| Local News |
Spending Millions to Clean Up The St. Johns
(AP)--The head of Florida's environmental agency announced a plan for Northeast Florida's cities and utilities to spend more than $600 million helping the St. Johns River.
The move, which was announced Friday, is supposed to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus entering the river, which would shrink algae blooms and help underwater grass beds where fish live and eat.
It took 9 years of talks between the state agency, local governments and people representing business, farming and public interests to come up with the plan.
Among the measures: imposing a quota on pollution entering the river from sewage treatment plants, monitoring storm water draining off highways and retiring some septic tanks.
Officials say the plan could take as much as 15 years or more to be completed.
What others are saying
- $600 millionTaking another 600 million from the taxpayer at a time like this is wrong headed. The people need most of all tax relief and to be left alone by the government. Saying that cities and utilities will be footing the bill is a sneaky way of saying taxpayers as cities and utilities get their money from us. With cities, it is through the force of government taxation, and the utilities take from us through monopoly confiscatory rates. I say no! Rise up, good citizens, against yet another government money grab. We already struggle to pay the bills and buy food. We already pay the government and utilities huge sums. They both need to go on a serious fiscal diet right now!
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