“You are doing OK, but if you want to do better, you have to shake up the status quo,” said Tom Murphy, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute, former Pennsylvania state legislator, and mayor of Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2005.

Murphy’s lunchtime address at FSU’s Turnbull Conference Center capped the morning forum on a regional approach to infrastructure development, sponsored by the Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County, Urban Land Institute North Florida and Our Region Tomorrow.

Cities have a particular challenge because in major metro areas, empty-nesters and Generation Y adults overwhelmingly want to live in urban areas. If Tallahassee is going to compete in a different world with a new economy, it will be driven by local universities, the advent of new technology and formation of businesses that recruit the area’s talent, he said.

“You have the raw materials here,” Murphy told the gathering. “I think you have got to think about how they get connected.”

While in office, Murphy used public-private partnerships to leverage more than $4.5 billion in economic development in Pittsburgh, including sports stadiums and a convention center. The effort also transformed blighted, abandoned industrial properties into new commercial, residential and public sites.

The Big Bend is projected to have 75,000 more households over the next 20 years, so critical decisions are being made now on how to address that growth, especially the infrastructure needed. Forum sessions covered transportation, energy, broadband communications, and the region’s green infrastructure and water resources.

A critical element will be the area’s ability to handle mobility needs. Harry Reed, executive director of the Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency, said the region is facing a projected 78-percent increase in freight movement through 2025.

“We have to think of how we will move freight efficiently, not just people,” he added.

The program Vrooman has championed, Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), enables property owners to borrow money to buy solar panels, wind generators, insulation or shutters for their homes with little upfront expense.

The program would establish a municipal “green corridor,” consisting of Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest, South Miami and Coral Gables. The five cities would lend money for a homeowner to install a proven energy-saving device — say, $30,000 in solar panels or $3,000 for solar plumbing.

In return, the cities would place a lien on the home until the loan was paid off by the homeowner, who would be assessed a monthly fee for the loan’s duration.

“It’s a fee that is not based on the property value but based on a set amount of what it cost to do the installation,” Vrooman said.

The investment could be recouped by lower electrical bills. Each home would undergo an energy audit and cost-benefit analysis before opting into the voluntary program.

Last month, the House and Senate passed Senate bill HB 7179, designed to help communities band together to assist residents in joining PACE.

On Monday, Gov. Charlie Crist received the bill and is reviewing it. He has until June 1 to take action on it, said his spokesman Sterling Ivey.

Sponsors anticipate its passage, especially in the wake of Crist’s call last week to convene a special legislative session later this month. At the session, legislators will consider oil drilling bans and renewable energy legislation.

“If it’s dealing with solar panels and opportunities for businesses and Floridians to move in that direction, he has been supportive of solar energy and rebates in the past,” Ivey said.

“It’s a no-mandate, no taxpayer subsidy that allows people to finance energy efficiency and other clean technologies, like solar, and save energy costs,” said Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, the House majority leader who cosponsored the bill with Sen. Michael Bennett, R-Bradenton.

“This is one of the most innovative public policy initiatives we’ve addressed in Florida for years for renewable energy. Local governments see this as a way for them to help residents and create jobs.”

The impetus began last year after Vrooman researched the PACE program in Berkeley, Calif. To date, 16 states operate PACE.

Vrooman lobbied Tallahassee and Cutler Bay’s sister cities. Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, Coral Gables and South Miami all passed resolutions earlier this year to lend support for Vrooman’s initiative, as did Cutler Bay.

In the PACE program, the city would pay for the installation of the energy-saving measure. Homeowners also could apply for federal incentives to knock the costs down.

The benefit would stay with the house should an owner decide to sell sooner.

If the bill becomes law, a homeowner seeking to enroll in PACE would agree to a cost-benefit analysis of his or her home, taking into account kilowatt usage, house design, location, trees and other factors.

Such factors would play into the cost-benefit and the payback. Solar panels, for example, can cost about $35,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bath house, Vrooman said.

