VIERA, Fla. – Once again, Brevard County will let voters decide if they want to pay for cleaning the beautiful, yet infamously polluted Indian River Lagoon.
Tuesday, county commissioners approved sending a renewal of the ten-year half-penny sales tax back to the ballot this November.
One local your Viera Community Correspondent James Sparvero met at the meeting who plans to vote yes was Captain Blair Wiggins, a fishing guide and host of his own TV show.
In the last ten years, Wiggins also started planting tens of millions of clams, which the county said, along with more than 130 cleanup projects in the last decade, have helped make the lagoon clearer and now there’s fewer algae blooms and fish kills.
“Could you imagine what the water would look like if it stayed looking like it did in 2015,” Wiggins asked. “It literally stayed black for two years.”
One of the criticisms of the tax is that while the county’s spent more than a $100 million on those helpful projects, there’s four or five times that amount that’s been collected in total.
“We have about $500 million worth of projects that are underway,” natural resources director Virginia Barker explained. “They’re either in design, permitting, construction. Those projects are moving along.”
Almost two/thirds of voters overwhelmingly approved the tax in 2016, and the county said it’s cost the average person about $400 a year.
Election Day is Nov. 3.