The Florida Roundup - Transportation planning, measles, and a new way to remove school books

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke with the chair of the Hillsborough County-City Planning Commission about transportation challenges and possible solutions (06:34). Then, we turned to an infectious disease expert for guidance on Florida’s measles outbreak (21:57). Plus, the latest in the effort to restrict books in Florida’s schools (33:12). And later, we bring you a few environmental stories from across the state (37:25).

Welcome to the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us this week. I figured we'd start today's show in a place where lots of you are right now. In a car. Yeah, I'm driving in Miami traffic at this moment. Hands-free though, being safe. Traffic, well it has a bad reputation doesn't it? Drivers in Tampa and Jacksonville, according to one study, are among the worst in America. The I-4 corridor is ranked as the most dangerous road in the United States in a separate study. And here in the Sunshine State, well, we can boast to having one of the highest auto insurance rates in the nation. All of this traffic, all this congestion, all the stopping and starting and waiting, well, it certainly all adds up.

It adds up to a lot of stress, and there's an economic cost to it as well. Floridians have to drive. That's the way the state has been laid out for transportation. Yes, there are some options for some people for public transportation, buses, trains in some locations and some Floridians have no choice but to use public transportation. But the great majority of transportation money in Florida is invested in roads. How can we untangle Florida's traffic? What are the solutions to the congestion that all of us experience? Call us 305-995-1800. 305-995-1800. Yes, you can call from your car. Be hands-free. Be safe. And if you are pulled over to the side of the road or at home listening or in the office,

you can also email us. The email address is radio at thefloridaroundup.org. You see, I'm on a road right now with one, two, three, four, five, six, six lanes, six lanes of traffic all going the same direction, and I'm barely going 10 miles an hour. Radio at thefloridaroundup.org is our email address or hands-free if you're driving 305-995-1800. I gotta try to get over lane here so I'm gonna throw it back to the studio. The expressway was opening up just a little bit picking up speed and I had to get over to the left. way was opening up just a little bit, picking up speed, and I had to get over to the left. The traffic was not cooperating. Cars and trucks were zooming up in my rear view mirror, crowding into my blind spot, claiming that little space in the left lane where I needed to occupy.

Isn't this what it feels like? Sometimes when you're inching over to the left on the highway, all of your attention is over here. You're craning your neck. Maybe you have one of those blind spot indicator lights going on, but other drivers seem oblivious to your desire to get left. So you stay stuck in the right lane. Well, it may become illegal to cruise for miles and miles and miles in the left lane. This week, the Florida Senate okayed a measure unanimously, some bipartisanship agreement over how to use the left lane

on major highways and interstates in Florida. Senate bill sponsor Keith Perry says the measure is intended to improve highway safety. It's a safety issue. You know, we have road rage. We're not going to eliminate road rage, but I think we can mitigate it some by people who want to be in that fast lane. Fort Myers Republican Representative Jenna Parsons-Molica is behind the plan.

It's not only a cause of frustration for us, more encounters, more maneuvers, more opportunities for accidents, and more opportunities for increased road rage. Driver behavior certainly can cause us headaches. By the way, do you ever notice that it's the other drivers that are making all the mistakes, not you? Christopher in Tampa thinks, though, it's more of a problem of the number of drivers on the road. I commute to work Monday through Friday in Tampa, and the traffic amount has grown immensely in the past couple of years, which is noticeably added as much as 20 minutes each way to my trip sometimes. I think the real issue is about the amount of traffic and not the grade of drivers. I believe Tampa needs big investments to roads and infrastructure to resolve some of the horrendous traffic we are experiencing right now.

Kristen Washington also spends plenty of time behind the wheel as a real estate agent. She lives in Tampa. When they tell me I have to go to a meeting downtown Tampa, I hate it. It's absolutely horrible. Call that malfunction junction. Just trying to get down through the interstate going into downtown Tampa. And unfortunately, because you have the widening of the lanes that are going on right now that have not been completed to even go off to I-4, it causes confusion. On top of the fact that we have so many more people moving to the Bay Area.

Mark in Alachua County writes us, prohibiting left-lane cruising on multi-lane highways in Florida to prevent accidents is nonsensical. Mark says there are no words. It obviously obstructs traffic and causes accidents. Tom in Jacksonville says the problem is not right-hand lane passing. Instead, the aggressive overall driving of those that do pass on the right. Tom continues writing that so many of these traffic crashes are due to aggressive drivers making excessive and risky lane changes.

