Senator’s support
Negron favors autism program funding
2
Cleaner water
Bessey Creek project kicks off
3
25
Different kind of play
Mental illness takes the stage
PALM CITY/TESORO
YourVoiceWeekly.com VOL. 3/ISSUE 9
YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015
2014 heads to history books with a lot of important stories PALM CITY — As 2014 calendars come off walls and the dates head to the history books, the year delivered a lot of important stories to Palm City, Martin County and the Treasure Coast.
Indian River Lagoon got some help
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Mitch Kloorfain/chief photographer Charles Grande, Jo Neeson, Riverkeeper Marty Baum, Mark Perry, of Palm City, Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch and Don Voss served as pallbearers for the symbolic burial of the Indian River Lagoon Saturday, May 3. progressed, the committee ended up getting about $232 million out of a $77.1 billion budget the Florida Legislature approved for various water-quality projects related to the lake and Indian Rive, more than it had asked for. “There’s more to be done, but we’ve made significant progress sending the water south,” Negron later told Your Voice News &
Views. Even through there was great news about the state’s ambitious water project funding, with bagpipes, eulogies and people dressed in black in mourning, the Indian River Lagoon was buried at Phipps Park — 2175 S.W. Locks Road, Stuart, on May 3. Speakers had a unified message for hundreds of funeral attendees
— the Indian River was murdered by corporate interests, apathetic government and general heedlessness. The mock funeral was a protest organized against, among other things, slowed progress on the Central Everglades Planning Project. CEPP is part of state
See 2014 page 4 15971
After the Army Corps of Engineers’ disastrous discharges of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee turned the summer of 2013 into a rare time of widespread community activism, a lot of apparent progress started in 2014. On Jan. 11, Jo-Ellen Darcy, who heads up the Army Corps of Engineers, took a helicopter tour stretching from Lake Okeechobee to the Indian River Lagoon to get a better understanding about the local ecology. Congressman Patrick Murphy gave the United States Assistant Secretary of the Army the aerial tour. “It did put it in my mind the challenges we face,” she said in a press conference after the tour. In Tallahassee, Sen. Joe Negron was busy getting ready to push the Florida Legislature into action during the annual 60-day session that runs March to May. Negron chaired the Florida Senate Select Committee on Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee, which had public hearings during the summer of 2013. The committee put forth a report in late 2013 that had an ambitious project wish list with a $220 million price tag spread over three years. As the 2014 legislative session
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