A 2009 Council on Environmental Quality report stated that the 130 million homes in the United States generate more than 20 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. Energy efficiency retrofitting can reduce energy use by up to 40 percent per home, and cut home energy bills by $21 billion annually, according to the report.

Some homes may not need the pricey panels, but can qualify through other measures, such as insulation, shutters, energy-efficient windows or solar plumbing.

The payback rate for a $3,000 solar plumbing unit could be three to five years, with savings of about $40 per month for a four-person household, said Alan Towsley, owner of Sunworks in Miami, a solar energy installation firm.

“It really is such an individualized project. The system size and cost is tailored to the specific homeowner and consumption and can vary dramatically,” said Tom Staples, president of Cooler Planet, a Washington-based firm that consults homes and businesses in connecting to solar power.

One local example lends support to the plan.

Dr. Oscar Hevia, a Dadeland-area dermatologist, turned his one-story, three-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot Coral Gables house into the first solar-powered home in the city last summer. A series of 20 photovoltaic cells on his rooftop convert sunlight into electric energy.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Hevia said. “The real charm, the part I like about it so much, is that every month it’s the gift that keeps giving.”

Hevia declined to say how much he spent and says he is awaiting federal rebates to help offset his out-of-pocket cost. He says he has cut his electric bill from $500 to $250 in the peak summer months and to about $90 in the winter.

Vrooman says it could take until the end of the year for the program to be implemented if Crist signs the bill.

“We’re going into new territory in the state of Florida.”

The Riley House Museum of black history will host 30 museum directors, travel writers and tourism specialists from around the nation in a three-day conference this week. The conference is designed to showcase Tallahassee’s heritage tourism attractions and promote discussions about collaborative efforts.

The conference serves as a warm-up for August 2011, when the Riley House will host the national Association of African American Museums, which is expected to draw 300 to 400 people.

“I’m hoping (this week’s conference) will have a residual effect and people will be so excited by what they see, they’ll go back to their locations and do a better job of preserving their history,” said Althemese Barnes, director of the Riley House. “I hope it also invites them back (to Tallahassee) for future travel, meetings and conferences.”

The museum, the former home of black educator John G. Riley, was created in 1995. Under Barnes, it became the founding force behind the Florida African-American Historic Preservation Network of 19 museums.

This week’s conference, from Tuesday through Thursday, will include seminars on heritage tourism, which is tourism focused on an area’s cultural history. Visitors will tour an array of local sites, such as Mission San Luis, Goodwood Mansion and Gardens and Tall Timbers Research Station. On Thursday, they will attend the annual Emancipation Day celebration at the Knott House, which commemorates May 20, 1865, when Florida slaves were officially told they had been freed.

Among those attending the conference will John Franklin, deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., in 2015.

“(The national museum) sees what we’re doing as a model,” Barnes said of the Florida network of black history museums.

This week’s conference is funded by a grant the Riley House won last year from Tallahassee-Leon County Council on Culture and Arts.

“(Barnes) has been working on this quite some time, and it’s a big achievement,” said COCA Director Peggy Brady. “I think it will introduce some people to what they didn’t know was significant history.”

Crist asked BP to fork over $34.75 million – $10 million more than BP pledged to the state to offset initial clean-up and preparation costs – for a “marketing campaign to counter the negative, widespread and false information potential visitors to Florida are receiving about the oil spill’s impact on Florida’s beaches and waters,” the governor’s office said in a press release.

This morning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incorrectly reported that tar balls had washed up on the beach in Destin. Not true, local officials said.

As Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s campaign staff pointed out, Sink (the Democratic candidate for governor) beat Crist to the punch this weekend by formally asking BP to pay for the ads. Sink also asked Crist earlier this week to get the federal SBA disaster loans to help out small businesses.

It’s been an oily week for the newly-independent governor and U.S. Senate so far, and it’s only Wednesday.

