00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: This is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cow Klan. Here's cal game. 00:00:21 Speaker 1: We're catching up with. Are you current? You're current? Do you still have your captain's license? 00:00:26 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:00:27 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Captain Chris Whitman Captains for Clean Water. If you haven't heard of this organization, you're you're probably not. This is a big assumption, but you're probably not overly tied in with like the saltwater fishing community, Captains has grown significantly over the years. Chris will have to chime in with with how long that is. But we're talking with Chris today. We're gonna learn more about Captains for Clean Water. We're gonna learn more about water in the state of Florida, which is an incredibly nuanced, uh subject, and and lots of stakeholders involved. And if you don't know about Florida's surrounded by the ocean, so h and it's very close to the ocean both in elevation and uh yeah, perimeter. I guess you'd say, so lots to learn here, especially for for this Montana kid with me as always as Jordan Sillers. Jordan's probably a little more well read on the subject right now, so hopefully he'll be joining in with some questions. This is another episode of Cal's Uh Cal of the Wild Cal's We Can Review interview segment. Thanks for joining along. We got a lot a lot happening these days. Uh, and you're listening is so appreciated. So Captain Chris tell us about Captains for Clean Water. 00:01:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, guys, thank you for having us on Captains for Clean Water. We're a grassroots advocacy group, stakeholder group started by myself and another fishing guide, Daniel Andrews. We both born and raised in South Florida fishing guides and hunting guides by trade, and saw the massive decline in our ecosystem as a result of Florida's water mismanagement, and ultimately that that led us to such catastrophe in our in our estuaries here, that it that it kind of forced us to take a look at where where the future of our fisheries and where the future of the Everglades was going, and and that led us onto a journey of ultimately walking away from our careers as fishing guides to form Captains for Clean Water to really create an organization to fill a void. There was science on the issue of Everglades restoration and restoring the flow of water from the middle of the state back to the Everglades where it historically went. There was science on it, there was engineering on it. The largest bipartisan restoration plan ever in the history of our country voted into law in the year two thousand and in twenty sixteen, when we were in the midst of a water crisis, we were shocked to find out that, you know, we're at the halfway point, or should have been at the halfway point of Everglades restoration, and not a single one of those projects within that restoration plan had been completed. And what we recognized was this wasn't an engineering problem, it wasn't a science problem. There was a void, and the void was the public. It was the stakeholders who were impacted who their voice was absent. They just simply people like Daniel and myself who were fishing guides, grew up on an island, were not involved in pushing to see progress happen. As result, there was no political will. Special interests were able to just kind of dictate and influence politics, to delay and kick the can down the road and very little progress was happening. So we built the organization to be a mechanism to both educate people in the public about Everglade's restoration and then also be a mechanism for them to use their voice. And we had the philosophy that if everybody knew about this problem, it would have been fixed a long time ago, and if we could elevate the public pressure through education, that that public pressure would ultimately be the only thing that we could do to drive political will to fix these issues. And so that's why we formed Captains for Clean Water. And what. 00:04:52 Speaker 1: I see of Captains, and you and I have been friends for a while now, is lobbying right, like lobbying efforts either in d C or at the state level or state level being state capital and Commission meetings. From what I see Captains does it does a great job of just being in that room consistently and providing that consistent message. Is that like the main driver of why people should be involved with CAPTAINS. 00:05:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the main driver is we're you know, we're talking about the future of a national treasure, the Everglades. It's no different than if we were talking about Yellowstone or Boundary Waters or Bristol Bay or anything else. And so whether you live here or whether the Everglades is like a bucket list place that you want to come pursue tarpin or go hiking or camping or whatever, that should be the main driver of why people should be involved is just the the ultimate value of the Everglades. The impact that captains has is you know, the lobbying point's a good point. For example, we don't have a single lobbyist in our opinion. You know, a paid lobbyist is going to go in and push for whatever somebody's paying them to advocate for. The most powerful lobbying voice you have, as we know, like what's going on with the public lands issue right now, is the authentic voice of the public. And in order for us to empower the public and the individual stakeholders to bring that authentic voice and lobby on behalf of themselves or on behalf of