Florida Democratic lawmakers aren't sold on Gov. Ron DeSantis' claims of environmental success; a St. Petersburg lawmaker said Florida's water is dirtier than when he first took office. PolitiFact consulted the data.
There is no catch-all unit of measurement to determine whether all of Florida's distinct waterbodies are dirtier or sicker.
Democratic state lawmakers aren't sold on DeSantis' environmental success; one House member from St. Petersburg said the opposite is true. Estuaries are bodies of water where the freshwater from rivers or streams converges with the saltwater of the ocean. The largest estuary in Florida is Tampa Bay, according to theHere's what we found when we tested Cross's claim. DeSantis' press office directed us to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
In 2018, before DeSantis took office, DEP reported that 2.5 million acres of the state's estuaries were polluted and not suitable for drinking or recreation. That number declined to 2.1 million in 2020 before growing to 3.1 million in 2022. We could not find data that compared the overall severity and extent of algal blooms from one calendar year to the next during DeSantis' tenure.
Florida also has the second most square miles of polluted estuaries in the U.S. It ranked ninth when looking at the percentage of estuaries assessed."Florida's had water issues for as long as people have been selling real estate down here. So, these issues definitely predated DeSantis," said Matt DePaolis, environmental policy director at the nonprofit Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.
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