Crist, who is shortly going to officially abandon the Republican party by changing his voter registration, visited the Panhandle this weekend and took a leisurely ride with reporters on a charter fishing boat to spread the word to visitors that Florida’s beaches are beautiful, fish are biting and the water’s clean.

Also today, Crist asked federal officials for an economic injury disaster declaration for the 19 counties abutting the Gulf Coast from the Panhandle south to Sarasota so local businesses can get emergency loans to tide them over until BP fills their damage claims.

Yesterday, Crist created the “Gulf Oil Spill Economic Recovery Task Force” to keep track of the economic impact of the disaster, something state and local officials have not yet estimated.

Crist also said yesterday he plans to call lawmakers back to Tallahassee for a special session to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot asking voters if they want a moratorium on offshore drilling in Florida. GOP legislative leaders, including House Speaker Larry Cretul and Speaker-to-be Dean Cannon gave a less-than-tepid response to the suggestion, both saying it’s unnecessary and a waste of money.

And on Monday, Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum, a leading GOP candidate to take Crist’s place, tapped former attorneys general Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, and Jim Smith, a Republican, to head a legal team in charge of possible and current lawsuits against BP and other companies associated with the April 20 Deepwater Horizon blast.

“It’s very scary,” said John Williams, executive director of the Tarpon Springs-based Southern Shrimper Alliance, which has written to federal officials to challenge the use of chemical dispersants on the oil. “They say it’s the lesser of two evils, but how do we know it’s the lesser evil?”

Fishermen say they are afraid the dispersants could create a series of widespread dead zones in the gulf, contaminating or killing marine life.

“Our entire seafood industry in the gulf is at risk here,” said Williams, whose group represents shrimpers from North Carolina to Texas.

No one but the Texas-based manufacturer, Nalco Energy Services, knows exactly what’s in Corexit 9500, the dispersant BP has been spraying on the slick. The company says it may pose a risk for eye and skin irritations and can cause respiratory problems, but “no toxicity studies have been conducted on this product.”

So far, airplanes have sprayed 315,000 gallons across the gulf’s surface to control the spill.

On Monday, three Louisiana officials wrote to Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, expressing “serious concerns about the lack of information related to the use of dispersants.” They said they wanted “a BP commitment that the dispersants being used to fight the oil spill will not cause irreparable short term or long term harm to our wetlands, coast, environment, marine life, wildlife or people.”

Corexit 9500 has been approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, although tests indicate it can be stored in the tissue of organisms. More than half of the agent in tests wound up storing in sediment, with less absorbing into the water.

Every time EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has met with fishing groups about the spill, she has faced questions about what effect the chemicals in the dispersants might have on seafood, agency spokeswoman Andora Andy said. For now, she said, the agency is awaiting test results.

“A dispersant doesn’t get rid of oil,” said George Henderson, a senior scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg who is the state’s top science adviser on the oil spill. “It just transforms its movement.”

As the name implies, the chemicals break up the slick “into very finely dispersed oil droplets,” according to a statement on BP’s website. At that point, the oil could evaporate or be consumed by oil-eating bacteria.

It could also be eaten by fish, poisoning them. Or it could wind up coating their scales, harming their ability to swim.

Five years ago, a 400-page National Academy of Sciences study concluded that the decision to use a dispersant requires making a choice: saving the beach at the expense of the ocean.

“It’s all about trade-offs,” said Beth McGee, senior water quality scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and one of the authors of the 2005 study. “You look at the resources at risk and you make a choice.” While there may be some sickness and fatalities among the fish population, she said, “you hope you’re saving some beaches or marshes.”

However, she added, anywhere the oil ends up, “it’s going to take a while for the system to recover.”

“You’re making a decision to save your birds at the expense of your larval fish and shellfish population,” agreed Henderson. But marine life should be able to bounce back more rapidly, he said.

That’s when the dispersants are sprayed on the surface, as their manufacturer recommends. Over the past week, BP has been testing a radical approach, shooting the dispersants at the source of the leaks a mile beneath the surface, even though EPA officials say the effects of underwater use “are still widely unknown.”

