Will new year bring new environmental protection?

It's a new year. We will have a new Florida governor, a new Florida Cabinet, a new Florida Supreme Court and mostly the same Florida Legislature.

The still unanswered question is whether we'll see a new approach to environmental protection.

At the top of the list is the long-delayed implementation of a 2014 constitutional amendment that was supposed to provide a big cash infusion in the state's Florida Forever conservation land-buying program.

The issue is now in court. A circuit judge ruled in favor of environmental groups that filed suit in 2016 to force the Florida Legislature to fund the program in the way amendment supporters envisioned. Legislators, predictably, appealed.

It will likely end up before the Florida Supreme Court, where three new justices will be seated this year to replace three justices who were forced to retire under state law.

The case will certainly test the proposition that Ron DeSantis will appoint justices who respect the constitution.

As a circuit judge recently wrote in another legal dispute involving legislative obstructionism in implementing another constitutional amendment, the constitution shouldn't be treated as a mere recommendation, but as the law of the land.

Another major environmental issue will involve whether the incoming leaders in Tallahassee deal with the Everglades issues in any significantly different way. Will they clean house at the South Florida Water Management District? Will they push harder to move more water southward to help Everglades National Park? Will they do more to deal with the myriad pollution discharges in Lake Okeechobee and its tributaries?

The list goes on.

Meanwhile, we have some issues facing us here in Polk County.

Let's start with curbside recycling.

Somehow the public has not grasped some basic facts.

One is that fewer items are supposed to go into recycling carts than went into the recycling bins that preceded them.

The other is that recycling carts are not just extra garbage carts.

The result is about a third of the materials that are brought to the recycling processing center Polk uses is not recyclable. The contamination last month resulted in a renegotiation of the county recycling contract in which the amount Polk pays for processing nearly doubled from $50 a ton to $90 a ton.

This problem is not unique to unincorporated Polk County. Cities and counties all over the country report similar problems.

The public confusion is exacerbated by the fact that there is no consistency about what curbside recycling programs will accept locally. Every city seems to have its unique list of what it will and will not accept.

Polk County has hired a consultant to come up with a better way to get the word out than simply putting pictograms on the cart lids and hoping everyone figured it out. At least one local city, Lakeland, has done the same thing.

There's still no word on what specifically these efforts will produce.

Remain alert for the new campaign and share the information with your neighbors.

The other challenge if local officials can get the contamination issue under control is to figure out how to persuade residents to recycle more often.

There's still too much high-value recyclables going to the landfill.

Another issue is impact fees.

Impact fees are assessments imposed on new development to cover the increased demands new residential and commercial projects place on roads, schools, public safety, parks, libraries and utilities.

Without impact fees, the entire cost of improving roads, building new schools and making other capital improvements in response to new growth would be borne by Polk's taxpayers.

In the past the County Commission has imposed impact fees at levels far below what experts concluded were justified as a result of periodic studies intended to keep the estimates as current as possible.

The County Commission recently hired a consultant to conduct a comprehensive updated review of impact fees.

This is an issue worth monitoring to see how the proposed fees are structured and whose interests — the taxpayers or the developers — dominate the decision-making.

Circle B talk

Jeff Spence, retired director of Polk County Parks and Natural Resources, will discuss the history and environmental restoration of the Circle B Bar Reserve at the next meeting of Ancient Islands Sierra at 7 p.m. Thursday at Circle B.

The meeting is open to the public.

The 1,267-acre site was purchased jointly by Polk County and the Southwest Florida Water Management District for $7.4 million in 2000. It had been a cattle ranch and the extensive marshes that are now a popular spot for nature enthusiasts had been drained to provide pastureland for the cattle operation. Spence will discuss the environmental restoration that has occurred over the past two decades and the site's growing value as a center for environmental education and ecotourism.

Check out Tom Palmer's blog at http://www.ancientislands.org/conservation/