Vonda in Palm Harbor says if you're in the wrong lane, don't cut everybody off by slingshotting across the highway. If you miss the exit, get up at the next exit and then backtrack. Good advice from Vonda in Paul Harbor. And Paul says, I suggest having local and highway patrol officers on patrol in decoy vehicles, not just the typical unmarked cars. Lots of folks calling in. You can also email us radio at the Florida roundup.org. Billions of dollars of your tax money will be spent on transportation in Florida this year, and the largest share goes toward road maintenance and construction. Nigel Joseph is joining us from our

partner station in Tampa, WUSF. Nigel is the chair of the Hillsborough Transportation Planning Organization. Nigel, how was the drive into the studio today? It's pretty good. Didn't come across any hassles or bad driving? No, no, not too much. I didn't have to go that into downtown Tampa, so it wasn't too bad. Fair enough. Transportation, of course, is a mix of federal dollars, state dollars and local dollars and interests from all across the country and in your neighborhood. But for residents, Nigel, right, transportation is about their commute. It's about their roads and stoplights. How would you describe getting around Hillsborough County today?

Getting around Hillsborough County today can be kind of challenging at times. I mean, it depends on when you're trying to get around Hillsborough County and where you're trying to get around to, really. How would you classify those challenges? What are the sources of those challenges? I think some of the callers and some of the voices that you spoke about earlier were pretty on key. I think it has to do with the number of drivers on the road. Obviously, that's tied to population increases. It has to do with the infrastructure trying to keep up with those rapid population increases. It has to do with funding trying to keep up with the other two categories.

So there's a mix of different things that go into the issue that we see on the roads out here. The population increase has been substantial in Hillsborough County between 2012 and 2022. That decade, Hillsborough County added more people than any other county in Florida except for Orange County, which is one county over from Hillsborough. Almost a quarter of a million new residents called Hillsborough County home. So how has that changed just even transportation planning in the area? Well, it causes us to have to look at things in tighter and tighter time spans, whereas, you know, 15, 20 years ago, we could look out long range and plan longer range. But nowadays, we tend to look at shorter time spans

and try to get things done quicker because things are growing so rapidly and changing so rapidly that as soon as you kind of come up with an idea, it's already too old or outdated or being challenged by some new group or some new population number that's looming on the near horizon. Give us an idea of how that has manifested itself. Is that mode of transportation, of talking about public transit? Is it even just, you know, where do you put a stoplight or whether or not you add a lane to a road? Well, it's a mix of all those things. One of the most recent things we've been trying to do is forecast congestion and using the forecast on congestion as a prioritization performance metric.

Obviously, different modalities. We also try to increase modality so that people have more choices and it isn't all about vehicles on the roads. There's an admixture of different things that we've done to try and address the problem. The shorter time spans that you cited because of the population increases, is the infrastructure, the bureaucracy of transportation set up for those shorter time spans to make decisions? Well, I mean, yes and no. It's set up to make decisions. The question really is, in what time span will the decision be made? So it's kind of a mixed bag there. You've got a lot of regulations, I suspect, zoning rules, environmental impact studies that have to be done. And then, of course, there's the actual design and build, construction, materials, labor.

So what are some methods that at least maybe you're talking about in Hillsborough County to try to shorten the time span while still recognizing these transportation projects are, you know, a financial investment and also can be a pretty substantial community investment. Well, one of the big ones is the MPO merger that everybody's talking about, trying to get the region to work together on transportation. So the MPO is Metropolitan Planning Organization, is that MPO? Correct. Okay. Correct. And so this is the idea that your transportation planning for Hillsborough County doesn't end

at the county lines. Exactly. Yeah. So how's that going? So far, so good. that your transportation planning for Hillsborough County doesn't end at the county lines. Exactly. Yeah. So how's that going? So far, so good. I mean, there's a lot of talk. There's a lot of interest. There's a lot of hopefulness in the conversation. So we're we on the Hillsborough side are moving forward. And I believe from what I hear about on the Pasco and the Pinellas sides, they're they're also interested in moving forward and trying to figure out how to work together as a region to address the problems and get more funding into the region so that we can obviously put more funding to the infrastructure and try and resolve some of these problems we're all looking at and sharing as a regional community. Yeah, Nigel Joseph is with us, the chair of the Hillsboro Transportation Planning Organization, just giving us a snapshot of some of the transportation challenges and opportunities that he's experiencing there in