The most recent subsea test occurred Monday, according to BP’s Bryan Ferguson, and it was “viewed as very satisfactory with regard to the results.” However, Ferguson could not say how many gallons of dispersant BP has sprayed underwater.

One 2006 study found that oil droplets treated with a chemical dispersant didn’t degrade nearly as fast when they were in very cold water — and the water a mile deep is just above freezing.

The shrimpers are worried that using dispersants at such a depth would guarantee that it would spread the oil droplets and dispersant on the sea floor, where shrimp larvae and other organisms could be affected.

There are no federal standards for how much dispersant could be present in seafood consumed by humans, said Nancy Thompson, director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Thompson has been dispatched to Mississippi to lead a NOAA team testing the effects of the spill and cleanup activities on fish.

“It’s kind of disturbing,” said Robert McKee, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who’s part of a consortium of attorneys representing the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. “There’s no way of knowing how many generations of sea life and how many generations of human life are going to be affected.”

“I am not an expert on oil. I’m becoming an expert on oil,” Greene said. But he told the shareholders that if the oil reaches St. Joe’s property, the damage will not be as bad as the potential damage to property closer to the damaged oil rig that has caused the spill.

“It is not Exxon Valdez. It is not what you see in the Louisiana marshes,” Greene said.

St. Joe owns more than 500,000 acres of land in the Panhandle, including 5.7 miles of “sandy beaches,” he said. As of 8 a.m. today, the surface sheen was 130 miles Southwest of St. Joe’s WaterColor resort community in Walton County.

“It is not there yet. At best it’s a week away,” Greene said.

But if the surface sheen reaches St. Joe’s beaches, it would likely cause little damage to the sand, he said. Of more concern is thicker oil sludge that is moving underwater. Greene is hopeful that the sludge will be broken up enough and dispersed in the water before it reaches land, causing minimal damage. But if it does reach the beach, the company can remove 6 to 8 inches of sand and renourish it.

And as St. Joe officials told analysts last week, the company will file claims with BP PLC to recover its costs from dealing with the oil spill.

“They [BP] have been open about it. They have been receptive,” Greene said.

Meanwhile, St. Joe is anxiously awaiting the opening of the new airport in Panama City on May 23. St. Joe owns 71,000 acres immediately surrounding it and 300,000 acres within 40 miles of the airport, and the company expects to capitalize on economic development opportunities from that land after the airport opens. St. Joe donated 4,000 acres of land to build the airport after the Airport Authority first approached the company in 1998.

“It’s hard to believe after 12 years, we’re only 12 days away,” Greene said at Tuesday’s meeting.

With its fortunes so closely tied to the airport, St. Joe in March announced that it will relocate its corporate headquarters next year from Jacksonville to a new office building adjacent to the airport site.

“We live and we work in Northwest Florida. That’s where our future is,” Greene said.

Attorney General Bill McCollum and Gov. Charlie Crist — the current and immediate-past attorney general — said the former elected officials would be working for free.

The four attorneys all said the aim is to avoid litigation but to be prepared if it’s necessary.

“This is going to be a long process. We’re in uncharted waters,” said Smith, attorney general from 1979-87. “Bob and I are going to start getting to work this afternoon.”

In the Gulf, BP and federal responders kept up efforts to contain the spill and stop the flow of more than 200,000 gallons a day that’s still pouring from the blown well unabated. Forecasters continued to say the oil would not reach Florida’s shores for at least three days, the limit of their projections.

Crist said he spoke to BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles earlier on Monday and was assured the London-based oil giant would provide the resources to address the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has sent $25 million to Florida. State planners last week estimated they’d spent more than $3 million in response to the spill.

“If we can let people know what they need to do in order to get compensated, we would hope at the end of the day that there would be no litigation,” said Butterworth, attorney general from 1987-2002.

McCollum said BP is saying the right things now, but proper preparation is prudent.

