We live on the water. It's why our homes are worth what they're worth, why our restaurants and marinas have customers, and why families like mine chose Boynton Beach in the first place. So I'm going to treat clean water the way I treat every problem: define it, measure it, and fund the fix. Here are the numbers — every one sourced, every one checkable.
Our own beaches were posted unsafe this year. On January 7, 2026, based on January 5 sampling, the Florida Department of Health issued water-quality advisories for elevated enterococcus — fecal-indicator bacteria — at four Palm Beach County beaches, including two of ours: Boynton Beach (Ocean Ridge) and Lantana Beach. (The other two were Lake Worth–Kreusler in Palm Beach and Ocean Cay Park in Jupiter.) DOH said the water did not meet safety criteria and advised avoiding water activities because of an increased risk of illness for swimmers (CW34/DOH, Jan. 7, 2026). Lake Worth–Kreusler went under advisory again on June 16, 2026, and was cleared on June 18 (DOH–Palm Beach). That's not an abstraction. That's whether your kids can swim on a Saturday.
The Lake Worth Lagoon — our estuary — is under stress. The Lagoon is Palm Beach County's largest estuary: 20 miles from North Palm Beach to Ocean Ridge, fed by two inlets and three flood-control canals draining more than 350,000 acres (Palm Beach County ERM). Peer-reviewed monitoring from 2007–2019 found seagrass and macroalgae declined after 2012 and were "barely detected after 2016" in parts of the lagoon, with the central lagoon nearly devoid of vegetation (Gulf & Caribbean Research, vol. 34). Seagrass is the engineer's gauge on this system — when it dies, the water is telling you the nutrient load is too high.
And blue-green algae keeps coming back. DOH–Palm Beach issued repeated Lake Okeechobee cyanobacteria alerts and cautions through 2025 and 2026, including cautions on February 25, 2026 and July 10, 2026. Harmful algal blooms are an ongoing, documented county-level problem.
No mystery here either. Aging septic systems and stormwater runoff push nutrients and bacteria into canals that drain straight into the Lagoon and onto our beaches. The county knows exactly where the worst inputs are — its Lake Worth Lagoon Initiative has a ranked project list, and three of the seven ranked projects for 2026 are septic-to-sewer conversions, including a $6.732 million Town of Manalapan conversion just up the coast from our district (PBC ERM, LWLI 2026 Legislative Request).
The other half of the problem is Tallahassee. The money exists; the question is who brings it home.
The state budget signed in late June 2026 (FY 2026–27) includes, per the Governor's office:
Now the district's ask. The Lake Worth Lagoon Initiative's 2026 request is $6,592,500 in state funds, matched dollar-for-dollar locally — $13,185,000 total across seven ranked projects (PBC ERM): the three septic-to-sewer conversions, Peanut Island habitat restoration ($1.32M), a North Lake Way living shoreline ($525K), a bathymetric survey ($220K), and Golfview Heights water systems ($798K).
Do the division: a $6.59 million ask inside a $301 million septic-to-sewer pot and a $396 million water-quality pot. That's roughly two percent of one line item. This is not a moonshot. It's a funding request waiting for someone in the room to close it.
And the return on investment is proven. Since 1998, the state has put $26 million+ into Lagoon restoration, which local matching turned into 62 projects totaling $95 million+ — every state dollar roughly tripled (PBC ERM). Since the late 1990s that work has built 250+ acres of habitat across 50+ projects: Snook Islands, Peanut Island, South Cove. As an engineer, I don't know a better public-works ROI in this county. My job would be to extend it.
1. Carry the Lagoon appropriation. File and fight for the LWLI's ranked list — starting with the $6.59M state share — from inside the majority that writes the budget. 2. Push District 90's septic-to-sewer projects to the front of the $301M line. The county has already done the engineering and ranked the projects. The missing piece is a closer in Tallahassee. 3. Watch the PFAS cost curve for your water bill. New federal drinking-water limits and Florida's new quarterly PFAS sampling mandate for wastewater utilities mean compliance costs are expected to land on residents' water bills (PFAS Central; The Floridian, 2026). I'll push for state grant dollars to absorb those costs instead of ratepayers — clean water is an affordability issue, and I'll treat it like one. 4. Publish the results. Same standard as the rest of this campaign: every water dollar I fight for gets posted here, with what it bought.
In 2026, Florida did pass a serious PFAS law: HB 1019, the Joe Casello Act, named for District 90's own late representative — the Boynton Beach Democrat and retired firefighter who held this seat until his death in July 2025. It phases out PFAS-containing firefighting foam in stages — banning non-emergency training use on July 1, 2026, sale and distribution on July 1, 2027, and possession and use, with exemptions, on July 1, 2029 — and requires quarterly PFAS sampling of effluent and biosolids at public wastewater facilities of 25,000 gallons per day or more beginning July 1, 2026. It became law because the majority moved it and the Governor signed it.
The incumbent was prime sponsor of a separate PFAS bill, HB 855 (PFAS cleanup target levels and Class B firefighting foam restrictions). It was filed December 19, 2025, referred to four committees on January 5, 2026, was never heard in any of them, and died in the Natural Resources & Disasters Subcommittee on March 13, 2026; its identical Senate companion, SB 1058, died the same day (Florida Senate bill history). I say this without malice: in a chamber with a Republican supermajority, that's the predictable math of the minority. Same issue, two paths — one became law.
Clean water in District 90 needs a representative in the majority who shows up with the county's ranked project list, the budget line numbers, and the leverage record — and doesn't leave until our share comes home. That's the job I'm asking you to hire me for.
Every figure on this page is sourced. Find an error? Send me the source and I will fix it.
Updated: 2026-09-04