Hillsborough County. We've got one of your neighbors, Nigel, calling in. John in Orlando has been listening. John, you're on the radio. Go ahead. Oh, yes. I think we're at a point where we could have technology to basically allow cars to reserve a registration through a traffic light. I don't know how many times I've stopped at a light. There may be 20 cars waiting while one car goes through on the other side to pass through. It just makes, or sometimes the light changes after three or four cars go through. It's really frustrating. I think that traffic will be a lot smoother if there was smarter interaction with cars and the traffic by

surface. It's a good point, John. Thanks for calling and adding this. Nigel, what about the idea of smarter traffic? I know here in South Florida, we've talked about traffic light synchronization in some of the major roads so that you're not just going a couple blocks and having another stoplight, even though you're going in the same direction. Absolutely. That's one of my big focuses. And I just wanted to also mention, just to clarify, I'm not the chairman of the TPO, Commissioner Gwen Myers chairs the TPO organization. I'm chairman of the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission. Thank you very much. Commissioner Gwen Myers. I apologize to the chair. And thank you for that correction in real time, Nigel. I appreciate it. But yeah, technology is a very important part of it.

I mean, technology is kind of difficult because technology is expensive. I think, you know, if we had a big basket full of money and just could do whatever we wanted with and had all the money in the world, technology would be the first thing that I would point to because, like the caller alluded to, if we can can get timing down if we can get traffic counting more precise right with more sensors on the roadways then we can start to do a lot of different things to manage right the congestion and the traffic that we're seeing so well there is a lot of money there is a lot of money though in the transportation kitty certainly and it comes from a lot of different sources uh is it being allocated in a way that is more 21st century

as opposed to perhaps something that was more 19th or 20th century? Well, that's a balancing act because infrastructure has to keep up. We all know that our infrastructure isn't exactly where it needs to be right now. So if we start pulling money away from investing in the infrastructure we have and spending that money on technologies that aren't yet proven, is that the right answer, right? These are all kind of balancing acts and questions that our elected officials have to take on. So be a little more specific about when you're talking about infrastructure. What does that mean? I mean, road maintenance is certainly one thing. Thankfully, here in Florida and Hillsborough County, you don't have the freeze and thaw cycle that we do or did up north for

those of us who are from that area. But so are you talking about, you know, building new lanes, you know, expanding roads? Right, capacity. Capacity, right. Whatever that becomes, whether it's new lanes, whether it's widening, whether it's, you know, people talk about toll lanes, people talk about double stacked highways. There's all these sorts of engineering answers to it, but really it boils down to capacity. And that ties into what we were talking about about population, right? We have all these pressures from population, but the capacity isn't keeping up. Let's hear from Jody, who's been listening in in Gainesville. Jody, you're on the radio.

Thanks for calling. Hi. So I've been looking at this since I started driving in the 70s, and we had talked about the problem. Again, it's a public interest, but when we make it a self-interest or a special interest, that's when we don't direct the problem, which is, you know, the addiction to the vehicle. We don't do carpooling, which we talked about in the 70s but we decided because um of the false doctrine of individualism that we have how many people drive on the road and they're all driving as single people instead of knowing that we're detached to those fellow drivers and

so that is the problem but we don't fix the problem we try to offset it yeah that is the problem, but we don't fix the problem. We try to offset it. Yeah, this is the social behavior aspect of transportation. Jody, thanks for adding carpooling in here. I grew up in a household where my father carpooled with other school teachers to go across town to teach high school chemistry for many, many years. Nigel, what about some of these social aspects of the behavior of commuters, of transportation, as opposed to just hardened infrastructure. Absolutely. That's a big part of it. But I do not want to overstep boundaries of people in psychology and sociology. Those are cultural and sociopolitical things that may be above my pay grade. I'm more of a technical kind of walk. Sure. OK. They're definitely a big part of it. Your caller makes a really good point that you know

the culture we live in plays a big role in how we decide to use the infrastructures and resources that we have a shared individual and incentivize right HOV so-called HOV lanes high occupancy vehicle lanes car pooling lanes during rush hour to say oh the left lane is only good if you've got two people or more in a car for for instance. What about those kinds of policies? Right. Yeah. Those are popular down there you're just talking about down in Miami. That's been popular down in South Florida and kind of- Well, I don't know how popular they are, but for those who have two or more people in their car, maybe they're popular. And those of us who are driving alone, looking longingly at those left-hand lanes,

perhaps not so much, right? Right. Right. We want to hear from another caller here, Jordan in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Jordan in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, you are listening and are on the radio. Go ahead, Jordan. Good evening, or good afternoon. Yes, I will say that my comment is that traffic, although it's a nightmare,

but the lack of authority, you can see people doing all kinds of crazy turns, red lights, driving in the wrong direction or in the wrong line, and nothing happens. Yeah. And authorities are tied because if they enforce it, they have to go to a traffic clinic to a judge or something to defend the traffic ticket, and they won't do it. People know that nothing will happen to them. Jordan, Nigel, what about traffic enforcement of the laws

and some of the crazy driving, the slingshotting that one emailer referred to of cutting across the lanes of the highway in order to get the exit? What about traffic enforcement? Yeah, that's another big part of it. Your callers make some really great points. I mean, enforcement is a big, big part of it. And a big part of enforcement is visibility, making sure that we have enough, you know, police officers, sheriff, roadway rangers to be out there and deter the behaviors that we spoke about just through visibility. But that plays a big role also. Our technical director is pointing out that those high occupancy lanes, so to speak, the express lanes, hybrid vehicles, get a free pass in those cash lanes, those express lanes that have some of the dynamic pricing.

