'Save the manatees!' Lawmaker sends mucky Indian River Lagoon water to colleagues
"Over 500 manatees have starved and died ... because there are no plants to eat," a slip of paper accompanying the bottles of water says.
Tori Lynn Schneider
Mahdi Kassam pushed a cart through the halls of the Senate Office Building Thursday afternoon.
"Delivery from Rep. (Joy) Goff-Marcil," the representative's legislative aide said, dropping a small gift bag in each senator's office.
The gray bags were adorned with a small blue sticker with an illustration of the Florida state marine mammal reading "Save the Manatees!"
The bags held a small jar of murky water from the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) and were delivered to all 40 senators and 120 House members this week.
"Over 500 manatees have starved and died in the IRL since December because there are no plants to eat," a sheet of paper also slipped inside the bags read. "Manatee necropsies document empty stomachs and stomachs with plastic bags as the only content."
In a statement, Goff-Marcil's office said the papers also listed proposed water quality funding requests this year for the state budget that include $600,000 for a lagoon seagrass restoration project.
Goff-Marcil coordinated with two women in and near her Seminole County district – Stel Bailey and Katrina Shadix – to get the water to the Capitol.
Bailey, a Cocoa resident, collected the water from the lagoon, documenting the process in a TikTok that got over 91,000 views and 26,000 likes. She then gave the water to Shadix, who drove from Titusville to the Capitol and gave the 180 jars to Kassam to be distributed.
"This is a way to get people to really see the water, and it just makes it more ... real," Goff-Marcil said. "We all want to drink clean water. That's not a Republican or Democratic issue."
Murky water makes social media
Some lawmakers took to social media to spread the word after receiving their jars.
"This jar made me think about my community in Pinellas County, about the recent Piney Point crisis, and about what we stand to lose if we do not become better stewards of our land, water and air. We can and MUST do better," said Democratic state Rep. Ben Diamond in a tweet.
"I hope that they feel a responsibility to clean it up," Shadix said of what she hopes lawmakers feel when they see the water.
"I hope that they feel that continuously having dirty water like this not only affects human health, the health of wildlife and fish and birds, it also drastically and negatively impacts our economy."
Shadix said Florida's economy is supported by tourism and ecotourism and without clean water, not only are people going to be sick and animals are going to die, but the state will lose revenue.
"If we can't make them care for the manatee, we can definitely make them care about income for our state," Shadix said.
Contact Tori Lynn Schneider at tschneider@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @photoriphy. Check out her photos on Instagram @phototori_.
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