From Andy Johnson, host of "Down to Business" radio show, former member of the Florida House

Dear Mercury Falling:

I am glad to hear there is such a group and/or blog as mercuryfallingjax. I salute you and I am FOR your work.

Very few people in Florida, and, particularly, very very few people in Jacksonville, understand that our health is at risk due to the high levels of mercury in our food, especially our seafood, probably mainly due to mercury coming indirectly from our coal-fired plants and our mass-burn garbage incinerators.

One wonderful way to boost this mercury, if that is the goal, would be for us to build more of the stupid and nearly-insane mass burn garbage incinerators.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds very good to make garbage just disappear into the air and to generate electricity, too, through mass burn garbage incineration?! But mass-burn garbage incineration is a terrible thing when anyone looks at the facts. ONE of many reasons to put an absolute stop to any more of these monsters is...that these monsters put mercury into the air which then comes back through the system, more and more concentrated, in mother's milk, cow's milk, our food, our seafood, etc.

Jacksonville people need to ponder the frightening fact that our Mayor and our unanimous Council and our unanimous Board of the Chamber and the unanimous Board of the local Home Builders and of the local REALTORS and the Times-Union...were all in 100% agreement that our city needed to build the BIGGEST DAMN MASS-BURN GARBAGE INCINCERATOR IN THE ENTIRE FREE WORLD back in 1988, 1989.

Thank God the people with brains eventually did prevail on this topic and, finally, the Council repented and the project was killed.

However, somebody needs to write that chapter of history and we need to hear some open comments from the big big mass-burn boosters. Do they now all admit they were wrong? Or are they still over on the sidelines, engines running, ready to do other equally bad things to us if we let them have a chance?

I say all that to say this. The very first step in dealing with mercury in Florida must be that there be a total stop, forever, to the building of any new mass burn garbage incinerators. (There are many other evil aspects to this fight. We'll stop with mercury for now.)

2. The second stop must be that we do more research.

3. The third step must be that we become very very very skeptical about building more coal-fired plants in Florida. We need to consider all forms of renewable energy. We need to learn more about the possibilities in conservation and in improved efficiency. And, frankly,

we must also look at more nuclear power.

4. We need to consider spending some money to jazz up the existing coal-fired plants in Florida to help them belch out less poison, including mercury poison.

5. We need to act like stewards of this earth, which is of course the honest way to describe how ALL major religions look at the relationship of humans to the earth. Stewardship is what is needed! Global warming, mercury poisoning, other forms of air pollution, and the absolutely finite aspect of fossil fuels...are all reasons we need to make adjustments quickly to become less dependent on fossil fuels.

Sincerely,

Andy Johnson