Martin County Commissioner Doug Smith Discusses Coral Reefs, Water, and Growth

Martin County Florida County Commissioner Doug Smith has been representing the residents and businesses of District One, which is coastal Martin County and Jensen Beach for a continuous twenty-three years of service.

The Florida Business Forum's Anchorman and Host Sam Yates caught up with Commissioner Smith to discuss some of the top issues and solutions to problems that make Martin County popular as a growing destination in Florida. 

Transcript

Sam Yates: 0:06

Hello, everyone and welcome to another informative episode of the Florida Business Forum Podcast. Let's open the Florida Business Forum floodgates and let the information begin to flow. Here's your Florida Business Forum information guru and Anchorman Sam Yates. The information is flowing and I want to welcome you again to yet another episode of the Florida Business Forum Podcast. You don't want a previous episode, I announced that we would be taking a look at counties around the state of Florida for insight into their leadership, their financial operations, environmental concerns, crime, a lot of topics that we can cover at a county level and why because the county commissioners are literally the gatekeepers to what goes on in our lives at a county level. So their insight their leadership is important. And I actually started this here in Martin County, because I am a resident of Martin County, welcome, County Commissioner Doug Smith, and Doug is my second county commissioner here in Martin County to be interviewed. And Doug, I'm sorry, I had to interview Sarah first because I'm now living in her district. I used to live in your district. And you and I go back a long ways. But welcome to the program.

Doug Smith: 1:24

Sam, thank you very much. And good morning. And thanks for doing this. It's great.

Sam Yates: 1:27

You know, as I said, I moved out of your district, but I still stay connected to everything that you are doing. So I want to touch on some of the things that are going on that are important. But I know you I've known you for a long time, but our audience does not know a lot about you. So tell us a bit about yourself.

Doug Smith: 1:47

Well, so I'm in my 23rd year of being a county commissioner elected to district one. It's been an amazing journey over all these years. And I think you know, what's interesting about the way we operate as a county, we have our districts, we are elected county wide. But we have our districts that we represent. And so, you know, what's been what's been really fun at at multiple different levels is that the attention that you get to pay to your district, and we've had a long standing, not really policy but but sort of a commitment to each other that, you know, in Sarah's district, Sarah takes care of her district, I take care of my district and Ed and Harold and Stacey like they take care of theirs. We don't really try to cross into each other's districts, even when asked some group or something will call and say hey, we need your help in another district. And always, at least my response is, you know, have you checked in with your district commissioner's office first, and pitched your idea to them. And if they're, if they're if they're not interested, if it's not something that's on their priority list, then you know, I'm more than happy to look at it with you, and see what we can't work together on with, you know, with that district to make sure that you get your your project accomplished. But you know it over the many years we've been doing this, you know, it's amazing. For me anyway, and I think even for our community to look back over the things that have been accomplished in district one. And you know, sometimes you get asked like, what was the? What was the most important thing that you've ever accomplished? And I start thinking about it like, well, there's some really big things that we've been able to pull off. I think, really the first and foremost, and this was even before I ran for the first time, there was always this conversation in Jensen beach about could we ever have our own high school in Jensen beach? Yep. And literally one of the first things that fell into my lap in 2000, was a discussion by the school board as to where at that time, it was going to be a middle school. And then for some reason it shifted over to a high school. And really there were there were two sites that were being looked at Jensen Beach was one of them and all rode down in South County was being looked up. And, and literally from everybody I'd ever heard from in our district, again, even before being county commissioner was, it would be the best thing that ever happened to Jensen if we could have high school of our own. And so I went to the school board, we had a fair amount of money in our district funds. And another thing that's interesting about the way we are structured, and I took pretty much all of the district funds that were in place at that point and gave them to the school board and said Here, put this towards your land acquisition if that'll help you make the decision. Whether it goes to Jensen or it goes to all rode and ultimately it did make the decision and we have the Jensen Beach high school and you know it sits there today and it's wonderful and it's in as part of a community having In high school and what happens at a high school, in your community that builds identity and, and camaraderie amongst the community is super important. And so yeah, that's the kind of stuff that that's great. And, and the journey has, like I said in the opening comments have been has been fantastic and amazing and what we've been able to accomplish all these years. And that's why I still tell people, I love what I do, I get up every day, looking at the new challenge for the day, because sometimes there's things that happen. First thing in the morning that you didn't know was gonna happen the day before. And you and you, you work your way through it, and you try to make it happen.

Sam Yates: 5:38

I think that speaks to leadership. Now everything that you've just said is what differentiates normal people from people who take charge and lead and and sometimes it's not exactly taking charge, but leading from whatever position you're in. And that brings me to something that I wanted to ask you about, that's on your profile on your web on the county website. And that is for a number of years, the Florida Association of Counties presidential Advocacy Award and 2014 1516 2021. What is that? And how do you fit into that picture? I know, but I want to share that.

