’t apply themselves. They don’t go and try to do it and figure out what they want to do. And so they settle into the path of least resistance. So if you want to do something, go do it. Good answer. Any good place to finish? I think Carter Henny. Thanks so much for being on the show, man. Thank you.

(…)

All right. Carter has left the building. One thing that I forgot to ask him that I usually ask my guests was how people can find out more about what he’s up to and how folks can reach them if they want to learn more about sea and trolling. Of course, you can always go to their website that’s sea and shoreline.com.(…) And as luck would have it in Carter’s case, he and his team will be down in Marco Island for the Florida Environmental Networks permitting summer school. That’s next week. So if you want to find out in person how sea and shoreline can help improve water quality while making shorelines more resilient or you just want to hear some really cool alligator stories, be sure to stop by their booth. That’s going to be right across from the registration desk down there.

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Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks for listening to Water for Fighting. This podcast has been brought to you by Res and Sea and Shoreline. Don’t forget to check the episode notes to visit their websites and learn more about how they can help you. If you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you use. And don’t forget to leave a five star rating and review. You can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, probably even Twitter at FL WaterPod. And you can reach me directly at FL WaterPod at gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and or what you’d like to know more about.(…) Production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thanks to Carl Sworn for making the best of what he had to work with and to Dave Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. A very special thank you goes out to Bow Spring from the Bow Spring Band for giving permission to use his music for the podcast. The song is called “Doing Work for Free” and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold.

(…)

Join me next time for another amazing conversation with someone who has helped shape water and environmental policy in the Sunshine State. Until then, keep your whiskey close and your water closer.

In this episode, Brett gets to spend some time with the former top attorney for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Matt Leopold.  In addition to his time at the EPA, Matt served as General Counsel at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; handled environmental issues for Governor Jeb Bush; and was an environmental attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.  

They talk about growing up in West-Central Florida; split(?) allegiances between his undergrad and law schools; his consequential tenures as the top environmental lawyer on the state and national stages; what happened in the Sackett v. EPA case; and what the Supreme Court’s decision means for regulators and the regulated moving forward.

If you want to get in touch with Matt, email him here: [email protected]

To check out the Hunton, Andrews, Kurth Law Firm, go to their website here: https://www.huntonak.com/en/

To read the Sackett v. EPA decision, go here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf

To get a quick view of how the United States Department of Justice’s case against BP turned out in relation to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, follow this link: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bp-exploration-and-production-inc-agrees-plead-guilty-felony-manslaughter-environmental

Please support our sponsors, RES and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms.  You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us. 

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

In this episode, Brett travels to Pensacola for a conversation with the prolific Executive Director of the relatively new Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program – Matt Posner. They talk about growing up in Pensacola; the value of the education and experiences he gained on the way to his current role; the importance of fostering partnerships as the head of a small agency; and the exciting new programs his team is spearheading that could breathe new life into the region’s estuaries.

See for yourself how things are going at the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program

Check out the remarkably well done 2023 State of the Bays webpage.

See how the Estuary Program’s work relates to that of the Northwest Florida Water Management District,

You can also review the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s interactive map showing the water quality challenges in the Pensacola and Perdido bays area and beyond.

Please support our sponsors, RES and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

In this episode, Brett is joined by lobbyist, consultant, policy expert, and former Secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection – Jon Steverson. They talk about growing up the son of an accountant and an English teacher; working for three different governors; his unintentionally controversial tenure as the DEP Secretary; and his approach to working in the legislative process. And of course, no conversation with Jon is complete without a mention of the Williams/Steverson Family Reunion and the Bonifay Rodeo.

Learn more about Jon’s work as Senior Policy Advisor with the Holland & Knight law firm and how he can help you.

See what all the fuss about the Bonifay Rodeo is.

Jon talks about his time with the Florida Association of Counties. See what those good folks are up to.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s State Parks website

Please support our partners, RES and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

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In this episode, Brett travels to Palatka to sit down with the Executive Director of the St. Johns River Water Management District – Mike Register. They discuss how a young engineer out of the University of Florida charts a path to a more than three decade-long career at the agency he now runs; his approach to solving problems and working with stakeholders; the complicated processes involved in the development of Regional Water Supply Plans and Minimum Flows and Levels; and his thoughts on the future of water in Florida.

Learn more about Regional Water Supply Plans.

Learn more about how the District is working with farmers to meet their needs and the needs of the environment. 

 Learn about the Indian River Lagoon, its challenges, and the District’s role in restoration. 

If you want to find out how you can protect drinking water supplies in the St. Johns River and beyond

Don’t forget to support our sponsors, RES and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms.  You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

In Episode 2 of Season 2, Brett travels to Lakeland for the opportunity to hear from the person who brought the idea of conservation easements (they called it something different in the early 90’s) to Florida: 8th generation Floridian, long time real estate broker, and former member of the Florida House of Representatives – Dean Saunders. They talk about his time with Senator and then Governor Lawton Chiles; how conservation easements and Bright Futures were born; and how a young pancake dinner salesman became one of the most prolific land brokers in the state.

If you’d like to learn more about conservation lands in Florida, including easements, check out the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI) 

Learn more about the Bright Futures Scholarship program.

Get to know who Senator and then Governor Lawton Chiles was. 

If you’re buying or selling real estate and want Dean’s help, find him here: https://www.saundersrealestate.com 

You can also reach Dean directly by email 

If you’re interested in finding out more about my day job and the amazing folks I work with, head here: www.anfieldflorida.com

This season of Water for Fighting is brought to you by my friends at Resource Environmental Solutions and Sea & Shoreline.

Sea & Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms.  You can check out their projects at www.seaandshoreline.com.

