Tag Archives: RTCW

Time to sign the petition: Right to Clean Water in Florida 2025-01-20

The day after Christmas, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal rejected a titusville charter amendment approved by 83% of local voters for Right to Clean Water (RTCW).

We recognize the overwhelming support of this charter amendment by the residents of the City of Titusville and the admirable policies of the amendment. However, the Legislature in drafting section 403.412(9)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act has not authorized the types of rights provided for in the charter amendment. As such, an appellate court has no power to change or alter what the Legislature mandated.

A week before, the Montana Supreme Court upheld a youth climate case, based on Montana’s 1972 Environmental Rights Amendment. Florida needs to catch up to Montana and Pennsylvania.

“[Montana’s] constitution does not require that dead fish float on the surface of our state’s rivers and streams before its farsighted environmental protections can be invoked.” —Justice Trieweiler, Montana Supreme Court, MEIC v. Montana DEQ 1999

[Florida Right to Clean Water, Please sign the petition, Join Montana and Pennsylvania]
Florida Right to Clean Water, Please sign the petition, Join Montana and Pennsylvania

Florida needs a Right to Clean Water in the state constitution to reverse that legislative pre-emption and to go farther in protecting Florida’s waters, like Montana and Pennsylvania have already done.

Go here to have your copy of the petition mostly filled out for you: https://bit.ly/FRTCW-petition

[QR Code, Florida RTCW Petition]
QR Code, Florida RTCW Petition

Or do it yourself by getting a copy at
https://floridarighttocleanwater.org

WWALS and many other organizations hand out petitions at festivals and outings.

Montana has a state Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA). Pennsylvania also has an ERA, and its Supreme Court has upheld similar cases.

Amy Beth Hanson, Associated Press, December 18, 2024, Montana Supreme Court upholds state judge’s landmark ruling in youth climate case Continue reading

Water Protectors Meet and Greet at Ichetucknee Head Springs 2024-09-08

Meet for an hour and then dip in the spring, or tube if you like.

If you haven’t already, you can sign the petition to get a constitutional amendment for Right to Clean Water on the Florida ballot in 2026.
https://wwals.net/issues/right-to-clean-water/

When: Gather 10 AM, launch 11 AM, end 2 PM, Sunday, September 8, 2024

Put In: Ichetucknee Headspring, at the Ichetucknee Springs State Park North Entrance, 8294 SW Elim Church Rd, Fort White, FL 32038.

GPS: 29.986107, -82.760109

[Water Protectors Meet and Greet, Sunday, 10-11 AM, 2024-09-08, Ichetucknee Springs S.P. North Entrance]
Water Protectors Meet and Greet, Sunday, 10-11 AM, 2024-09-08, Ichetucknee Springs S.P. North Entrance

Continue reading

Pictures: Florida Folk Festival Saturday 2024-05-25

Update 2024-05-30: Pictures: Florida Folk Festival Sunday 2024-05-26.

People kept asking to sign the petition for a Florida Constitutional Amendment for Right to Clean Water.

[Florida Folk Festival, Saturday 2024-05-25, Livelier. Most popular:, Right to Clean Water Petition]
Florida Folk Festival, Saturday 2024-05-25, Livelier. Most popular:, Right to Clean Water Petition

We’ll have more of those petitions today, on the banks of the Suwannee River in White Springs, Florida, at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. Continue reading

Pictures: Florida Folk Festival Sunday 2024-05-26

The petition for a Florida Constitutional Amendment for Right to Clean Water brought many people to the WWALS Booth. They went away with a WWALS flyer, so RTCW meshes will with other WWALS activities.

[Florida Folk Festival, Sunday 2024-05-26, Florida Petition for Right to Clean Water]
Florida Folk Festival, Sunday 2024-05-26, Florida Petition for Right to Clean Water

Sarah Younger of Sierra Club Suwannee-St. Johns Group shows how to sign the petition. We got 90 signatures on the banks of the Suwannee River in White Springs, Florida, at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park.

