ANNA MARIA – In an uphill battle against corporate interests to maintain healthy water quality, Capt. Chris Wittman said mobilized individuals can make a big difference.
Wittman, co-founder of Captains for Clean Water, spoke at The Center of Anna Maria Island on Jan. 23.
Noting many attendees at his talk were “some heavy-hitter fishermen,” he told his story of the quest to fight for clean water in Florida.
“I grew up in Sanibel and became a fishing guide,” Wittman said. “I saw water quality impacts to other fishermen and to my way of life.”
Despite witnessing the impacts that red tide and algae blooms had on the fishing industry and tourism, Wittman said it was years before he took action.
“I was 16 years into my guide business and had not played a role and was not active in trying to fix it. I didn’t see how as an individual l could make an impact on these huge issues, like the Lake Okeechobee runoff,” he said. “I cared a lot; I was directly impacted. But without having a pathway to make an impact I simply adapted.”
He adapted by picking up clients in other areas and avoiding the problem sites until the widespread red tide of 2016 became his wake-up call.
“In 2016, my 16th year guiding, we came into a water crisis many of the guys in this room remember,” Wittman said. “We had this horrendous red tide. It was so toxic that it was killing sea turtles, grouper, dolphins, tarpon, snook, cobia, redfish, you name it. A 27-foot whale shark washed up on the beach of Sanibel Island.”
That was when Wittman decided things had to change.
“If we continued down this path, my life as I know it would not exist in the way that I knew it,” he said. “The program that I built for 16 years – my clients would save up all year to come fish with me for a week at a time – would cease to exist.”
He talked to fellow fishing guides and teamed up with Capt. Daniel Andrews to co-found Captains for Clean Water.
“The more we talked to people, the more we realized there were tens of thousands of people just like myself that were impacted by water quality and were aware of water quality issues, but were not active in driving solutions for those issues because they didn’t have an outlet, they didn’t have a path,” Wittman said.
He said that development and a sewage infrastructure that couldn’t keep up with the rate of growth were factors in diminished water quality, but he said the discharges from Lake Okeechobee were what was crippling the fishermen’s way of life.
“That red tide shut down everything,” Wittman said. “Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach were at a 90-95% vacancy in March – the peak of the season.”
Wittman learned there was a plan put in place in 2000 to fix the areas affected by Lake Okeechobee runoff.
“Those same issues that were affecting me in Sanibel were affecting my friends over in Stuart and St. Lucie, in the Florida Bay… all these issues were connected,” he said. “Water from the Everglades systems which would naturally flow from the Kissimmee River all the way to Lake Okeechobee through the river of grass all the way down to the Keys could no longer do so. That system was compartmentalized, it was drained, it was diverted, it was controlled.”
Wittman referenced the bi-partisan Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan of 2000.
“It’s the largest ecosystem restoration project ever undertaken in the history of the world. Sixty-eight projects would reconnect the flow of water to the Everglades,” Wittman said. “There was this plan to fix it and it was estimated it would take 30 years to complete 68 projects. Massive reservoirs, taking down of canals. All these projects would work in concert together to reconnect the hydrological flow back to Florida Bay.”
“Who could guess how many of the 68 projects had been completed by 2016?” Wittman asked attendees. “Zero, not a single one.”
“There was no political will, there was no passion to change the water management system in Florida,” he said. “The more we looked into this, we figured out there were two drivers, a lack of political will because there was a lack of public pressure and because the lawmakers who were charged with funding these projects were being influenced by the industrial sugar industry, one of the top two political donors in Florida.”
“The only way we can combat that is not dollar for dollar or lobbyist for lobbyist,” Wittmann said. “The way we can do it is to create public pressure. If we can get everyone to understand how important their voice was and to give them a mechanism to use their voices.
“If we can educate people on these issues, they’re more likely to use their voices and create educational and outreach meetings like this,” Wittman said. “Advocacy creates public pressure, and that is what we can leverage to influence policy.”
He encouraged attendees to email their legislators and attend meetings.
For more information, visit https://captainsforcleanwater.org/.