RES is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

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Welcome to Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida with the people who make it happen. I’m your host, Brett Seifers. This season of Water for Fighting is sponsored by Sea and Shoreline. Sea and Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at seainshoreline.com. The season is also brought to you by Resource Environmental Solutions. REZ is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us. More about these good folks a little bit later. As advertised, we’re continuing to broaden our horizons a little bit more this season and today’s guest fits right into that philosophy. I’m so excited to be joined by a former member of the Florida House of Representatives and the founder, managing director, and senior advisor for Saunders, Ralston, and Dantzler, Dean Saunders. Dean served in the Florida House for two terms between 1992 and 1996, where he was instrumental in the creation of legislation that served as the foundation for the development and expansion of conservation easement programs here in the state of Florida. Since then, he has brokered some of the most consequential conservation purchases ever made in the state of Florida. Dean, thank you for joining me on the podcast. It’s good to see you. Yeah, good to be here. Let’s start at the very beginning. You and I talked for a few minutes before I got here, and you said that you’re an eighth generation Floridian. Is that right? That is correct. So tell me about your parents then, I guess, and their parents and parents and parents. Oh. So my parents, my dad, the Saunders side, were really cracker conks. Actually, the Saunders helped found the Bahamas in the 16. 1649 when the Lutheran adventurers left the Bermuda and went to the Bahamas. And then from the Bahamas they made it to Key West in about 18… between 1845 and 1847. And then migrated up the coast and then settled in the Dunedin area, a little community called Curlew, settled by the Saunders and then by ultimately my other side of my dad’s side of the family, the Sutton’s and Bechtons and a whole bunch of… names over there. And my great-great grandfather founded the Curlew Methodist Church, which at the time was the second oldest church in what was then Hillsborough County. Wow. So now of course it’s Pinellas County. Right, I was going to ask about that. Yeah, yeah. And then my mom, she came from Michigan. She was adopted and so her adoptive mother moved to Dunedin and that’s how she met my dad. My mother, actually her biological father is Native American. He was in Ottawa. I think Ottawa and Chippewa from Michigan. And so I’ve actually located her half brother. She never knew she had and he never knew he had a half sister until about a year ago. Wow, that is that is recent. Yeah, so is that the I had a friend who calls them I guess you purrs are they the you purrs the ones that are not the north side of Michigan or is it a different part of? Michigan that well, well, no, they were not part of the Upper Peninsula, but good catch I mean there were there’s several bands of the Ottawa and I think it’s the Little River Band that okay My folks were part of interesting So then let’s go back to you’re now here in Florida. Your parents, where were you born? So I was born in Claremont. Okay, which is much different now than it was when you were born there. True. But what were you like as a kid? What did you like doing? What did your dad do for a living? So my dad managed some groves for the Artie Keene family, a big citrus growing family out of Orlando, and he managed about thousand acres of their groves and a lot of them were in and around Claremont. Had he always done that from when you were in Dunedin? So dad went to University of Florida, majored in citrus and then he actually moved to Lakeland. He was working for the Soil Science Foundation here in Lakeland and then he got a job with Mr. Keene to be the manager of his citrus groves and so he moved to Claremont. So did you grow up in the groves with your dad? Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, as a little kid, I mean, fishing, swimming in the lakes, playing baseball. When I was 13, I started working in the Orange Coast. I remember it was, Easter break was coming up, and it was, so we had Thursday, Friday, and Monday off for Easter. I mean, back then, you could still call it Easter break. But now we call it spring break. And I remember it was a Wednesday evening, and Dad said, oh, by the way, you’re going to start working in the morning, so you need to make a lunch tonight. 630 in the morning. I did that until I graduated from college. I would come home in the summers and I’d work in the orange groves. So I started working 10-hour days in vacations and summer and whatnot. But it’s interesting. You have people that have different stories and some folks intentionally avoid the things that their fathers did before them or their mothers did before them. And I didn’t want to assume you’re one of the most significant land brokers in the entire state, probably the Southeast. And so I didn’t want to assume that, hey, just because you’re buying and selling doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily, it’s part of who you are. But it sounds like it is and has been. Well, yeah, yes and no. I mean, so my grandfather was a commercial fisherman. And so my dad’s on the Saunders side. Ever since we came from the Bahamas, we were either farmers or fishermen, right? And mostly fishermen. But my dad went on the agricultural side. the next Jaco Stowe, you know, at the time. I wanted to be a marine biologist, but later realized that there weren’t that many jobs at the time in that field. And so I migrated into majoring in citrus and agriculture and thought I would be, I’d always enjoyed sales. And I can remember when I was eight or nine, my dad was a great grove manager, but sales were not one of his things. And the Rotary Club was having pancake supper and they had tickets, right, to sell. So I took my dad’s tickets and I walked all over Claremont selling pancake supper tickets. And he was the top salesman. So he sold the most tickets. And it was actually me that had sold them. And he got a little black and white, 8-inch black and white TV as his prize for selling the most tickets. And he gave it to me. I enjoyed the sales. I enjoyed getting around and meeting with people and talking to people. You know, is Dean again, you know, what are you selling now? Do you know? Right. What do you attribute that to? Is it that, that persistence or were you always an extrovert? Is that kind of your thing? I, yeah, I just think, you know, yeah, I was, I, you know, enjoy people and enjoyed sales, I mean, it was a, just something to do, I don’t know, I just liked it and so I always thought I’d probably end up in fertilizer sale or chem, chemical sales or something. I was really thinking more national chemical companies at the time, ag chemicals. But when I graduated in 82, was a farm recession. Now the country in general was doing okay, but the farm community was not. And so I ended up going to work for Golden Gem Citrus Growers. And I know that one of your next questions is gonna be, well, how did I get to work in for Lawton Childs? So just to go to that story, I came home from work one day and I’d been at Golden Gem for about three months. Is this after college that you’re talking about? This is after college. After, you know, so 1983, my dad says, This guy called, his name is Charles Kennedy, says he’s administrative assistant to Lawton Childs. He called and I said, well, okay, do you have his number, Dad? I can return his phone call. No, he just said he’d call you in the morning. I said, Dad, what? So, sure enough, at six o’clock in the morning, he called me, I was already at the Golden Gym offices and he just said, Dean, I know you’re at work and you probably can’t talk, so just listen. He said, I’m. Charles Kennedy, administrative assistant to US Senator Locke-Chiles. And the senator would like to hire somebody to work agricultural issues for him. He’s looking for a cracker with a background in agriculture, preferably in citrus, who enjoys politics. You were referred to us by the University of Florida. Would you be interested in discussing this with us? And I said, yes, sir, I would. And I went down to Lakeland that night, and two weeks later I was working for Long Chiles. Wow. So that’s what brought me to Lakeland. Okay. So, I mean, you glossed over it a little bit, but you mentioned you were referred by the University of Florida, but you actually went to the University of Florida. Correct. And so while I was at Florida, I was very active in student government and my fraternity. I was a member of Alpha Gambrough Fraternity. was president of AGR and I was president of the Student Senate while I was there and member of Florida Blue Key and all the kinds of things that one does to be in leadership positions, never thinking that I would ever use that in any political fashion after school. Yeah, that’s the part I was curious about is the University of Florida, even in the A’s, it’s an enormous school now, but it’s always been a big school in Florida, and so Dean Saunders or you ask the president of the university, like, oh, you need to call this kid Dean Saunders. Yeah. So they reached out to the lobbyists for IFAS, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, who were looking for somebody, and if you all got somebody that you would recommend. And so there they recommended me. Right, so then let’s talk about then your time while he was Senator Lawton Childs. What did you do for him? How did that work? Lakeland, I assume, the entire time? So we were headquartered in Lakeland and I was here. So I was working administrative kind of issues, mostly. But he wanted me to be a, my title was agricultural liaison. I went to meetings with Florida Citrus Mutual or the dairy farmers or the, actually the sugar growers had an association at the time. They don’t anymore. It’s been disbanded. Or the cattlemen’s meetings or farm bureau meetings. Association meetings. I mean Busy is what you were. Nursher Men and Growers Association. All of the agricultural groups in the state, I got to know the leadership of those organizations. And that’s what the Senator wanted me to do. He wanted me to be out and meeting with those folks. So they knew they had an advocate and a voice in Washington for their needs. And so that’s really what I did. And then at some point, Mr. Kennedy came to me and said, like for you in addition to doing the work that you’re doing with the agriculture community, we would like for you to travel with the Senator, advance his trips, do the follow-up, and conduct town hall meetings on a regular basis in a 20-county district. So I was the quote, not only the agricultural liaison, but then they called it I think, Central Florida District Assistant. Okay. So when the Senator was in any of my counties, I’d pick him up at the airport, I’d That kind of thing. At that point, I mean, you’re working for who become probably one of the most famous, if not the most famous politicians from Florida, at least in the modern era. But did you consider yourself getting deeper into the political side of thinking at that point? Or do you still think of yourself as an ag person, an ag liaison, a person that wanted to work around those issues? No, I saw myself latter, really more, I was still an ag guy. I was, I’m working for the senator. I was very loyal to him, worked hard for him on his behalf, and did what he asked me to do, right, and represented his interest. But at the same time, I was an advocate for the agriculture community. And he knew it, they knew it, but I never really thought of me in that light, right? Right. That just wasn’t my particular interest at the time. I was interested in doing a good job and really being an advocate for agriculture. That sounds great. Talk about that transition then from Senator Childs to Governor Childs and then how you fit into that picture. So you asked me earlier was I always in Lakeland and I was always in Lakeland, but I had an interlude. The Farm Bureau, Florida Farm Bureau Federation hired me and so I took a year off from service with Senator Childs. to work for Florida Farm Bureau in Gainesville, which is where our oldest daughter was born. Okay. And so I did ag issues again for Farm Bureau, more national sort of issues. I did some state lobbying. And then in 1986, when the Democrats took control of the Senate again, Lawton became chairman of the Budget Committee. And he called me shortly after that and said, Dean, I’d like for you to consider coming back. Actually, we had dinner. And he said, I’d like. I’d like for you to come back to work for me. I’d like for you to come to Washington and handle ag issues for me. I’ll have more money, I can pay you out of the budget committee, go on staff and whatnot. And I said, well, I said, Senator, let me think about it and pray about it, visit with my wife about it. And I came back about a week later and I said, as much as I would find the opportunity exciting and to work for you again would be phenomenal, I just don’t want my opportunities to be in Washington. Because I know if I move to Washington, future opportunities will be there. And we really want to live in Florida. We love our state. We don’t want to be that far away from our parents. And I now have a daughter to consider. So he said, okay, well, how about if we just let you work out of the Lakeland office and you fly up to D.C. to do the work you need about once a month? And he said, but listen, if I make this trade off with you, you’re going to have to travel with me again. So that’s what we did. Okay. And then so what year was that when he took over that committee and asked you to come back? That was in 1986, right after the election. So I came back and I was on staff. So, 87. So then he decided not to run for reelection. He was up for reelection in 1988, but he made the decision, actually on Pearl Harbor Day, not to run for reelection in the Senate. So he made it in 1987 that he wasn’t going to run. So, and so I approached him and I said, well, I’d gotten my real estate license when I was a senior in college. And so I said, would you all consider cutting my hours in half and my pay in half and let me see if I can’t make a living with this real estate license? Because the Grove Market was really on fire. And I knew Citrus. I mean, I majored in Citrus in school. I knew Orange Grows. My dad, I worked in them. You know, since I was 13 years old, understood it, liked it. And there was demand because of all the freezes of the 80s, the early 80s, the 81 freeze, 82 freeze, 83 freeze, 85 freeze, all created a huge demand for orange groves south of Polk County, in Polk County, and south. Just kind of south of I-4. And for land to plant groves. So. They agreed, and I was able to make a deal that replaced my entire salary that I lost. And then the day after we closed the office, I got a deal done that replaced my entire year’s salary. And so I never looked backwards. I just saw it. You know, this is God’s, you know, providential hand here directing me. I never would have ever imagined that I would be selling real estate. It wasn’t like something I said, oh, wow, I just want to go sell agriculture real estate when I grow up. Never thought that in my wildest imaginations. And I remember my mom saying, You’re going to sell real estate? We put you through college for that? Ha ha ha ha. And to which I would say, Mom, remember, I paid for half of my college. That’s why I worked in those groves. I paid, I paid for half of my college. So, yeah. Did that make you better? I mean, you know, obviously, you know, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a real estate agent, but, but your history though, in your education, your experience, you’re dealing with the folks, not just from university of Florida in your education, but with the, the work that you did for center of trial. It had to be invaluable. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so, so then not only was it just Senator Childs, but then, you know, when he ran for governor, I suspended my real estate practice and went. and helped him. When the day the announcement was made, I called him and said, I’ll see you in the morning. So I loaded up my little Bronco too and brought my computer and some clothes and went to Tallahassee. It was a little chaotic at the time, the campaign as most campaigns are. Nobody was raising money. But because I had been on the Senate staff, I knew so many of his friends and contacts around the state. So I just started got on the phone and just started putting together events to raise money to bring him into town. And so just started raising the money. So I raised the money for him in the campaign and then I stayed on staff with him. and then ran for the legislature myself. But all of those experiences put me where I was able to develop relationships with agricultural people all across the state and in various forms from dairymen to nurserymen to peanut farmers to citrus growers and tropical fish farmers, strawberry growers, I mean, fern growers, you name it, the gamut of Florida agriculture. to know a lot of that leadership. And so when I ultimately got out of the legislature, I was, what am I gonna do now? And I said, well, who do I know? Well, I know all these leaders in the agriculture community. I love selling land. You know, I’m gonna create a firm and we’ll start focusing on agricultural real estate. I wanna take just a moment to talk about my friends at REZ. Florida is a treasure trove of natural wonders, but the cost of that treasure is our collective responsibility to restore and protect its ecological and water resources. That’s where my friends at RES, the nation’s leader in ecological and hydrological restoration are at their best. With an extensive Florida-based team, RES provides top-notch nature-based solutions that uplift Florida’s ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. From water quality to hydrological restoration, wetland mitigation to coastal resilience, RES addresses the complex challenges facing our state with our unique operating model of taking full responsibility. for their project’s performance over time. Working with both the public and private sectors, RES is tackling the issues affecting Florida’s water and land resources the most. 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You know, I’d been working for Governor Childs at the time for almost a year and a half or so. And Quillian Yancey, who is a state senator from Lakeland, decided he was going to retire. He’d had enough, he was full of it, and he was going to retire. Well, that was going to create an opening for his Senate seat. And so I thought, you know, maybe I’ll run for that Senate seat. Polk County is where I am. I’m involved in this. Now I like it. Maybe I want to try my hand at it. So I approached the governor and said, I’m thinking about this. He said, well. then you need to get down to Polk County and you need to go bounce around and see what folks are saying. You need to go meet with some of the leaders down there and assess this situation. So I did. And it was a reapportionment year, and so the reapportioning the House and the Senate, but I came to the conclusion that there were others, Fred Jones being one of them, that were also considering running for the Senate seat. Fred had been in the house, who was a veteran of the house for 24 years, from Auburndale. I thought my chances probably weren’t all that good to take on that sort of a challenge, but he ultimately decided not to run. But everywhere I went, people I met said, yeah, there’s this guy in the house named Joe Vescusi. We’re not so sure about his brand of leadership, and we’d rather encourage that you run for .. Why don’t you think about running for that seat? So I did, and I made the decision to run. Joe was an incumbent Democrat. I was a Democrat. But we had a third party in the race, Gene Roberts. Gene was somewhat of a perennial candidate. He had run like eight times for office. And he was a great businessman, and he was well known in the community and well liked. He was also a Keywest or a clonk. Did he ever win? He never won, ever. But. What I realized then was, and we ran a strong campaign. I came in second and then Joe and I were in a runoff. This was when we still had runoffs in the primary. And what I realized is if you’re an incumbent and you don’t get 50% in that first race, if you’re in a runoff, you’re probably gonna lose. Because that really says that 50% of the people don’t think you should be reelected. So I was able to win in the Democratic primary. But it was the Ross Perot years. It was 1992. It was the Ross Perot years. And it was a throw the rascals out. And so highest voter turnout ever in Polk County. It was like 80% voter turnout. It was crazy. So all the polls were showing. My polls were showing me up. about 16 percentage points a week before the election. Republican polls were showing me up about 14% or 15%. So I felt, and I had kind of gotten word back on that, so I felt pretty good going into the race. But what I learned about polls is that polls poll the most likely to vote. Well, and most likely to vote is by past performance. Right. But in the throw the rascals out year of Ross Perot, that attracted so many people that weren’t most likely to vote. They were people that came out to vote. So there’s about almost a 20% pickup of those folks that would never poll. We never sampled their opinions because we didn’t expect them to come and vote. Sure. Right? So I won by five votes as it turned out. Five votes. And we had 10 days worth of recounts. We had six recounts, including a hand recount. Did the number ever change in there from the pot? Oh my gosh, it changed. Oh yeah, it’s a number of times. In fact, Brett, I went to bed that night. I remember calling my guy that was running my campaign. He was at the elections office. I was at our election party. And he said, Dean, I don’t know how to tell you, but I’m so sorry, but you lost about 220 votes or something like that. So I’m like, OK. So I called my opponent. congratulated her and I thanked everybody for their help and support and their friendship and my wife and I sat and we talked and said, you know, what an enriching experience this has been for us. Really, we’ve gotten to meet so many great people, got to learn a lot. This has really been an enriching experience for us. And you know what? The sun’s going to rise in the morning. We’re going to be fine. This is not. You know, not the end of the world. Sure. Disappointing when you’ve worked so hard not to win. But so we’re home in bed, literally. My I’m falling back on the pillow when the phone rings. It’s about two 30 or three o’clock in the morning. And it’s Bill Ruff. He, now Bill Ruff. He was a reporter, local political reporter for the Lakeland ledger. And he said, Dean, hey, this is Bill. What’d you think about the election? And I said, Bill, I lost. I mean, what do you think? I mean, I’m disappointed. He said, oh, you hadn’t heard? I said, no, what are you talking about? He said, well, they had a staff who at the elections office, they double counted the absentee ballots. And when they backed those out, you’re now 21 votes, but they still haven’t counted the military absentee ballots. So those have got to be opened up and there’s about a hundred of those. Well, I did that quick math. I said, okay, well there’s a hundred and there’s four districts in Polk County. There’s probably going to be 25 or 30 of those ballots. So probably go more to Republicans because it’s military and I’ll probably still be ahead. If I’m only ahead by 21 votes, I’ll probably lose about half that. And sure enough, when we counted them, I was up 11 votes. Then we did some machine recounts and whatnot. It varied. So we went from 11 to 7. Then we went into the canvassing board meeting. And the canvassing board said, hey, we’ve got a problem. We were canvassing the election, which is just a reconciling of ballots given to ballots voted. And we realized we were five ballots. too many, or five ballots short. And so when they explained it, what had happened was one of the precincts ran out of ballots. The demand in the voter turnout was so high, they ran out of ballots. And so, and they did not have time to drive to the elections office and get more ballots and get back by the time the polls would close. So they took some absentee ballots and had the people fill out absentee ballots. And there were five of those ballots. And they marked them and put them in a special box and put a note on it. And so when we went to the canvassing board’s meeting, the first thing was, well, how should we handle these five ballots? So they so bravely asked the candidates what we thought. And I said, well, listen, whether I win or lose doesn’t matter as much as the integrity of the election. And if they look like they are, I understand the explanation. I mean, it was an extraordinary voter turnout. They look like those are properly cast ballots, then we should count them, absolutely. However it turns out, my opponent didn’t think so. She thought we shouldn’t count them. And I think they broke three votes my way, two votes her way, so I net gained a one. But then she was demanding a hand recount. So we went in and I said, fine. I mean, again, the importance is that the election results of people’s voice should be heard, count them by hand. Well, what I didn’t realize at the time, Because we had a fill-in-the-bubble ballot. So we didn’t have hanging Chads like we later had in 2000, because we didn’t have those kind of voting machines. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that there are ballots that are not counted, because people fill out the ballots incorrectly. They bring a pen in, and they fill it out with pen, which isn’t read by the computers. Or they put in an X or they circle or they make other marks on the election ballot, but they’re not counted by the computers. And so the hand count and the computer count reconciled, it was the same. And now we come to the 25 or 30 ballots that were rejected by the machines and the canvassing board was then charged with determining the will of the voter. And they literally went through all these ballots. And so Saunders, Breidenbach, Saunders, Breidenbach, Breidenbach, Breidenbach, Saunders, Saunders, back and forth. And there was not a single ballot I disagreed with until the very last one. And I knew at that point I’d won because I knew there was no way the canvassing board would allow that ballot to be counted for my opponent. If it made a difference in the race and you could tell where somebody had put their mark, like they were thinking they were going to vote for my opponent. But then they lifted their pencil up and you could tell because their other ballots were bubbled in, right? But on that one, they decided not to vote. They abstained, but they called it for my opponent. And I figured, you know what? I must have won because there’s no way. they would let that because it was clear they didn’t intend to vote in my opinion. Right. And I won by five votes. So I think I, I think my opponent talked to me maybe eight years later. She never, she walked out and went to North Carolina and I never heard from her. She never spoke to me for eight years. Okay. So I mean, obviously that that requires the follow up of what was that conversation like eight years later? I can’t even remember. I don’t really care. All good. All good. So, we’re into metaphorical, skin of our teeth territory on getting into office. Did it work out easier the second time? These things usually are easier, I would assume, for an incumbent, but you served two terms. Did the second one go a little bit easier? Yeah, it was easier. It was interesting that the Democrat I had defeated in the primary race, Joe Biden, Nova Scusi changed parties and ran as a Republican and challenged me as a Republican. Interesting. But yes, I won. And so you didn’t spend a lot of time in the legislature, but you spent enough time dealing with public policy for years by that point. You’re still a really young guy. How old were you when you first got elected office? I was 32. 