their businesses to d C two policymakers in Tallahassee or Washington, we have to first educate them on Everglades's restoration. The fact that you had this massive ecosystem at the turn of the century, in the early nineteen hundreds that was drained and diverted and water was bled out, and the whole thing was compartmentalized, and as a result, the East coast and the West coast of Florida would get way too much water in the wet season, and that water that was destroying those coasts historically would flow down to the Everglades, So the Everglades would get too dry, and Florida Bay down in Florida Keys would get too salty, and so Everglades Restorations as planned to reconnect that system to allow Lake Okeachobe's waters to flow back through the River of Grass back to Florida Bay, rehydrating the Everglades and reducing those damaging discharges to the east and the West coast. And so in order for us to expect people to continuously, over the course of years or decades advocate to see this massive project through to completion, they're going to have to have an understanding of that problem, of the solution that's in place to that problem, and then be able to convey to policy makers how those issues are symptoms of that water mismanagement affect them personally, their way of life, their business, anything like that, and in doing so, we've been able to build a movement of authentic voices of people who can simply say, this is affecting me, this is affecting my business, my job, our employees, our state's economy, a national treasure. And that's really a message that coming from those individual people resonates. It can't be denied by policymakers. And it's a lot different than, you know, the message of a paid lobbyist that's in there multiple times a week for any number of issues. When when folks with you know, raccoonized sunglass tands and scruffy beards and people who definitely do not look like they fit in in the halls of d C show up, they get noticed, Yeah darn right. 00:09:08 Speaker 1: And they can speak passionately about their issue, right, So absolutely tell it, tell a good story. 00:09:16 Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's and it's they do because they're coming from such a pure place of somewhere they love or their lifestyle or the future of of what shapes them into the people they are. Being able to pass that on to the next generation is at stake, and so it's it's just it's just the you know, the old adage you fight to protect what you love and and that's going to come through in that message of this is this is a genuine, honest, authentic movement that is trying to save a place that's valuable not only to citizens of Florida, you know, fishing guides like myself, but to people across the entire country and really around the world. I mean, the Everglades is an incredible place and it would be catastrophic to you know, to humanity to lose it because of bad decisions by people. 00:10:14 Speaker 1: And what's going on right now like that, what's the issue of the day that CAPTAINS is working on. I mean, obviously none of this stuff happens overnight. I'm going to go ahead and assume that all those Everglades restoration projects have not been accomplished. Where are you at? 00:10:35 Speaker 2: So when CAPTAINS was formed in twenty sixteen, well, I guess backup. Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, we call SERP as for an acronym, SERP was put into law in the year two thousand. It was it was bipartisan effort between President Bill Clinton and Governor Jeb Bush. It's a state and federal partnership to execute the largest ecosystem restoration project in the history of our country and it's sixty eight infrastructure projects to again reconnect that flow, and it was estimated that it would take thirty years to complete. So by twenty thirty they thought we would complete this. In twenty sixteen, not a single one of those sixty eight projects were completed. Since then, you know, here will be our organization will be ten years old this next February, February of twenty six We have now seen over the last eight years, record funding out of both Washington, d C. And the State of Florida, year after year after year. And that was really the way Everglades restoration was stalling. It wasn't It wasn't the Army Corps of Engineers and the Water Management District, the agencies involved in building these projects weren't being funded to the capacity that they needed, and so they just the projects weren't moving at the right place. As a result of that massive public pressure, there's been more political will, and we've seen record funding out of Governor Desanis out of both of his terms. We saw record funding from President Trump in his first term President Biden and then and then again out of Trump's budget this year. So this is something that in a world of very divided politics, we see massive support and it's a result of that public pressure. So where we are today, over fifty five of those sixty eight projects are now well underway in construction or have been completed. We have attended dozens of ribbon cuttings, groundbreakings, and everglades restoration is now really moving at a lightning pace. The reality is we have we have a single special interest opposition, and that's the industrial sugar industry. It's similar to kind of that issue with Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, where you had a special interest pushing politically to get something that really didn't benefit the United States citizens or the citizens of Alaska as a whole, and could cause irreversible damage. The sugar industry