{"id":253,"date":"2010-02-24T10:06:18","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T15:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/?p=253"},"modified":"2010-02-24T10:06:18","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T15:06:18","slug":"palm-beach-post-florida-a-conspicuous-no-show-at-annual-coral-reef-summit-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/2010\/02\/24\/palm-beach-post-florida-a-conspicuous-no-show-at-annual-coral-reef-summit-in-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Palm Beach Post: Florida a Conspicuous No-Show at Annual Coral Reef Summit in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/blogs.palmbeachpost.com\/seeinggreen\/2010\/02\/23\/florida-a-conspicuous-no-show-at-capitol-hill-coral-reef-summit\/<\/a><\/p>\n

by Paul Quinlan<\/p>\n

\n

Florida takes great pride in its copious coral reefs, which rival even those of the Caribbean, the state\u2019s environmental agency boasts on its website. Imagine, then, the surprise among delegates at this week\u2019s annual gathering of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force in Washington that the state of Florida \u2014 for the first time in anyone\u2019s memory \u2014 was a no-show.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida didn\u2019t even send anyone at all – not even a staff person,\u201d marveled Dan Clark, of South Florida reef conservation group Cry of the Water, in a telephone interview from the meeting.<\/p>\n

An higher-up at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which usually sends a top staffer to task force meeting, told Clark that Gov. Charlie Crist had cut travel for state workers because of the state\u2019s budget woes. But the feds even offered to pick up the tab for whomever Florida would be willing to send, a surprised task force staffer told Clark at the meeting.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why Crist didn\u2019t take them up on the offer, and a spokesman for the governor would not return calls for comment. Was it in protest to the tougher pollution limits the EPA wants to impose on state waterways? An attempt to duck the debate over whether to protect reef habitat at the expense of future beach replenishment projects? Simple oversight?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s politics, no doubt,\u201d said Clark, suggesting the Crist doesn\u2019t want to appear to be cozying up to environmentalists as the gap between him and front-runner GOP Senate rival Marco Rubio grows. \u201cI hate to read too much into it, but I\u2019ve got to wonder if the governor is distancing himself from environmental issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tags: Charlie Crist<\/a>, coral reef<\/a>, Department of Environmental Protection<\/a><\/p>\n

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Charlie Crist<\/a>, Oceans\/Reefs<\/a>, Politics<\/a>, State government<\/a>. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0<\/a> feed. You can leave a response<\/a>, or trackback<\/a> from your own site. <\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/blogs.palmbeachpost.com\/seeinggreen\/2010\/02\/23\/florida-a-conspicuous-no-show-at-capitol-hill-coral-reef-summit\/ by Paul Quinlan Florida takes great pride in its copious coral reefs, which rival even those of the Caribbean, the state\u2019s environmental agency boasts on its website. Imagine, then, the surprise among delegates at this week\u2019s annual gathering of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force in Washington that the state of Florida \u2014 for … Continue reading Palm Beach Post: Florida a Conspicuous No-Show at Annual Coral Reef Summit in Washington<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}