- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Next on WEDU an in-depth report in the Tampa Bay Times, it looks at the future dangers of storm surge and flooding along Florida's West Coast.

Tallahassee bay put up more roadblocks to solar energy in the state.

And the governor takes on Dr. Fauci.

Political insights next, on Florida This Week.

(dramatic music) - Welcome back in a new series of investigative reports, the Tampa Bay Times working with the National Hurricane Center, looked into the danger to Florida's West Coast from storm surge caused by smaller tropical storms and hurricanes and what they found should concern us all.

- [Rob] The Times report looked at the damage caused by a late season tropical storm Eta, which brushed by the Tampa Bay area in November of 2020 and made landfall North in the big bend area.

Even that relatively small storm flooded thousands of properties and caused millions of dollars in damage.

Here's how Eta affected one St. Petersburg family.

- For Eta we had no idea, it was a tropical storm, nobody was really talking about it a whole lot, it caught us totally by surprise.

But at the end of the day, it was probably only two or three inches inside the house.

So thank goodness, it could have been a lot worse.

But even the two or three inches, it was probably between 75 and 100,000 for two to three inches of water.

And I don't even know if that includes the (inaudible) It was shocking, shocking.

- Joining us now are the reporters on the series "Rising Threat".

There's Zachary Sampson, he's the Environment Reporter for the Tampa Bay Times He's also covered the damage that hurricane Michael caused on Florida's Mexico beach in 2018.

And Langston Taylor, the Data Editor at the Tampa Bay Times.

He's a graduate of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and has worked at the Charlotte Observer.

Zack and Langston thanks for coming to the program, great to see you.

- [Both] Thanks for having us.

- So I was surprised one of your main points is that even a small tropical storm like Eta, which came through two years ago, if it comes close enough to our area, it can be very dangerous.

Zack, tell us how much damage did Eta cause?

Because I think it came by and we didn't really pay that much attention to it.

- Yeah sure, both before and after.

I think that people knew a tropical storm was coming through, but we didn't see that same rush on sandbags or things like that, that sometimes we have in past storms and then afterwards for those who weren't flooded, we just went along our day.

But there are some communities around here, Shore Acres in St. Petersburg, Madeira beach, North from there Redington Shores that really saw a lot of flooding.

You know, that storm brought in three to four feet of surge, and what happened is it coincided with a high tide.

And so it really gave us quite a bit of flooding in some of those low lying communities that you saw houses have several inches inside, which can rack up the cost quick.

- Likes of the, in that story we hear from this woman whose home was flooded just three inches and costs more than $100,000 in damage, that's amazing.

- Yeah, and depending on obviously how nice your house is, but tearing up flooring, drywall, damage to vehicles outside, whether it's lawn equipment or whatever.

Your whole house doesn't have to be swept away for you to have a huge bill.

And we find that in this game of inches people face, this is gonna be a bigger problem going forward.

Whether flooding gets into your garage or stops at your front step, it's a lot different than if it gets into your kitchen floor.

- What are the projections for sea level rise between now and 2050?

- So we worked with projections that were recommended by local planners, recommended to local planners.

They range somewhere between seven inches and about 22 inches, so if we get between a half a foot and two feet of sea level rise, that's a huge deal.

Partially because once surge reaches three feet, that's considered life-threatening storm surge, it's real damage to people.

And every inch, it's maybe rising a little bit vertically, but it goes much further horizontally inland.

- Well we just put up on the screen, the projections between now and 2050 of what communities are gonna be most effected by possible flooding caused by even a minor storm.

We're talking about the barrier islands of Pinellas, the Gulf beaches, Gulf port, upper Tampa Bay, Oldsmar, parts of Safety Harbor, Sarasota, Venice and Bradenton Beaches, and Apollo beach, the Shore Acres area in St. Pete, South Tampa especially at MacDill Air Force Base, Davis Islands including Tampa General Hospital.

In the next 50 years, you're saying that if we have a storm like Eta, Zack, that these places might face some serious flooding?

- Yeah absolutely, and it's even less than that, 50 years certainly is a real projection, but I think for a lot of people a practical numbers is 30 years.

And you know, 30 years is the typical mortgage.

If you had signed that in 2020 when Eta hit you'd be looking out to 2050.

And by that time, working with the modelers at the National Hurricane Center and Langston did a lot of work on overlaying that with property data, and census information, and building footprints, you're looking at potentially two to five times the amount of flooding that Eta did cause us, just based on sea level rise alone.

- Well, I'll put it up on the screen a picture of a parking garage, and I wanna ask you guys, where was this?

This is a parking garage that's in your series, where was that?

- Yeah, so our colleague, Luis Santana took that photo the night Eta blew through, and that's a parking garage by Tampa general hospital which, for people in the region that's right on the North side of Davis Island.

- And it's a really important hospital.

