First they postponed the meetings for the attempt to put golf courses or pickleball courts in state parks.

And day before yesterday the Florida governor said “back to the drawing board.”

Plug Pulled on Park Plan, DeSantis claimed it leaked, Back to the drawing board, How about a bill to prevent it?
Photo: DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD, Tampa Bay Times,
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2024/08/28/florida-desantis-state-parks-golf-course-hotel-pickleball-plan/

But don’t trust them. The same or different developers behind this attempt will be back again.

Since state legislators of both parties were opposed to this bad idea, there is talk of a bill to stop this from happening again.

That’s good, and how about a constitutional amendment for Right to Clean Water?
https://www.floridarighttocleanwater.org

None of the nine parks proposed this time are in the Suwannee River Basin. But if they happened, how long before somebody wants to put a golf course or a lodge at Suwannee River State Park, or Manatee Springs, or Ichetucknee Springs?

Alex Harris and Ana Ceballos, Miami Herald, August 29, 2024, DeSantis pulls plug on controversial state parks plan after public, political backlash,

Gov. Ron DeSantis is withdrawing — at least for now — plans from his administration to add golf courses, pickleball courts and 350-room hotels to Florida state parks after the proposal faced intense public and political backlash.

“They’re going back to the drawing board,” DeSantis said at a press conference Wednesday in his first remarks since the state’s plans became public last week. “I’d rather not spend any money on this. If people don’t want improvements then we won’t do them.”

The “Great Outdoors Initiative,” announced last week by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, was instantly met with opposition from leading elected Republicans and Floridians across the state. The proposal drew hundreds of protesters at parks across the state and garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions opposing the plan.

Most notably, it drew the ire of some of the most influential members of his own party in Tallahassee. Soon after the proposal was publicized, Republican elected officials in congress, the legislature and the cabinet lined up against the plans, which in itself was a rare showing against a DeSantis administration idea.

While the governor’s office and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have previously defended the plans, DeSantis suggested on Wednesday that the proposal was a “half-baked idea” that had never received his approval.

“This is something that was leaked. It was not approved by me, I never saw that,” DeSantis said. “A lot of that stuff was half-baked and was not ready for prime time. It was intentionally leaked to a left-wing group to try and create a narrative.”

After the governor disavowed the proposal on Wednesday, South Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz publicly called for an investigation into the source of the idea. “We need DeSantis to release all records on this greedy land grab, plus an IG investigation into who really backed it,” she tweeted.

Leaked? Eight scheduled meetings across the state? Yeah, sure, leaked.

So the public outcry was so loud the governor has to pretend it wasn’t his initiative.

Stay tuned for when it comes back. And then let’s be louder.

Meanwhile, a bill sounds like a good idea.

And Right to Clean Water.
https://wwals.net/issues/right-to-clean-water/

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

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