“With the Exxon Valdez case, I’m told . . . there was a period of great cooperation with Exxon and then at some point it broke down,” McCollum said. “I’m hopeful this won’t. . . . We have a lot of losses potentially over an extended period of time, both to the state and to individuals and to local government.”

Suttles said at an afternoon briefing in Louisiana that the company has eight claims offices open, with seven more expected by Saturday. He said the average payment made to those making claims of financial damage is nearly $5,000.

“When people show up, they can walk out with a check in hand,” Suttles said.

McCollum said last week that BP officials assured him claimants would not have to waive future claims to get a payment. McCollum said last week BP officials said they’d put their promises in writing. On Monday, McCollum said they’d yet to do so.

While more pollution made its way ashore in Louisiana and more than 200,000 gallons of oil is released daily, federal officials and BP said they’re continuing to work to stop the gushing oil and contain the spill from the Deepwater Horizon site.

“We’re aggressively attacking the spill on the surface,” said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry, federal on-scene coordinator for the response.

She said controlled burns of surface oil would resume in the next few days, weather allowing.

Suttles said 120 flights have spread dispersant on the surface, and 13 burns have consumed 13,000 barrels of oil. He said nearly a million feet of boom has been put in place, and 2.4 million feet is on order. A third test is set for underwater dispersant injection at the site nearly a mile below the surface where the oil is emerging from pipes leading away from the wellhead.

BP’s 40-foot, 120-ton containment box didn’t work over the weekend when slushy frozen hydrates clogged the mechanism. Suttles said BP is readying a smaller alternative, called the top hat. At the same time, relief-well drilling continues, and further efforts are still under way to trigger shut-down mechanisms at the wellhead, Suttles said.

“I think it’s important we go ahead and have a special session,” Crist said before Tuesday morning’s Cabinet meeting. “I think the Legislature is of a mind to do so as well.”

Crist said he spoke on Monday to Senate President Jeff Atwater. The governor can call a special session. So can both presiding officers of the House and Senate, acting together. Crist didn’t say how the details would end up. He said the session would be “in a couple weeks.”

The session, Cris[sic] said, would also address alternative energy standards for the state, legislation Crist has sought unsuccessfully for four years. “I want to talk about wind, nuclear, solar, gas — natural gas, other alternative means to provide energy to our people in the wake of what’s happened in the Gulf,” Crist said.

Morning update
TURKEY POINT — As a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico lingers off Florida, local officials are bristling at a top-down, “unified command” that has the U.S. Coast Guard, two state agencies and British Petroleum signing off on their spill response plans.

Officials from a handful of mostly rural coastal counties vented their frustration Monday at a meeting sponsored by Our Region Tomorrow, a collaboration of eight counties in North Florida and two from southern Georgia.

“We have a lot of unknowns that continue to haunt us,” said Scott Nelson, Wakulla County’s director of emergency management. “This event leaves us with no local expertise.”

The standing-room-only crowd included state Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, who is running for Congress; Tallahassee Mayor John Marks; and top aides to Attorney General Bill McCollum, the Republican frontrunner in the race for governor; and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, his Democratic rival.

Also packing the tiny conference room at Florida State University’s Coastal & Marine Laboratory were environmentalists, small-business owners and waterfront-property owners.
Franklin County Commissioner Pinki Jackel said her board reviewed a unified-command response plan for her county, found it lacking and formed a contingency action committee that identified more fragile areas that need protection with booms.

The county submitted its plan last week to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection but has yet to hear back.

“As locals, we’re not going to take a back seat,” Jackel said. “We know best how to take care of Franklin County.”

DEP director of legislative affairs Cameron Cooper said Secretary Mike Sole has given everyone marching orders to respond to requests within 24 hours.

“You said 24 hours, in front of all of these witnesses in this room,” she said. “We’re going to hold you to it.”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

Gov. Charlie Crist, asked at the Capitol about local officials’ frustrations, said he was cutting out the bureaucracy himself.