here benefits from the status quo of water management. Water being held back in Lake Okachobee and no longer able to flow south is almost like a guarantee of water supply to the sugar industry who's located primarily directly south of Lake okachobe So it's like that old archaic way of managing the lake treats the lake as a reservoir instead of a natural functioning part of the ecosystem, and the result of that old water management was it throws off the balance of the entire everglade system. Too much water to the coasts, not enough water to the everglades. And so for a long time, you know, here in Florida and and in d C, the sugar industry, who's federally subsidized, has has massive tariffs on import sugar that elevates the price the floor of their product. And then through a number of subsidy issues, they're they're basically able to make production of sugar in the United States much more valuable than in the other parts of the world, and they take and they put that money back into politics. And it's it's something that for a long time, before people were involved, they were able to dictate the the speed at which these happened through just political influence. And so you know, we have now seen that that fight is constant and it's kind of twofold. It's what it really is is not about growing sugar, and it's it's not about just restoring the everglades. The fight is really about controlling water and who controls the water. And you know, in Florida here water it's not like California and Florida. Water is public, it's not privatized, and so there's this effort of how do how does the sugar industry, which is two big corporations, really how do they get and maintain as much control over that water as possible? And that's really what the fight. They see that any water that is going to the Everglades is water that's not available to them, and they, you know, they actually went as far a couple of years ago to sue the Army Corps of Engineers, who's building the largest components of Everglades restoration. That the kind of cornerstone or heart of Everglades restoration being what's called the Glades Agricultural Area Reservoir. I know, Cal you and I have talked about that before. It's the EAA Reservoir. It's a reservoir that'll take Lake Okeachobe's polluted water. We'll take it in during the wet season instead of discharging it to the coast, We'll clean it through filter marshes, through engineered wetlands, and then we'll send that clean water back south to the Everglades in the dry season to keep that ecosystem hydrated. They sued the Army Corps of Engineers over the operations of that reservoir, saying that you know, the core could build it, which is a four billion dollar reservoir that the taxpayers are paying for, but that they should be entitled to that water rather before it would be sent to the Everglades. And they sued. We filed an amekas brief on behalf of the Army Corps. It went to the district court in Miami, where they ruled in favor of the Corps. They sent the judge there cited our brief, and then they appealed it and to the appellate court in Atlanta, and and they recently again ruled in favor of the Army Corps. So there's been these attempts legally and politically to control the water in Florida. And that's really the big fight that those two big industrial sugar companies bring. And that's the threat that everyglade's restoration has to overcome over the decades to see it through to completion. And so you know, where we are today is more progress than ever before, but under a constant threat of of you know that that progress being stalled or delayed and control the water being hijacked, and one of the things that's happening currently that's it's very similar to the public lands issue or selling off of public lands, is the sugar industry is recently proposed to put a rock mine in the Everglades next to these big restoration projects, and a couple of issues. One is just the fact of forty years of mining in the Everglades can have detrimental ecological impacts, but it could also that EAA reservoir. To put into perspective for people, it's an above ground reservoir. So it has a thirty foot burm all the way around it, and it's this you could put the island of Manhattan inside of it. It's ten thousand, six hundred acres. It's massive, and so you've got this massive above ground reservoir, and you can imagine what thirty or forty years of blasting one thousand feet away could do to the integrity of that reservoir, could cause it to leak, and so real concerns there. But the bigger picture is they're selling this rock mine as a water resource project, saying, after forty years of mining, we'll have this hole in the ground that it'll have water in it and then it can be available for restoration. And they're doing that because mining rock mining in the Everglades in itself is prohibited unless it's for the purpose of building a restoration project. So they're trying to disguise this forty year long rock mine as this restoration project. And it's a massive fight. And the real long term goal there is not the eight hundred million dollars of aggregate that they would get out of that land, but is the setting the precedent to what the future of that land will be. Will it be available to restoration projects or will it become rock mines that then who controls that water that is left over in those holes? And ultimately it's it's a way for them to tactically gain control or privatize water that would be otherwise would be public water. And so it's a massive fight. It's just kind of unfortunately statis quo to what we're seeing now across the country is this effort by special interests to you know, take a grab at public lands and public waters. And the only effective tool that we all have as Americans to push back against that is our collective voices. 