So there's a bit of an incentive there, for instance. Nigel, we appreciate the time. Thanks for sharing the picture of transportation in and around Hillsborough County. Hope you have a safe drive back to the office or home or wherever you're off to here on this live Friday afternoon. Got to beat the traffic, right? Beat the traffic sometimes. Yes, sir. Nigel, great to speak with you. All right, thank you. Nigel Joseph with the Hillsborough Transportation Planning Commission.

We've got plenty more to come here on this edition of the Florida Roundup. We've got a measles outbreak in South Florida. There have been reported cases in Central Florida. We'll get you updated with what you need to know about measles, the virus, and the vaccine. That's next as you're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Next week on this program, the scheduled end of the legislative session here in the Sunshine State. Lawmakers are due to wrap up their law writing for the year, including decisions on how to spend billions of dollars of your tax money. Kids under 16 may be banned from social media platforms in Florida. Some older teenagers may

be allowed to work longer hours. There may be new restrictions on civilian oversight of police. Spending on education and health care makes up the lion's share of the state budget. So what do you think about the law writing and law making so far this year here in Florida? What issues are you satisfied with? What issues would you have wanted lawmakers to tackle? Let us know now by emailing radio at thefloridaroundup.org, radio at thefloridaroundup.org, and we may use your comments next week. Now, the measles. The United States declared the virus eradicated a couple of decades ago, but outbreaks have popped up, including one here in Florida. At least nine cases have been confirmed in Broward County.

The outbreak started at an elementary school two weeks ago. There has also been a case reported in Polk County, which is thought to be related to international travel. And the Orlando Sentinel reports the Orlando health system in central Florida has seen four cases in the past month. 305-995-1800. We are taking live phone calls on this Friday. Your questions, concerns about measles, 305-995-1800, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. Get those emails and phone calls going now. We will have a few minutes here to talk with you. Measles is very contagious and can be serious. The State Department of Health has not declared a public health emergency here in Florida. The State Surgeon

General Joseph Latipo wrote a letter to parents of the school experiencing the outbreak in Broward County that it was up to them if they wanted to send their children back to class, even if they're not vaccinated against the virus. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends unvaccinated children stay home for three weeks. This week, the congresswoman representing this area, where the school with the measles outbreak has happened criticized the state's Surgeon General response. Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz called Ladapo grossly irresponsible. Florida's Surgeon General stands in stark contrast to America's proud legacy of bipartisan public health success.

instead politicizes public health and peddles risky freedom of choice rhetoric that fuels vaccine hesitancy and downplays the public and personal health necessity vaccination. The most recent update on the Florida Department of Health's website is from a week ago and is directed at health care providers. Dr. Eileen Marty is with us now from Florida International University, an infectious disease specialist. You may recognize her name from being on this program in a regular state during the height of the pandemic. Dr. Marty, welcome back to the program. Nice to speak with you again. Always a pleasure. What is known about this outbreak in Broward County, about how it started? Well, the outbreak in Broward County was initiated, was recognized, and we're not, you know, it's still under investigation as to exactly how it started that we wound up currently with nine children. which is in the United States, generally these outbreaks begin because someone imports it from

another country where there are more cases. And there is a problem all over the world right now with measles because, for example, about the CDC estimates 61 million doses of MMR vaccine were missed during the interval that COVID was raging of 2020 to 2022. And that allows for a lot more people to be susceptible just by itself. And some of that wasn't because of vaccine hesitancy, but simply the difficulty of getting to the child vaccinated during that era. But that's part of the problem. How dangerous is this virus, especially for children? So for an unvaccinated child, the chances of coming down with the measles if they're exposed is somewhere between 90 and 95 percent. For a fully vaccinated child,

the chance of having any symptoms from being infected with the measles virus is little less than 2%. So there's a big difference there. And once you are infected with the virus, you have about a one in five chance of having a problem that's going to lead that child to need hospitalization.