32, yeah. Super young. But you’d already been around these issues for a long time. And so it seems like you made really good use of the time that you had in the legislature. And I want to talk. little bit about that in particular because he’s largely a water and environmental podcast. The idea of conservation easements and the expansion of their use, you were instrumental in that happening. Tell me about that process. So yeah, so you know it’s funny, Brett, back when I was 24 years old and I was working for Lawton, newly married, and I can remember I’m not sure why my wife and I were in Orlando, but we were coming back to Claremont to go to my parents. This was in 1984, so this was after that 81 freeze, which had been devastating to Lake County, but then that 83 freeze, the freeze of Christmas of 1983, which coincidentally was also the week, the first night we spent in our new home in Lakeland was the freeze night. And the heater didn’t work. So here we are in 1984, and I’m driving back. And it looks like something you would see out of a dystopian novel. Just dead, gnarly orange trees everywhere. Wow. You know, because that drive used to be so pretty, you know, rolling hills, just nothing but orange trees and lakes. And, you know, we were called the gem of the hills. Claremont’s little mantra was, gem of the hills. That was our little thing. So I remember saying to my wife, I said, you know, this will all be houses one day, and I’m going to hate that. I said, you know, I wonder if we could pay landowners not to develop their land. So hence, the idea of the conservation easements at the time was born out of that. And so when I went to work for the Florida Farm Bureau between my stints with Lawton and when he was in the Senate, I started doing some research on the transfer of development rights because that was being used as part of the new… growth management legislation that the state enacted in 1985. Now the counties are having to do their comprehensive planning and all that has to get approved by the state. Well I started seeing… transfer development rights showing up as a way to offer a landowner a token, really, like oh, well, we’re going to allow you to transfer your development rights somewhere. So I started really researching that concept, and I found where there were some counties in New England. By the way, transfer development rights almost never works, because you have to have, government has to create a sending zone and a receiving zone. It requires the government to create the market. And that’s just something governments are terrible at. And so they really don’t work, was the conclusion I came to. But I also discovered that there were some counties in New England, Suffolk County in New York being one of them, that created purchase of development rights programs. I thought, oh my gosh, this is it. Where the government’s actually buying the rights to develop the land. And in Suffolk County, they were concerned about potato farmers. They wanted to continue to make sure they had people farming potatoes. Wow. And so. That’s Long Island, right? Suffolk County? Yeah. Right, yeah. Potato farmers on Long Island. Correct. And so I started calling some of those counties and I would talk to the people administering the programs. Oh yeah, this is how it works and whatnot. So I really had. I dove into it and really understood it. And so I said, I went to president of Farm Bureau at the time, Carl Lupe, I tried to pitch this idea. This is a great idea. This is a way to protect ag land, but still protect the integrity of private property rights. So it’s conserved, but the landowner gets to enjoy some of the appreciated value that he’s giving up to not develop the property. What was the initial reaction the first time you came back to Florida? You did all this research, you’re talking to these folks, you see that there’s something there. When you first said it out loud to someone, what was the initial reaction that you got? Skepticism. You know… But I was so enthusiastic about it. I remember when I talked to Carl, he was like, well, you know, that sounds interesting, Dean. You know? And so now, so fast forward to 1990, and I’m working for Lawton, but also on the ballot in 1990 was the constitutional amendment to create the Preservation 2000 program, which was an investment where the voters of the state said, we want the state to make an investment in our green infrastructure. We want them to protect some of our land. And so the concept was to spend $300 million a year to bond that money because the interest less than the appreciated value of the property. And so let’s buy land now and we’ll pay for it as we go. And we’ll pay for it from the documentary stamp tax, which was a beautiful nexus because it was, as real estate gets sold, houses get sold, part of that money goes for the doc stamps, we’ll use that money to pay back the bonds. So it was a great nexus. So suddenly now the state is buying a lot of conservation land. So here we go, 1993, and I’m like, you know, I had this idea when I was in the legislature. I mean, when I was a kid at age 24, I had tried to talk to the governor about it. I talked to the lieutenant governor, Buddy McKay, about it. I talked to Carol Browner, who had been head of the Department of Environmental Protection. I said, guys. This is a way we can make our dollars stretch further. We don’t have to pay as much. We don’t have to pay to manage the land. This is a great concept, and it protects the integrity of property rights. You know, they just weren’t, they didn’t disagree with me. It just was not a priority for any of them. Did they also think that it wouldn’t work, that landowners wouldn’t be interested, or was it really just, hey, we don’t know how to make that function? I just don’t think it was. A particular priority, it wasn’t like, oh, we’re against that idea. It was just, we’ve got so many other priorities and things that we’re focusing on. We’re not going to really worry about that. So when I got elected to the legislature, I said, you know what? I had this crazy idea, and I’m going to see if I can’t make it a reality. So I called the director of the Division of State Lands at the time, was Pete Mallison, and I asked him about it. And he said, well, Dean, he said, that is an interesting concept. He said, it’s one I think could work. He said, and I said, well, Pete, if I were to do this, how would you recommend we go about doing it? He said, well, I would find an area, and let’s see if we can make it work. Take a geographic area, and let’s set aside some money to do that only in that geographic area. And let’s test the efficacy of this before we go try to do it statewide. So. That’s what I did. So I crafted some legislation to do just that, to buy development rights. And that’s what we called it, purchase and development rights. So following on Pete’s suggestion, I said, you know, the Green Swamp area of critical state concern is about 320,000 acres area in Polk and Lake County. It was already designated an area of critical state concern. So it was already considered an important area. geography to protect. It was large enough in acreage that we would have. We could test the efficacy of the program, because we’d have enough landowners to pull from to see if they had an interest. And so. Right. But I also know landowners were skeptical of the water management districts. They didn’t trust Swift Mud, they didn’t trust St. John’s, they darn sure didn’t trust DEP or the Department of Community Affairs because remember, this was right after growth management got passed and landowners were feeling the impact of what they consider to be down zoning on their properties, where they might have had one unit to one acre that they could develop on their property. Now they went from one unit to five acres. one unit to 10 acres or one unit to 20 acres. And in the green swamp, they were talking about making them go to one unit to 20 acres. Because anything in the green swamp area of critical state concern, not only did the counties have to agree to, but the state got a say so in that as well. And not just through comprehensive planning, but because it was in an area of critical state concern. So the state was really holding their feet to the fire. All that to say, Brett, that it really created increased distrust of any of those state agencies. So I said if this idea is going to have any merit it’s got to be a separate independent body. So I wrote it so that it would be a separate independent body that Polk County would get three appointees by their County Commission could appoint three people Lake County could appoint three people and the governor could appoint three people. We’d have nine members and that’s so that way we’d have an odd vote. But they would be charged with hiring an executive director and coming up with their own rules and implementing the plan. And we took $10 million a year. Ultimately, it came from the Preservation 2000 monies. But a little different pots. There were separate monies set aside for areas of critical state concern. They got a little bit, so I took some of that from here and there, and we came up with $10 million a year, so $30 million over a three-year period. was how we did it. And I’ll never forget when I introduced it, the government guys didn’t like it. They didn’t like the idea of only buying an easement or stopping just the development. They wanted to buy all of the property. And they just thought I was a fascist in that regard. That’s how I say it. And the landowners… thought I was a communist. Um, and so, but most of them knew because of all my background and history with them, they knew, well, you know, Dean’s one of us. And I had been active in the Burt Harris Private Property Rights Protection Bill. I was one of the people behind all that to protect private property rights. Yeah, I had a lot of credibility with the landowners. And so they were skeptical as well. So I’d say it was met with skepticism on both sides. But I’ve always felt like the landowners and the agriculturalists had a lot more in common with the environmental community than either one of them would acknowledge. And I thought, you know, if you buy the development rights, that’s where the integrity of private property rights meets the protection of land. It meets conservation. You’re paying the landowner to give up the right to develop the property. Alright, let’s pause for a moment and talk about my friends at Sea and Shoreline. As we in Florida wonder what the future holds when we face the storm season ahead, Sea and Shoreline is working to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. by installing a variety of green and gray infrastructure solutions to make our cities and counties more resilient. These solutions include seagrass restoration, mangroves, oyster reefs, riprap, oyster break waters, and something called a WAD, which stands for Wave Attenuation Device. By installing their patented WADs, sea and shoreline can help protect our communities against sea level rise and storm surges by diffusing wave energy, stopping shoreline erosion, and even rebuilding shorelines through sand accretion. To learn more about how Sea and Shoreline can protect your community, visit seainshoreline.com. Alright, let’s get back to the conversation. You mentioned the landowners. What was the reaction initially from the environmental community at that time? Again, everybody was a little skeptical. And it depended on where you kind of came from. Some of the environmental organizations, the Nature Conservancy, and you had mentioned earlier, Brett, the gentleman, Eric Draper. Eric and I were good friends. And he didn’t really understand the agriculture community. And I always kind of considered it one of my jobs to educate people about agriculture. and being an advocate for how farmers felt and ranchers felt about their land. And I knew the deep love and attachment they had. And honestly, the state only has the right to argue about protecting that land because these people have protected it for all these years that they haven’t developed it. Right, right. So let’s respect and honor that. And so folks from different walks of life, but in this one area where we could conserve property, we really did have a meeting of the mind, so to speak, even if people were distrustful of the other. Right. And so I got earlier mentioned to you that I’d sponsored it in the house, but my sponsor in the Senate. was happy to sponsor it because it sort of begged him to sponsor it, but he suggested that I needed to be the one to come carry the load. and push it through the Senate, which I did. And when I went to the Natural Resource Committee to present the bill, the Florida Farm Bureau was, the lobbyist was on my right side in support of the legislation. And the Audubon Society lobbyist, Charles Lee, was on my left, appropriately positioning. But they both spoke in strong favor of what we were doing. And so it became law. We had a big bill signing ceremony here in the green swamp. The governor came in and it just enjoyed all kinds of success. People loved it. Landowners liked it. They were receptive to it. Do you remember the first easement that you executed or that was executed by the state or I guess that organization? There was a group. So in the first batch we did, I think there were nine that got done. They were called land protection agreements. At the time, we were not using the term conservation easement. where it was purchase of development rights, and it was called a land protection agreement. Later down the road, the name got changed to purchase of a conservation easement. And I remember people came to me and said, yeah, you know, I think it sounds a little more politically correct to call this purchase of development right. I mean, a conservation easement. And I said, I don’t really care what you call it, as long as the landowner. is remunerated and compensated for the rights he gives up in his land. Right. And this can take lots of different angles. So that’s kind of how that got born out. And I do remember, you know, you asked me how people responded. My biggest opponent, really, in this was Fritz Busselman. So Fritz was the land acquisition director for the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Fritz hated this idea. and the concept of buying and development rights. He hated it. And he tried to undermine me everywhere I went. He went to the St. Pete Times, I remember, and got them to write a scathing editorial, opposing it. And then later, it was the best idea Fritz had ever had. Sure. After we got a pass, after we’d had success, then Swift Mud started using it and doing, they probably did more easements than anybody else, and Fritz was at the head of all that. So sometimes you just got to have to prove it to people. Because Fritz would be a late convert. It was a later convert, but he later used it extensively. to protect a lot of land. And we talked about it before. It’s like from my end being at the Northwest Florida Water Management District, it was a huge tool for us to be able to use, to get that same protection that you were after, that the environmental community’s after, while making sure that we’re respecting someone’s property rights and making sure that they’re properly compensated for, for giving up those rights that they had before. Right, and you know, and from your perspective, double the amount of land you could protect with the same amount of money. That’s exactly right. And you didn’t have the long-term commitments to managing the obligate. You didn’t have the obligation to manage the land and pay for it. And it still stayed on the tax rolls and still stimulated the economy in some form or fashion. Right. Because if someone is using it to, and Northwest is more likely to be growing timber, it’s still something that’s part of the economy still. And you’re exactly right. That was a big, that’s a big thing, especially in some of the smaller districts. but it’s not unusual for these larger ones. It costs money to manage hundreds of thousands of acres of land. And so I think what you, you open a door that, that made it a lot easier for us to be able to manage that in the long run. And that’s a, that’s a huge deal. Yeah. And it was, so I remember the day, cause I’m sure at some point you want to know about my transition out when I, literally the day my announcement that I was not going to run for the was in the paper. I had a local rancher call me, Charlie McOverstreet, call me up. He said, Dean. You know, I thought you were crazy as a sprayed roach with your conservation legislation. But you know what? And he said, but I didn’t want to be critical because you’re my friend, and you’ve been my friend a long time. But you know, I’ve been thinking about this. And I think this is something that could help me. Why don’t you come out here and visit with me and Betty Kaye? That was his wife. I think I want to hire you to help me get this done. I thought, oh, okay. Charlie back needs help. There may be other landowners that need help doing this and I’m a big believer in it, you know So if you if you really peel me back, you know, I’m an agriculturalist and I’m in a real estate broker You cannot be either one of those without a strong sense of the protection of private property rights. There’s hygrosync to me. Now you can’t put a nuclear waste dump everywhere on your property, right? I mean, there has to be some regulation of what you do. That’s why we have zoning laws. That’s why we have growth management. That’s why we have some of the things that we have in place to protect against obnoxious uses. But you cannot come from either one of those facets of life. And I came from both of them. and not have a strong sense of private property rights. So, you know, if a man owns a piece of land and there’s development pressure and he wants to develop it, and he can, and there’s demand, you know, God bless him. That’s his right. But I’m an eighth generation Floridian. And you know, I love Florida, 18 million people ago. You know, but I can’t change the fact that they’re here. And so, but we can try to protect some of what’s here for it not to be developed. As long as we can do it in a way that protects the integrity of property rights. It doesn’t trample on that. So when he mentioned that to me, and I thought, you know, this would be something that maybe I could go pitch and talk to other landowners about. I understand it, I wrote the legislation. But I believe in it. I’m passionate about it, and I get to protect land. And so I’ve started doing a lot of that work, and I’ve done it ever since. And I’ve had the privilege of doing probably close to 100 deals with government and representing landowners and protecting land from being developed. It ends up becoming your long term, make a career of the pancake dinner from being a kid. Yeah. Exactly. Tell me about a couple, maybe one. I know the one that’s most recent, which was the Bluffs property at St. Teresa up in Northwest Florida. But tell me one of those is that maybe you’re the most proud of, or at least is significant in your mind in terms of bringing folks together, because that’s what you’re doing in the end, is bringing landowners. In this case, government together, sometimes like the Nature Conservancy is involved, and you make that happen. Tell me about that process a little bit. I approach this as an understanding of working with a buyer and a seller. I view my job is to really understand both parties’ needs. If I can meet two parties’ needs, that’s where we make a deal. It’s not always the highest and best price. It’s meeting needs. And so I focus my whole real estate practice, and I encourage my associates to, let’s really understand the buyer’s needs, let’s understand the seller’s needs, because where we get them to meet is where we get paid, where we make a deal. Right, right. So the state or any conservation group, and I’ve done deals with. the counties, I’ve done deals with all the water management districts, I’ve done deals with the USDA, I’ve done deals with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, done deals with the state of Florida, Florida Department of Agriculture, so there are so many iterations now of this concept. Because when I did it, USDA wasn’t buying conservation easements, they started that with the 1996 farm bill. They started buying wetland reserve easements. So these things have just evolved, and they’re different tools. you know some of the counties now are doing them. The water management districts have done them. So there’s different iterations and different goals and objectives and so I try to understand the goals and objectives. Like USDA’s, the wetlands reserve easement is to restore wetlands that might have been damaged or destroyed for farming, for agricultural purposes. And so one of the larger ones I did at the time represented Bluehead Ranch and the Westby Corporation with Mr. Carlton and we protected 25,000 acres of land at the headwaters of Fish-Eating Creek. And that was a huge project. It was the largest conservation easement that USDA had ever done. It involved three landowners and I remember going, we spent quite a bit of time in Washington. It was during the Obama administration and they had a little different angle and I was saying rather thousand acres there and 100 acres over here, why don’t we look at a watershed? I said here’s a phenomenal watershed and we can restore it. We got three landowners primarily to deal with. And Fish eating creek. is a natural course that runs into Lake Okeechobee. We want to clean up Lake Okeechobee, then let’s protect it. And here is a way to make sure that happens. So that’s an example of one I did. And you mentioned the Bluffs of St. Teresa was a 17,000 acre track in St. James Island. We called it the Bluffs of St. Teresa because it was a marketing name. Right. As you know, Brad, I sold the Latter-day Saints, the company they called reserves bought about 382,000 acres from St. Joe Timber Company. Back in 2014 we closed on the deal, but some of that land was surplus. And this 17,000 acre track on the Gulf of Mexico with over 25 miles of waterfront on it because it fronted on Oclochne Bay and on Alligator Point and you know the bay there on the Gulf of Mexico. So they hired me to sell that for them. because it didn’t serve their purpose. But it was, when I saw it, I thought, oh my gosh, this would be such a phenomenal piece to have in conservation. The state really should try to own this. So it took a while and we tried at one time and weren’t able to get there. And we figured out a way to get it done. And we, and we made it happen. And, uh, yeah, and I’m real proud of that. Is that that property really should have been in public ownership. It is special. And, and it’s, it seems to me as like you tell me where, where I may be missing this a little bit, but, but it is seeing those kinds of opportunities and be able to work with someone like ag reserves. Who has, who is now? I think the largest private landowner. They’re the largest private landowner in the state of Florida. They could have easily done whatever they wish, but they’re a cattle company, and at least that segment of their operations is cattle. And so seeing, is that part of the experience that you built over decades of seeing an opportunity where someone else may be like, oh, well, we don’t know exactly how to approach that with these folks? You know, yeah, I mean, it does come from having that experience, from just being comfortable enough in my own skin to ask the questions. And to start being so bold is to offer some suggestions. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? We could do this, position it here, position it there. And I really enjoy working with sellers and helping them accomplish their goals. And sometimes it’s not a straight line. And so in the conservation arena, these deals oftentimes take so long. to get done. Sometimes it can happen quickly, but normally it takes years to get them done. There was a period after the Great Recession when the state didn’t have a lot of money and they weren’t investing a lot of money in their green infrastructure. And so to get deals done, we had to be very creative. I did a lot of deals with USDA. But we also, I got the Florida Department of Agriculture and USDA together. And I said, guys, why don’t y’all partner? You’ve got a couple different programs. Why don’t you partner on some of these programs? And neither one’s carrying the main load. So I was able to get a lot of my deals done by just being creative and thinking out of the box. I did one deal where I sold a conservation easement to USDA, Wetlands Reserve easement. And my landowner wanted to sell the property, but I didn’t have any particular buyers. Because at the time, it was right after or during the Great Recession. There were no private buyers. People weren’t buying. I mean, they just weren’t doing anything. They didn’t have the money to do it. So we did an easement with USDA, Whitelands Reserve easement, and then I sold the underlying fee value once we sold the easement to Polk County and the SwiftMud in partnership. So they partnered and bought the underlying fee. So that was one of my more creative deals. It involved three units of government, Water Management District, United States Department of Agriculture, and Polk County. Interesting. Your folks have described you, or you’ve described yourself to your folks at least, or as a recovering politician. I’m gonna ask you to take one last look back into that life. Is there something that if, some I made you go back to do it again, that you wish you had done while you were still there, or something that you see over the years that you’ve been out, that you might like to go back and fix? Oh man. I mean, you know, there’s always things you see, but you know, I don’t want to have any real regrets of what I’ve done. I mean, in addition to the conservation easement legislation, I was also created the bright futures, authored the legislation that created. bright futures and authorizes existence. It didn’t get funded until after I was out. The year after I was out, it got funded. I think it’s a piece of policy though, speaking as a parent. I know there are a lot of parents out there that are listening to this as well. You know, you’re part of sending my oldest to college. I’ve got two younger ones that will continue to take their SATs and however many times it takes and do their volunteer work to qualify for bright futures. It’s been a huge part of a lot of people’s families. And it stood the test of time, which I think is important as well. You gotta be proud of that. Both of those things are, I’m incredibly proud of. Honestly, The Bright Futures has kept, it did what we meant it to do. Keep our talent, one of the goals, right? Keep people in Florida. Keep them going to Florida schools. And so the demand for schools in Florida is a lot higher as a result. But guess what? We keep a lot of those people here and keep our talent in the state of Florida. Yeah. I think it’s a, uh, a huge innovative piece of public policy. Um, and so, uh, well done there. And you know, that was one of those things, Brett, when I did it, that was some real heavy lifting. Uh, man, I had to work that thing in the house. And then my Senate sponsor at the time was in the doghouse with the Senate president. And every single one of his bills had six committee references. Ouch. Which, as you know, is your time in the legislature, was the kiss of death. Because committee meet about four weeks, and if you got six committee assignments, there’s no way to get through all those committees. So I was able to go and convince Don Sullivan, who was Senate, he was chairman of the education committee in the Senate, and I said, Don, you know, I’ve got the answer to the lottery. You know, because everywhere we went, people would complain to us about the lottery. And so we were all feeling that, you know, people were saying, well, it was a flim-flam. You promised us educational enhancement, but you’re just really filling budget holes with this money, you’re not really using it the way you said you were going to use it, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I spent some time, I spent about an hour in Don’s office. pitching him on this idea that this is an answer to the lottery. And what a great way we could do it. And we patterned it after the Hope Scholarship from Georgia. And so after I got talking to him and he said, you know what, Dean? I think you’re really on to something. I think you’re right. He said, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. He said, I’m going to take the bill and I’ll make it a committee bill. Said, I’ll take it from the member and we’ll make it a committee bill. So we did, and we got it, got it passed in the house and the Senate. And then I’ve got the governor. And so he didn’t like it. And so one of the things I knew about the governor, governor Childs was that he didn’t like entitlements and he was really concerned about. tying the hands of the future legislatures. But I kind of thought that was the beauty of it. It kind of did tie it, because I knew it would be so popular that they’d have to continue to fund it. And so he came in town, and he was signing it. And I knew he had a concern and was thinking about vetoing it. And I begged him, please, don’t veto this. Don’t, please. And he didn’t. He didn’t veto it, but he also didn’t sign it. He let it become law without his signature. Wow. And I think the only reason he did was because it was me asking. The next year, of course. was the big fanfare now that everybody’s funding it. And it just so happened providentially, I was in town and was able to attend the bill signing ceremony, and Ken Pruitt, who was one of my good friends, he said, Dean, you come get in this picture with us, because we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done this legislation. So the governor signed it and handed me the pen. That’s really cool. Even though I wasn’t in the legislature at the time. If you’ll indulge me, we go into sort of a, a lightning round, but it’s more of a, you know, rote questions I ask everybody just to kind of to get their reaction, but I think it’s people seem to like it that that listens. So I’ll ask you this, you spent your career preserving some of these, you know, unique special places in Florida. Are you optimistic about the environment in Florida? When you say the environment, you mean land, these natural systems, that, that sort of thing? so grateful that our leadership and the voters have said, look, green infrastructure is important to us. And honestly, you know, some policymakers have had different priorities of emphasis on that, some more so than others. And certainly our current governor has had a very strong conservation ethic and is very encouraging of protecting land. And this legislature is following in suit. And so they have appropriated quite a bit of money. And so I think we, Florida, is a model for how this can be done in other states and is thing to do for development and for conservation. And so if you want to protect your quality of life in your state, here’s a way to help do it. Yeah, I mean, like we can always discuss issues. There are always things when you have 20, almost 23 million people living in a place, it’s going to provide stresses and strains and that that’s going to exist. Yeah. And that’s the other, that’s the, that’s the next question, which is, is there something that keeps you up at night regarding that subject matter? And if so, you know, you know, why. Well, you just got a lot of resources that get stressed. Water certainly is at the top of that stress, because we can’t live without it. And so there’s a lot of competing demand for those water resources and to keep water clean. I don’t know that it keeps me up at night, but I know those are important considerations. And some of that stuff’s above my head, above my pay grade, because I’m not in public policy anymore. And you’re right, I am a reformed politician, mind talking, but I do get to participate and work with landowners and I can do my fair share in helping protect this place. Why not? by reducing some of the stress on some of the land, right? By helping do the conservation easements that I’ve been able to help do. Right, and that’s enormous. I think I would agree in that you are, in fact, doing your part. What advice would you give to young people that are thinking about whether it be in the public policy arena or in land brokerage, in conservation easement deals? What would you say to them in terms of getting things. Follow your dreams. Chariots of Fire. in that movie, and I tell my kids this, you know? Eric Little in the movie is seen, you know, he’s a missionary, his family, missionary family, and of course he’s a famous Olympic athlete, chooses not to run on Sunday, and then later runs in a relay race, and England wins, and you know, it’s one of those things, but in the movie, it shows his sister saying to him, Eric. just wish you would get this over and that you would get back on the mission field and doing God’s work on the mission field. And he said, I told him, yeah, but I feel this pleasure when I run. He made me fast too, and I feel this pleasure when I run. So I’ve told my kids, I want you to do. where you feel this pleasure in what you’re doing, and where so where your passion, what do you like doing? Pursue that, but pursue whatever you do with excellence. We’re made in his image to be excellent at whatever we do. So do that, pursue whatever it is that you’re passionate about, be really good at it, and focus on it. That’s great. If folks want to know more about what you do and how you may be able to help them in general and more specifically with here at your brokerage, how can they get hold of you? and call us at 863-648-1528 or email me at dean at svn.com. There you go, you heard it folks. And I’ll put the website in our episode notes so they can find you there as well as the email address and other things about what we talked today. I could go on for hours with you, but Dean Saunders, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brett, enjoyed it. Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks for listening to Water For Fighting. This podcast has been brought to you by Rez and C&Shoreline. Don’t forget to check the episode notes to visit their websites and learn more about how they can help you. If you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you use. And don’t forget to leave a five-star rating in review. You can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, probably even Twitter at FLWaterpod. And you can reach me directly at FLWaterpod at gmail.com for who and or what you’d like to know more about. Production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thanks to Carl Sworn for making the best of what he had to work with and to Dave Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. A very special thank you goes out to Bo Spring from the Bo Spring Band for giving permission to use his music for the podcast. The song is called Doin’ Work for Free and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold. Join me next time for another amazing conversation with someone who has helped shape water and environmental policy in the Sunshine State. Until then, keep your whiskey close and your water closer.