00:20:25 Speaker 1: Chris can I ask what might be a dumb question, what does the sugar industry want with a rock mine? 00:20:33 Speaker 2: So they what is is they've got after decades of farming in the EAA, the whole land south of Lake ok chob is very very fertile, like mock soil. It's peat soil. So when it's hydrated, it's like a sponge. After decades of a series of you dry it out, you know, you artificially drain it, you dry it, you plant it, you flood it, what's happened is the soil subsides and oxidizes, and so the area in the south part there near these everglage restoration projects, they've actually lost up to eight feet of soil and they're hitting caproc so it's no longer productive area to farm because there's just not any dirt. So now they're looking at what is the next resource they can extract from that land. And here there's limestone and that can be used for building roads. And as we know, Florida as well as everywhere in the country, is being developed a lot faster than we would like to see it. But they're looking at, Okay, we can extract this limestone, but you're not allowed to mine in that area unless it's for restoration, So let's call it a restoration project. So I think if you look at it in a timeline, what is their goal is in the next thirty years thirty five years would be to extract nearly a billion dollars worth of aggregate, sell that aggregate to the state and development, and then you would have a sixteen foot deep, eight thousand, six hundred acre series of holes in the ground that would be holding water that then the question is who does that water belong to? You know, this is on their land now. So I think the thirty year goal is a billion dollars of aggregate. The real goal is control of that much water. And here in Florida, it's it's almost like never ending. It's not just the capacity that would be in that hole. You dig a hole a couple of feet deep here, you hit water. So if you've got this massive hole in the ground, you can pump water out of it. It almost like just keeps coming in. So that the long term goal is it's a it's an attempt to gain control over that water and then really set the precedent for what will the rest of the six or six hundred thousand acres of Everglades agricultural area become when it becomes unfarmable, you know, will it be rock mines and then developments or will it be able to be sold to the state to build actual restoration projects. And you know that's really there's a multi benefit layer to them. Not it doesn't benefit, it actually harms the taxpayers. And the fact of can harm the ecosystem, can threaten everyglades's restoration, can threaten control of the water being privatized. And then it also elevates the artificially elevates the value of that land. So if the state wanted to go in and buy ten thousand acres of land to build a filter marsh, the value that lands about ten to twelve thousand dollars an acre. Well, if now you can make the case that you can mine it for a billion dollars, now the value that lands one hundred thousand dollars an acre. So now the taxpayer's got to spend a billion dollars to acquire the land before you ever start building a restoration project. And so it could just lead to restoration in the future of Everglades restoration almost becoming impossible because of the financial burden that would come along with it. 00:24:18 Speaker 1: Gotcha, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it sounds like a real pivotal moment in Florida history right now, Like what way do you want your state to go? 00:24:28 Speaker 2: It is and you know, politically they're very, very powerful. They've been able to fast track this project through. You know, there was a law passed last year that changed the way that a unsolicited proposal goes through the process, where a normal Everglades restoration project, these projects are identified, they're designed and developed by the Southfold Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers, and then they seek contractors to build the designed project and those project designs goes through years of vetting and studies and analysis to make sure that they don't have detrimental effects and that they will in fact benefit Everglade's restoration. They take they go through years of stakeholder input. Everybody from fishing guides in the in the tourism industry to the industrial sugar industry. Everybody can come to the table there and that those those projects are intentionally very long in their approach. This new unsolicited proposal process was put into law and it basically allows in this case, the landowner Sugar and the contractor, which would just be the contractor that would normally put out, you know, a bid on building these projects, to propose a project that wasn't identified or designed by those agencies, and coincidentally, maybe maybe not, I don't really believe in coincidence, but when that law was passed forty eight hours later, this project was the first proposal to ever be put through that process. And the chain of events that happened we brought attention to this, something did not smell right. The applicant being Sugar, withdrew their application and then on Christmas Eve they sent a letter to the Water Management District to basically reinitiate this. And then on New Year's Eve, the executive director of the Water Management District sent a letter to the Zoning Commission in Palm Beach County, which is