Action Alert: Save Hammerheads and Oceanic Whitetips
Please sign the PEW Environment Group petition to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to protect hammerhead and oceanic whitetip sharks in U.S. waters. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) governs the management of sharks in U.S. ocean territory, and has supported proposals for global trade restrictions to ensure the future of these sharks.
Your signature is urgently needed – tell NMFS it’s time to stop catching hammerhead and oceanic whitetip sharks in U.S. waters! Please sign the petition today.
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Past Alert:
We won! Click here to read Victory for Coral Reefs
The issue:
Along the southeast Florida coast five ocean outfall pipes discharge over 300,000,000 gallons-a-day (MGD) of partially treated sewage into the coastal waters.
In 2008 the State of Florida passed a law to end ocean dumping
At the 2008 International Coral Reef Symposium, Ft. Lauderdale, then Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law legislation ending the practice of dumping inadequately treated sewage from ocean outfall pipes into Florida’s coastal waters. 
The signing was hailed by hundreds of coral reef scientists gathered from across the globe who attended the international conference.
Now the Florida Legislature is moving to derail the ocean outfall legislation
Three years later newly elected Florida State Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla of Miami introduced bill SB 796 designed to delay the implementation of the 2008 legislation and allow the continued dumping of sewage into Florida waters until 2030. An identical House bill HB 613 was filed by Representative Carlos Trujillo, also of Miami.
SB 796 does not deny the sewage is killing the costal environment, in fact the bill states: The Legislature also finds that discharge of domestic wastewater through ocean outfalls compromises the coastal environment, quality of life, and local economies that depend on those resources. The Legislature declares that more stringent treatment and management requirements for such domestic wastewater and the subsequent, timely elimination of ocean outfalls as a primary means of domestic wastewater discharge are in the public interest.
What the pro-sewage lobby, led by Miami-Dade County, is saying is that it just costs too much to protect Florida’s coral reefs and coastal tourism economy. This is the same county that can afford to build a new half billion dollar sports stadium for the Florida Marlins baseball team (as long as the team agrees to change their name to the Miami Marlins).
Thinking about South Florida as a Spring Break destination?
In 2004 NOAA performed a tracer study on the Hollywood Florida ocean outfall that pumps 42 MGD into the coastal waters. They found the sewage effluent flowed northward parallel to the coast with a broadening of the width of the plume to about 3 km at the farthest point sampled, 66 km from the outfall. That 40 miles (66km) delivers the Hollywood poo to the doorstep of ritzy Palm Beach. And the Hollywood 42 MGD is less than 15% of the 300 million gallons dumped everyday into south Florida coastal waters.
Source: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/themes/CoastalRegional/projects/FACE/PDF/EST_2004.pdf
Killing coral costs jobs
According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection: 239,000 acres of coral reefs and associated reef resources lie within the four-county area that stretches more than100 miles from the northern boundary of Biscayne National Park in Miami-Dade County to the St. Lucie Inlet in Martin County. These reefs are part of the third longest reef system in the world which annually sustains more than 71,000 jobs and generates $6.3 billion dollars in sales and income for Florida.
Source: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/secretary/news/2009/02/files/0212_02.pdf
TAKE ACTION
Contact your Florida State Senator @: http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/Find
Contact your Florida State House Representative @: http://myfloridahouse.gov
Not a Florida resident?
Tell the Florida official tourism marketing corporation VISIT FLORIDA where you will not spend your vacation dollars: http://www.visitflorida.com/feedback/
~ Keep up with breaking reef related news at the Reef Rescue Coral Reef Blog ~