In our Season 2 opener, Brett has a conversation with noted filmmaker and author, Steve Hawley. Steve has a brand new book out called, Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World. They discuss the mythology surrounding the benefits of many of the world’s dams; the benefits of restoring once-dammed rivers; Dam Removal 101; and why he’s cautiously optimistic about the future of the world’s natural systems.

Go buy Steve’s new book here:

• To get it straight from the publisher, Patagonia 
• To buy it from Steve’s favorite book store 
• To find it at Amazon 

Read Steve’s first book, Recovering a Lost River.

Watch Steve’s film, Dammed to Extinction

• Watch on Amazon Prime
• Watch on Vimeo

To learn more about restoration work being done on the Klamath River, check out this amazing video.

I encourage you to find out more about what my friends at Sea & Shoreline and RES are doing to restore and protect Florida’s natural places and communities here: https://seaandshoreline.com and here: https://res.us

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

00:07Welcome to the second season of Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida and beyond with the people who make it happen. I’m your host, Brett Seifers, and I’m so grateful to be back with you for another season. I wanna start by thanking my new partners who helped make this podcast a reality, Sea and Shoreline and Resource Environmental Solutions, widely known as RES.

00:29REZ is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to addressing Florida’s environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us.

00:47Also, Sea and Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that is on a mission to restore Florida’s water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at seaandshoreline.com. More on both of those great companies later on. But now let’s talk a little bit about the season in front of us.

01:07As implied by the Florida and beyond from a second ago, we’ll be broadening our horizons a bit on the show. I think you’re going to find the conversation lineup for this season to be both interesting and thought-provoking. I should note that much of the season’s lineup is thanks in part to the feedback I’ve gotten from you, the listeners, so please keep sending your suggestions. Let’s get on with the season opening guest. Our guest is a filmmaker, an author, who has dedicated an already storied career to making the case that we have been terribly misinformed about the benefits of dams,

01:37and even religious cost. His name is Steve Hawley. And Steve has a new book out called Crack The Future of Dams in a Hot Chaotic World. Steve, thank you for joining me on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You’ve written a well-documented and beautifully illustrated book, but this is a personality driven podcast. So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to start by talking about you for a bit. That’s all right. Sure.

01:59Let’s start with where you live and where you were born and take it from there. Yeah, I live about an hour east of where I was born. I’m from Hood River, Oregon, and grew up in Portland. And I think maybe the most pertinent and interesting thing about my ever lengthening life history here, I’m in my early fifties is that in my formative years, one of my best friends growing up was a fly fishing nerd and

02:28energy and still is a fly fishing nerd as a matter of fact and introduced me to the world of Rivers and steelhead and salmon and quite clearly that’s shaped some of my career choices was that part of Growing up what were your what were your parents like were were they from Oregon as well or did they come from somewhere else? My mother grew up in Salem and Eugene my dad grew up in Berkeley, California and in outside of Boise, Idaho

02:57And they’re both school teachers. My dad is a PE teacher. My mom taught second and third grade. Okay. What were you like as a kid? You mentioned your, your friend who was the, the fly fishing nerd. Did you start fishing when you were really young or did you have other interests as well? I loved, I, I, I took to fishing right away. Neither of my parents were super outdoorsy people or fishermen, but my dad would always, you know, particularly on Sundays after church, if we wanted to go fishing somewhere, we’d hop in his old pickup truck.

03:25He’d take me to some spots out along the Clackamas River. That those were really formative experiences, but it really took off when I when I connected with this friend of mine who whose whose father taught a whole bunch of us skinny, you know, East County, East Multnomah County kids to really appreciate rivers in a way that I couldn’t have done without getting to know this family. How old were you at that point? When you when you started to connect with that one kid and his and his dad?

03:5516 maybe. Okay. It was high school. Yeah. So as soon as one of them had a driver’s license, then that really opened up doors as well, of course. Did that extend beyond high school into college, that sort of thing? Yeah, I had one of those kids, another friend of ours, pretty much designed his whole college career around getting out to fish. I lived with him in tiny little Ashland, Oregon, where I went to…

04:18college and this guy managed to get all of his classes into two days a week so he could have the other five days a week to fish. I didn’t quite have quite that level of dedication but it was truly the case that what we were taught when we were 15 and 16 is stuck with this sort of core group of friends who are who are still at it you know still out on rivers whenever we can get there. So you still hang out with him go fishing? Yeah a couple times a year. Awesome, awesome. Yeah.

04:44What were you studying in college? Was it something related to natural sciences or engineering or geology, something like that? Well, I still have ongoing case of math phobia. And so I have a degree in English, but I took every science class that I could that didn’t have a lab attached with it. So a lot of ecology, a little biology, some geology.

05:14Really, because of that introduction to the natural world through fishing, I became sort of fascinated with all of the facets of the earth sciences, I suppose. And that’s still sort of fascinating subject for me. We know what is, what is this place that we’re inhabiting? What is its history? What makes it work? What hurts it? What helps it? I’m always interested in, in kind of the origin stories of a sort, you know, with folks and.