So this is a virus that can cause a series of problems. One of the most important things that people need to understand is that this virus targets those hematopoietic stem cells, those cells in the bone marrow that make your red blood cells and your white blood cells and your platelets. And by targeting those cells, one of the problems that children get is anemia. And so they're tired. And another problem is that the white cells that are so important to keep your immune system strong are lowered as well. And so they become susceptible to all kinds of secondary infections as well. Not only that, we know that people who get the

measles, children who get the measles, remain susceptible to other infections for months afterwards. In fact, this is so much of a problem that even things that they originally had good antibodies to or good cell-mediated immunity to, that drops too, because those cells that are normally keeping their protection up to these other infections have been brought low because of the measles virus infection. Yeah, because they're going after those white blood cells, for instance. Yes, and the platelets, which makes some people susceptible to bleeding, of course. Sure. What about booster shots for older children or even adults? So it depends on when you were born, right? People who were born

in 1957, virtually everyone born before 1957 or 1957 was infected with the measles. This is the most infectious virus known among humans. It's not the most infectious virus of all because a foot and mouth of animals is a little more contagious. But among humans, measles is the most infectious so that it has a baseline reproductive rate between 15 to 20. That means that each person who is infected has, if they go into a community where no one's immune, would infect 15 to 20 additional people. And put that in comparison to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that was so contagious,

and yet each person that got COVID only infected between one to four, even at the maximum time, four other people. So you can see that logarithmically, measles is a lot more infectious. And measles has been historically an incredibly important disease. In fact, measles brought down the monarchy in Hawaii because of the king and queen being infected. Wow. And so the booster shot question, you mentioned, folks, before 1957, the commercialization of the vaccine for measles was, I think it was Merck originally back in the 60s, 63, 64 is when it finally got approved, I think. But what about, you know, for, you know, parents of children who may have been vaccinated recently,

but those parents have gone perhaps decades between an MMR shot? Well, the beauty of the MMR vaccine that we're giving now, which is, by the way, not the same one that was given in 1963. Yeah, technology has changed. The science has advanced. The science has advanced. The science has advanced. It is so safe and so effective now that it's really just a beautiful

vaccine. If the parents, by some odd chance, never got measles and never had the vaccine, they absolutely should be vaccinated. if they only received one vaccine, because back in the 70s, we were only giving a single dose. And then in the late 80s, there was a huge outbreak of measles, and it was recognized that two shots were necessary when using the vaccine version. So the vaccine strain doesn't get into the same receptors and doesn't use the same receptors that the wild virus does. And therefore, it is milder and doesn't and cannot cause the complications that you get from the wild virus. But again, because it's it's a little different, we needed two doses. So if someone only got one dose, they should get a second dose. Someone who has had two doses, they're good to go with the caveat that an infected,

a fully vaccinated person can get the virus in their system because a vaccine isn't a magic shield, right? It's going to, that virus can still get into their system. They're just not going to get sick. Or even if they do, it's going to be very, very, very mild symptoms. And the caveat being that someone who does have the virus in their system and is fully vaccinated, even though they may not have any significant symptoms at all. symptoms at all. We now know from data from California, when Californians were not vaccinating the way they should, that a person like that can transmit the virus to someone else. So suppose like my daughter just had a new baby, that baby is too young to have been vaccinated for measles. If the other children were to bring the even though they're fully vaccinated into the household, then that baby is at risk. This is so this is this is this is a real problem for pregnant women who have not been vaccinated and for, you know, children that are less than six months old that can't be vaccinated. Just as a side note, Dr. Marty, sounds like congratulations are in order

for you and your family for the new edition. So I don't want to let that pass by. Michael has been listening in from Coco. Michael, you are on the radio. Thanks for calling in. Go ahead. Hi. Good morning or afternoon.

Good afternoon. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, I'm a retired physician, and I agree completely with your guest. The key to the key to measles is what we've done for nearly 100 years, and that's adequate vaccination and requiring vaccination to attend public schools. We need, what we really need, is a functional public health system, which we no longer have in this state. Michael, thanks for sharing your viewpoint from Coco as a retired physician. Dr. Marty, I want to try to leave politics out of this a little bit, but what are the consider there's been criticism that the State Department of Health has not declared a public health emergency in Florida with these cases, particularly in Broward County.

