ICYMI: Local Officials Join Commissioner Nikki Fried in Calling for DeSantis Red Tide Executive Order

Tallahassee, Fla. — This week, local officials in Tampa Bay asked Governor DeSantis for state assistance in battling the ongoing red tide crisis, echoing Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried’s call for the Governor to issue an executive order on the health and environmental emergency affecting Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough, and Manatee counties. Experts consider the current red tide worse than in 2018, the worst in Pinellas County in half a century, and in part the result of the Piney Point phosophogypsum spill.

July 12: On Monday, Commissioner Fried called on the Governor to issue an executive order, providing state coordination, funding, personnel, and resources to help mitigate the toxic red tide algal bloom responsible for massive marine life deaths and human respiratory effects. In 2018, then-governor Rick Scott issued an executive order on a red tide outbreak, sending state biologists and grant funding to hard-hit local governments. Fifteen tons of dead fish had been collected when Fried called for the executive order; four days later, 676 tons of dead fish had been collected by Pinellas municipal and county workers alone, who have been “taken off their normal jobs to remove dead fish around the clock.”

Fried’s letter to the Governor can be read here.

July 14: On Wednesday, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman asked the Governor for red tide emergency assistance, with more than 200 city employees cleaning up tons of dead marine life. According to reports, “many city employees agree with the mayor that it’s time for the governor to help” amidst continuing respiratory illness concerns, but the Governor has yet to issue an executive order as his predecessor did. The Governor’s office instead lobbed criticism at local officials, continuing a disturbing trend seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises.

July 15: On Thursday, the St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-0 to approve a resolution asking the Governor to declare a state of emergency, with municipal costs reaching well over $1 million for red tide cleanup and maintenance and repair work diverted by the worsening crisis. The bipartisan city leaders said “the damage is huge” in Tampa Bay and that “they need the governor to declare a state of emergency … before it makes the red tide situation even worse.”

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