Doug Smith: 6:19

So very early on. In starting this, I was introduced the Association of Counties Florida Association of Counties, we call it fac, fac a former County Administrator had suggested to me that I take their leadership program, which I did two years before I actually got elected. They didn't really know what to do with me at that point, because they'd never been asked by someone that wasn't a sitting commissioner to take their program. And so they agreed to let a non sitting Commissioner take their certification program, I was the first and the last to do that there was a two year program at that point in time. But that allowed me to fully get entrenched into fac. And right from the very beginning, it struck me that the the the advocacy side of what we do at the Association of Counties, for counties for all 67 counties certainly would allow me the ability on policies here in Martin County that I could take policies that were important to us here and translate them into policy adoptions at the Association of Counties. And follow that through to where now, not only did we have advocacy in Tallahassee from the county side, but now, if I can get one of my priorities adopted at the Association of Counties, their lobbyists, their team of staff can also be working on that priority for us that directly benefit us in Martin County. And so that led to me becoming president of the Association of Counties. I did a two year stint. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why it ended up being two years versus one year. But it allowed me to do a couple key important things, I think that were super important. One was that I got to focus on the 16 County Coalition that we have around Lake Okeechobee. And I used the presidency at fact to build that consensus around taking it from a nine County Coalition to a 16 County Coalition, which made up the water management district representation for South Florida and allowed us to have a much larger regional discussion about the importance of Everglades restoration and what was going on around the lake. But it also allowed me to get advocacy at fac at the state level, and then would also translate to the National Association of Counties at the federal level. And so there's advocacy awards, if you call them that are really from my work relative to working on legislation working with the Association of Counties on policy, working in Tallahassee, both on our priorities here for Martin County, but also for the Association of Counties. And we've been able to accomplish some really big things important things that have helped Martin County long term. If we have time, I can go into the National Association of Counties side of this, but I've taken the same strategy that I've used at the association of counties here in Florida. And and taken that to Neko the National Association of Counties and taken our priorities for both Martin County for Florida, embedded them into one of the committees that I sit on and that I chaired last year for Neiko which is called E L u which is Environment, Energy and land use on a national level. And probably one of the more significant accomplishments I think that we have been able to accomplish. We worked for five years at least, to get a reauthorization bill for the coral reef reauthorization act done which had not been done since 2000. wasn't it past this past week before Christmas. And it took us five years to accomplish that. But we were able to embed into language at the state, but also into the federal level, the importance of getting that done and what that meant to Florida. Because Florida has the only continental United States, coral refract from Martin counties inland south to the keys. And we have lost an unprecedented amount of coral and species due to some disease and bleaching that has occurred. And so the rewrite of that national policy that both impacts Hawaii and our southern territories and us here in Florida, was super important to get done. Not only did it refocus our energy on how we manage reefs, and how we manage that coral infrastructure, but the funding along with it as well. And, you know, it's not an easy task to get anything done in in Washington. It's a very complicated place. But I would be remiss if I didn't do a shout out to Senator Rubio and his staff, they helped write the rewrite of of the coral reef act. And and really were first class advocates in helping us get all that done. So between the 16 County Coalition going to DC, working with Neko, working on Everglades, restoration, prioritizing the rehabilitation of the dike, our C 44 project that's out in Indian town that was the first of the major water storage projects to occur, both at a national level and on a state level. All of those things come together with those advocacy ideas of how do you build coalitions on our more grand scale. And if we can get 16 counties that represents seven to 8 million people to agree on a policy for Washington, they love that, because now we're not up there competing. I'm not competing against Miami Dade or Broward on a policy that we're in sync on. And if we can deliver the magnitude of what Everglades restoration really means to Florida to our delegation in Washington, and we don't have to argue and debate over the merits of it. They love it. And they've made those things happen. So that was a long answer to the advocacy idea for the Association of Counties. But it was a

Sam Yates: 12:20

Perfect answer, because it covered a lot of the things that I that I am very interested in sharing and covering clean water. It's just not coral reefs. But you mentioned the Everglades restoration or canal systems are in your opinion, are we doing enough to make sure that our water is clean.