05:42they get to a point in their career and they’re doing things that are really special. But for me, it’s the curiosity is where does that come from? And that’s a really interesting origin there. When did that start to stretch into thinking about dams, writing about dams, working on those sorts of issues? Was it from a personal experience or was it something that you got into from another direction?

06:11What I started considering at a relatively young age was just this massive transformation of the Columbia River system. The Columbia was once upon a time, relatively recently, one of the world’s top producers of salmon and was the world’s very best producer of Chinook salmon. And what we’ve done over the past three quarters of a century is transform that system, that natural system that existed for hundreds of thousands of years,

06:41That same river basin becoming one of the world’s top producers of hydropower. And so I started wondering what the trade-offs have been. And, you know, that’s one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time writing about this topic is those trade-offs are not often well considered. I don’t think over the long haul, I think the system that we’ve transformed is going to cost a lot more than it ever has come to. Yeah. I want to talk about that a bit because.

07:10You tell story after story of, and I’ll call it the false promise of dams, as it relates to the supposed economic and even cultural value. You tell that really cool story about the video that you show on the face of the dam. But you made some strong arguments that that’s not the case necessarily. Can you talk a little bit about some of those assumptions that we make about those benefits like hydropower, agriculture, and the reality that you ended up seeing as you researched it?

07:38Yeah, I think the trade-off to keep in mind is that the benefits that were promised have never quite been delivered. Maybe the second part of that is the ecological cost has been far higher than anybody has previously calculated. And that second part is especially true under any kind of climate change scenario that you’d want to consider. So, you know, recall that a lot of these projects were built…

08:02And I guess the big dam building frenzy was in the last century, starting probably with the depression and the federal programs to kind of put people back to work. And that’s an honorable motivation, but the benefits that were supposed to be delivered from water control projects were supposed to be kind of a rising tide that would lift all boats. And that’s not really what happened. For instance, the Columbia basin projects just west of me here in Washington state, the hope was to put 10,000

08:30families on their own working farms. And we never really got much more than a quarter of that. You know, it turned out that there’s about 2,500 families on some rather larger working farms. And so then the problem became, and this is something that the engineers never considered because what was really required was a type of social engineering. Where were you going to find the labor pool to work?

08:56you know, almost a million acres of newly irrigated land. And the answer to that question has been migrant labor. And there’s a, in the book, I outlined the whole kind of sorted history of our relationship with immigrant labor. And we’ve had kind of a Jekyll and Hyde relationship.

09:13with mostly Latin American and Hispanic workers. At first we invited them under a program called Bracero’s. And then a lot of the folks that we invited, we ended up uninviting in a rather unfriendly way. That kind of contrasting treatment of the labor pool that is still in this country, responsible for putting a lot of our food on the table, that’s never really been resolved. The immigrant issue that we have in this country is in a large part, particularly in the Western United States, driven by…

09:43the water projects that we built in the last century. You know, so that’s the economic cost. And we can talk a little bit about the environmental cost, which has been enormous. Sure. And you mentioned climate change, right? So at one point you talked about in particular methane and how these reservoirs on the backside of these dams are causing more methane thereby supposedly it would be counteracting the benefits of saying, using hydropower instead of saying, you know, coal or oil or something like that, right?

10:12Yeah, there’s a whole mythology around hydropower that borrows heavily on the virtuous intent, you know, of building large public water control projects. And part of that mythology is that

10:23hydro power is clean and green. It never has been. First of all, we talked a little bit already about the transformation of one of the greatest salmon-bearing river systems on earth into one that produces electricity. And so the loss of that resource, which has cultural, social, and even for indigenous people, religious implications, the costs have never really been fully calculated. And then you fast forward to our current predicament with climate change. In the book, I…

10:51talk about a researcher on the Washington State University campus who’s been part of this global team of scientists. And they’ve recently figured out that the world’s reservoirs, impoundments behind dams, have a greenhouse gas equivalent footprint, in other words, methane, that is equal to the greenhouse gas footprint of the nation of Germany, which is the world’s sixth largest producer of greenhouse gases.

11:21contribution to climate chaos, and yet we still have policies in place that say, well, hydropower can be part of the solution, but it’s not. The science tells us differently. All right, let’s take a quick break here to talk about my friends at Sea and Shoreline. Since its creation in 2014, Sea and Shoreline’s heralded experience with scientifically validated methods of aquatic restoration has proven successful across more than 150 environmental projects.

11:49The company continues to be the industry leader in rehabilitating threatened and corrupted aquatic environments, with proven success in places such as Crystal River, Homasasa River, the Caloosatchee River, and the Indian River Lagoon. I have seen firsthand how Seah and Shoreline completely reset the ecosystem in Crystal River, transforming it from an algae-dominated system to a plant-based system. The water used to be full of lingbia and hydrilla, with a thick bottom layer of muck that smelled like rotten eggs. Through muck removal,

12:18and planting of native eel grasses, the system is now beautiful and crystal clear with lush eelgrass meadows. The manatees are feasting, varieties of fish have returned, eco-tourism is booming, and property values have significantly increased. For more information about Sea and Shoreline and what they’re up to, visit seainshoreline.com. You mentioned the cultural and even religious aspect. Can you expand on that? Because you talked about the salmon a lot and obviously now I know why because you’re a big fisherman.

12:48And even beyond that, I understand that it’s an important issue to you. But those salmon are often a part of these cultures and even the religious aspects of some of these communities. Right? Absolutely. We’re the town where I’m.

13:04speaking to you from in Moscow, Idaho was no until the mid 19th century for thousands of years have been home to the Nez Perce and they were salmon people. They will tell you that they’ve been here since the beginning of time and that one of the foods that sustained their lives and their culture and their villages and their families for that.

13:24long stretch of time with salmon. You know, in their origin story and their creation myth, first there was water and then the salmon came. And you know, their relationship to that creature means almost everything to them. The only comparison I could make is it’s as important to the Nez Perce spiritual belief as the elements of communion are to Catholics. It’s that important. And one of the things that our government has done is disregard that.

13:51the belief that salmon are key to the spiritual as well as physical well-being of indigenous people in this part of the world. You wouldn’t do that if it was a mainstream Christian religion, right? You wouldn’t say, well, you know, the elements in communion just aren’t that important. So we’ll just do away with them and let people, you know, make their own way through an uncertain future. It’s really, it’s an environmental story. The disappearance of salmon is what I’m referring to here, but it’s also, this becomes a human rights issue.

14:22And I think that’s one of the more sort of fascinating and maybe hopefully will inspire some emotions amongst people who pick up the book because these people have been very patient with our federal government. And now we’re in a situation with climate change where time is running out to do something, to do the right thing. And hopefully we’ll manage to at least take a few steps in that direction.

14:48Yeah, let’s talk about the federal government for a bit. The Bureau of Reclamation comes in for some serious criticism throughout the book, obviously. But the politics of these dams in their construction, their removal, it’s all over the book. But it seems like these contentious places, it runs deeper than the typical partisan politics that we see on TV or read in the papers. Am I capturing that correctly? It seems like over that period of time.

15:17everyone has some blame there in that regard. Yeah, you know, what really I think is worth taking a closer look at in this scenario is the corruption of a few small branches of the federal government, the Bureau of Reclamation, the US Army Corps of Engineers. And I guess an apt analogy here might be to think about the way stolen property is treated.

15:43Right? So if I, if I steal your car and tool around here in Moscow, Idaho on a Saturday night, just given the nature of what happens when you steal somebody’s car, you’re not too concerned about washing it and returning it to the place you stole it from. Right? Right. And I kind of feel like on a much grander scale, that’s what’s happened with water resources in this country, particularly in the West is that the beneficiaries of that ill-gotten gains from water control systems.

16:11has made a very few people pretty well off and they’ve been very successful at maintaining the status quo that was established when these systems were built. And I’ll give you a quick example of that. I write about in the book the Westlands Water District in California. And throughout the Obama and into part of the Trump administrations, they managed to cut a deal where…

16:35They are going to get their water from the Colorado. I’d say that’s it’s not true. They don’t get their water from the Colorado system. They get it from the California state water system.

16:45And in an era of climate change where everybody in Southern California particularly is struggling to maintain a viable supply of water, Westlands has cut a deal where they’re going to take ownership of $3 billion worth of public infrastructure, the water control that delivers water to their fields. And they’re also going to be guaranteed water in a fashion that almost no one else in California will be.

17:13So while we’re talking about everybody else making cuts and conserving and just completely rethinking the way that we use water, this particular irrigation district has managed to sew up kind of a 19th or 20th century version of water rights that really doesn’t have any place in a warming, drying world. It’s a little different here. Florida is kind of a mix of that repairing water rights and then prior appropriation. But when we look at these types of…

17:41of projects where you’re talking about irrigating where there are a lot of rules and laws here to govern the more efficient use of it. When we talk about surficial storage for that use, usually it’s a double benefit. So you’re cleaning some historical water quality issue while also maybe providing some water supply. Did those kinds of restrictions exist in some of these systems that you’re talking about? Where they exist, they’ve been ignored.

18:09You know, and I think really, you know, the Eastern seaboard in Florida is definitely different, but the 20th century version of water control and the, off the top of my head, thinking of some of the major ecological disasters that Florida is dealing with at the behest of agricultural interests, I guess that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the commonality in this system is that, again, the virtuous intent, we owe a debt of gratitude to.

18:37farmers and ranchers for putting food on our tables, but they are responsible, just as the rest of us are, for managing water and land in a way that it can be put to good use for many generations to come. And I think what we’re looking at instead is, you know, all the signs are pointing to an agricultural system that is not going to last long into the 21st century unless we start rethinking the way that we do things.

19:06And federal water control has played a key role in sort of thinking about things, not in the long term, but in the short term. And, and so that applies whether you’re in Florida or Idaho or in the middle of the country and on a farm in Iowa or Kansas. It’s the policy itself of free water and electricity for farmers is something that has corrupted our ability to manage resources into the long term.

19:33Yeah, we see that, um, over here and, and, uh, you know, I want to focus on, on your, on your book and, and your experiences, you know, as much as possible. But I think maybe the, the equivalent here is, is perhaps we have a large, large river, the Kissimmee river that flows to Lake Okeechobee, a massive freshwater lake, and then ends up in, in the Everglades, but Army Corps of Engineers, uh, in that, in that, that mid 20th century wisdom, you know, straightens a river, creates a dyke. And then, you know, and the rest is history. And then you spend.

20:02hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes billions of dollars now here in Florida, undoing a lot of that well-intentioned mess on the part of the federal government. You talk a lot about that in terms of, and I remember one part, you were talking about salmon in, I think it’s the Columbia Basin, where they were trying to reseed or put salmon patcheries and the cost per salmon was insane, but that’s the price in order to get something

20:32to try to survive in a climate and an environment that is not meant for them the way it is with the dams. It was like something like, I wanna say 250 to $600 per salmon. Yeah, it gets higher than that too. Some of the, there’s a hatchery here in Idaho that was built in 2017 and was supposed to help sockeye salmon, which sockeye are a variety of salmon that spawns.

20:59part of their life cycle requires a freshwater lake. And so sockeye swim from the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles inland and historically spawned up in the, up at six or 7,000 feet in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. And you know, the hatchery, I think they were well into the thousands of dollars per fish. And then they ended up not helping the naturally reproducing fish because as is often the case when you introduce a hatchery fish into a system.

21:26and those fish have been inoculated against specific diseases, they can introduce that disease to the naturally reproducing fish and wipe out part of the population. And that’s exactly what occurred in this hatchery down in Boise. And so not only was it a very expensive endeavor, but it ended up being a biological failure as well. And I think what we need to learn from those kinds of scenarios is that there’s a certain wisdom to…

21:54a natural system that is inherent simply because of the millions of years of evolution that go into the, you know, the development of a river system with its native wild creatures. And we haven’t yet really learned how to honor that inherent wisdom that you find all over the planet and that everywhere you look we seem to be hell-bent on doing away with. I guess to that point, the book seems at times to be both pessimistic

22:24and then hopeful, like all at once. Is that how you see yourself in some of these stories? Like, I want to talk about the Klamath River, but before I do that, is that the impression that you want readers to have? How do you see yourself in that regard? Yeah, you know, I have two kids. They’re gonna be adults soon. They’re both teenagers now. And I think the deal I made when my kids were born is that you give up the privilege of being a full-time pessimist when you have children.

22:53So the deal I made is I can be a pessimist only 20% of the time. 80% of the time I have to try to be optimistic. And my oldest son is going to study environmental science. He’s going off to college in the fall. And I appreciate his outlook on the future, because I think he has managed to cultivate some sense of optimism that these are giant problems, but that they can also be addressed. That gives me hope as well, if somebody from the next generation is already thinking like that.

23:22You have an entire chapter, it’s called, you know, Dam Removal 101, and you talk about a few of the success stories, and I want to talk about one of those, it’s simply because I have some familiarity, because I have some folks that I work with, at a company called Resource Environmental Solutions, and they’re working on the Klamath River Dam restoration, and not the dam removal part, but you kind of end that chapter about the Klamath River at the point of just prior to…

23:49the actual removal and then restoration. Can you talk a little bit about that success story and how you go from the disaster to the end result, which is hopefully the restoration of this habitat in these natural places? Yeah, the Klamath is really a blueprint for what could be done almost anywhere where there’s dams that need to come out because what you had is pretty contentious, drought-stricken river basin and some fairly entrenched water buffaloes as a…

24:19the former chief of the Bureau of Reclamation, Dan Beard calls them just people that, irrigators that have come to view the water and in a given river basin as their sole, as owning all of it, I guess, would be the easiest way to put it. And the first thing that happened is that those people were sort of thoroughly disabused of the notion that they own all the water. And so they got beat in court numerous times, and it turns out they don’t own all the water. So then…

24:46to jump over a whole bunch of things that happened. They were kind of forced to the negotiating table and then kind of a really beautiful thing happened and these commercial fishermen and a few conservationists and farmers found out that they actually like each other. So they, in earnest, sat down around a table and hammered out a deal and they got.

25:07a promise from actually my congressman, my former congressman in the state of Oregon, he is now retired. He told these people, you bring me a deal and I’ll push something through congress. Well, he was making a bet that these people wouldn’t come up with an agreement and he wouldn’t have to push a bill through congress. So they called his bluff and when it was time for him to do something, he didn’t do anything. But nonetheless, these people, again, the develop the relationship that they had developed

25:35dictated their next move, which was, we’re not gonna quit. And they figured out that they didn’t need Congress to take dams out on the climate, that they could make it happen just through the federal relicensing process. And so that’s what they did. They got together and sort of reworked that original agreement so that no congressional authorization was required.