where this project could be located, saying that this project could possible will be a resource project. And so it was very suspicious and ever since then it's been fast tracked through the process, kind of rammed through, circumventing the public input part of it, and so we've really been ringing the alarm bells and and recently it's it's gone viral. We put one of our videos of one of those interactions now is approaching four million views on YouTube. And so it's something that the public is furious about that it's not acceptable, and it's now it's just been moving at such a fast paced through the political process that you know, the public is saying, like, we need to we need to stop and and put put the brakes on this thing and make and analyze it to see what the actual impacts could be. And so now now that's kind of our our biggest focus and biggest battle, and ultimately it's going to come down to DP revoking that permit or the governor weighing in and saying, you know, this could threaten Everglades restoration and we're not going to move forward with this. You think about that eight thousand plus acres would be really valuable if they wanted to turn it into a filter marsh, and that's something that could be built in a couple of years and we'd have a functioning, you know, restoration project that would be cleaning water within a few years versus forty years of rock mining. 00:28:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the trade off that they're offering, I imagine, right is we're going to provide x amount of jobs for X amount of time. There's probably some sort of agreement to fund restoration and other places, or that's typically part of these puzzles somehow, someway as that tracking down there. 00:29:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, close the jobs thing. Yes, they're saying that this will create one hundred and forty jobs. So in the world of jobs supported by our ecosystem in Florida, like, that's not even measurable. I mean, the EAA reservoir construction, which is like a ten year project, is estimated to create seventy thousand jobs. So one hundred and forty jobs is It's just it doesn't even compute the. 00:29:32 Speaker 1: That seventy thousand job number. That's probably not direct ditch digging on the resume. 00:29:39 Speaker 2: No, no, it's not. It's a it's a and that's the number from the water management district in the Army Corps. But it's probably direct jobs as far as actual workers on the ground. And then the fact that you know all of the infrastructure, the trucking, the hotels, everything that goes along with that, all the way to the engineers and scientists and stuff that are analyzing it in other areas. But that's their number. As far as like the funding part or funding restoration. The way this is being sold is they will pay for the startup and then they would turn it over to the state to take on the cost of the actual restoration project forty years from now. However, we've seen this exact scenario with a different reservoir on the East Coast called the C fifty one Reservoir, where they proposed it as a public private partnership same way as this, and said that the landowner and the applicant would carry the cost. Once they got approval, they went back to the legislature for funding the very next year, and so now that project has cost the taxpayers of Florida almost three hundred million dollars one year. They went and asked the legislature for fifty million, and the legislature gave them one hundred million, game twice as much as they asked for. So we know we know how this game works. You're going to propose it saying we're going to provide this this project, and then when we're done, we'll turn it over and at that point the taxpayers will pay for it. But what will really happen is once they get the green light, they'll go back to the legislature, which they are one of the top political donors you know, across the board on both sides of the aisle, and they'll put in a funding request for appropriations and next thing you know, this will be a taxpayer funded rock mine that has little to no benefit to the taxpayers. And so it's it's a it's a tactic to further subsidize the actions of one of the most heavily subsidized you know, companies or or u s interest in the nation. And that's just that's just kind of their their mo. 00:32:06 Speaker 1: Everybody's got patience to wait forty years and see what happens on good faith, right, that's got to be that's got to be on your side. What so, what what can folks do right now? How do they how do they learn more? And uh, how do they get involved? 00:32:22 Speaker 2: Chris, Yeah, thank you for that. I think that the best thing is is visit Captains for Clean Water. You can go to our website or follow us on social if you don't already all of this content we put out. As you guys know, the key to to really creating public pressure is to engage on that content. If you if you see these videos and stuff we put out about this, like it, share it, comment on it, let policymakers know how valuable the Everglades is. And then also if you're interested in in the biggest value is people having a better understanding and opportunities like this to talk to you guys, to give people long format information about these issues. This we're talking about Everglades restoration as a whole and some of the current struggles. But we just launched a podcast, Captains for Clean Water podcast. It is on all your typical platforms that you would typically get a podcast, as well as on YouTube, and we do incorporate videos and stuff of some of these interactions at these agencies. So YouTube is a great place to to get the full picture. But the very first podcast we ever did, What is about This Rock Mine and Episode one, and so I think those ways, you know, plug in with us on our social follow us, you know, follow us on on YouTube and listen to that podcast and educate yourself and engage in the fight and add your voice to the movement to save the Everglades. 