Central Florida environmentalists are praising a new plan in Tallahassee to let counties spend hotel taxes cleaning up polluted springs, lakes and lagoons — an idea they say could be especially helpful in tourism-dominated Orange County, which is struggling to find enough money to save water bodies like the Wekiva River and Lake Apopka.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Nancy Prine, an activist with the conservation group Friends of the Wekiva River, said shortly after the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives unveiled a plan that would allow counties to use some of the tax on hotels to pay for environmentally important water projects.
That tax is an enormous source of money in Orlando, which draws more than 75 million visitors a year and is the busiest tourist destination in the United States. Hotel taxes in Orange County generated nearly $300 million last year alone — more than three times as much as any other county in Florida.
Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and other tourism businesses have lobbied hard over the years for laws that force counties to spend those taxes primarily in ways that subsidize the tourism industry. As a result, Orange County has spent the vast majority of its hotel taxes on things like advertising Orlando to more tourists; building, operating and repeatedly expanding the Orange County Convention Center; and financing event centers like Camping World Stadium, the Dr. Phillips Center and the Amway Arena.
But under the plan proposed this week in the state House, counties would be given the freedom to spend hotel taxes on “water quality improvement projects” — a broad category that would include flood-control projects that help protect communities from rising sea levels; efforts to clean up and prevent the spread of toxic algae; and financing programs that help homeowners relying on aging septic tanks connect to environmentally safer sewer systems.
Key leaders in the state House — notably House Speaker Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, and the chairman of the House tax committee, Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Miami Springs — are from Miami, which is grappling with intensifying King Tides and other potential impacts from rising seas. Lawmakers have also been under growing pressure to find money to stop the spread of algal blooms around the state.
“This would make Florida the first state to tie water quality to tourism,” Avila said.
The proposal could be a big help to the vulnerable Wekiva River, said Michael Cliburn, a retired environmental engineer and the secretary of Friends of the Wekiva River.
There are nearly 30,000 homes in the river’s springshed in Orange, Seminole and Lake counties that are clustered relatively densely — on lots of less than one acre each — and yet are on septic tanks rather than modern sewer connections. And those septic tanks, according to one estimate, are collectively responsible for 29 percent of nitrogen-laden pollutants leaching into Wekiwa Springs and Rock Springs, the main sources of water for the Wekiva River and Rock Springs Run.
Nitrogen fuels the growth of algae and invasive plant species like hydrilla that choke out native plants and lead to declines in fish and birds.
But forcing homeowners to connect to sewer systems is expensive — and few of them want to pay for it themselves. Five years ago, a study of just one subdivision in Orange County of about 380 homes near Wekiwa Springs estimated it would cost about $7 million to connect them all to sewer lines. It still hasn’t happened.
The state of Florida has budgeted just $50 million statewide this year for springs-restoration projects.
“Even if you put all the state money into Orange County, you’d have a hard time getting it done in 20 years,” Cliburn said. “So they’ve got to come up with more funding sources.”
Money also remains one of the big challenges in what is now a more than 20-year effort to restore Lake Apopka, which was once one of the premier bass-fishing lakes in the nation but was destroyed by years of pesticide- and fertilizer-laden muck farming.
In December, representatives for the St. Johns River Water Management District asked Orange County commissioners to approve a permit that would allow district engineers to dredge the lake bottom and replant native vegetation. But they also acknowledged that they did not yet have the money to pay for any of the projects they were obtaining a permit for.
“Just because we’ve made a big improvement, it doesn’t mean we’re done” said Joe Dunn, the acting president of the group Friends of Lake Apopka. “Like any other project, the last mile is the hardest.”
Environmental groups can’t count on help from hotel taxes just yet. The tourism industry is already gearing up to fight the House proposal, and they are likely to focus their efforts in the Florida Senate, which has not introduced a similar bill.
The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association — which is led by a board of directors that includes lobbyists for Disney and Universal — began mobilizing against the measure almost as soon as it was proposed. Carol Dover, the lobby group’s president and CEO, called the plan an attack on the tourism industry.
Dover said the tourism industry already helps pay for things like water quality through the sales tax it also collects from visitors. “To attack our TDT [tourist development tax] money is like double-taxing us on things we feel we already pay a fair share of,” she said.
Some Central Florida leaders, many of whom rely on the tourism industry for things like campaign contributions, event sponsorships or donations to favored charities, appear reluctant to get involved in a debate about whether they should have more flexibility to spend hotel taxes.
Neither Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who raised at least $45,000 from Disney during his re-election campaign last year, nor Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who also raised at least $45,000 from Disney during his 2018 campaign, would say whether they support spending hotel taxes on water quality projects.
“We are still gathering information on the proposal in the bill and do not have a position at this time,” Dyer spokeswoman Cassandra Lafser said.
“Mayor Demings is closely following all the state legislative items from session that would have any impact to the citizens of Orange County,” Demings spokeswoman Kelly Finkelstein added.
Orange County Commissioner Christine Moore, who represents part of the Wekiva River springshed and has called on the state to provide more money for septic-to-sewer conversions, said she would be uncomfortable using taxes collected by hotels to pay for those kinds of projects. Moore said state lawmakers should spend more state money financing these programs rather than pushing the costs down to locals.
Asked where the state could find more money, the Republican county commissioner said, “I wouldn’t be doing all these tax cuts all the time.” The hotel tax provision is included in a broader package that includes approximately $150 million in tax breaks.
Tourism lobbyists have defanged similar measures in the past. Two years ago, for instance, the Legislature passed a law that let counties spend some of their hotel taxes on big public-infrastructure projects — like roads or sewer plants — that help support the tourism industry.
But during the last week of session, an amendment was added to that bill that placed restrictions on counties that wanted to use hotel taxes on those type of infrastructure projects. One of the groups that asked for the amendment, according to the lawmaker who sponsored the original bill, was the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association, another lobbying group that is led in part by Disney and Universal executives.
Orange County attorneys later cited that last-minute amendment when they took the position late last year that the county could not use hotel taxes to pay for any of the $125 million that Orange County agreed to give to Universal Orlando to pay for a new road serving the company’s planned Epic Universe theme park.
Rich Maladecki, the president of the local hotel association, did not respond to an email asking if his group will seek similar amendments to this year’s plan to use hotel taxes on water projects.
For their part, environmentalists say it makes perfect sense to spend hotel taxes preserving environmental jewels like springs, lakes and coastlines – which are tourist attractions themselves.
“Hundreds of thousands of people come to Wekiwa Springs and Wekiwa Springs State Park and Rock Springs Run at Kelly Park and we know many of those people are from out of Orange County, out of state, even out of country,” said Jay Exum, the chairman of the Florida Wildlife Federation. “It’s a key part of tourism in Orange County.”
jgarcia@orlandosentinel.com; 407-540-5996; @Jason_Garcia
