Green Opportunities Ripe for the Picking

Water shortages, sewage leaks, chemical spills, development in environmentally sensitive areas, fires, pollutants in our waterways. We hear and read about these things almost every day in Southwest Florida.

But, really, aren’t these concerns primarily of government, regulatory agencies, and the so-called environmentalists? They might affect eco-tourism and development, but do they have any real bearing on the average businessperson?

Absolutely, say regional planners, regulators, educators, and corporate leaders.

It’s difficult to think of a business that is not somehow affected by the “green industry,” the environment and its management, says Wayne Daltry, director of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council.

“With our area economy, the industry is as pervasive, just about, as the energy industry. Without energy, we don’t have a society. Well, without the environmental focus we don’t have all that much of an economy.”

Getting a handle on the “industry” is a little difficult. To those in the landscaping, tree-trimming, and lawn-maintenance businesses, theirs is the “green industry.” To others, its focus is environmental regulation — those governed by regulations and those employed as a result of regulations. Still others think more in terms of “green business,” improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness, even broadening a customer base and avoiding major capital expenditures, through management techniques that also benefit the environment.

Some produce environmental management products and services — from consulting, to fuel-cell development, to hazardous waste. Others are affected by environmental management practices, businesses, and industries as diverse as farming, auto shops, septic companies, hospitals, restaurants, and property development companies.

Environmental management “is so inseparable from our economy, it’s like trying to get to age 70 without going through ages 30 to 50,” Daltry says. “It’s intertwined.”

Keeping a Clean Nest

“Our economy is basically tied to people,” Daltry says, “and our population growth here isn’t because we’ve been birthing a lot of babies.” The population is growing because people keep coming for a better quality of life and that quality of life exists primarily because of Southwest Florida’s environment — warm winters, sunshine, water, clean air.

“When you get right down to it, what is the thing that generates the economy of Florida? It’s our environment,” says Rick Cantrell, director of district management for the South Florida Department of Environmental Protection. “Whether it’s the sun, the beach, the clean water, the fishing — it all goes back to ‘What do we sell in Florida?’ We sell the environment. And if we don’t take care of our environment, it’s going to have a direct negative impact on the whole state.”

Tourism, of course, is one component. Visitors are drawn by the areas natural resources. “We were using our area environment to sustain the economy,” Daltry points out, and the same elements that draw tourists also draw new residents. Historically, many of those have been retirees; now the “information age” also plays a role in the area’s population growth. Technology is releasing people from the traditional workplace and allowing them to set up their desks where they like. And growing numbers of people like Southwest Florida.

“North Dakota worries about out-migration; we don’t have that problem unless we soil our nest,” Daltry says, like Dade County did. “They soiled their nest so they started to lose population and stabilize, until they became the gateway of the Caribbean and new waves of immigration came from the south,” he adds.

“You have to watch,” he warns. “Take a look at year 2000 statistics on what’s happening to central cities and central metropolitan areas. They start having flight if you don’t manage your community’s assets. If we don’t do that here, we can become one of those places, too.”

So far, Southwest Florida has not gone the way of Dade County, but it hasn’t stayed green without a few fights. And it’s in the ring for a few more.

In the ‘70s, the battles to protect the community’s assets focused on the shoreline. As a result, the majority of Lee and Collier counties’ shorelines are in preserves, Daltry says. “In the latter part of the ‘80s, we started to realize that the piney flat — which we had thought would always be there because, hell, there was so much of it — had been over-drained,” he continues. “Now we’re starting to realize, ‘Oh my god, we need to do some more inland preserves there, too.’ Those are air sheds for cooling, air sheds for air quality, that’s headwater protection for water volumes and quality.”

Although a fire regime is normal for this environment, the fires we’ve been seeing in recent years — which take a toll on air quality — are not normal. “The water tables have become lowered to such an extent, there are no natural firebreaks — the firebreaks that were the swamps, the sloughs, the wetlands,” Daltry explains, as well as the vegetation so firmly rooted in the high water table that it could withstand normal fires. “Of course, if you burn off the vegetation,” he continues, “you have a desert. Deserts are made up of sand, which is what we have. You look around the world at our latitude, it’s commonly desert, so it’s been our vegetation that’s helped keep this part of the area attractive.

“Green industry. You’ve heard it before: Everything’s interrelated.”

One of the easiest ways to “soil our nest” would be through rampant, uncontrolled growth.

“In this part of Florida, the biggest challenge anyone has to deal with is growth,” says the state’s Department of Environmental Protection’s Rick Cantrell. “Growth is that two-edged sword. It’s good for the economy, it provides income for many people, but there’s always a downside to it. It requires the public to spend a lot more money on wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and ways of disposing waste.”

Recognizing that there is a breaking point is why there seems to be conflict in the business sector, Daltry says. “Typically, chambers of commerce are used to being pro-growth no matter what. You find in our area where that’s not necessarily the case, because established businesses can be adversely affected by more growth,” he explains.

Perhaps the biggest threats to the environment and the economy it sustains are political pressure and actions without good foresight, whether it be oil exploration or growth management.

“A speedy decision usually turns out to be a wrong one,” Daltry says. “In Southwest Florida, probably being a local elected official is the toughest job there is, because they can’t successfully blame somebody else. And every day, the policies that they implement have to find a balance point between sustaining the community/green industry and a contemporary issue. With the problem at the time, fixing it one way may become the problem of tomorrow.”

The Business of Regulation

State, federal, and local laws and regulations designed to protect the environment have spawned an industry in itself. Agencies ranging from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, to water management districts, to the federal Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and a host of others employ many people and contract with a wide variety of private businesses.

Regulation itself “generates business or results in business being formed to meet those needs,” says Cantrell. “No matter whether it’s a large, residential subdivision being planned and sited, or somebody building a dock behind their home, in most cases, there will be an environment professional, a private enterprise person involved in that.”

The need for people who understand environmental management and regulations spawned a component of the green industry — environmental consulting.

“There is a fairly significant industry that deals with environmental consulting, which really wouldn’t exist without environmental regulation and a concern for the environment that the people of Florida and of the United States have made known to their elected officials,” Cantrell says.

Regulations touch innumerable businesses and industries, though not always directly, and while environmental management protects some businesses, it can make others’ jobs harder.

“For the average business, it’s probably something of a pain — kind of like being stuck in traffic,” Daltry says. “For a few businesses, it’s pretty darned hard and a lot of them fail because they haven’t kept up with it. Others,” he adds, “go to politics in order to prevent from being covered by it.”

For those who gripe, Cantrell has this: “The first thing I tell everybody is that regulation didn’t get there without a cause.” In his 28 years in the business, he says, “there has never been a regulation that I’ve seen promulgated by either the agency or the legislature that did not come out of some abuse taking place by the private sector.”

Businesses should be aware of the regulations that affect them, he points out. “If you’re in an industry, you should try to keep abreast. Laws are not passed in secret.” Still, the department’s primary focus is to help businesses comply. “Enforcement is necessary at times, but the goal is not to do enforcement. It’s sort of like medicine — the goal is to prevent people from getting sick to start with,” he says. “The agency’s goal is to keep the environment clean. Every chance we get to make the regulations more user-friendly, ... we’re going to do it.”