The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 24

H' 'WW 2B THE PALM BEACH POST WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26,2003 A Sugar lobbyist's critical letter on lagoon plan irks advocates ru JUPITER FARMS Mikayta Ortiz, 5, who was critically injured when her stroller ran off a porch into a retention pond at her home March 14, died Monday afternoon at St. Mary's Medical Center, hospital spokesman Don Chester said Tuesday. Her mother was working in the yard at 11338 N. 154th Road when she noticed the stroller missing. She rescued her handicapped daughter from the pond and performed CPR.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is investigating the case as an accident, sheriff's spokeswoman Diane Carhart said. BOCA RATON A 26-year-old man was arrested Monday afternoon on charges of leaving the scene of an accident on Spanish River Boulevard involving a bicyclist. Brendan agreement. Port officials said it's a new fee for new purposes and is legal. WEST PALM BEACH The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County will sponsor a special showing of Exodus, the 1960 epic celebrating the Zionists' 1947 fight to create a Jewish state in Palestine.

The digitally remastered movie will be shown at 7 p.m.; April 7 at the Muvico at CityPlace. Tickets, which must be purchased in advance, are! $18 and include popcorn and soda. For information, call 478-0700, Ext. 192. if A carnival to promote organ donation is scheduled for 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m. April 2 on the: free speech lawn and the bookstore lawn pf the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University. The event will feature free food, giveaways and games. People signing donor cards at the event will receive free long distance phone cards. For information, call David Korn at 297-3607.

PORT ST. LUCIE While most council members on Monday said they considered City Manager Don Cooper's arrest for simple battery a personal matter that wouldn't affect his job, at least two changed their minds Tuesday: after reading a detailed sheriff's report about his arrest Friday on a charge of hitting his wife. Linda Cooper told detectives her husband had struck her before during their 32-year marriage. Councilman Jack Kelly said he was "appalled and surprised" at Cooper's actions, which have "embarrassed his family and the city of Port St. Lucie." Kelly said he was dismayed to learn the abuse had been ongoing.

-f5 f5V McQuaid ot ZbW Second Ave. was arrested after a witness to the hit-and-run accident dialed 911 on his cellphone and led police to McQuaid's house, according to a police report. Police said they found McQuaid in his back yard with marijuana and some Viaera in his cant McQuaid The corps' slowness in finishing its Indian River report has puzzled both environmentalists and Martin County leaders. The corps originally was supposed to finish the report in time for Congress to approve the Indian River project last year, but both the engineers and the lawmakers missed that deadline. Corps leaders in Washington missed a Jan.

31 deadline, saying they still had to review it. In Washington, corps spokeswoman Carol Sanders couldn't say when the document will be done. Despite the setbacks, the corps is continuing to plan and design the lagoon project. Its partner, the South Florida Water Management District, has already spent more than $112 million to buy 36,000 acres for the lagoon project, nearly a third of the total land needed. The Indian River plan includes four reservoirs, five pollution-filtering marshes, 90,000 acres of restored habitat and the removal of 5.5 million cubic yards of muck from the St Lucie River.

The lagoon project is scheduled to be finished in 2010, nearly 30 years before the rest of the Everglades restoration. Supporters say it's also has the purest environmental spirit of the whole restoration, focusing much of its efforts on natural wetlands instead of the corps' usual pumps and levees. "It is expensive, but it is the way restoration should take place across the United States and the rest of the world," Reed said. But while the lagoon plan is supposed to re-create natural water flows and lessen pollution of the St. Lucie and Indian rivers, it can't accomplish all of that alone.

The river and lagoon also need a break from the constant pouring of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee. But the Everglades restoration isn't set to finish dealing with that problem until 2026. Dickey said the corps hasn't been able to say how much help the lagoon will get from the plan if the Lake Okeechobee work never happens. Hurchalla said the answer is simply to get going. "We all want Everglades restoration to happen," she said.

'And we all want to start now with the Indian River Lagoon." Staff writer Jennifer Sorentrue contributed to this story. bobkingpbpostcom By ROBERT KING Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Everybody seemed to love the $995 million plan to restore the Indian River Lagoon. Then a well-connected sugar industry lobbyist in Washington began asking questions, and the US. Army Corps of Engineers suddenly seemed unable to get the plan to Congress. The two events are connected, environmentalists said Tuesday, as they publicized a Nov.

8 letter in which lobbyist G. Edward Dickey questioned whether the project would do enough for the lagoon to justify the cost. "We're devastated to learn that our friends in the sugar industry are arranging to sabotage it," fumed Hobe Sound environmentalist Nat Reed. He said he suspects that growers are trying to hamper the lagoon project to gain leverage over a broader $8.4 billion Everglades restoration. The accusations puzzled Dickey, a former corps planning chief and ex-deputy assistant secretary for the US.

Army. He said he was merely trying to get the corps to fix flaws in its document so that it's not doomed in Congress. Among the problems: Dickey said the plan for cleaning water entering the lagoon assumes that the Everglades project will eliminate pollution flowing from Lake Okeechobee. Although the lagoon plan is supposed to be finished in 2010, work on the lake won't be done until 2026 if ever. "I see a potential for a real embarrassment in terms of having spent the money and not getting anything," said Dickey, a senior adviser to the lobbying firm Dawson Associates.

The firm's clients include United States Sugar the Sugar Growers Cooperative of Florida and farming groups such as Florida Citrus Mutual and the Florida Farm Bureau. But Dickey said he's puzzled that people are attacking his comments based on who his clients are and not on the merits of his ideas. "I've been a naive idealist I always thought comments spoke for themselves," he said. But Martin County environmentalist Maggy Hurchalla said Dickey was setting up an unsolvable Catch-22 for the restoration. "He's saying you can't start it because you might not finish," said Hurchalla, adding that she questions the motives behind the letter.

"If somebody's throwing a monkey wrench, it's because they want something." pockets, according to the report. He was arrested on four charges, including leaving the scene of an accident involving injuries. He was being held in the Palm Beach County Jail on $4,500 bail. The name of the bicyclist and the extent of her injuries were unavailable. STREET WISE iff LAKE WORTH The reopening of the Tri-Rail crossing on Sixth Avenue South, scheduled for 7 a.m.

today, has been delayed because of bad weather. The road should be open Thursday evening, Tri-Rail spokeswoman Bonnie Arnold said. Alternate routes include 10th Avenue North and Lantana Road. For information, call the Tri-Rail customer service at (800) 874-7245. PALM BEACH GARDENS Firefighters used foam to put out an oil fire Tuesday at a metal-treating plant at 4125 Burns Road, city fire-rescue spokesman Chris Brown said.

The fire at the Klock Co. caused no injuries but there was some property damage. The blaze began about 6:58 a.m. when a piece of heat-treated metal was placed in a cooling vat filled with oil, Brown said. Investigators said it was I accidental.

I BRIEFLY IT RIVIERA BEACH The Port of Palm Beach Commission approved a variety of tariff Increases Monday for both cargo and passenger vessels. The most significant, a new "terminal operation fee" for cargo vessels, applying to both current and new port customers, will raise about $550,000 a year to pay for higher security and utility costs, port officials say. Other tariff increases of about 30 percent would apply only to new business. The new rates are expected to go into effect April 1. Attorney John Turner for Teeters Agents Stevedoring told commissioners the new cargo fee amounts to an increase in wharfage rates, a violation of Teeters' RIVIERA BEACH The city sued the town of Palm Beach Shores this week for the right to; charge town residents 25 percent more for water than the city charges its own residents.

State law allows cities to charge customers outside their bounds an extra 25 percent fee. But that conflicts with a 1951 agreement under which Riviera Beach i originally started providing water to Palni Beach Shores. Riviera Beach charges 25 percent more to all other areas outside its bounds, utility director Ed Sierra said. Boca Raton ends 23-year sister-city relationship with Spandau, Germany Hager, ever the champion of free-market principles, concurred. "I'm prepared to vote to junk the relationship, that is, to sever it," he said.

Abrams wrote a letter earlier this year to Spandau's mayor, asking for an explanation of last year's protests. Der biirgermeister never wrote back. "It is disturbing they didn't respond," said Coun-cilwoman Susan Haynie. Council members Dave Freudenberg and Carol Hanson were not present at the council meeting. johnmurawskipbpost.com IJIIhHIIItlllilAllJLMTTM i w.H'i:tjjiiMMi?flirc Many people needlessly spend their lite savings to pay for nursing care.

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nit ut Mfld vou ttm wnMii riwnmcn ibui out quaMcaKxie md (mmst. OTtwKuplWimWIX) By JOHN MURAWSKI Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BOCA RATON Auf Wiedersehen, Spandau. Boca Raton is ending is 23-year sister-city relationship with Spandau, Germany, the site of anti-Jewish disturbances last year. Mayor Steven Abrams, who is Jewish, said the breakup is not over the German protesters who opposed naming a street Juden-strasse, or Jewish Street, last November. And this is not a form of payback for Germany's refusal to back America's war in Iraq, Abrams said.

"It's not about the people of Spandau or the government," he said. "It's not any one reason. It's a whole number of reasons." The council voted 3-0 Tuesday to create a task force to come up with other sister-city possibilities which would create economic development opportunities for Boca Raton. The ideal city would be comparable in population to Boca Raton and would offer more than just a vacation spot for city officials. Spandau and Boca Raton exchanged delegations in the mid-1990s, Abrams said, but of late the relationship has been inactive.

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