What are some of the considerations for declaring a public health emergency? a public health emergency? Well, for something to be declared a public health emergency in any region, then the amount of disease that is being produced, whether directly or indirectly by that infection, has to exceed the capabilities of the hospitals and clinics that could manage it. That's really the way we define a public health emergency. And that's why, for example, COVID was declared a public health emergency because it was exceeding the capabilities and therefore impacting not just on people who got, for example, COVID, it was impacting on surgeries and all kinds of other things because of loss of resources. So I think that calling it a public health emergency is not the key point here. I think what's key is that the message isn't about keeping your child at home. The message is about getting your child protected

so that your child doesn't end up with the many, many complications that they can get from measles and that they don't forward transmit to others. Because even though I already mentioned that, yes, somebody fully vaccinated can transmit, it's a much lower risk from that person than somebody who's never been vaccinated, right? Because the amount of virus shed by somebody unvaccinated with full-blown measles is very high. And I think people need to understand there are some very serious complications, viral pneumonia, secondary pneumonia, and three different types of neurologic conditions that result from measles. And one of them, the subacute sclerosis and penicillin is absolutely

deadly and can't be stopped once it starts so um there is this is this virus is no joke and the key message that should be coming out from our public health officials is get your child vaccinated and do what's appropriate uh in the community so that, as Florida used to do, we were extraordinarily strict in not allowing unvaccinated children to come to the schools. That's where we should be. That's what's going to really reduce the risk. Dr. Eileen Marty is an infectious disease specialist with Florida International University. Dr. Marty, nice to catch up with you. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us again. Thank you. Pleasure.

I'm Tom Hudson. You are listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Now, a new tactic in the effort to remove books from Florida public schools. Indian River County has taken markers to draw over illustrated naked behinds in some books. Yeah, these are drawings, some of them drawings of made-up creatures that appear in children's books, and some of them with naked derrieres. Well, now the illustrated derrieres are covered up by hand-drawn shorts and pants. Carlos Suarez, a reporter at CNN, first did a story on this, and he joins us now.

Carlos, welcome to our program. You were at one of these book review meetings for Indian River School District recently. Tell us how did that go about? How did that meeting come about? Hey, Tom, thanks for having me. Yeah, so we were up in Indian River County for one of these book objection meetings, essentially, where a parent goes before a group of educators, as well as folks that live in the community, and they submit what they believe is a book that is in violation of state law. And so then these committee members, they accept this challenge, they decide exactly how long they're going to take to read the book. And then they come back, they take public comment, and then they vote

on whether one of these books that has been challenged by a parent is removed from a school library. Now, once these committees, and they can procedurally differ from school district to school district, once they take that vote, it goes before the full school board, and then board members sometimes decide to vote in line with these committee members or they decide to overrule their decision on whether to remove these books. Generally, it's been about the words in the books that have been objectionable to these folks. But in this case, what you found in Indian River County are some illustrations, not even

photographs. These are illustrations and in some case, an illustration of a made up creature, a goblin who is showing its behind to to a reader. Yeah, so the folks over at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, this organization that tracks these book challenges in Florida, they were the ones that really uncovered these book illustrations that had been changed in Indian River County. uncovered these book illustrations that had been changed in Indian River County. They track all of these books. They make these public records requests and they get all of this information and they essentially put it on their website so that folks are better informed about what is happening at a lot of these school districts. And what they found was that this school district in Indian River County had essentially taken a sharpie and pen to some of these book illustrations. And they're pretty, you know, they're well-known books. I mean, one of them was In the Night

Kitchen by Maury Sendak, you know, critically acclaimed. That's a book that I read when I was a child. And they also went after this other book, Unicorns Are the Worst, which is just about a goblin who's upset with his unicorn neighbors. And so this one parent made this objection, said that it violated state law. And she was the one that offered up a solution to the school district, which was looking to cover up these illustrations or you need to remove the books. And the school district went along and literally took a pen to paper. And so these books that are in Indian River County have now been covered up where the characters were naked.

I've got about 30 seconds left here, Carlos, but the Moms of Liberty group has been really leading the charge with this book challenge. And you spoke with one of their leaders. What did she tell you about why these illustrated backends were somehow offensive or against the law? Yeah, Jennifer Pippins is a parent up there, and she is the chair of the county's Moms for Liberty group up there. She was pretty, you know, she was quite proud of the fact that according to her,

she has challenged 242 books in the last couple of years. And she told me that she felt that the nudity here was an issue, though, when I pointed out that nudity alone is not against Florida law. She didn't really have quite of an answer. And towards the end of our interview, she all but said, we've got to leave it there, Carlos. Thank you.

This is the roundup. This is the Florida roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. A couple of stories about fish around Florida now and stick around for one story about butterflies. First, the number of rare sawfish reported sick or dying in the lower Florida Keys has climbed to more than three dozen now amid a mysterious outbreak of odd fish behavior. Yeah, more than two dozen other species are turning up sick and spinning in the water, but not always dying.

