There's no general meeting this month as we break for the holidays. But let's come on stronger than ever in 2011 to demand clean water for the St. Lucie estuary.
Mark your calendars and plan to attend the new year's first meeting, at 11 a.m. Jan. 27 at Stuart City Hall.
Your help is needed more than ever as the Pollution Establishment undermines every key effort to curtail the tainted discharges that are shunted onto us in wet times.
Meanwhile, we await a decision by the Court of Appeals for the U.S. District Court in Washington regarding our riparian rights claim that discharges of toxic chemicals and muck are an unconstitutional "taking" of property rights.
A three-judge panel heard arguments from both sides on Dec. 6. There were no indications as to how or when the judges will rule.
The defendant U.S. Corps of Army Engineers, backed by the South Florida Water Management District, argued that while the discharges have been damaging for decades, the six-year statute of limitations bars action. Defendants also claim that "navigational servitude" laws preclude any action involving the pollution.
After the hearing, one Rivers Coalition leader said: "It's disheartening that our own government is using procedural loopholes to block a cleanup instead of taking steps to stop the terrible discharges in the wet years. But however the lawsuit goes, it will have at least spotlighted the outrageous despoiling of this once-great estuary."
Visit RiversCoalition.org to read background of the lawsuit and other continuing developments.
The river still cries for your involvement and support. Will you answer her?