Langston why is Florida's West Coast so susceptible to this kind of flooding?

Is it more susceptible, let's say than the East Coast of Florida?

- It is, mostly because like the entire Gulf Coast, it's a very shallow coast.

The Gulf of Mexico is shallow itself, and then when you get on land, it doesn't go uphill very fast.

So small amounts of surge travel much further inland.

We find that for category one hurricanes, Tampa Bay's West Coast is more at risk than Miami, despite much more development in Southeast Florida.

So it's a problem of smaller and average storms that we can expect to happen more often.

- I wanna go back to Eta, was an emergency declared?

Did we get a disaster declaration?

And did those folks get bailed out?

Those folks whose homes were flooded, and did some people end up losing everything because their homes were flooded?

- Yeah sure, so there was a state of emergency declared on the front end, which can help you with things like preparing with evacuations if they become necessary.

But one thing that didn't happen is a nationally, presidentially declared disaster on the backend of Eta.

And that has to do with thresholds that you need to hit, you pretty much to boil it down, it needs to be beyond the capacity of the local governments in the state to respond, and Eta didn't meet that.

And so what you had is a situation there where there was localized heavy damage, but it wasn't broad enough to trigger some of that immediate inflow of national money, and national staffing in terms of helping people on the ground.

So you did have people who lost almost everything, Madeira beach is a good example, the city says it issued nine letters of substantial damage, which means that those properties have to be either torn down and rebuilt entirely or very expensively overhaul to meet modern standards.

And you have people out of their homes in that situation for months or more than a year at a time.

- And they're out of luck, they're out money.

- Yeah, that's where insurance comes in.

And I think anybody who's living in some of these areas is probably should, or does have flood insurance, but you got to think about everything in your house, and how much of it is covered, or how much do you want to be covered after the storm?

Are you gonna be made whole again?

- In likes of the cost of cleanup in your story you say, for 1,000 square foot home, it's gonna cost you $11,000 for the cleanup if you get just three inches, just a bare amount of water.

If you got a 2,500 square foot home, it goes up to about $30,000.

If you get three inches, that's a lot of money.

- It is, and so FEMA uses these matrices based on how expensive the home is, how big it is.

But the water damage adds up, people don't understand, tearing up flooring, handling dry wall.

Again, your home doesn't have to be swept away for you to have major problems that you have cost.

- And then mold can take over.

- Sure.

- Yeah.

And then I was interested that you pointed out that when water floods your house, it's just not simply water, that we're talking about salty water can be corrosive, it's littered with garbage, gasoline and sewage, which it's not just like taking the vacuum pump and sucking out the water from your house, it poses a health danger.

- Yeah, you got to think about the fact that you're gonna have a cleanup crew come in afterwards to handle things like mold.

But that water is picking up whatever it's traveling over, and that can be damaging just in the substances, if it's picking up oil from the street or gasoline, or what have you, and also just in terms of the actual objects that are in it.

If you have a pretty good surge with wind coming and moving some waves, then stuff's gonna float.

It could be as much of a dryer, it could be your trash bin, but it's not just water hitting your house there you've got an object that's delivering even more force.

So it's both damaging and dangerous in terms of the actual content.

- And Langston, did you find that the disaster preparedness people, or county planners, city planners, city officials, county officials, state officials, federal officials, are they aware of the potential danger that you're pointing out in the story?

- Yeah, as we ran this by local officials and emergency management types, they kind of squared with what they foresaw.

I mean, this is gonna be a real problem that planners are starting to work together across boundaries to handle, but this is a threat for the rest of our lives.

- Zack, I would imagine that a lot of people that move here, and move to some of these growing communities are not aware of the potential danger of this kind of flooding.

- Yeah I think, that's a good point, and it's one of the dangers in what Langston said is that, local government officials know this, but one thing that everybody struggles with from scientists, to those local government officials is communicating this to people, and how we understand risk.

And so, there's a second part to this story beyond Eta, that looks at some of the things that are leading to that confusion, and that's up just now on tampabay.com at tampabay.com/risingthreat, and it's gonna explain to people that the system of maps and the way we talk about storms has led people to be perhaps a little more complacent than they should be.

- A lot of people think they're safe, and it couldn't happen to them, but as we saw that woman in Shore Acres, she was caught off guard and had a huge problem.

Thank you so much for coming by Florida This Week.

Langston, Zack good to see you.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - A Bill now moving through the legislature, which is backed by one of the state's largest utility companies aims to cut the financial benefits of rooftop solar to homeowners by about 75%.

- [Rob] Opponents of the legislation, including environmental groups, solar construction companies, and the states NAACP say, if it passes the fast growing green power industry could be devastated.

- Susan Glickman is the director of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, she's also working with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and other organizations, working toward a clean energy future for Florida.

Susan welcome back to Florida This Week.

