Opinion: Act on Lullwater Lake Cleanup

January 14, 2025

by Rex Lee Reid

A few years ago, Senator Jay Trumbull successfully secured funding for the cleanup of Lullwater Lake and its connecting ponds, in part because the lake is no longer brackish. Sadly, a hurricane struck, and those funds were redirected to disaster relief.

This year, thanks to the great work of Senator Trumbull, he managed to restore that funding in the 2024 budget. However, the governor has decided to put an end to pork-barrel spending for special interests.

Now, before you call for me to be tarred and feathered, I am not saying that the cleanup of Lullwater Lake meets the definition of pork.

What I am saying is that I agree with the governor that our legislature should not be a place where individual House representatives and senators trade favors for their districts at the expense of taxpayers. To prove this point, the governor’s line-item veto letter in this case is thirty-nine pages long.

Kudos to the governor for working to prevent Florida from becoming a mini-Washington, D.C., a place that has burdened our nation with $34 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities well exceeding $100 trillion.

So, what should we do, and what message is the governor trying to send?

The message I hear is: If you want local control, then here you go. Personally, I fully support the governor—as long as we actually have local control.

Luckily, in this case, we do. The solution lies in none other than the Tourist Development Tax statute, Section 125.0104, for those following along at home:

5. To finance beach park facilities, or beach, channel, estuary, or lagoon improvement, maintenance, renourishment, restoration, and erosion control, including construction of beach groins and shoreline protection, enhancement, cleanup, or restoration of inland lakes and rivers to which there is public access, as these uses relate to the physical preservation of the beach, shoreline, channel, estuary, lagoon, or inland lake or river.

This statute gives the Tourist Development Council (TDC) the authority to clean up Lullwater Lake. Given that two PCB (Panama City Beach) council members sit on the TDC board, this should be a no-brainer.

The TDC has recently received a massive windfall, thanks to the federal government covering most, if not all, of the cost of beach restoration in Mexico Beach. Lullwater Lake is a critical part of the city’s flood control plan, being one of the two outlets to the Gulf in the Pier Park area.

Additionally, they should consider restoring the lake as closely as possible to its brackish state. This would prevent it from being overrun by lily pads in the future.

One potential solution could involve running a pipe, similar to the one Gulf World uses to connect to the Gulf, with a pump that activates as the tide rises and falls—problem solved.

www.RexLeeReid.com

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