25:58You had a utility company, Pacific Power, that was really interested in getting rid of what they saw as a stranded asset. And so it took 30 years, all told, but next year, all four of those dams are gonna come out. And the thing to keep in mind about that is that on the West Coast, the Klamath Basin was once the third largest producer of salmon along the Western coastline of the United States. The first was the Columbia, the second was the Sacramento-San Joaquin.

26:29And the third was the Klamath. So it’s daunting in an era of climate change to think that maybe we could have some semblance of that back. But one thing that I’ve learned over the years about all Salmonids is they’re way tougher than we give them credit for. And there are such plethora of little gem-like pieces of habitat in a Klamath basin that these fish are now going to have access to that you can’t help it again, be sort of

26:57at least cautiously optimistic that dam removal there is going to yield some positive results. Yeah. And you’ve seen that already, right? That you, I forget exactly which part of the book you talk about where a dam was removed. And even though it wasn’t the entire extent of the river, the amount of time it took for salmon to start making their way back up river was, I think you said like in the course of a year, maybe two at the tops. Is, am I remembering? Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s.

27:25Yeah, let’s talk about an East Coast river on the Gulf of Maine where there’s just been an incredible ecological restoration. The first dam to come out there was the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in 1999. And that’s kind of how I marked the beginning of what you might call the modern dam removal movement.

27:43And one reason that that’s considered the beginning is the results there were so dramatic. There’s a type of fish called, now they call it a river herring, it used to be called an alewife, and it’s an anadromous fish. It spends some time in the ocean and then comes back in freshwater river systems to spawn. And in the ensuing years, since Edwards Dam came out, there’s been several more on the Sebastica and some other rivers in the Gulf of Maine. And now you have…

28:08about five and a half million river herring that are returning to those Gulf of Maine rivers every year. They’re kind of the baseline of the ecosystem in that part of the world, the marine ecosystem in that part of the world. And you went from having probably less than 100,000 of them prior to 1999 to having five and a half million. You know, the turnaround was just remarkable when the Edwards Dam came out 24 years ago now. It marked the beginning of not only a transformation,

28:37for the river, but for the city of Augusta, which because they use the Kennebec River as kind of an open sewer for so many years, literally the backs of the town’s buildings had been turned away from the river. And in the last 25 years, it’s been remarkable to watch in Augusta as the city’s kind of turned to face the river again and make it a focal point of future development. Wow. So there’s been social, ecological.

29:05you know, and even economic returns on that investment. And that’s a story when you start looking at this, that can be told over and over again. It’s remarkable to watch particularly East coast cities where there’s a longer history of industrialization, reincorporate free flowing water into the architecture of the town. And to that end, like you provide an actual, it’s almost like a, here’s how you do it point by point. And working towards.

29:31dam removal. I don’t want to give away the entire book. I think everyone should read it. It’s a fantastic book. But talk about a little bit about how you go about the dam removal 101. Yeah. You know, the low hanging fruit, so to speak, of the dam removal movement is the thousands and thousands of small dams, no taller than 15 feet, that are not serving any particular purpose. And all they need to be removed is funding and a-

30:01and to go through a permitting process to do it safely. And so that was kind of the inspiration behind that chapter when you talk to a group like American Rivers that’s been played a central role in a lot of East Coast dam removals. They’ll tell you that it’s a successful endeavor and that the only thing we need is more money and a quicker timeline to get more of these dams removed. And so that was kind of, I thought.

30:25If we could include a 15 or 20 page instruction manual on how to get a small dam taken out that maybe that would help serve that purpose You know, it’s interesting to look at state like New Jersey and and look at the amount of river restoration that they’ve accomplished over The past 15 or 20 years it made it so that you know, it’d be a really interesting Adventure to fly into JFK with a three-weight

30:48fly rod and take a cab to take a cab to all the within an hour of the city. Whereas suddenly there’s some pretty good trout fishing to be had. And, you know, it’s one of those things that you can point to young people and say, you know what, this is a place that is much better off than it was when I was a kid. And I think in this day and age, that’s a really important thing to be able to, to, to tell young people. All right. Let’s take a quick pause to talk about my friends from res res.

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31:46and the Heartland to coastal estuaries, and the Florida Keys. They focus on restoring floodplains and wetlands and improving water quality, benefiting numerous species that call Florida home. With an unwavering commitment to preserving the state’s unique ecological communities, RES confronts the complexities of Florida’s mosaic landscape with water resources head on. Their creative solutions and innovative approach are helping municipalities, agencies, and local water resource groups pave the way for a brighter future.

32:16With each project, RES upholds long-term stewardship practices, guaranteeing sustainable outcomes that endure. Discover more about their work and commitment to addressing Florida’s environmental challenges by visiting www.res.us. Yeah, I think on the other end of that spectrum, and it was something that I intended on asking earlier, but when you talk about the, you know, these small dams is you talk a little bit about some.

32:45high hazard dams. When you look at, you’ve mapped out, you actually have a map of the United States where you’ve mapped out where these dams exist. I think even a worldwide map as well, where you have high hazard dams. And some of the stories about when you have a failure of these sometimes century old dams that fail, there’s some significant loss of human life there. And so I know it’s a lot more complicated, but

33:06In terms of how to accomplish that, how do folks go about, you give a, I think you give one, at least one example of a place where you had a dam that was going completely defunct. Maybe it was the Klamath where it’s like, it’s becoming a hazard and it just becomes easier to take it down than to risk thousands of people potentially dying. Yeah. I mean, that’s happening all over the country. Remember that the…

33:31lifespan of concrete is no more than about 60 years and you have, you know, abandoned projects in places that are, that, you know, some of these structures are approaching twice that they’re potentially disastrous depending on how large the structure is. I, in the book, I write about an example, uh, in Italy, where a post-war project called Bionte dam was built in a, in a little town called Longaron. I might be screwing up the Italian on that.

33:59But the dam itself didn’t collapse, but the reservoir, the hydrostatic pressure in the reservoir played a role in causing a landslide. So a mile square slab of rock slid into the reservoir and created this super wave that washed over the top of the dam and took out a town of 2,500 people below it. And there was almost 100% mortality rate. And the violence of this collapse or the wave, I guess, that ripped through the town, look, I think there’s some pictures in the book.

34:28and it looks like a war zone. I mean, the wind that that wave created ripped the clothes off of people. As these structures age, you know, you look at…

34:38The snowpack, for instance, in the state of California this year, or in the Southern Sierra, they have three times the normal amount of snow. And all water managers and public safety officials are kind of waiting to see what happens in the first spate of hot weather down there, because these systems were not designed for the kind of sudden variability that we’re having in our weather these days.

35:00So there’s a huge amount of safety considerations. In the book, I interview this expert, the safety engineer from Berkeley named Robert B. And he, you’ll see if you pick up the book, he’s so alarmed by the lack safety standards that we have in our country’s water control projects that you, you know, for a guy who’s studied safety for an entire career, you’d think it would take quite a bit for somebody to just cover their eyes and look the other way. But.

35:26In the interview that I did with him, he said that’s kind of what he’s doing with dams. He feels like a major disaster at this point is almost an inevitability. And that should cause us a great deal of alarm. Well, let’s, if you don’t mind, let’s move down south quite a bit. You toward the end of the book, you the namesake of your publisher, Patagonia, you had to South America to talk about some of these these beautiful natural areas down there and, and the work to

35:54prevent dams coming in. So we’re dealing, you know, as you, as you note in, in the book elsewhere about dam removal in the United States, but there’s still places where, where folks are trying to put in, you know, incredibly large systems, right? Yeah, it’s happening all over the world. The heartening thing about South American dam development is in the nation of Chile. There was a, I guess an uprising that really caught the attention, not only of a lot of Chileans, but a lot of-

36:22people internationally. The short version of the story is that there was an Italian company that had proposed building five dams on the

36:31on the Baker and Pasqua rivers in southern Chile. And there was one person, it kind of started with one person. There’s a cowboy that lives in the Aysen region in Chile who was so alarmed by the prospect of losing the land where he grazes his sheep that he hopped on a horse and rode a few hundred miles to the regional capital, this town called Caique. And that caught the attention of media and they started doing kind of annual marches from their…

36:59part of Iceland region up to this regional capital. And the government wasn’t paying them much attention, but through a sort of series of both lucky and very much strategically planned events, these people, these kind of very rural, not very well resourced locals ended up preventing these five dams from being built. And so it’s kind of a story of what looks like an impossible task to begin with can actually.

37:28very quickly become something that is quite feasible and even certainly desirable. And I think the other part of that that’s been really heartening in sort of the post-Pinache era in Chile is that there’s been this national kind of youth movement. People are really falling in love with the landscape there and with what you can really legitimately term as their homeland, right? And I think that’s partly a function of a different economy than they had.

37:53in the 60s and 70s. But it’s partly because, you know, why does any sort of social movement happen? There was just a recognized need to experience what is beautiful. And I think the reason that I included the chapter on Chile is I sort of feel like that’s something that in this country, the conservation movement has started to steer away from a little bit, is that those aesthetic arguments, the human need to experience beauty, it should be really.

38:21what motivates a lot of our conservation work. It’s hard to get people excited about rising temperatures or a longer hurricane season because that’s just weather, it’s just numbers. But if you can contextualize people’s care for the planet in the places where they live, and so this particular place is worth restoring or defending, then I think that makes for a much more potent conservation movement.

38:47It seems like it and I mean the book alone with the number of the gorgeous photographs, not just of South America but all over the world of these natural places I think really begins to do that idea some justice. I know we don’t have a ton of time left but I’d like to shove you into a kind of a lightning round of sorts and I ask these questions of everyone and I think a lot of these answers I think people will be able to find by.

39:13by reading your book, which again, I encourage people to do, but let’s just, let’s roll with it and you, let’s see what we come up with. Hey, that sounds great. Yeah. What professional accomplishment are you the most proud of? Well, I quite suddenly in 2017 found myself fighting and co-producing a documentary film also, there’s a recurring theme here also ultimately about some dams.

39:39And the name of that movie is Dam to Extinction. It’s a documentary film about the plight of killer whales in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that have evolved to feed almost exclusively on Chinook salmon. And because of the transformation of the Columbia River system from what was once one of the world’s top producers of Chinook salmon into a top producer of hydropower.

40:04These whales are starving to death. And I think in telling that story, we stumbled onto the plight of one particular whale that they named these whales. A mother whale named Telequah pushed her, she had a stillborn calf. And the distress that she could, you could visibly palpably feel caused her to put this dead, this stillborn baby on her snout and push it around.

40:32the coastal waters off of Seattle and the state of Washington for 17 days. She swam over a thousand miles with this thing on her nose. She wouldn’t let it sink to the bottom, so it would start to sink and she would dive down and push it back up and the rest of her fellow whales swam alongside her. There was just a demonstrable show of grief, you know, from one fellow mammal to another and we were able to include that.

41:00footage of that in the film and it caused another significant uprising. I think some of the advocates for those whales started a petition that I think it was on change.org and it now has over a million signatures on it. And it is basically begging the government in the state of Washington to do something about the lack of salmon returning from the ocean to rivers in the Pacific Northwest. And we’re down to less than 1% of historic abundance. And so

41:29I think that’s the thing that is, you know, I’ve chosen to do the kind of work that I do because I feel like we’re in this unique time in history where we’re going to have to undertake some fairly dramatic changes from the way we’ve been doing things the last few hundred years. And if I, you know, if I could draw attention to these issues and make people or, you know, encourage people to have an emotional response, I think that’s kind of the basis of our, you know, activism is that you have to have a connection to the issues that you’re

41:58fighting for and if I’ve managed to do that with that film or in some of my writing and other places I think that’s that’s the thing that I’m most proud of. Yeah I guess that leads me to one of the other questions or you know it has some connection there is like is if you had a chance to go back to say the beginning of your adult life is there something that you would do differently is it to make that case earlier? Yeah absolutely it took me until I was into my 30s to step

42:27my current role as a writer. And, you know, now it’s one of the most heartening things that I get to experience is high school kids and even younger. I think of one activist up in the state of Washington who’s been advocating for salmon and removing dams and the wellbeing of killer whales since she was 10 or 11. And yeah, just sooner and more. That’s the only regret that I would have. I feel like this is vital and necessary work and I’m encouraged by the number of

42:56young people particularly that are recognizing that and taking it on in a much more effective way than I’ve managed to. You kind of nailed down really the last two questions and I’ll make it a two-parter in that regard. Sure. So you spent this part of your career helping to restore these unique and special places. Are you one, optimistic about the future of these places and the battles to come? And then…

43:22What advice would you give to young people who are just entering or they’re interested in, in the world of, you know, whether it be dam removal, advocacy, or environmental restoration in general? Yeah, I’m, I guess I’m like my son. I am cautiously optimistic that we’re going to address some of our major problems where what keeps me up at night is how much we’re going to lose before we get on with the fixing, right? I think if you could characterize.

43:51our species in maybe a sentence or two, it might be something like we’re not nearly as good at long-term planning as we consider ourselves to be, but we can be pretty effective in an emergency. And I feel like this long emergency that we’re still kind of on the front end of with climate change is going to really…

44:13catalyze a transformation of, and hopefully for the best, for our species, for humans, you know? The second part of the question, I would point young people to a quote that I included in the book by a famous Grand Canyon river guide named Martin Litton. Martin was the angel on David Brower’s shoulder as they were negotiating to prevent dams from being built in, on the Colorado River and in and around Grand Canyon in particular. There’s a famous fight that I…

44:42retail in the book about preventing a dam in what is now a dinosaur national monument. And Martin said, don’t ask for what is reasonable, ask for what is right. And I think if there’s a flaw in the modern conservation movement is that they’re not arguing and fighting passionately for what ought to be the world that they want to create. They’re sort of negotiating too meekly over what is. And don’t.

45:09The advice to young people would be don’t compromise that vision of what you think the world can be. And don’t let anybody else talk you into just negotiating over the crumbs of what is. I think that’s really important. That’s why I hope that’s why I wrote the book. And I hope, you know, the words of Martin Linton and some other folks that are in there will cause people to not let go of that more optimistic vision of what the world could be. Well, I think it’s a perfect place to close. And so I’ll once again tell people what the book is. It’s called Cracked.

45:38The Future of Dams and a Hot Chaotic World. Steve, where can folks find this book and your other work as well, including your film and your first book? Let’s see. Probably the first, let’s do the film first. It’s streaming on Vimeo and on Amazon Prime. The film has a website. It’s dam2extinction.com. My first book, I would encourage you to go to the website of any independent bookseller. My favorite is Powell’s Books, because that’s close to home in Portland.

