I received a Google alert today that pinged a Palm Beach Post editorial lamenting the Lake Worth and Florida Department of Environmental Protection's efforts to convince people that dumping waste from a water treatment plant won't harm a treasured reef.The article featured the use of my favorite biologist-for-hire pejorative: biostitute. Florida is where the term biostitute - a combination of biologist and prostitute - was coined, explained Michael Risk, a professor emeritus at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and former consultant to Florida DEP projects. Things generally accepted elsewhere, he said, have to be proven time and again here.
While state hired biologists attempted to explain the negligible effects that a wastewater outfall would have on the reef, they apparently failed to understand the public desire for a precautionary principle. Considering all of the other threats to reef health already underway, why compound the environmental insults with yet another stressor?
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