“I think you do what we did this weekend and just go meet them directly. There was no bureaucracy between us. It was direct. That will only continue,” Crist said.

Taylor County administrator Jack Brown wondered who will be giving the orders if the spill hits his county. Taylor is in two U.S. Coast Guard districts. A BP response coordinator is being assigned to most affected counties, but Brown said he just learned that he will have to share his with another county.

“We’re concerned,” he said. “We’re split between the Mobile command and the St. Petersburg command.”

Caskey said the response plans will fall in place as the unified command creates more staging areas.

“Right now, you guys are five days behind Escambia. When we hit the ground with a staged area, it’s a massive effort. You’re going to see boots on the ground,” Caskey said. “This is going to be an all-hands-on-deck evolution.”

Jack Rudloe, founder of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, warned that the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil could disrupt the food chain.

“I have a request on the dispersants: Don’t use them here,” he said. “We need to think small. We need to think in terms of plankton and microbial organisms.”
Meeting organizers stressed the need for local cooperation, but some local emergency management directors are worried that they are competing with their colleagues and other states.

There aren’t enough booms to go around, and locals aren’t sure how the $25 million that BP gave Florida last week for response preparations will be divvied up.

Pam Brownell, Franklin County emergency management director, said small counties aren’t just angry about giving up control. Her three-person team had to work out a deal with a consulting firm, Calvin, Giordano & Associates, to draw up a response plan because she didn’t have experts.

The firm estimated that for consulting work, mostly mapping to determine where to put the oil capturing booms, will cost $250,000 for the first 30 days. The county doesn’t have the money, Brownell said, so the firm agreed to begin doing the work on a contingency basis.
Related

“I graduated the emergency management academy, and that’s mostly about hurricanes,” she said. “I call this the black storm.”

About a hundred leaders from Franklin, Wakulla, Leon, Taylor and Gulf counties came together to give and get suggestions about how to protect their coastal communities.

Franklin County Commissioners encouraged other counties to the east to prepare and come together even though state agencies and B-P are calling the shots.

D-E-P encouraged this saying it needs the local input to know what the most vulnerable parts of the coastline are. Folks from Tallahassee also came because they say even if you don’t live along the coast these are your beaches, too.

There are so many unknowns still, but as of this morning some oil has actually moved away from Florida. And that’s good news.

After an intense, two-hour meeting attended by a handful of officials from mostly rural Panhandle counties, it was clear they’re going to need it.

“We have a lot of unknowns that continue to haunt us,” said Scott Nelson, Wakulla County’s director of emergency management. “This event leaves us with no local expertise.”

Sponsored by Our Region Tomorrow, a group that includes eight North Florida and two South Georgia counties, the meeting drew anxious officials to a standing room only conference center at Florida State University’s Coastal & Marine Laboratory.

County emergency management directors, used to calling the shots in local disasters, are bristling at a unified command structure that has the U.S. Coast Guard, the Division of Emergency Management and BP, the company responsible for the April 20 spill, signing off on local response plans.

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Steve Caskey and a top DEP administrator listened patiently while the locals vented their frustration.

Franklin County Commissioner Pinki Jackel said her board reviewed a unified command response plan for her county, found it lacking, and formed a contingency action committee that identified more fragile areas that need protection with booms.

The county submitted its plan last week to the DEP but has yet to hear back.

“As locals, we’re not going to take a back seat,” Jackel said. “We know best how to take care of Franklin County.”

DEP director of legislative affairs Cameron Cooper said that Secretary Mike Sole has given everyone marching orders to respond to requests within 24 hours.

“You said 24 hours, in front of all of these witnesses in this room,” she said. “We’re going to hold you to it.”

Former Tallahassee mayor Scott Maddox, who is running for agriculture commissioner on an anti-drilling platform, questioned BP’s role in the response.

“I think it’s unprecedented that at a time of a national disaster, a private company is making the decisions,” Maddox said. “We don’t do that with hurricanes.”