Floridians need what others have: a constitutional right to clean water
Joseph Bonasia
SWFL Regional Director, Florida Rights of Nature Network, Inc.
Reposted with permission from Florida Weekly, December 2022
In 2012, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed Act 13. It forced local municipalities to allow fracking virtually everywhere within their boundaries: schools, churches, parks, protected waterways, and wildlife sanctuaries, among other places. It included a medical gag order. Doctors were not allowed to speak publicly about the health impacts of fracking they were seeing in their patients, nor share information with other doctors.
Stacey Haney, a nurse and single mom who lived next door to a neighbor’s frac pond, watched her animals sicken and die. She and her children eventually grew sick, too, her son so much so he could not attend school for an entire year, and they had to move from the farm that had been in the family for generations. (Stacy’s story was the focus of Pulitzer prize-winning Amity and Prosperity, by Eliza Griswold.)
As happens too often, Act 13 was written by industry lawyers, not the elected legislators who approved it, and Pennsylvania’s governor received $1.7 million in industry contributions.
Lacking any other practical recourse, several towns filed suit contesting the law, and in 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared key provisions of Act 13 unconstitutional. Critical to that decision was the Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution which, among other things, stated, “The people have the right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and aesthetic values of the environment.”
“It is not” the court said, “a historical accident that the Pennsylvania Constitution now places citizen’s environmental rights on par with their political rights.” A right to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment is as fundamental to the well-being of Americans as is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms, and Act 13 violated this right.
Montana also has an Environmental Rights Amendment, as does New York. Florida, so staunch a proponent of individual freedoms and rights, does not.
““The people have the right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and aesthetic values of the environment.””
Our constitution merely says, “It shall be the policy of the state to conserve and protect its natural resources. Adequate provision shall be made by law for the abatement of air and water pollution…and for the conservation and protection of natural resources.” This is a policy statement, not a declaration of a right.
Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions highlight how crucial are explicitly stated rights. In Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court said that the failure of the U.S. Constitution to declare the right of women to bodily autonomy, including abortion, meant it did not exist, and thereby overturned 50 years of established law, convulsing the nation.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn v. Bruen, the court struck down New York’s new gun law because it violated every American’s right to bear arms as explicitly stated in the Second Amendment.
Pennsylvanians passed their Environmental Rights Act (ERA) in 1971 by a four to one margin. Floridians can pass our own ERA, the “Right to Clean and Healthy Waters” amendment in 2024, if we first qualify it for the ballot by gathering 900,000 signed petitions by Nov. 30, 2023.
Florida’s wetlands are already under constant threat. What will we do when the U.S. Supreme Court, as many fear will happen in an upcoming opinion, changes the definition of “waters of the United States” making wetlands in Florida even more vulnerable to rampant development? With an explicitly stated constitutional “Right to Clean and Healthy Waters,” we can save our remaining wetlands.
When next spring, as a consequence of hurricanes and legacy nutrients in Lake Okeechobee, we again suffer blue green algae blooms, perhaps as bad as and potentially worse than those in 2018-19, can we expect action from a state government that has initiated very few of the recommendations from its own Blue-Green Algae Task Force? A “Right to Clean and Healthy Waters” would enable us to compel meaningful state action.
Rights matter and fundamental rights matter most. Demonstrating its fear of a rights-based approach to environmental protection, the state legislature in 2020 preempted the authority of local governments to pass laws giving citizens any rights regarding the natural world. It doesn’t want citizens empowered with a right to clean water.
Take five minutes to go to www.floridarighttocleanwater.org to print the petition. Sign it. Mail it. Get five other voters to do the same.
Pennsylvania’s ERA was born when American rivers were afire from pollution. Today, Florida has thousands of miles of rivers and streams contaminated with fecal bacteria. Eighty percent of our 1,000 springs are impaired. Red tides have increased in alarming frequency, duration, and virulence. They and blue-green algae blooms choke our waters and our local economies. Manatees are dying in historic numbers as seagrass beds disappear.
The time for Floridians to grant themselves the fundamental right to clean water is long past due. But it will not happen unless Floridians make it happen.
To view Joe’s presentation on The Right To Clean water for RESET CONVERSATIONS, click here.
