The Bill Always Comes Due By Tyler-Christian Daniels
The Bill Always Comes Due By Tyler-Christian Daniels Intended Audience: The general public who assume environmental damage is someone else’s problem I want to start by telling you what I do for a living, because I think it is going to reframe the next few minutes in a way that feels personal rather than abstract. I am a land development planner in Polk County, Florida. My job is to sit at the intersection of what people want to build and what the land can actually support. Every single day, the Green Swamp comes up. That is not a figure of speech. The Green Swamp is a 560,000 acre watershed in Central Florida that feeds the Hillsborough, Withlacoochee, Ocklawaha, and Peace Rivers. It is one of the most ecologically critical pieces of land in the state. It recharges the aquifer that a significant portion of Florida drinks from. It filters runoff before it reaches those rivers. It slows floodwaters. It is doing an enormous amount of work that nobody is paying for, and every time so...