- Great, thank you very much, good to see you Rob.

- Good to see you.

So tell us more about what the utility companies are trying to do regarding solar energy up there at the legislature.

- That's right, in 2008 Florida adopted a net metering rule, which requires the utilities to pay you a fair price for the energy that you create on your roof.

So they're making an attempt this session in a bill that's been reported by news outlets to have been written by the state's largest utility which is Florida Power & Light, that would gut this net metering rule provision and make it less of an economic opportunity for homeowners to get solar.

It would essentially double the payback time, the time it takes the savings to pay back the cost of the solar array, it would double it from probably about seven to about 15 years.

- Utility companies say, look we've got costs, we've got power generation costs, we've got line costs, we've got staff, and we've gotta be able to pay for that.

And they say by having more and more people getting solar, I think it's 90,000 or so right now, or 90,000 homes in Florida, the solar energy customers also have to pay into the system, pay more into the system in order to keep the grid running, what do you say?

- There is an argument that at some point there are fixed costs that need to be considered, but the fact of the matter is, and you mentioned there at last reporting were 90,000 net metered systems out of a possible 10 million electricity customers.

So it's less than one half of 1% that is energy need is met with rooftop solar.

There's a little bit more of utility scale solar, it's important to have that, but we do not want to block off people's opportunity to save money by putting solar in their roof.

So they invest in the solar and then the current net metering rule requires the utilities to pay a fair price.

So if we get to 10% or 15%, then we really do need an analysis, this was done recently in South Carolina, we can talk about that later.

So if there's an honest look at the value and the benefits that solar brings to the grid, then we can take an honest look at what systems costs there are.

But the utilities have actually dealt with minimum billing and we can get into that in a minute.

But in the recent rate settlement there was a minimum billing.

So they actually have dealt with this issue of fixed costs.

- I wanna play a sound bite from Charlie Crist, who's running for governor, he's running in the Democratic primary for governor.

This is what he said this week about utility companies.

- Stopped this morning, talking about utility bills, almost 15% across Florida, that's outrageous.

Governor DeSantis doesn't care, isn't doing anything about it.

When I was governor, we appointed a Public Service Commission that actually cared about the public.

The people he's appointed are just lapdogs for the utility industry.

- Susan the governor and the legislature have a lot of power in appointing members of the Public Service Commission, have the recent rate increases by utility companies been justified, in your mind?

- All three investor on utilities have come in for rate increases as much as 18% for Florida Power & Light.

And then on top of that, because they have invested so heavily in fossil gas, where more than 74% relying on gas, they've all come in to pass on additional costs.

For Florida Power & Light, it's more than a billion dollars, Tampa Electric's already gotten 78 million, and they're asking for another 163 million, similarly with Duke which got 248 million, they're asking for another 314 million.

So addition to the rate increases, they're asking for billions of dollars because they bet on gas.

We don't have fuel diversity so it's absolutely the wrong move to reduce solar, right?

We don't wanna do anything that reduces solar.

And when we do, in Florida there's only a handful of tools to move to clean energy.

And with energy efficiency, our utilities TECO is 46, Duke is 48, Florida Power & Lights 51 out of 52 in utilities offering efficiency programs.

So we don't offer efficiency, and now they wanna sort of put the kibosh on solar.

When the solar industry is just taking off.

So you can invest in solar, you can pay for it over time and then you get a year's of free electricity and you pay in a minimum bill for being attached to the grid.

So they've handled that, so this really is a bill to choke off solar.

- So we just have 30 seconds, but I wanna ask you over the years, over the last 20 or 30 years has the Public Service Commission gone from being a neutral arbiter to being more pro utility and less pro consumer?

We just have a short time.

- Yes, the Florida Public Service Commission has long been considered captive by the utilities.

As former governor Charlie Crist mentioned when he was governor, they did stand up to the utilities on rate increases, and four of the commissioners were ushered off.

Most recently, governor DeSantis just appointed the president of the Senate, next session is Kathleen Passidomo and they just put her 28 year old daughter is now on the Florida Public Service Commission, which approved all these rate increases, which approved to pass on all these additional costs for gas and approved not having energy efficiency programs that are meaningful in the state of Florida.

So this Florida Public Service Commission has not been a friend to consumers.

- Susan Glickman thanks for coming on.

Great to see you, we'll bring you back.

- Great, sounds great.

(upbeat music) - Diane Roberts is an eighth generation Floridian, born and raised in Tallahassee.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Washington Post, the St Petersburg Times, and now the Florida Phoenix.

And she also teaches at Florida State University, Diane Roberts, welcome back to Florida This Week.

- Thank you.

- Diane, I wanna play a part of a commercial that the governor's put out for his reelection, attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci.

- Fully vaccinated, you are protected, and you do not need to wear a mask.

If you are vaccinated, you should still wear a mask.

