The Knuckleheads of the Day award

Today's winners are the nine members of the South Florida Water Management District Board, Kevin McCarty, Irela Bagué, Miya Burt-Stewart, Alice J Carlson, Michael Collins, Nicolás J. Gutiérrez, Jr, Malcolm S. Wade, Jr, Harkley R. Thornton and Lennart E. Lindahl. They get the award for the following.

A golf course that will suck a million gallons a day from South Florida's dwindling water supply won approval Thursday from the same agency that wants homeowners to limit their lawn irrigation because of drought.

The board of the South Florida Water Management District unanimously approved Palm Beach County's plans for the 190-acre golf course, at the edge of the Everglades west of Boca Raton, despite criticism from environmentalists who called it a waste of natural resources.

*****

The decision came about two hours before the board imposed three-day-a-week limits on lawn sprinkling from Tequesta to the Keys, plus a 30 percent cut in irrigation by farmers relying on Lake Okeechobee.

Water managers said the golf course will fall under the same restrictions as everyone else, and board member Lennart Lindahl said the county should consider whether it's a wise time to begin planting grass. "But that's their business decision."

The approval for the golf course came exactly a month after the board announced it would no longer allow cities and counties to rely on the Everglades for their increasing water needs. Communities would have to turn to costlier sources, such as irrigating with treated sewage.

But Palm Beach County's new golf course will draw 30 million gallons of fresh water per month from on-site lakes and the shallow Biscayne Aquifer - all part of the same overstretched water system that draws from the Everglades. The course is under construction in the South County Regional Park at the west end of Glades Road.

Here is the Palm Beach Post's coverage of the new water restrictions. TFM sees these as needed because of the lack of rainfall.

As to the golf course, what the hell is going on? This smells, and I'm not talking about the sewage water either. A million gallons of water are needed a day for the course, that to anyone is a great big waste. Golfers will have to sacrifice too. So why build this course? Something tells me an illegal deal is going on hear, because nothing else makes sense. Considering these recent scandals in involving Palm Beach County politicians and other questionable deals, residents have to wonder if have the government officals around here are on the take.

For wasting millions of gallons of water while imposing water restrictions on others, the nine members of the South Florida Water Management District Board, Kevin McCarty, Irela Bagué, Miya Burt-Stewart, Alice J Carlson, Michael Collins, Nicolás J. Gutiérrez, Jr, Malcolm S. Wade, Jr, Harkley R. Thornton and Lennart E. Lindahl are today's Knuckleheads of the Day.

Linked to- Blue Star, Bright & Early, Cao, Jo, Morewhat, Outside the Beltway, Overtaken by Events, Perri Nelson, Pirate's Cove, Pursuing Holiness, Right Voices, Samantha Burns,