Springs Advocacy: We’re Doing It Wrong

Since early 2011, I’ve been involved with many well-intentioned, caring people who are trying to save Florida’s freshwater springs—the largest such concentration of springs in the world. During that time, the conditions in our springs have not improved; instead, they’ve gotten worse.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working.

We thought if we could “raise awareness” and “educate people” that would help. It hasn’t.

We thought if we could “fight the permits” and bad actions by the State of Florida’s water managers that would improve things. It hasn’t.

We thought if we used the tried and true advocacy techniques of the past, those techniques would be effective. They aren't. They don't work when political and public policy decisions are made by people who only care about money, power and control.

What all of these efforts are lacking, and what the State of Florida is lacking, is a vision for the future of Florida’s springs and other waters.

Instead of articulating a new vision, what we’ve done is to reinforce what retired UC Berkeley Linguistics Professor George Lakoff calls “the frame” of business-as-usual for water decisions in Florida, and what the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (then managed by Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil, now with the Center for Democratic & Environmental Rights) identified as the “regulatory triangle.” That triangular decision-making framework kept us from focusing on the big problems that are causing springs to decline and forced us down a rabbit hole from which we can only nitpick at small aspects of those problems from well outside established power structures.

Or, as one of my early mentors on Florida water issues explained, “It’s like we’re behind a big dump truck that’s shoveling trash and we keep trying to clean it up. Instead, we need to get a helicopter and get out in front of that truck.”

Raising awareness and educating people only works if people are empowered to connect the dots between what they see happening at the springs and how they mark their ballots in state elections. So far, springs advocacy groups have been unable to connect those dots, probably because of an overabundance of caution in protecting their Federal 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, which prohibits the endorsement of or opposition to individuals running for public office.

Yet the fact remains that our springs problems are political problems—but even changes in political leadership might not be enough to make the kinds of changes that could save the springs. No matter how much we all bemoan the “leadership” that allows our springs to decline, even under different leaders there are severe structural, cultural and legal barriers that those leaders might not be able to overcome. I listed those problems when I was working for the Ichetucknee Alliance:
http://ichetuckneealliance.org/break-the-barriers/ 

We all know it’s easier to criticize than to make positive suggestions for change, but I have suggestions and will list them now.

We must realize that what we are engaged in, at its core, is transformation and culture change—and transformation begins with a positive vision. That vision can come top-down, from a leader who can inspire buy-in by others, or it can come bottom-up, from the grassroots—but there has to be a positive vision.

Our springs advocacy groups have not articulated a vision; they’ve only indicated what they don’t want, which is damage to our springs—and that reinforces, albeit inadvertently, the “business-as-usual” frame. At its core, this is a “failure to communicate.”

We must understand that apathy—at the voting booth, and in the form of many new citizens who have no clue about what Florida has lost and may lose—is our biggest enemy.

We must come up with new, creative ways to transform apathy into love. We could create an animated video of the Floridan aquifer and make it available to everyone on YouTube, to increase understanding. We could hold rituals at the springs, involve faith-based groups, collect old-timers’ stories and use them as jumping-off points for articulating a new, transformative vision for Florida’s waters. Those are just some of the ways we could ignite this kind of spiritual transformation with regard to our springs.

We could join hands with groups that are seeking to overturn SCOTUS’s Citizens United decision to get corporate money out of our political campaigns.

Realizing that we all need clean and abundant water, we must actively reach out, join hands and work with Florida’s agriculturalists to solve our water problems instead of labeling those people as “the enemy” and engaging in “us vs. them” thinking. Why? Because there are no solutions to our springs problems without the involvement of our farmers and foresters.

We must change our laws to enable transformational culture change. We could enlist our small army of springs advocacy organizations’ members and other like-minded groups in support of efforts to encode new, stronger, rights-based constitutional laws that would give the State of Florida the legal teeth it needs to protect our springs. State and Federal constitutional amendments must give people the rights to clean and healthy waters and give ecosystems the rights to exist and to thrive.

In a counterpoint to the frame of “fighting” for the springs, we must articulate and constantly reinforce a compelling vision for the future, one that could include recommendations for tiered water rates (a big encourager of conservation).

We must get political—create a political organization, or partner with an existing one, to advance that vision.

As for what that vision might be, what about this: 

Realizing that the health of its people, economy and natural water systems are interconnected, Florida will restore, preserve and protect those natural water systems and will become an international model of wise water use.

We must think bigger, bolder, and more creatively.

In short, as one speaker advised us years ago at a meeting hosted by Barry University Law School’s Center for Earth Jurisprudence: We must state what we want, not just ask for what we think we can get.

If you're reading this and want to do something to help turn this situation around, please visit the website for the Florida Right to Clean & Healthy Waters proposed state constitutional amendment, read up on that effort, then print, sign and mail the petition to put the amendment on Florida's 2024 ballot. Then ask five of your family members and friends to do so, too.

The photo above is my photo of Gilchrist Blue Spring, which experienced a sinkhole collapse the day before I wrote this article. Thankfully, the spring has recovered.