Monthly Archive for November, 2005

The Care of Rivers

Published on November 30, 2005 in Community, Environment and Mysteries. 0 Comments

The spread of sprawl across our pastoral county spells new kinds of trouble for our rivers and the Indian River Lagoon. New residential development is covering more and more square miles with impervious surfaces, and the new homeowners pour new toxic blends down their drains and driveways. Not that our previous, citrus-based agricultural economy was light on the land. But now we have homebrews draining into our estuary and ocean.

There’s a lot that caring homeowners can do to lessen their impacts on already compromised coastal waters. Residential “best management practices” (BMPs) designed to protect water quality and conserve water provide a good start (see Florida Green Industries manual on turf grass and landscaping BMP’s, as well as model ordinance language for landscape BMPs). In some locales people are banding together to build better places by incorporating sustainability principles into the design and construction of buildings and transportation systems, land use planning, governance, and energy and water conservation. For recent industry perspectives on some of these issues see Land Development Breakthroughs “Best Practices Conference”. Innovators are also applying LEED design principles and guidelines to create green buildings and communities .

But this whole sustainability thing has yet to gain traction in Indian River County, Florida. First things first, perhaps.
“The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.” – Tanaka Shozo

Sustainability, Citrus, and Subdivisions

Published on November 24, 2005 in Community, Economy and Mysteries. 0 Comments

Agriculture in Florida is dying. Oranges and cows are being rolled aside by retirement communities. Development rules. Or at least that’s the buzz around here.

Premium grapefruit and the “Indian River” brand are synonymous. For more than a century, citrus has been king of our regional economy. Five generations of landowners have tended their green wealth, but now their resolve seems broken. Under assault by scourges like citrus canker and greening disease, smashed by three hurricanes, and beaten by the brutal economics of cheaper foreign fruit, citrus is succumbing. Sky-rocketing land values, and taxes, driven by the mounting pressure from a tidal wave of sun-seeking boomers who want retirement homes built on top of where citrus now grows, are forcing many growers to sell.

Maybe we should have seen it coming. After all, Florida has always been a hotbed of biotic exchange, with plants and animals getting carried here from all over, and often finding this lush peninsula a suitable new home. It should come as no surprise that the citrus industry, as a vast monoculture dependent upon continuous inputs of fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides, would eventually prove vulnerable to a concoction of exotic death-dealing diseases and pests. Still, it seems somehow unfair that the future of agriculture here should appear so gloomy.

Today in the U.S. we give thanks for the privilege of living in a democracy based on individual rights and participation. We are thankful, too, for life’s simple things, like good food and clean water. As we give thanks for our blessings, we may also wonder about the mystery of how we’ll fill the hole dying agriculture leaves in our community.

Will we grow any of our food locally? Where will the thousands of people who work in our local agriculture today find jobs tomorrow? Where will they live as housing costs continue to spiral out of sight? And how will they afford life’s basics, including the food they used to help grow?

As Indian River area groves and ranches are sold and made into golf, polo, or “nature preserve” developments, many of our neighbors will get left behind and have no place in our increasingly up-scale, life-style driven community. Can we create a new agriculture? Can we replace citrus with other crops? Can we save agricultural jobs? Maybe some new combination of row crops, organic “niche” products, and high productivity fiber crops for bio-diesel or other alternative energy supply holds the key to the future. Or, maybe the lure of the quick cash-out will be too strong to resist for landowners tired of hard work and uncertainty? Is the only choice between citrus and subdivisions?

Sustainability and knowledge

Published on November 23, 2005 in Community, Environment, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

How we will attain sustainability in Florida is a mystery. Visionary scientists, like Dr. Peter Raven (Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences), predict that we can transition to sustainability in two generations. And that is without any miraculous new technologies. However, this transition depends on significant advances in basic knowledge, in the social capacity and technical ability to use it, and in the political will to turn this knowledge into action.

It’s that last point that concerns me. I live near Vero Beach, in Indian River County, Florida, along the Atlantic coast. Our region, the so-called Treasure Coast, has been “discovered,” and is now under terrific development pressure. It seems millions of graying boomers want to retire here. Meanwhile, the traditional agricultural economy, and hence land-use, is faltering owing to plant diseases and economic policies. We stand on the brink of a vast conversion of groves and rangeland to residential sprawl. This conversion has taken off at a frightening pace, and pressures are building to make more and more land available to developers. How much development here is “sustainable”? How many people can be supported in our little county and yet maintain a high quality of life for future generations? Why is the only use of the word sustainable by our decision-makers to be found in the phrase “sustainable development”? And, maybe most worrying, why aren’t decisions at the county-level being guided by the best available knowledge?

Indeed, it sometimes seems that political will at this local level is being exercised to ensure that actions result from back-room deals and ancient social ties, rather than from knowledge. The kind of knowledge that can answer questions about our current and future uses of the land – for example, detailed information about human populations, natural resources, social patterns and preferences – as well as the tools to apply this knowledge, like GIS-based modeling, seems to be distrusted, devalued, and dismissed.

Will we make some of our most momentous collective decisions in ignorance? And if so, what are the chances that we’ll attain sustainability at the local or regional scale? I suspect that this scenario is playing out in our neighboring counties, and indeed, across Florida. Can we still make the transition to sustainability even though many of our leaders are anti-science, anti-intellectual, and xenophobic? Stay tuned.