Clean the water and bring the tourists!

Clean the water and bring the tourists!

All our elected officials need to get  behind cleaning the water once and for all. No more smoke and mirrors.
This has got to stop.
If you work in tourism on the Treasure Coast  you should be the number one person who wants to fix this problem.
Today I drove down to Ft Lauderdale  for an awesome meeting and yummy lunch with “Visit Florida”.  Long ride but so happy I went. The nicest people. It’s their job to make sure that the tourists come. These are seriously talented people who want t excel at their job.

clean the water and bring the tourists

clean the water and bring the tourists

People are coming to Florida  and they are coming from all over the world.
When I moved to my house on the hill on the Indian River Lagoon I had a plan. It included a kayak and a paddle and a lot of floating on the water. The parking lot down at River Palms was filled with people with paddleboards and kayaks. Paddleboards businesses were popping up.  I even bought a fishing pole. I even tried to fish. I failed miserably but I had a good time.  All my plans were about turning my head space into a happy place and heal with the help of the water. You get the picture. No one moves to the Indian River Lagoon not to be part of the water. It’s the water that binds us together.
A very important part of all our lives is having a good healthy economy.  I don’t care who you are without a healthy economy we have nothing. Our economy depends on tourism just like the rest of Florida.

A few weeks ago I had company and we were talking about the water and this person who is from Maine said “Well face it Florida is certainly not a pretty place.”  I sort of wanted to deck her.

Every single town and city along the Indian River Lagoon has  beautiful  and original wonderful things for tourists to come here for. Unfortunately, most of them have to do with the water.
Fishing adventures, Paddleboarding, kayaking. Tourists want all these things.
At the end of February I spent a week in Sarasota. My sister booked a medical conference there and she brought her girls and her husband. We spent the week at the beach, sighting seeing, eating, hanging out. They had a great week. All my nieces wanted was to be at the water.
Without clean water we have nothing. Actually we have minus nothing. Because our tourist dollars are going elsewhere.
I lived in Rockport. Mass on Cape Anne next to Gloucester. These people know how to do tourism. At the time we had about 30,000 people that actually lived there year round  and our census in the summer went up to 150,000. Summer was crazy but we knew it would be over and everyone would ok for the winter. Crazy old Walter Dyer made so much money he hired an airplane and threw out hundreds of dollars so people would have money from the sky.
Visit Florida wants people here from all over the world and they are working hard to bring them here. We have to potential to have wonderful outside adventure holidays, eating our good food and buying things in our stores.

When I go to Colorado or Maine its not to sit inside. When I go to Colorado hiking is involved, a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, a trip to Pearl St on Thursday where all the vendors are and a river rafting trip and any kind of fun nature trip I can find. In Maine I spent most of time out on the lake in the boat or just hanging at the private beach. I can stay home and stay inside.
One airplane full of people is 721 jobs.
So here the questions I have. Why are our very own legislators against us having a good economy? Why  is the Economic Council of Martin County for the continued pollution and destruction of our waterways? Why are they so in bed with Big Sugar who thinks its ok to destroy us?  Change your name! You should be called the Uneconomic council of Martin County!
Big Sugar at our Martin County  fair. They are probably the only ones with enough money to be a big sponsor because everyone else is sucking seawater at this point. Literally.
There is estimated billions of dollars that will come in Florida on tourist dollars. Many of these dollars should be coming to our very unique Treasure Coast. They may come once but with dirty water they won’t come back. (My own sister wouldn’t book a conference here because all she wanted was clean water to go swimming in.)
I met a lot of very nice people today working hard to do their jobs. When I told them where I lived most knew what was going on more or less. You could see the pain in their faces.
There is no business in the world that should be allowed to play the games big sugar has played with us. Anyone in Martin County that is in bed with them is not a friend of the great citizens that live here. There is no reasoning with them. They take no responsibility for their actions and create the most ridiculous propaganda I’ve ever seen.

But they can’t compete with Florida Tourism.

I say take away all their subsidies and take that money, buy the land, send the water south, stop the discharges and save our river. Then send us the tourists and may we all live happily ever after.

Cyndi Lenz

Editor and Rabble Rouser

Treasurecoast.com

TreasureCoast

TreasureCoast

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  • Posted 8 years ago

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