Doug Smith: 12:42

So it's taken us 20 years to take Everglades restoration from the inception of the adoption of the plan for syrup to get to a place both at the state level and the federal level where the the magnitude of that project and the cost of that project are fully embraced and fully supported both at the federal level now and at the state level. All that has taken years and years of advocacy, both in Tallahassee and in Washington. But the things I mentioned earlier about getting the 16 counties together to prioritize what were our top three priorities for Everglades restoration, because everything's important, every component is important. But you can't do them all at one time. And the amount of money involved in doing the whole thing is so big, that it takes multiple, multiple years and acceptance to get that sort of a thing done. And so when I talk to people about how do we do all things, water in a relative to Martin County and the State of Florida and our region, I break it down to there's really kind of like three roles that are involved here. There's the local level, here in Martin County, what is our role in protecting, enhancing creating better water quality for us here locally? There's also a role for the state and where does that come in? And then there's a role for the federal level and what level and where does where does the federal group come into play with all of this and so it's a multi pronged approach that we are really now I think, hitting our stride on on on seeing those benefits happen. The C 44 project is done. That took close to 20 years to start to finish to get it built, constructed permanent and done. The the hardening of the Herbert Hoover dike around Lake Okeechobee is done a major step forward in protecting South Florida, but also giving now all of us the ability to rethink how all of that is managed. Are we here in Martin County? A couple of years back. Something I've been working on, honestly, since I got elected was a policy, and really a belief in a programmatic change here in our community that septic tank removal in the urban area is something that we absolutely have to do. It's not all of the fix. C 44 isn't all the things Lake Okeechobee isn't all the fix. But they're components of a much larger plan, that there are certain things in Martin County we have control over. And to that point, we have a very robust stormwater plan we've done over Gosh, 35 to 40 Major stormwater projects in the urban area of Martin County that clean up water. Another piece of that was a septic tank conversion program. We are ahead of schedule, we adopted a Plan A few years back that said we have 10,000 septic tanks that that need to go. And we need to do in 10 years. And we need to get the funding and we need to organize it in such a way that it's affordable to our residents to kind of mimic what Monroe County did, they had a 10 year plan and they got a lot of federal dollars and a lot of state dollars to convert the keys on two separate sewer. And so we have adopted that strategy. And what is unique with the timing of getting that done, having a governor that has significantly supported funding to Department of Environmental Protection and in Tallahassee. The whole septic to sewer conversion discussion for South Florida has really changed dramatically. When we used to get years ago, our 16 County Coalition together. At the beginning of our meeting, we'd all do an update about what was going on in our community water wise, right. 10 years ago, no one ever gave an update on septic or sewer conversions. Now today, everybody that's present brags about what they're doing on the septic to sewer conversion front. And it's fantastic. It's it's it's a it's a it's a very much embraced plan that now everybody wants to brag about Yeah, we did 6000 units last year, we did 4000 units last year. So all of these pieces fall into different silos. And as I said earlier, there's not a single fix. There's not a single silver bullet. But there are things we can control here at Martin County that we can do by policy, and we're doing them other counties are doing the same. Another big initiative that was brought to me maybe six years ago or so, was by our former employee, Gary Roderick, former DEA DEP guy worked for us. He really, he really helped Martin County shape and form our stormwater program 20 years ago and did a phenomenal job setting us up to where we are today. And Gary came to me five, six years ago and said, Doug, you know, the next really big problem we have are biosolids, we have got to stop doing what is happening with biosolids being spread out in western Martin County, which we actually did do a moratorium on that years ago, but there was still illegal dumping going on. But there has been a practice of spreading biosolids, which effectively is the byproduct of our human waste that goes comes out of our treatment facilities. We've got to stop doing it we can't because what's happening is that even though we're processing our waste into a refined type of product that can be used. It still contains phosphorus, it still contains nitrogen and a whole bunch of medical waste that we have, we have got to get rid of

Sam Yates: 18:47

Yep. And in the medical waste part of that I there's a new report and I won't go into it but because I'm going to be featuring on an upcoming episode, the amount of medical waste, pharmaceutical waste that are showing up in red fish of all things here in the North Indian River Lagoon but other lagoons and other water estuaries around the state Tampa South Florida Indian River Lagoon one of my friends in the in the media Ed killer is going to be doing something on that he and I have chatted about it can be sure you get it I know that for our audience. They place a lot of value on individual leadership but you see the bigger picture and because you do see that bigger picture I would like permission to invite you back for another episode. Would you come back

Doug Smith: 19:42

Sam I'd love to and I appreciate all the time you know the the story that I just shared with your the stories. There's a lot to it. There's a lot of moving parts and it's years worth of work that have gone into to get us to where we are today. But I will say this it's it's it's starting to make a difference. And I appreciate you giving us the time to at least talk about it. Because I think what happens with the in the communication world these days, there's a lot of noise out there. And there's a lot of competing information that people just don't have time in their day to, to be able to absorb it all. And so every opportunity we get to talk about water in Martin County. It's what we it's really one of our primary focuses of what we do here. And I appreciate all that you're doing for us.

Sam Yates: 20:32

And I want to echo that right back to you from the community. We appreciate everything that you are doing. So, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have Commissioner Doug Smith back with us. He has said Yes, he'll be back and I always love it when I hear that. So until our next episode. Have a great day everybody. The Florida Business Forum is dedicated to showcasing Florida businesses and CEOs of all sorts to promote their business or not for profit in the only business forum of its type in Florida. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, the Florida Business Forum is now accepting guest applications. Have a great day everyone and stay tuned for more business