46:08Uh, you can order it there. Certainly like most other books can be found on Amazon. You can, you can order it from there if you can’t find your favorite independent bookseller. And then this latest work, Cracked, you can find on Patagonia’s website. And it’s also for sale in a lot of their retail stores, as well as at a lot of independent booksellers. So I’m plugging your independent bookstore. If you’re lucky enough to live near a town that has a

46:33a bookstore support those folks. They’re the ones that are, you know, not only supporting authors like me, but supporting, I think, a finer vision of the world of literacy, right? I tell listeners, you heard it from Steve, you know where to buy the book down. I’ll put I’ll put links to all those, including your favorite independent bookstore, by the way, and we’ll put that in the episode notes as well so people can find it and find your other work.

47:00Steve Hawley, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a real pleasure. Hey, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. Hey, you bet. Good luck to you. Yep. Take care. Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks for listening to Water for Fighting. You can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and probably even on Twitter at FLWaterpod. And you can reach me directly at FLWaterpod at gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and or what you’d like to know more about. Thanks again to my friends at C&Shoreline and Rez.

47:28I’ll have more information about them in the show notes and website as well. So please be sure to check them out. They’re doing amazing work. Production this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thanks to Carl Soren for making the best of what he had to work with and Dave Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. A very special thank you goes out to Bo Spring from the Bo Spring brand for giving permission to use his music for the podcast. The song is called Doing Work for Free and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold.

47:56Join me next time for another amazing conversation with someone who’s helped shape how we think about water and the environment in the sunshine state. And at least for this episode beyond until then, keep your whiskey close and your water closer.

In the last episode of the season, Brett sits down with limnologist, business owner and two-time water management district executive director – Ann Shortelle.  They talk about building a family and career in Florida; being one of only three people to serve as executive director of two different water management districts; how she wants young women and girls to embrace math and science more; Notre Dame super fandom; and how she became a “Lake Doctor”. 

To learn more about the North Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership, go here: https://northfloridawater.com

To learn more about the Central Florida Water Initiative, check here: https://cfwiwater.com and here: https://floridadep.gov/water-policy/water-policy/content/central-florida-water-initiative-cfwi

To find out more about DEP’s Office of Water Policy and Ecosystems Restoration, head here: https://floridadep.gov/water-policy

To see what they’re up to at the Suwannee River Water Management District these days, check out their website here: https://www.mysuwanneeriver.com

To wade through the Wikipedia page on the Rodman Dam and Reservoir, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodman_Reservoir

You can email Ann directly here: [email protected]

Our theme song is “Doing Work For Free”, by Bo Spring Band (Apple Music) (Spotify) (Pandora)