Florida registered voters can sign any time:
https://www.floridarighttocleanwater.org

Each signature gets us (and all the other groups participating) closer to getting the petition through Florida Supreme Court review and onto the 2026 ballot. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t go through governor or the legislature. And once it gets on the ballot, environmental constitutional amendments tend to get approved by huge margins. Which will put it in Article I, along with other basic human rights such as freedom of speech.

Many thanks to WWALS volunteers Gee Edwards and Bird Chamberlain for helping. Continue reading

Earth Day: Planet vs. Plastics 2024-04-20

Trash cleanups are good, but you wouldn’t clean up after a sewer spill and do nothing to stop it from happening again. You wouldn’t be happy with any city or county that let spills keep happening.

You can help stop trash from getting into our waterways by getting cities to enforce trash ordinances about parking lots and trash cans, by getting trash traps installed on creeks, and by asking for single-use packaging bans and bottle bills. Start by bringing your own reusable grocery bags, but don’t stop there.

The Global Earth Day theme for 2024 is Our Planet Versus Plastics.

[Earth Day 2024, Planet vs. Plastics 2024-04-20, Trash cans, Trash traps, cleanups, Plastic bans and bottle bills]
Earth Day 2024, Planet vs. Plastics 2024-04-20, Trash cans, Trash traps, cleanups, Plastic bans and bottle bills

Styrofoam and other plastics are not just an eyesore. These plastics from Valdosta and elsewhere entering the watersheds are breaking down and getting into all aspects of the environment. Animals eat them, and cannot digest them. Children play in creeks with this stuff. Adults don’t want to boat on rivers with floating trashjams. It’s hard to promote eco-tourism without fixing the trash problem. Sure, we go clean it out of the rivers, and you can help us with that, but that alone is not enough. Continue reading

Petition: Right to Clean Water, Florida, for 2026 ballot 2024-03-08

Hot off the Florida state authentication process!

Florida registered voters, please sign and circulate the petition for a state constitutional amendment for a right to clean and healthy waters (RTCW).

You can get it here, or from
https://www.floridarighttocleanwater.org/

Or from WWALS and Suwannee Riverkeeper at any festival or outing, such as Valdosta Azalea Festival today. Yes, that festival is in Georgia, but many people from Florida attend.

[Four Florida rivers (Withlacoochee, Ichetucknee, Santa Fe, Suwannee), RTCW Petition and Full Text 2024-03-08]
Four Florida rivers (Withlacoochee, Ichetucknee, Santa Fe, Suwannee), RTCW Petition and Full Text 2024-03-08

With around a million signatures, RTCW will get on the ballot for 2026. The legislature and the governor do not have to approve it. The people do, and when it gets on the ballot and an overwhelming majority vote for it, it will immediately become law. Law that can be used to tilt the playing field that is currently way over towards developers and polluters. Law like has been used successfully in Pennsylvania and Montana to deal with water pollution, fracking, and climate change.

This RTCW petition is fundamentally different from the 2014 Amendment 1, Florida Water and Land Conservation Initiative. That ended up in Article X, along with many other well-meaning and good-sounding provisions in that and other Articles.

RTCW goes in Article I along with other basic rights such as religious freedom and freedom of speech. Not law like all the other well-meaning and good-sounding provisions in other articles of the constition.

Sure, the legislature can still try to pass laws to circumvent RTCW and state agencies can try not to implement it. But that will be harder with a fundamental right in Article I.

The RTCW amendment is long because it has been written by attorneys to avoid complications such as Continue reading

Transitioning to 2026 for Right to Clean Water in Florida

Yesterday, December 5, 2023, the Florida campaign for Right to Clean Water announced a temporary setback won’t stop RTCW:

Apparently, the many obstacles put into place against grassroots citizen initiatives have proven successful for the Florida Legislature this time. Despite over 100 active volunteers working toward this common need, we fell short of the number of signed petitions we needed to qualify for the 2024 ballot.

What we WERE able to achieve, by all accounts and professional assessments, is pretty amazing:

Over 100,000 petitions signed, statewide awareness, cross-partisan support, tourism and business support, support from fishing and faith communities, etc.