Jenny Stoletovich reports now from our partner station WLRN in Miami. Scientists racing to determine what's killing the sawfish say they don't yet know if the two things are related. Whirling fish, a behavior commonly found in freshwater fish infected with a parasite, was first spotted in early November. The first dead sawfish was found on January 30th. That's escalating concern that whatever's causing other fish to fall sick is now killing a species so rare it can only be found in South Florida. It's also one of the ocean's coolest. You couldn't dream up this creature if you tried to. Dean Grubbs is a fish ecologist at Florida State University whose lab

studies and tracks sawfish. He's also a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's sawfish recovery team. There are five species of sawfish in the world. That's it. And they're all listed as endangered or critically endangered. So an occurrence like this, where all of a sudden quite a few large animals are dying inexplicably is a great concern to us. Scientists are so far focusing their investigation on a tiny algae found in Ciguatera. The toxin can accumulate in fish and make people who eat the fish sick, but it normally doesn't harm the fish. That's leading them to suspect this toxin is a different species. State officials say it has only been found in

water near shore and not on reefs where ciguatera occurs. It also appears to be influenced by tides. Dead sawfish have only been found between Bahia Honda and Key West on the Atlantic side. Where they're sort of obvious to people because if they move into the shallows and it's sort of rocky there so they're kind of obvious. So we have no idea if there are more of them that are dying, but on the backside, on the gulf side of the Keys, because that's all thick mangroves, and it wouldn't be obvious if they're back there. This particular toxic algae can also sometimes occur after disturbances. So scientists think the summer ocean heat wave that bleached coral throughout the Keys may have ignited it.

But they say at this point, that's just a theory. And they're not sure why sawfish are more vulnerable. They love to lie on the bottom and wait for schooling fishes and things like that to come out of these tidal channels. And they swipe at them with that rostrum and eat them. And so if you have schooling fishes that have been affected by whatever's going on, things like mullet or even pinfish or whatever it might be, there is the potential that they could be eating more of the infected prey. The toxin is not turned up in fish we eat, but scientists are still testing. They're also trying to figure out if that ocean heat wave is

a cause, so they're sampling water where temperatures spiked. I'm Jenny Stiletovich in Miami. This next one is a bit different. Folks in South Tampa have been complaining about a weird bass sound. That's bass, not bass. Some say it's loud music. Another theory is that it is from black drum fish. Reporter Sky LeBron from our partner station WUSF in Tampa has been listening to the sound and to the people trying to solve the mystery. James Locascio is preparing for a dive. He's about to drop a mic into a canal on Davis Islands in the backyard of a family that says they've heard the the ominous sound. All right, let's see how this goes. Locasio is a senior scientist at Mote Marine Laboratory.

He says the sound is similar to what he discovered in the early 2000s in canals from drumfish around Cape Coral and Punta Gorda. So to dive into his hypothesis, Locasio is diving in and around Tampa Bay to drop underwater microphones that can pick up the sound. So the black drum, we measured their strength at 165 decibels, but that's relative to an underwater reference, so it's not directly comparable to air. For reference, that sound in the air can blow out an eardrum. Underwater, it's not that strong, but it's still pretty loud. The drumfish can do this with an incredibly strong swim bladder that produces the noise and acts almost like a speaker to stretch its volume out. Locasio got involved because Sarah Healy, a resident who's heard the sound, asked for his help. She's created a map pinpointing all of the locations where people have reached out to her,

saying they've heard it. Healy launched a GoFundMe to help pay for Locasio's research. She says others have come to her saying they're sure it's music, and she's not discounting that possibility either. I don't think they're wrong. I think that it's not an either-or. It's a dense urban area, and so we're going to have noises that are from multiple different sources. Healy's friend, Steph Kaltenbaugh, has a method that's a bit more boots on the ground. She hops in her minivan and travels up and down Bayshore trying to pinpoint the sound. We are on the hunt for this mystery noise. Kaltenbaugh says she's heard the sound plenty of times over the past couple years. It rattles the entire house. It's just this constant vibration.

And Kaltenbaugh isn't alone. In fact, one man says he's already discovered the origins of the sound. 110%. Brad Hall is a local video and audio producer. He says he pointed a high-end microphone off of the Ballast Point Park Pier and triangulated the sound to somewhere across the bay. It sounded like this. Then he drove to the other side of the bay along U.S. Highway 41, and after a while, he started hearing loud music. And I could hear as clear as day. I mean, that sound was just pounding my windshield like nobody's business. Hall came across a couple cars with rows of speakers along the back.

