Florida Wants to Further Destroy Manatees: HB 999 will Allow the Rich to Get Richer and Kill Manatees

 If in or know anyone in Florida, let them know about HB 999.  Read more below and visit this link for more info: http://gawker.com/manatees-are-dying-off-and-florida-is-determined-to-sp-489114098?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

“On the last day of its annual session, the state Legislature is expected to pass HB 999, a bill that would bar local and county governments from setting their own standards for water quality and wetlands construction—assuming those standards are higher than the state's relatively lax requirements, that is.

The proposed law would also severely limit "testing, sampling, collection, or analysis" of state waters. And it would make about two dozen existing regional water districts "exempt from further wetlands or water quality regulations." One of its key sponsors, Rep. Jimmy Patronis, is the state chairman for the conservative, pro-business American Legislative Exchange Council, and his family owns a swath of Northwest Florida that it pimps out for water-bottling and clear-cutting.

The bill could obliterate the already-threatened Florida manatee, which subsists on quickly disappearing river grasses. In fact, 582 of the burly mammals have died so far in 2013—as much as 19 percent of the entire adult population—thanks to a shrinking supply of food and the proliferation of deadly algae blooms like red tide in state waters.”