All thanks to you and your help in spreading the word and sharing the call to action. We are grateful. Especially for all our ambassadors and supporting organizations who have spent so many hours out there, in the Florida heat, not just collecting signatures, but SPREADING THE WORD that there’s finally a solution to our state’s systemic problems in water protection.

[RTCW FL 2026]
RTCW FL 2026

Press Release Campaign update:

We have temporarily halted actively collecting petitions and are in the process of ensuring every single signed form is properly processed to the correct county Supervisor of Elections for final validation, by December 31st.

During this time, Continue reading

North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan in SRWMD presentation to NCFRPC –Columbia County Observer 2023-10-09

Thanks to Stew Lilker for recording and analysis of a presentation about water planning in the Suwannee and St. Johns River Basins.

To answer his question: No, there won’t be enough water, unless water withdrawals are limited, which neither of the Suwannee nor St. Johns River Water Management Districts seem inclined to do.

Please sign the petition to get Right to Clean and Healthy Waters on the ballot:
https://www.floridarighttocleanwater.org

[SRWMD, NFRWSP]
SRWMD, NFRWSP

Stew Lilker, Columbia County Observer, October 9, 2023, North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan: Just a Suggestion – Will There Be Enough Water in the Future?

COLUMBIA COUNTY, FL – The North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan (the east side of the Suwannee River Water Management District and the top half of the St. Johns River Water Management District) is being updated. The Plan focuses on the sustainability of resources. It is just a plan, and water users “are not required to implement” any options identified in the Plan.

Well, slide 24 seems to indicate some requirements. Maybe local governments don’t have to implement exactly what NFRWSP says, but I’d bet they will be strongly recommended to do so. Continue reading

The Mermaid says sign the petition, Rights to Clean Water for Florida 2023-03-26

The mermaid likes it.

Florida registered voters, please sign the petition to get a state constitutional amendment for Rights to Clean and Healthy Waters on the ballot:
https://www.floridarighttocleanwater.org

[The Mermaid says sign the RTCW petition]
The Mermaid says sign the RTCW petition

This picture of Mermaid Danielle Shmalberg with the RTCW petition and Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman was taken at the 2023 OSFR Songwriting Contest, part of RiverFest by Our Santa Fe River.

WWALS has shamelessly copied that idea for years. Join us Friday evening, September 22, 2023, for the sixth annual Suwannee Riverkeeper Songwriting Contest as part of the first-ever WWALS gala fundraising dinner, WWALS River Revue:
https://www.betterunite.com/WWALS-wwalsriverrevue2023/ Continue reading

Children’s climate change lawsuit against the state of Montana starts today 2023-05-25

The children’s lawsuit against the State of Montana on climate policy starts today, June 12, 2023.

The plaintiffs have already won part of it without a trial: the state legislature repealed a law that promoted fossil fuels.

[Judge (Daily Montanan) and the child plaintiffs (New York Times)]
Judge (Daily Montanan) and the child plaintiffs (New York Times)

This case is all over the news today as the trial starts.

But the judge’s decision to allow the trial was made more than two weeks ago, according to the Daily Montanan:

Multiple times in her order, [Judge Kathy] Seeley cites a 1999 Montana Supreme Court decision in the “MEIC I” case in which the court decided Montana’s 1972 Constitutional framers “did not intend to merely prohibit that degree of environmental degradation which can be conclusively linked to ill health or physical endangerment.”

She cited multiple framers who said they believed defending a healthful environment both meant there should be no future degradation of it beyond 1972 and that citizens should not need to show their health was hurt to find relief from potential damages.

“In fact, the Court has repeatedly found that the Framers intended the state constitution contain ‘the strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution,” she wrote.

MEIC I was MEIC v. Montana DEQ 1999, in which Justice Terry Trieweiler of the Montana Supreme Court also wrote, “[Montana’s] constitution does not require that dead fish float on the surface of our state’s rivers and streams before its farsighted environmental protections can be invoked.”

There’s a lot of pessimism by environmentalists about this case. But remember: few people thought it would ever get to trial. And the children already won a major concession from the state without even getting to trial.

Blair Miller, Daily Montanan, May 25, 2023, Judge allows Montana youth climate change lawsuit to proceed to trial: Continue reading