A roundup of news items related to climate change and other environmental issues in Florida:
Senate strips wage preemption from heat exposure bill, sends back to House | Florida Politics
In the last week of the regular session, the Senate and House are in a showdown over whether local governments can set wage preferences for contractors and subcontractors.
The Senate has amended HB 433, stripping the piece of the bill that preempts local ordinances from giving preference for local contractors that provide better wages or benefits to their workers.
The rest of the bill preempts cities and counties from passing ordinances requiring businesses to allow workers who toil outdoors to receive breaks in the shade and water at intervals throughout the day. The Senate approved the measure on a 28-11 vote along party lines, with Democrats objecting to the heat exposure regulation preemption.
Florida beach renourishment stalemate hits another roadblock | Axios
The latest effort to end a yearslong stalemate between local and federal governments over beach renourishment has itself stalled.
Why it matters: Beach renourishment — the process of pumping sand onto shorelines to combat erosion — keeps Florida’s beaches accessible to the public and protects waterfront habitats and communities from storms.
Such projects are expensive, running up tabs in the tens of millions; without federal help, renourishment could be out of reach for some locales
Why Florida doesn’t have wind energy, but lawmakers want to curb it anyway | Tampa Bay Times
If you drive through parts of Texas, California, the Midwest — or look off the coast of several northeastern states — you can see enormous wind turbines, their rotations powering millions of homes as part of a push to make wind part of our country’s energy future.
But not so in Florida, a state whose lower wind speeds have kept it from becoming a wind energy hot spot. And lawmakers are poised to pass a bill that could help keep it that way by banning offshore wind turbines in state waters.
That ban was recently added to a major energy omnibus bill that is nearing passage and is the priority of House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast. The proposal would also roll back some regulations on natural gas pipelines and delete the majority of references to climate change found in state law.
If you have any news items of note that you think we should include in our next roundup, please email The Invading Sea Editor Nathan Crabbe at ncrabbe@fau.edu. Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here.
