MIAMI — One of the strangest political conversions in modern times may well be that of former Sen. Bob Smith, a New England arch-conservative turned South Florida environmentalist.
The New Hampshire Republican, who as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2000 marshalled a GOP-led Senate to pass the risky and expensive Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), is spending his retirement seeing the plan through.
“We passed the legislation, but we haven’t saved the Everglades, not by a long shot,” said Smith, who turned 65 in March. “Whatever it takes to get that water moving again, that’s my priority.”
The vehicle for Smith’s passion is the Everglades Foundation, a young but influential nonprofit whose offices here command sweeping views of Biscayne Bay. Smith, who when not immersed in Everglades issues sells real estate in his adopted home of Sarasota, has been president of the group since 2003. On his watch, the foundation has grown from a small collective of like-minded philanthropists into an emerging scientific and policy powerhouse.
Among the foundation’s recent hires are two top Everglades scientists — Tom Van Lent, formerly of the National Park Service, and Betty Grizzle of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Together, they are revisiting some of the fundamental questions about Everglades restoration, including where and how water should flow to achieve maximum benefit for the natural system, including Everglades National Park.
“My hope is to take the knowledge I’ve gained as a politician and policymaker and the knowledge they have as scientists to build this into a highly effective organization,” Smith said. “I tell them, ‘Give me the science.’ If I’m wrong on the policy, tell me so we can fix the things that aren’t working.'”
Nathaniel Reed, an Everglades Foundation board member, former assistant Interior secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and arguably Florida’s most respected living environmentalist, praised Smith’s success at converting the once staid organization into a hub for science and policy discussion.
“He has a wonderful value here because he is recognized as the man who pulled CERP off,” Reed said in a recent interview.
Smith’s vow
While the Everglades bill glided through the Senate in the autumn of 2000 with just one vote cast against it, the legislation was far from a sure thing when it began making the rounds on Capitol Hill early that year. Lawmakers questioned the plan’s whopping $7.8 billion price tag (it has since escalated to $12 billion) and the feasibility of completing 68 restoration projects over nearly four decades.
Influential Republicans like Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.) described the project as a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and Sen. John Warner of Virginia worried openly that the Everglades bill could create financial drain on other important restoration projects, such as the Chesapeake Bay effort. Even the top Democrat on the environment committee, Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus, described the proposal as a massive, potentially treacherous money pit on a par with the Vietnam war.
“I have this funny feeling I am going to leave to my successors here a huge, huge problem,” Baucus said at the first Washington hearing on the project. “And the problem is, my gosh, we have spent all this money on the Everglades. And, my gosh, it is not working like it was supposed to work. We’ve just got to keep on pouring more money in it, because we have gone this far.”
Smith, too, was viewed with suspicion by project supporters. He narrowly won the chairmanship of the environment panel in 1999 after the sudden death of Sen. John Chaffee, a moderate Rhode Island Republican and stolid backer of Everglades restoration. Smith’s reputation then was that of staunch anti-environmentalist. At the time he took the panel’s gavel, Smith had voted just 13 percent of the time with environmentalists, according to the League of Conservation Voters.
Worse still, Smith was on shaky ground with his own party’s leadership. He had broken ranks with the Republicans to launch a brief and ill-fated run for the presidency as an independent. In bolting the GOP, Smith excoriated his colleagues for brokering too many deals with Democrats and not holding firm on the socially conservative platform on which many of them had ridden into office.
Nonetheless, Smith made the most of his opportunity as EPW Committee chairman. In January 2000, Smith accepted an invitation from Sen. Bob Graham (D) and Rep. Connie Mack (R) to visit South Florida and address the annual Everglades Conference in Naples, Fla. Smith began his speech with a surprising vow. “I will work to ensure that we in Congress do what we need to do to achieve this goal,” he told the packed audience of restoration advocates.