And when I got over there, the sound levels, the visualization, the amount and size of the audio equipment, everything matched. It all made perfect sense. Others are skeptical of Hall's findings being the ultimate answer. Locascio says he'll continue to collect data until April. He'll then fish the mics out the bay and analyze the sounds. But an answer needs to be found at the very least. I'm going to lose my mind.

I mean, I guess I'd have to get over it, right? But I think we're all just extremely determined right now. Determined to find the solution to what's becoming a classic South Tampa mystery. I'm Sky LeBron in Tampa. I'm Tom Hudson. This is the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Finally in the Roundup, more butterflies are dying due to climate change, pesticide use, and a loss of habitat. But one butterfly native to Florida and was thought to be gone forever is making a surprising comeback.

Here's reporter Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota. A small black butterfly with wings just over an inch long eats nectar from a wildflower. Looking on, Craig Hegel smiles like a proud father. You know, the thing about atalas is they are so gorgeous. He's director of the Botanical Gardens at the University of South Florida in Tampa, which is now home to several of these atala butterflies. It's a dark butterfly, but it's got this fantastic bright red body that you can't miss,

and this iridescent blue markings on the wings. Hegel says for years he's been involved with the Gardening for Wildlife movement, which urges people to choose local, native plants instead of flashy tropical ones imported from abroad. The Atala is like maybe the best story because it shows if you put something in your yard, you get something in return.

And that something begins with a prehistoric plant called the Kunti. It looks like a bushy, dark green fern. It's the host plant where these Atala lay their eggs. The caterpillars eat the leaves and then attach their chrysalis to them before they turn into butterflies. If eaten raw, the root and seeds are poisonous. Hegel says indigenous people figured out how to make the plant edible. Then European settlers over-harvested it to make flour. So the indigenous people used coontief as they needed it, but the early white guys that came here just dug them all up to make a profit,

and they really had basically eliminated Kunti from the landscape. As Kunti plants disappeared, so did Atala butterflies. They've been known to live in Cuba and the Bahamas as well, but in Florida, from around the 1930s, they seem to be gone. as well, but in Florida from around the 1930s, they seemed to be gone. That changed one day in 1979. A naturalist named Roger Hammer was walking around on Virginia Key near Miami when he spotted a Kunti plant. And there was these red larvae with yellow spots down their sides feeding on the leaves, and I wasn't sure what they were. And being an inquisitive naturalist, I collected some, brought them home, and reared them. When the first one emerged from its chrysalis with those inky black wings and red body.

Well, it was one of those oh-my-God moments, and I double-checked to make sure I was seeing what I believed I was seeing, and sure enough, that's what they were. They were Atala butterflies. Hammer raised more and brought some to nearby botanical gardens and to wild areas of Everglades National Park. Fast forward to today, Nkunti plants are more common again in the wild, in yards, and along medians and roadways. And Atala butterflies are now seen almost all the way up the east and west

coasts of Florida. Forrest Hecker is a community educator who works at the University of Florida's Farm Extension Office in Sarasota. He helps people spread italis to their own neighborhoods. Otherwise, he says, they really stay where they were born. If they have their host plant and they have the right flowers, they're not going to go more than like an acre range. Here's how it works. People like Janet Paisley buy a couple of potted young Kunti plants at a native plant nursery. Then they drop them off at the butterfly garden outside Hecker's office. And five days later, Forrest emailed me and said, you better come and get these.

You have hundreds, hundreds of eggs on these. She brought the potted plants to a little preserve in her neighborhood and put them down near some established Kunti plants. A year later, Atalas fly around freely in her bayside neighborhood of Pelican Cove. A few residents walk by, and an Atala lands right on a woman's arm. Is he still? Oh, there he goes. Aw, they're friendly little things. Atala butterflies never made the endangered species list

because when it became federal law in 1973, they were presumed gone from Florida. And now, a spokesman for Florida Fish and Wildlife says Atala butterflies are no longer considered in need of protection by the state. Sandy Coy has been researching Atalas for 20 years. She says even though they've spread far beyond their traditional range, they're not out of danger. We take away the host plant again. We pave over too much more habitat. We have a devastating hurricane. Any of those factors could wipe this butterfly out again. Not much bigger than a quarter, tiny italias don't fly far or pollinate any crucial crops. But nature lovers across Florida say just helping this little butterfly exist again

is a thrill. I'm Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota. That's our program this week. It is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF Public Media in Tampa. The program is produced by Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. WLRN's Vice President of Radio and our Technical Director is Peter Meritz. Engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson, Charles Michaels, and Jackson Hart. Richard Ives answers our phones. The theme music is provided by Miami Jazz guitarist Aaron Libos at aaronlibos.com. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening,

and supporting public media in your community. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.