You really better be very careful before you bring the children back.

The default position should be to try as best as possible to keep the children in school.

Right now at this moment, there is no need to change anything if you're doing on a day by day basis.

I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see.

So let me clarify that 'cause there was a little bit of a misunderstanding.

- So Diane, that's Dr. Fauci over the last three years, not in chronological order, kind of taken out of order by the governor, but the governor goes on to tout the fact that Florida is free, sells a pair of flip-flops for 39 bucks on his website.

And he's saying that Dr. Fauci has been wrong.

What do you think of that ad?

- Well, I was unaware that Dr. Fauci was running for office in the state of Florida or anywhere else.

But aside from it all big taken out of context and completely childish, the governor appears to be unaware that science changes, knowledge changes.

What we knew in the beginning of this pandemic, say in February, 2020 is not what we learned subsequently.

This is how science works, as more data becomes available we change the recommendations, things shift.

There was a time when the science was that the earth was the center of the universe.

And we discovered that wasn't the case and changed accordingly.

And so the governor is just relying on the ignorance of his base, which I'm sorry to say, he profits from enormously.

A man who went to Yale and to Harvard ought to be ashamed of himself.

- Diane the governor's touting the freedom that we have to move around here in Florida without masks and vaccine mandates, and freedom has become a center part of his centerpiece of his campaign.

I know that there's a Freedom Act that's being proposed in Tallahassee.

So what do you think of this idea of the governor running on creating more freedom for people, you think that's accurate about what's going on here in Florida?

- Well, we're free to go out and give each other COVID and we're free to take ridiculous cures like horse dewormer, and I guess we're free to spout nonsense.

But what we're not free to do, say if you're a woman is to control your own reproductive rights, you are not free, if you're a teacher to tell the truth about American history, and you're not free, if say your poor person to get any help.

There are a lot of things we're not free to do.

We're about to be not free to have clean water at the rate the governor has going on trying to or not trying to address toxic algae, which they have endless task forces on and don't address the actual source of the pollution.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty free, but it's mostly free to get sick and die.

- There's that whole question of academic freedom too where you mentioned teachers and professors.

Professors here in the state of Florida are sometimes being canceled because of the things they're about to say.

- Yes indeed I mean, people are terrified to even start a conversation.

At University of Florida it's absolutely disgraceful the way that professors in the law school, the medical school, political science, so many departments were treated because the head of the board of trustees doesn't think faculty enjoy first amendment rights, nor does he accept that they are experts, he just didn't like that they got uppity and more or less threatened them with legislative financial sanctions.

The University of Florida, we were happy all of us happy to see, joined the top five public universities in this country.

They're in the process of destroying that good reputation.

And that's bad for all of us here in Florida.

- Diane you're up there in Tallahassee, the legislature's in session, we have big problems in Florida, housing costs are on the rise, rents are on the rise, teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation, we have a teacher shortage.

Red Tide has killed thousands of tons of fish and marine mammals, homeowners insurance rates are rising, auto insurance rates are rising, electric rates are going up.

How has Tallahassee dealing with these issues?

- Badly, if we take Tallahassee to mean the Florida legislature.

They have plenty of time to do things like all name strawberry shortcake, the state dessert.

'Cause I know that we've all been ruling that that's just the best thing in the world, begging for strawberry shortcake to be, what would the right word be, canonized.

But they also have plenty of time to hold a ridiculous hearing with the nominate for State Surgeon General who could not I mean, obviously in a pitch battle with syntax, could not answer a straight question at all and was unbelievably disingenuous, and frankly sounded rather stupid, though I don't think he is at all a stupid man.

They are passing all kinds of bills that attack actual freedom, while calling the bills about freedom.

Attacking women, attacking the poor, and attacking education.

And I don't know how much further backward Florida can go, but sometimes I think, we're just longing for 1861, and those happy days when we succeeded from the Union, we were the third by the way, to secede from the Union, and well look how well that worked out.

- But they are gonna give businesses the power to Sue local governments, if the business doesn't like an ordinances passed and they cost the business money.

- I'm old enough to remember when Republicans banged on and on about how local government closest to the people was the government you should listen to, not a bunch of people in Tallahassee or Washington, 'cause how could they know what you needed?

And apparently that's not true anymore, apparently local people don't know anything, they're just a bunch of ignorant yahoos and need to be told what's good for business in Tallahassee.

But if Washington tries to tell us that, then we'll all have a fit again.

This is taking state's rights to an insane level.

- Well Diane Roberts, thanks.

I'm glad you're enjoying the session of legislature.

It's always great to see you.

(laughing) (upbeat music) Thanks for watching.

Please send us your comments at FTW@twedu.org.

You can view this in past shows online at @wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And Florida This Week is now available as a podcast, you can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcasts.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] Florida This week is a production of WEDU, who was solely responsible for its content.

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