speaker:Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida with the people who make it happen. I’m your host, Brett Seifers. I’ve decided to close out the season by talking to one of the smartest people I know, and easily my favorite limnologist, Dr. Anne Shortell. When I met Anne, she was just hired as the director of the Office of Water Policy at the Department of Environmental Protection, and she would go on to be one of only three people ever to serve as executive director of two different water management districts. She’s currently the co-owner 2030 Consulting out of Gainesville and even though we’re talking by phone, I couldn’t be more happy to have her on the show. So let’s get on with it. Anne, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I’m honored to be here and thanks for noting that I actually can’t keep a job. Oh boy. We’ll get to some of that. Trust me. Trust me. First of all, where are you at the moment? Dallas, Texas. And why are you in Dallas, Texas? Well, I have a daughter and son-in-law and twin granddaughters here and we are currently in the final days of Baby Watch for number three. Wow. Wow. That’s awesome. And we’ll get to a little bit more of that pretty soon, but I want to start with when you were born. And you were born in, let me see if I pronounced this correctly, Saul St. Marie? Is that right? Sue St. Marie. There you go. And that’s in Michigan. Yes. much about your beginnings because you’re an Air Force brat. So your family’s not actually from Michigan, right? Correct. They’re from upstate New York. Where in upstate New York? Because Ryan Matthews, who I spoke with last week, his family’s from Troy, New York. Uh, not too close to where my family is, has their roots, Janesden, New York is in the extreme western portion, close to Buffalo. really about 60 miles from Buffalo. Wow, cold times. And do you still have a lot of extended family up there? We have, you know, there’s cousins about and you know, once removed type family. It’s generally a fairly small family and most of my generation and the next generation have moved elsewhere. Okay, so do you consider yourself in any way a New Yorker or are you just, hey, I’m an Air Force brat And so I’m from everywhere. Air Force brat and no, I do not consider myself a New Yorker. Well, I mean, you’ve been in Florida for a long time. So I hate to try to bash you over the head with that, but sometimes it is what it is. So where did your parents end up after the Air Force days were over? Well, my dad’s last active duty station was Eglin Air Force Base out on the Panhandle. So he retired there. and my dad actually moved to Gainesville where we, Kevin and I were raising our family. Nice. So then tell me about young Anne. You end up as an accomplished academic, and I know for a fact that you’re a huge sports fan, especially Notre Dame football, but were you bookish as a kid? Did you enjoy the outdoors and sports more or was it both? Well, I always enjoyed the outdoors sports, but as a spectator, I’m not all that coordinated. And I enjoyed academics, but I don’t really consider myself bookish. Although, you know, I’ve read all the Nancy Drew mysteries from back in the day. So maybe I am. I think I started my scientific career when I was in grade school. Wow. Tell me about your, your favorite parts of exploring nature and the outdoors as a kid. Or was that, was that something that you like doing? So when we lived in Oklahoma, I could walk to school and you had to, you know, cross this little creek on the way to school. And in the, in the spring, I would pester my mom for mason jars and come home every day with tadpoles, probably decimated the population in the, in the creek. But for sure, I then spent hours, countless hours and days trying to rear these guys into little frogs, I admit to having lost some. But those, yeah, those were the beginnings. And by high school, we were moving around all the time. And by high school, nationally, we had the National Environmental Policy Act. And I kind of felt like I was an environmental sleuth. I mean, as a teenager, I probably arrested with my little brownie camera outside of, you know, outside the gates of some ne’er-do-well looking industries taking shots and speculating what was really going on there. Little did I know, right? Yeah, exactly. And so just to pull on that thread a little bit, was there a place that you were looking at that you were sleuthing out to end up being a ne’er-do-well? an exercise of that curiosity that stayed with you? For me, it’s mostly curiosity. There was one place in my high school days that looking back, I can see, well, I wasn’t far off on that one. But in general, most industries are trying to do the right thing. They’re trying to improve environmentally, whether it’s air, whether it’s water, all the different things. I mean, back in the day, folks were what was usual and customary and we didn’t understand all the consequences, you know, 50 years ago. So yeah, that seems fair. And we have tons of examples of that, you know, in Florida, where you had the, I think most specifically the federal government, you know, thinking you’re doing the right thing. And in the end, I’m thinking of straightening the Kissimmee River, you know, all the way down to Lake Okeechobee and what a mess that made. Absolutely. So where family when you graduated from high school? You mentioned high school? In Georgia, Robbins Air Force Base, one in Robbins, Georgia. Is that, gosh, was that Atlanta or Macon? It’s just south of Macon. Okay. And so you go on to study both biology and chemistry in college. And I was going to ask how you ended up at Mercer for that, but I think I know the answers because it was close by and it’s a really good school. Is that right? arrogance associated with it. It turns out, you know, back in the day we were we were schooled, you know, you can be anything, you know, study hard, the world is your oyster, you can do whatever you want. And I was just arrogant enough to assume that that meant I only needed to apply to the college that I wanted to go to. Go to the college of your choice. Well, I didn’t get in and by then it was It was so late. It was too late to you know kind of go away to school all all of these other choices that I’ve looked at And eliminated because of course I was going to the one school but Mercer had and it is a good school by the way But they had a reciprocal any of the counties adjoining they had you know kind of this admission policy I maybe they assumed you weren’t gonna live on campus I did but I mean Mercer because I had not gotten the college of my choice. You mentioned that three times now, not getting into the college of your choice. So you do not want to mention it? I was trying to avoid mentioning William & Mary, but now I’ve said it. Also a lovely school, but known for chemistry and biology or you want to study something else at William & Mary? years old, you’re not necessarily making these choices based on how the programs look. Grad school, yes. You know, undergraduate, not so much. I just fell in love with it when I visited there and eliminated all my other choices and that was not a good thing. Of course, I got my revenge, if you will, my admissions revenge when they, because I kept my application active. the first semester of my freshman year at Mercer and you know had a little party and burned the thing and As one does when they’re when they’re young. Yes, and so When did the plan to become as as our mutual friend John? Stevenson says when he refers to you as a lake doctor. So when did that materialize? Well, I had many wonderful teachers and professors along the way and in my sophomore year at Mercer, one of my professors who was a University of Michigan graduate said, you know, Ann, you ought to look at going to their field station. University of Michigan’s got this field station up at Douglas Lake. I think you’d like it. I think it broadened your horizons. Long story short, I applied, I went, took my first Limnology class, and I realized at that time I’ve found the career when in fact I couldn’t have articulated, I didn’t even know what a limnologist was. For people either who don’t know, I said lake doctor, but it’s slightly more complicated than that, I understand. What is a limnologist for folks out there that don’t know? Well, so classically, it’s the physical, chemical, and biological science of lakes and reservoirs, surface waters. including myself, are happy if our feet are wet. So we’ve branched out into rivers and streams and wetlands. You know, we pretty much stop at the estuary, you know, where as things start to get salty, we’re less in a comfort zone. Interestingly, it’s generally less about groundwater, or it was, radically over the last 50 years as we realized the interaction between the surface water and the groundwater. Yeah. And that’s especially true here in Florida, obviously, and especially true in two places where you headed up. We’ll talk about that pretty soon. But I want to stick for a second on your choices that you’re making here, which are endlessly fascinating now. So you have this professor you really like, and he says, you’ve got to go to Michigan and you say great, but what I’m actually gonna do is go to the school that is the arch enemy of the University of Michigan. I guess maybe second to Michigan State, which is Notre Dame, but there’s a lot of kismet, luck, fate involved in that as well, I assume? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and as you already mentioned, I’m a big college football fan, so that helped too. Although, you know, Michigan would been would have been a good choice as well. But I did end up doing my graduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. Yeah and so you’re at Notre Dame and that’s how I know you more than anything else is that you are all Irish and and so you went to Notre Dame and you meet a dashing young engineer there named Kevin has two degrees from Notre Dame. He went there as an undergraduate and became an electrical engineer, a systems engineer, moved away, worked for a while, came back to graduate school and that is indeed where we met. His family is from Connecticut. He had from back in the day, our girls just found his acceptance letter to you know Notre Dame. So he got into the college of his choice. Unlike me, but it was a match made in heaven. We dated and got married after I finished my degree at Notre Dame. So did you end up in Florida right after that? Tell me because I’ll give you where I’m at in terms of my knowledge of Anne Shortell and Kevin Shortell history. I meet you in 2011. I know you went to Notre Dame. two periods and that’s a that’s a fair number of years there. So what happened after you graduated and you both got married and moved on? So he had already finished and had moved to the Boston area and he was a little bit more of a homebody than me. Recall I’m an Air Force brat, I’ll go anywhere, right? Right. And he grew up in the same house in Connecticut, you know, for his entire childhood Boston, not far away. So I followed him there when we got married. That was a big career decision point, right? You know, do I do a postdoc, da da da da da? We made the decision, well, we’re going to start out in Boston. And we loved Boston. We were all over New England, having, you know, the time of our lives as newlyweds. And, you know, life just intervenes in those times. was skyrocketing, my mom got sick. I mean, you know, my dad and mom had retired to Florida. Our best friends up there at the time were Bill and Wendy Graham. Wendy Graham was, who’s the University of Florida’s head of the Water Institute there now. Back in the day, they had, they had come up and she was at MIT for her doctorate and Kevin and Bill you know, worked at the same small firm. And so we were all fast friends. And they were coming back to Florida and we were looking at the housing and saying, you know, we could do really well in Florida. And Kevin’s like, Florida? Are you, you know, what? But the rest is history, as they say. We moved to Gainesville and stayed there for the entire time we raised our family. And so, yeah, you mentioned raising a family. You have two daughters. What are their names? And So Janet was born in 89 and Jennifer was born in 91. And so you go straight to Gainesville. Are you living in the, or is the house that you have now, is that the same one that you’ve lived in the entire time or have you moved around a little bit since you were there? No, we found that house and that’s been our homestead all this time. Wow, that’s very cool. Yeah, exactly. I can relate, that’s for sure. I’m the son of two Navy brats. But I picked up from my mom the desire not to move all the time. So that’s kind of stuck. My dad used to love, boy, he loved moving. But you’re now both in the private sector, right? And so tell me a little bit about that. Tell me about the work that you did before you ended up in government service. You know, kind of for me, classic environmental consulting, developing clients, trying to help them be successful, mindful of choices that they need to make to develop their product or to deliver energy or whatever their particular challenges were in a cost-effective way, but also in an environmentally responsible way. France all over the country. And there were some fantastic folks that I met along the way, and really with very, very few exceptions, the folks that I was trying to do the right thing. So that was successful. I had fun for a long time. Nice. And then you decide to give all that fun up and come into government at DEP, no less. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you got there, it was, you know, the trumpets and bugles, a calling, and everyone is very excited to get you in the building, myself included. How did that happen? Yeah, well, serendipity is a real thing, right? Governor Scott was elected. I was invited to be on his transition team. He was looking for a scientist. He got me. Now what are the odds? And my eyes were opened during that time period of, you know, the whole government, the workings of government and the policy aspects. Just, you know, those doors kind of cracked open for me and I saw what some of the possibilities were. And I’m also, you already know this, easily bored. to work in that administration. And, you know, DEP would be the obvious place to start. But as you know, I went there as green as a turnip or something. I don’t think green, I guess the leaves are green. In terms of policy, and you and John Stevenson, who was not the secretary yet, affairs director, schooled me up and taught me everything I know. I mean, basically, you know, just tried to keep me from running my mouth too much in inappropriate times. We’ll get, we’ll get to a little bit of that as well. But I w what I remember the most was your sticky note whiteboard. So you have a whiteboard that people normally use to write on, but you decided to put what had to been a couple hundred sticky notes, a dollars all over it because you’re trying to work through some issues that the state’s been struggling with for many years, the biggest of which is consumptive use permitting. So water quantity. You also were worried about water quality, but the big thing that you were sticking in was the consumptive use permitting process as well as the Central Florida Water Initiative. Do I have that right? Am I remembering correctly? You are remembering correctly. the useful sticky note model is you can, the thoughts that are all on these sticky notes can still just be moved around. It was in part was an organizational challenge. How do we crack this nut? And you’re right, it had been avoided for many years. I mean, it’s one thing for government to recognize an issue. to actually wrangle the cats together and try and make progress to solve an issue. So sticky notes were useful to me and yes, a lot of people thought it was old school and of course that was also true. I guess that’s the benefit of being, as you say, green is you bring something completely different to some of these questions and maybe that’s exactly what it took. because you had some pretty good successes there in terms of dealing with Consumptive Use Consistency as well as the Central Florida Water Initiative, the CFWI. Do you feel like that that’s what happened in the end? That’s what it seemed like to me, but I want to get your take on that. Yeah, I think there were a lot of aha moments, both for myself, for our staff, groups that we were dealing with because we were posing questions in a, you know, not that these were radically new questions, but I think folks just hadn’t been facing them for a while or maybe ever. And sometimes fresh eyes can point out things that help the various entities that are impacted by rules and regulations and environmental advocates. fresh eyes and a fresh way of looking at things can sometimes be helpful. The one that sticks out to me is helping people understand that we didn’t need to fight to the death over every consumptive use permit. Right. You know, that there’s lots of perfectly appropriate, smaller consumptive use permits. People are doing the right thing. They’re conserving the water that they can. volume of the water coming out of the ground is tied up in a few big permits. And by a few, I would pose it as 20% of the permits as opposed to looking at the other 80%. Not that you don’t look at those, but your staff could spend literally all of their time on small permits. Do a fabulous job. move the needle on water supply. Right. And it just took some spreadsheet manipulation and a few bar charts to start to show people that you know we need to focus is is is off. We’re trying to we’re trying to be perfect with every single permit that we touch and we need to focus on a big picture and we moved the needle when we started doing that. Yeah I agree and and to the extent that that happened, you end up, I guess I’ll accuse you of it, because I think you left first, of breaking up the band. So you go to the Suwannee River Water Management District. I go to end up going to the Northwest District. And it seemed like you took that exact same attitude, that approach to some of those challenges and you’re having significant ones. It’s a small water management district, Suwannee, with enormous challenges. is water quality. Now, obviously water quality is a big deal as well, especially with how many springs there are in the Suwannee River District. But my memory of those days was you were always looking for a way to build better mousetraps, to work better with stakeholders, to find solutions to putting more water back into the aquifer than was there before without the giant battles. Am I remembering that correctly as well? And, you know, there were some bloodied encounters over that general issue. But yes, we’re not going to continue to make progress, you know, over and over time if we’re not continually looking for ways to build better mousetraps, do things more efficiently, look for dual benefits. Not just water quantity. resilience piece now and you add that in and water quality ever present in the work that we’re doing on some of these projects. But it was important to take the battle from, it’s not my water, it’s not your water, it’s my water, and move it to how do we manage the resource that we have and help nature replenish each year as the rains come and that there’s enough for everybody because that’s what the water laws of Florida intend. But in practice, it had gotten, you know, kind of swords drawn and, you know, people in different interest groups, you know, battling back and forth in a nonproductive manner. And I know that the minimum flow and minimum level laws and program can lend themselves to those kinds of fights, especially when things are getting scarcer in terms of water resources, but I think you really did a good job of trying to work your way around that. And that’s what I took away from, not just there, but also your work at the St. Johns River Water Management District as well. And so I want to just kind of segue into that and try to kind of get a sense of your overall philosophy and we’re getting a taste of some of that. But you moved to the St. Johns River Water Management District, which is bigger, more You’ve got a lot of moving parts, but in the end, I guess, let me ask you this first. Why did you take the St. John’s River job? All of those things that you just articulated were part of that calculus. But in reality, our leaders in Tallahassee understood that there were still issues, not only between Suwannee and St. John’s, but in the St. John’s footprint. that needed additional attention. And I was happy to go there because I think it’s important in St. John’s, especially in the northern half of that district, to have Suwannee’s perspective coming in. But yes, I’m sure you’re aware, I got a call from Secretary Stevenson, asked it a couple of governing board chairs, et cetera, et cetera. issue. That the reason for you being there, the perspective you bring going from Swinburne to St. John’s, because I think there are two elephants in the room there, right? You have one which is South Georgia, not just consumption, but also waste water coming down. And the other elephant in the room is an enormous place called Jacksonville and the consumptive use by perfectly decent folks, but heavy use nonetheless in that JEA territory. Am I capturing that correctly? Yes, there are utilities there, JEA being the largest one, but every all the utilities were trying to do their job. And we needed a regional solution. A secretary of vineyard at the time got that started very early on, recognized that and got those two water management districts together with their swords in their sheaths mostly. have water management leaders like myself that could articulate both sides geographically, if you will, of those issues. And because otherwise, you know, it’s just human nature. You get pretty myopic. St. John’s was doing a great job on so many things. But the groundwater doesn’t stop at the borders. And those highly professional scientists at both districts understand how it works together and that having two separate models that don’t get the same answers at the border is just not going to climate. Right. Yeah. And is that part of, I wanted to ask in the next few questions about your management style, but let’s pause there then. You have perspectives coming from two different places. You have a big task at hand. You have, I’ll probably screw this up. It’s another initiative. What is the… That’s close. North Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership. Okay. Now I know why I couldn’t remember it. That’s a lot of words. Okay. Did that predate your work over there? I’m trying to remember my timeline, but was that a function of Secretary Vineyard’s creation and your implementation? Yes. When I was at DEP, I mean, that came on early because JEA had, at the time, had a very, right before I got there had been successful in getting a giant large modification on their consumptive use permit. You know, the Swanny folks who were already very concerned about their water supply sort of lost it over that. And yes, wisely, Secretary Vineyard, who was from Jacksonville, was seeing the bigger picture there and got the chairs and the executive directors in and got that kicked off because, you know, it was just not a tenable position for the state to have water management districts at drawn swords at the borders. Right. He used to say, you got to have the right people on the bus. I think he felt like you were one of the most important pieces on the bus. And I think the reason maybe because it’s one of the things I like about you the most is that I’ve never had to wonder what you’re thinking when I’m in a room with you. me when you’re my boss at DEP and it also helped when we were both district EDs. So you get these these calls and meetings together and you know to know that you are going to be engaging honestly but also assertively in whatever the task was at hand especially when it had to overlap between between districts and I think that’s one of the things that that Herschel saw in you as well. Do you think that’s you think that’s right or am I just supposing? I think that’s probably fair. I mean, I never really had a very good filter. But if you’re trying to solve regional problems, the folks that are going to be partners in that effort, whether it’s governmental partners or various stakeholder groups, there has to be a level of honest communication share so that everyone understands, you know, the different points of view, and then you’re always driving towards that common ground. But the underpinning has to be based in how the water works, right? I mean, you can’t come up with a solution that doesn’t, isn’t viable because it doesn’t actually work. And Secretary Vineyard also had his saying of, we’ve got to get the water right. And he was absolutely right about that. And so would you describe those traits as part of your general management style as well? Because we’re talking about problem solving, but we’re also talking about you heading up one large office in DEP and big issues and then heading up two agencies altogether with enormous challenges. Is that a part of your management style, which is being honest and attacking problems with common sense solutions. How would you describe your management style? I mean, I think that’s kind of it in a nutshell. It doesn’t always work well. It can be a rocky road at times. Folks are not necessarily used to that level of, I don’t know, just sharing, I’ll say. But it’s important. I mean, the way I was always trying affect change was to get people in a room and we could say anything in that room, I mean respectfully, but say anything in that room, battle it out, it might take a while. But once the decisions are made, folks are theoretically on the same page and we know what our next plan into the future is to solve that problem. Sometimes that’s difficult, haven’t gotten solved because you’ve got to sort of step out on faith to get some things done and sometimes government employees, it’s safer if you will to do good work but not necessarily take that leap. If you’re not from that organization, it’s easier to take that leap. and then a private sector person by nature. And you give a decade of that, which is assertive, common sense, drive forward, try to fix problems. That’s what you’re there for, that’s what you’re trying to do. And so you give 10 years of that, but then you hang up your bureaucrat spurs, I’ll call them, and then head back to the private sector, back to those roots, so to speak. Tell me about that transition back to business owner work-life balance with the grandkids in the equation now? It was difficult, Brett, very difficult for me. I had been managing, as you pointed out, big things and scads of wonderful people. And that change was more challenging for me than I thought it would be, probably because I was just being Pollyanna and hadn’t really thought it all through. I don’t regret the decision to retire from public service and to kind of split my time with being new Nana and also back in the private sector. But it was a big adjustment for me personally. You know, hey, it’s all good. Decisions have new adventures and we got through all of those new adventures. I needed to keep my hand in scientific innovation jar. I wasn’t ready to let that go. that go and that it was, I was surprised by how much I missed some of the things that I would have told you before I retired, I wouldn’t have missed at all. What are the things that you do take on? What scratches that edge for you at the moment? Are you very selective in terms of the work that you take on? Pretty selective. And part of that is I don’t have, you know, I’m not a full-time consultant anymore. So, and it’s a gift at this stage of my career to be able to be selective. I told you when I was in the private sector before that the vast majority of my clients were trying to do the right thing, but not every one of them. And now I can tell the ones that I’m not that interested in working for because of whatever reason that I’m just too busy. And I’m probably being sincere. I am too busy. on projects, still focused on clients who are willing to innovate. It’s not every client that wants to be first at anything. You know, they might want to be third if something is panning out, but they don’t want to be first. Well, I’m concentrating on the folks that are willing to step out with me and others who are trying to connect lots of dots that will benefit Florida Water over along and along. So given that status and how you look at things now, I want you to look back on what you’ve done so far. Is there a professional accomplishment that you’re most proud of or something that’s maybe, some people have trouble picking out one thing and so is there something that would kind of fit in your top three? I thought about that a lot and I keep returning to something because most of the accomplishments your period were not mine. They were, you know, just a cast of thousands working together and, you know, pulling in the same direction. And I would not want to point to any of those and say that was my best accomplishment. But I do feel like I kept bringing up wherever I was, but particularly at the water management to encourage students, younger people, to envision themselves as a water scientist, as a water engineer, to, you know, it’s that STEM pulse. And even at Swani, we started there with small grants for teachers to get some of these things into their schools. We also, during the summer, would bring groups out to springs and different places, Springs, but to see how do we measure things about springs? How do we use maps? All the different technology. That wasn’t really happening there when I got there. We then also took that and it morphed into a slightly different form, but we had a program like that at St. John’s too. That’s not to say that there weren’t fabulous teaching opportunities beforehand, like as a woman scientist, I could speak to diversity and you know student encouragement in a way in a voice that that maybe they hadn’t heard before. So I am, I don’t know if proud is the right word, but I feel good about the progress that we made in that arena. What do you tell a young woman, a girl, or a young man about doing, whether it be public service or just the environmental sciences as a whole. What do you tell them? What kind of advice do you give them? Well, I think it’s important for any young person to really try and lay the table with a buffet, sample the buffet and see when do the light bulbs go on. And then you know where to sort of focus is a fabulous thing if you love what you’re doing. You’re not really working. But you have to find that. And I didn’t want, whether it was women, young women, girls, minority students that maybe hadn’t been exposed to some of these things before that others are, I didn’t want them to feel that there was anything out there that they couldn’t put on the buffet. And I didn’t want folks to be afraid of math or afraid of science. I mean, they some folks just assume they can’t do it. And in some cases, not only can they do it, but they’re brilliant at it. You know, so you you try to foster that inquisitive nature that we have and see where it leads and then follow it. Is there anything about your government service that you feel was left or even underdone? Almost everything. You know, we’re not finished. List them all. But I’ll throw one out there. This is, you know, the sort of the classic Pollyanna Anne who thinks, oh, we can do this. When I got to St. John’s, I made no secret of the fact that we had something that we could do that would really cross so many different groups groups in St. John’s and lots of people would feel good about it. And that was reestablishing the riverine connection of the largest tributary to the St. John’s River by taking out Rodman Dam, the dam itself. Holy smokes. Oh my goodness, you stepped in it, didn’t you? Now, you know, as I was preparing for retirement, I’m thinking, gosh, now we’ve got this dam assessment out there. dams have water control structures all of them have to be refurbished they have lifespans you know engineering 101 dam safety 101 right can’t you don’t wait for the catastrophe you’ve got to take action and it’s not that reservoirs are bad hey I like bass fishing in reservoirs but there are lots of can be offline, not midline. Lots of lessons over the past 50, 75 years how to do this and water control structures and dams are coming down all over the country for various reasons, not the least of which are things like fish that need to go up and down and manatees and others. But I’m not the most patient on the planet. You probably remember that from back in the day. I remember that, yes. And I was at St. John’s for six years and we didn’t get it over the finish line, but there’s a lot more genuine conversation now than there was and we’re still trying to help the stakeholders that have a different point of view to see the regional water-related ecosystem benefits that would accrue from such a change. But yeah, there were a lot of things undone. That certainly was one. That’s a good one. That one may last a bit longer as well. Are you optimistic about the future of the environment and natural systems in Florida? And why? Yes. Well, I’m an optimist. I have a professional career from its earliest days that nature can heal and people can help that process. We need more people to understand that it’s important. We’re not going to run out of water, but we’re running out of that plentiful, clean, fresh water to support all of our various activities. So things need to be innovative, and sometimes that might be a little more economically challenging, but Absolutely nature nature finds a way and I am an optimist I do try to help people to understand that it’s not There isn’t a switch that we can throw that are that’s going to solve these challenges. It’s it’s an incremental day in and day out Do better each day each year each decade To begin to see the improvements, but there’s you know, gosh over the globe where like-minded people have brought aquatic ecosystems back from the brink. So on the other side of that coin, what, if anything, keeps you up at night regarding Florida’s environment? All of those things that aren’t done. Because my mind is still going to be looking for the next innovation, the next policy change particular innovation to be more useful and who do I need to talk to next or you know who does the secretary need to talk to next to begin to move that issue down the road. I do sleep pretty well though. Well that’s good. Finally, how can folks get in touch with you if they want to take a shot at getting some of your time at a GEO 2030? Well my email address is I probably on LinkedIn, a, b, short, at gmail.com very simple or give me a call that number hasn’t changed in a long time. It’s been a while. Yeah so I love hearing from folks and I do get calls from many of the wonderful people that I’ve interacted with especially over the last decade just to kind of talk through issues and I love to do that too. Awesome. Ann Shortell, thank you so much for coming on the show and being the season closer for us. Thank you for having me. Well, that’s it for both this episode and our very first season. I can’t thank you enough for listening to Water for Fighting. If you’re enjoying the show, tell a friend and please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you use. Oh, and don’t forget to leave a five star rating and review. You can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram at FL WaterPod. And you can reach me directly at FL WaterPod. gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and or what you’d like to know more about. Production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thank you to Carl Sworn for making the best of what he had to work with and to David Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. A very special thank you goes out to Bo Spring from the Bo Spring Band for giving permission to use his music for the podcast. The song is called Doing Work for Free and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold. Please join me back here in about we’ll have more phenomenal guests including a few curveballs along the way. Until then, keep your whiskey close and your water closer.