Looking back, Graham recalled the experience seemed to soften the New Hampshire firebrand. “I don’t know how much that singular experience contributed,” Graham said in a recent interview from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “But he became a very strong advocate of restoration after that. It was a harbinger of his continuing interest in the Everglades.”
Smith made good on his pledge, working in step with traditional GOP targets in the Clinton administration — like Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt — to get a draft of the CERP legislation before the committee early in 2000. He preached the importance of taking financial risks to save the Everglades. He locked the state’s powerful sugar industry out of negotiations when executives failed to testify at a hearing. And, in one of the lighter exchanges over the bill’s prospects, Smith and Graham threatened to feed Baucus to an Everglades alligator if he failed to support the restoration. Baucus eventually signed on as one of five cosponsors.
Spending political capital
Smith left the Senate in 2002. He lost in the primary to John E. Sununu, who was elected to replace Smith.
The hefty Smith, who at 6-foot-5 retains a commanding presence, readily acknowledges he is spending political capital earned from 12 years in the Senate to push, pull and cajole government agencies in charge of restoration projects to stay the course laid out by the 2000 CERP bill, whose estimated cost has since jumped to $8.4 billion.
“I’m basically using my influence to write letters and make phone calls,” Smith said. “I helped write the bill and I sponsored it, so I think I know what the spirit and intent [of CERP] is supposed to be.”
Among those who hear regularly from Smith now are Col. Robert Carpenter, commander of the Army Corps’ Jacksonville district office, which has primary responsibility for financing and building restoration projects. Among other things, Smith has pushed for the corps to allow more outside participation in the planning of CERP projects. He wants to get the work of his own scientists, Van Lent and Grizzle, before the corps, but has been rebuffed on a number of occassions.
“It’s not an easy situation,” Smith said. “Our goal is not simply to criticize the corps, but to reach out to them in a respectful way,” Smith said. “We understand what our role is here. We don’t make the final decisions. But that doesn’t mean we can’t speak up and present valid science to help steer [the agencies] in the right direction. We want to challenge them professionally.”
Smith also cited concerns about Florida’s priorities for the Everglades. While he said CERP’s foremost purpose is environmental restoration, the state’s leaders, including Gov. Jeb Bush (R), have in some instances lost sight of restoration goals in favor of flood control and water supply priorities, which the plan also promotes as a secondary benefit.
State leaders have also grown frustrated with the federal government’s slow pace toward implementing CERP projects, prompting Bush to launch his own Everglades program, called “Acceler8,” which fast-tracks eight key CERP initiatives that the state believes need immediate attention.
Seasoned Everglades advocates, like Graham, have noted the growing tension between the projects’ state and federal overseers. In a recent column for the Palm Beach Post, Graham likened the federal-state rift to feuding spouses, and he recommended improved communication and a renewal of vows to CERP’s broader goals.
Of Smith, Graham said: “He would be a good pastor to preside over” a retaking of “marriage vows” between state and federal agencies.
Smith chuckled at the notion of his taking a greater role, particularly for the Bush administration, in seeing the Everglades restoration through. He stressed he is content working at a slightly greater distance. In addition to its own scientific work and the funding of small-scale restoration projects, the Everglades Foundation helps coordinate the efforts of more than 15 high-profile groups — such as Audubon of Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation and 1,000 Friends of Florida — who together wield considerable political influence.
Most important, Smith said he will continue to advocate strongly for the restoration plan that Congress passed six years ago under his tutelage. By the same token, he said he will resist efforts by the state or other stakeholder groups to place their own priorities ahead of CERP. “You’ve got to demonstrate that you’re doing all of this work for the right reason, which is restoring the natural system,” he said. “You won’t convince Congress to send $12 billion to Florida to provide water for the city of Miami. That’s Florida’s job.
“They want the money to be used for the Everglades, because that’s the national treasure,” he added. “That’s how I was able to sell the program in Congress, and that’s the message I’ll continue to deliver down here.”
