Floridians don’t want the DEP to pave paradise and put up a parking lot
Wind-sculpted trees crouch atop a dune at Grayton Beach State Park. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” – Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, according to its mission statement, “protects, conserves and manages the state’s natural resources and enforces its environmental laws.”
Why then is the DEP, the sole governmental entity charged with “protecting” and “conserving” Florida’s unique and endangered natural resources, advancing a proposal that would threaten the very resources it is charged with protecting?
Cynically titled the “Great Outdoors Initiative,” the DEP proposal, according to a report by Brandon Girod of the Pensacola News Journal, would bring a mix of golf courses, hotels, pickleball courts and disc golf courses to nine of Florida’s state parks, including Topsail Hill Preserve and Grayton Beach State Park.
In the Panhandle, Topsail Hill would suffer the worst, receiving a 350-room resort, pickleball courts and a disc golf course. Pickleball and disc golf would also come to Grayton Beach State Park.
Never mind that this proposal, on its face, seems to contradict the point of even having a park; never mind that further development pressure would endanger the unique and irreplaceable ecosystems contained within those parks; and never mind that a growing number of Floridians and elected officials are saying they don’t want these parks developed; why would the state try to compete with the private sector in matters of resorts and golf courses when it has no aptitude for managing either, and with regard to golf courses, would be investing taxpayer dollars in a failing venture?
Golf is a failing venture. It has been declining in the United States for years, and continues to lose popularity as younger, less affluent generations look for other ways to entertain themselves.
In a Jan. 13, 2023 report, Amelia Josephson, writing for SmartAsset, noted, “Golf has had fewer and fewer players over the past decade. According to Pellucid, the number of U.S. golfers is down 24% in 2016 from its 2002 peak. The Pellucid report found that in 2013 alone, golf lost 1.1 million players. This number has continued to decline today.” Additionally, the number of golf courses in the United States has fallen 13 percent from 2006 to 2022, according to the National Golf Foundation.
As for hotel rooms and resorts, Florida is awash in both. Two of the top 10 hotel room cities in the United States are in Florida, according to a 2016 Statista report. They are Orlando and Miami. Orlando trails only Las Vegas in its number of available hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Florida’s revenue derived from hotel occupancy is second only to California’s and the gap is closing, according to a July 22, 2022 analysis by Oxford Economics.
Obviously the state needs another golf course like the proverbial hole in the head, and its hotel industry is doing just fine, thank you very much. What’s infuriating is that while the DeSantis regime fritters away its efforts on pointless and cruel political stunts like the drag queen dust-up, book bans, and now this absurd proposal to develop Florida’s state parks, it ignores the real problems facing Floridians such as climate change, the housing crisis and the spiraling insurance crisis.
Florida is home to plants and animals not found anywhere else in the world. Their existence plays roles in our lives not fully defined by science. More than that, we, as moral beings, have an ethical obligation to preserve life, not just for own aesthetic but for the rights of those other living things.
If there’s a market for more hotel rooms, golf courses and other amenities, the private sector will provide those things, on land more suited for those uses.
Florida’s uniquely beautiful and irreplaceably state parks must be preserved in their natural state for us and future generations to enjoy, and for the creatures with whom we share this earth.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Flickr user Gage Skidmore by way of a Creative Commons search. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/
Apparently Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance believes “people” should remain in abusive relationships for the sake of their children.
He said this in a speech to a Christian school in 2021.
When Vance uses the word “people” I assume he means “women,” and I don’t want any MAGAts telling me otherwise. Women constitute 70 percent of domestic violence victims, and women file for divorce in almost 70 percent of the cases. Don’t tell me he’s not talking about women. That’s precisely who he’s talking about. “Women,” not “people.”
Too many Republicans are gay and oppose gay rights.
I have a couple of questions about this.
To begin with, what does the issue of women remaining in abusive relationships have to do with running the government? I’m asking this as a rhetorical question because I already know the answer, and that answer is: nothing.
Vance seems to believe that he, by virtue of his position as an elected official, is responsible for maintaining the moral center of our society, which is ironic when you consider Republicans are often the ones calling for limited government intrusiveness into our personal lives. I guess that rule doesn’t apply when you belong to the self-annointed “moral majority.”
Second, why isn’t anyone arguing this issue from the flip side of the coin, the male abuser? Why does he get a pass?
Again, I’m asking this as a rhetorical question because I already know the answer, and that answer is: Vance, and the object of his fawning adoration, Donald Trump, and many of the MAGAts themselves, are what women of the ’60s and ’70s referred to as “male chauvinist pigs.”
It’s true. They’re male chauvinist pigs – white men who will tell you up front that everybody is equal, then whisper behind your back that they are more equal than others.
As such they adhere to a predictably restrictive body of beliefs, among them that women should know their place in society; that people of color should settle for low-paying, low-profile and low-prestige societal jobs and status; and that members of the LGBTQ community should simply go back to the closet before they make anyone else uncomfortable.
They’ll do or say anything to maintain their white male hegemony over the rest of us.
If I were a woman, a person of color or a member of the LGBTQ community, I wouldn’t vote for the Trump-Vance ticket. You couldn’t pay me enough money to vote for the Trump-Vance ticket.
The fact that so many will scares me. Because it reminds me that too many people in this country are either poorly informed, don’t want to be informed, or they lack the ability to separate fact from faith. They’d rather entrust their future to a body of preconceived beliefs that have been rendered null and void by the ever-changing reality that the rest of us must deal with on a daily basis.
The past is gone. Time to move into the future.
And by the way, I’m a member of a family where the parents remained together “for the sake of the children.”
It was a living hell.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .