St. Johns County Soil & Water Conservation District

01/28/2023

Please visit the new page for the St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation District, and meet the current officials. Link to be provided here when live. Senate Bill 1078 took effect on January 5, 2023, creating a new mission for the Districts and redefining who qualifies to serve.

12/19/2022

Click this link to view the document referenced in the Dec. 19, 2022 St. Johns County Legislative Delegation. tinyurl.com/yckbpu44 (See other reasons SB 1078 should be repealed in the comments below.)

12/18/2022

Get all the good dirt at the Dec. 21st meeting of the St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation District. (9 a.m.) There will be a presentation on soil surveys and a demonstration by our County Extension Agent, Evelyn (Prissy) Fletcher, on how to estimate soil texture. Bring your own soil sample if you like. This will be our final meeting of 2022, and for two of us, our final meeting on the board, after Senator Travis Hutson's Senate Bill 1078 unconstitutionally cut our 4-year terms in half and disqualified us from running again. Incredibly, a chemist specializing in water analysis no longer qualifies to serve on the Soil and Water Board. Welcome to the corrupt world of Senator/Developer Travis Hutson.

Attend in person at the Agricultural Center or on Zoom via https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82400046073?pwd=YkJhenpkYW0yelJqSGZwMERVN0ljUT09

11/15/2022

The monthly meeting of the St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation District will be held Nov. 16, 9 a.m. at the Agricultural Center in St. Augustine. Zoom link for the meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82560474354?pwd=a3E2aXdNdDU1ekNKSW1WaXlDWmJ6dz09

10/26/2022

The St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation District will hold it's annual Local Working Group Meeting, Nov. 1 at 9 a.m. It can be joined via Zoom at the link below, or in person at the Agricultural Center in St. Augustine.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81633605985?pwd=dllBcm41bUU1WWhrNGtRalk1cXhZUT09

10/20/2022

Terrific news for sea turtles and other marine life! Thanks to Councilman Rory Diamond, the City of Jacksonville is poised to pass a balloon release ban ordinance - Oct. 25th. It's cleared two committees. Learn how the ordinance found a sponsor! If you hit a paywall reading the article, see the first comment to read it in its entirety. St. Johns County's SWCD presented a referendum calling for a new state statute to ban balloon releases which was passed unanimously at our state meeting.

In a bizarre twist, Senator Hutson used this fact to claim Soil and Water Conservation districts in Florida should be abolished, and he all but dismantled them with SB 1078. He later gutted a companion bill in the senate to an excellent state bill to ban balloon releases, causing the bill to NOT even be considered in the 2022 session. (It's hard to imagine how anyone could hate wildlife enough to do that.)

The caption on this photo is:
"A community member sent a picture of a balloon found 16 miles offshore in the ocean to Nicole Crosby, representative of the St. Johns County Soil & Water Conservation District. Crosby started a petition which ultimately succeeded in banning balloon and lantern releases in St. Johns County early in 2022." https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2022/10/17/jacksonville-city-council-considers-ban-balloon-lantern-releases/8205847001/?fbclid=IwAR15PckdU-jYkR6r9X8SZCSMIOhdBlkoSF2KH8l6S5hES2bcnsoyPBHFjZ8

The ban could be voted on and take effect as early as Oct. 25. Environmental advocates say passing such a ban would greatly help impacted wildlife.

10/16/2022

AFCD (Association of Florida Conservation Districts) Executive Board member Jeff Moore has been called on to resign by a number of us after this photo surfaced, purported to be of him in full K*K regalia. Former president of AFCD, Moore did not follow through on his promise to the media to make a public statement two weeks ago. (He did resign from his county commissioner job that he was COINCIDENTALLY appointed to a few months after he supported Senator Hutson in the dismantling of the Soil and Water Conservation Districts via SB 1078.) Now, the Tallahassee newspaper has run its second article on the controversy, this time revealing that the AFCD's Attorney Ramba called on Jeff to resign, but Jeff would not. This information was withheld from SWCD members by Charlene Meeks and Archie Mathews who made decisions on our behalf in a meeting that did not have a quorum. They decided to let him remain on the board until his term ends in February. Many of us consider that unacceptable. Meeks and Matthews should also be asked to resign in light of making decisions without a quorum and withholding information from SWCD supervisors.

Senator Travis Hutson has clearly influenced the governor to make at least three appointments that benefit Hutson. The other two were in St. Johns County - appointments to influence the approval of his 5600-home development in May. At this point, it's no surprise that Hutson would join forces with someone who dressed as a member of the most notorious racist organization in the U.S. Hutson's new law, publicly supported by then president Jeff Moore, SB 1078, is inherently racist and has resulted in the forced departure of a number of African American SWCD supervisors. Hutson was warned that would happen, and it did. Ironically, the commissioner position that Moore resigned from is in the only county in Florida that's majority African American - Gadsden County. He was the only white member of the commission.

Full story here. (St. Johns County's SWCD chair is quoted.) https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2022/10/12/desantis-appointed-commissioner-jeffery-moore-keeps-position-large-florida-nonprofit-despite-interna/10464149002/

10/06/2022

This will be a great tour of agriculture in St. Johns County!! Why not sign up? Sponsored by UF/IFAS.

Our half-day farm tour will include a 55-passenger bus ride throughout the county to tour our local agriculture.

09/28/2022

Today's monthly meeting of the St. Johns Soil and Water St. Johns County Soil & Water Conservation District has been postponed due to impending Hurricane Ian. New meeting date will be posted shortly.

09/27/2022

ONLY FOUR DAYS LEFT TO LITERALLY SAVE THE WHALES. Everyone who reads this, PLEASE take a moment to click on the form at the bottom of this link and write a comment, asking for increased protections for the Right Whale. These gentle giants are very close to extinction - only a few hundred left worldwide. Your voice can make a difference. Right whales have been seen from Mickler Beach. PLEASE comment (and share).

Just last year a critically endangered right whale mother and calf were struck by a boat and killed right here in St. Augustine. With less than 350 animals remaining, the North Atlantic Right Whale is on the brink of extinction. We need your voice to help protect these gentle giants from extinction.

09/08/2022

We missed this editorial in June - posting now. It's written by one of the most knowledgeable and hardest working SWCD supervisors in the state who has led a successful effort to conserve many millions of gallons of water. Senator Hutson's SB 1078 unconstitutionally cut his term in half and disqualified him from serving again - as it did many of us in Florida. Since January, The Hutsons (major developers) have donated over $400,000 to Governor DeSantis who signed SB1078 into law.

Who will be purged next under Florida’s autocratic regime? This is only the beginning.

08/24/2022

August 24th monthly meeting of the St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation District will take place at the Agricultural Center in St. Augustine. Start time: 9 a.m. The public is always welcome to attend in person or by Zoom at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81997625810?pwd=Q3c2V1A5N2VWK2MyNGpPbklyTW5Ddz09