00:33:57 Speaker 1: You got a stake in this right and as I say often these days, if you're not willing to speak for it for yourself. Somebody else is going to be in that room doing it and you may not like what they say. You're absolutely learn more. Get involved. Sounds like captains will help you with the tools you need to confidently stand up there and say your piece. So what's the fish and report down there, Chris. 00:34:26 Speaker 2: Fishing is actually great. Yeah, it's been a fantastic tarpin season. The red fish and snook bite is very very good right now. And you know, I think that's a great way to leave this conversation. Is the even though we've seen such significant decline and impact in these ecosystems, the Everglades is still such an incredible fishery and is still so resilient. If we give these places like the Everglades the opportunity to be in recovery, they will recover and and the fishing is great. It's it's just reinforces why we fight so hard to save this place, because there's there's no place like it. If you if you've ever chased tarpin on a fly in in the Glades, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And uh, if you haven't and you're a fly fisherman, it should absolutely be on your bucket list. 00:35:32 Speaker 1: Darn right, man, this it's shaping up to be the second year in a row. I haven't gone down there. And man, once he once, he kind of make it part of your schedule. It's kind of a necessary thing. It's just a different place. Once you're out on the water, you're not gonna lie. Florida traffic is brutal, brutal, brutal, brutal. 00:35:53 Speaker 2: It's to me, it's it's my elk hunting. It's like, once you do it, that's part of your life forever. And uh, you know, whatever struggles it takes to get to that point, to be on that mountaintop or be in the in the in the depths of the Everglades, it's it's once you're there, it's it's worth it and it changes you. 00:36:14 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man. And and you know, we're talking about this massive public lands steel that we're in. It is no different than than the water steel, right. And and if folks over there could contextualize the fact that they could walk out to that boat slip, have all their gear ready to roll, and that ocean's been privatized, that bay has been privatized, that river estuary has been private, privatized, and you can no longer go out there that that's what we're dealing with out here in the West right now. And and those are the places that for the folks who can't stand that traffic and the congestion, like we need. 00:36:56 Speaker 3: That stuff to to survive, right we do need Fine, that's it's like that, that's our it's it's you know, we make the argument a lot of times with policy makers the economic value, because that's a language they understand. 00:37:10 Speaker 2: But to us, it's it's a spiritual value. It's it's like who we are. It's where you go to to be yourself. And without that, it's kind of like you're you're completely lost. And so no, it's it's you know, it's it's a lesson that you know, I learned too late. I believe I'm born and raised here, fourth generation. I grew up on an island. It was a fishing guide and it took until I was in my you know, late thirties to get involved in this. But don't ever assume that somebody else is going to protect and save something you love. You. If there's a something impacting something you care about, you damn well better be part of that effort, if you expect to to see it, you know, last in the future. 00:38:00 Speaker 1: That's right, man. And I think another important takeaway for people is if you're thinking, don't worry all the way in next election cycle, you're basically saying you're going to give up on a lot of good stuff before mid terms or the next big election, right. 00:38:19 Speaker 2: And and and if you have this old mindset of oh, it's it's one side that you know, it's it's the Republican side or the Democrat side, like that's not how politics works. That's exactly what they want you to believe. The reality is massive, powerful special interests. They work, they have ties across both sides of the aisle, whoever's in powers, who they're leveraging. And there's no political party that's going to come to your rescue. There's no single organization that's going to come to your rescue. The only thing that will come to rescue these places and special areas is the collective voice of the people. And that's it if we demand, if we demand it, and then there is you start putting your eggs in one political party or the other, or or whatever it's, you will lose. You absolutely will lose. 00:39:14 Speaker 1: Darn right well, Thanks a bunch, Chris. We'll get you back on here for some updates. If all these awesome listeners have any questions for Captain Chris Whitman, you can get a hold of him directly at Captains for Clean Water. But if you want to reach out to ask c A l. That's Askcal at the Meteater dot com. We will him back on to answer those, or we can connect with them and answer them here on the show. Thanks a bunch, Chris, keep fighting a good fight, keep us posted, and we'll talk to you again soon. 00:39:48 Speaker 2: Thank you Kyle, Thank you Jordan. Appreciate the opportunity.