Jeff Clemens, a District 27 candidate for state Senate, issued a press release Wednesday challenging a campaign mailer that says he supported Lake Worth’s 2007 plan to discharge briny concentrate from a reverse-osmosis water plant while serving as the city’s mayor.

The flier shows a brownish substance spewing from a discharge pipe behind a photo of Clemens. It says Clemens, then mayor of Lake Worth, supported the utility’s plan to allow the discharge into the ocean off Lake Worth Beach, which opponents argued would harm coral reefs.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Clemens calls the flier “libelous.” His campaign manager, Cesar Fernandez, said he is consulting with lawyers about a possible lawsuit.

 Annette James, campaign manager for Clemens’ opponent, Mack Bernard, said Bernard had not seen the ads, did not approve them and could not comment.

“These mailers were not sent from, nor approved by, the Mack Bernard campaign,” James said.

The mailer accusing Clemens of being weak on the environment was paid for by the Committee for Effective Representation. The committee is controlled by Associated Industries of Florida, the big-busness group that is supporting Bernard in the race for the new Senate District 27 that covers much of east-central Palm Beach County.

In a May 2007 article published in The Palm Beach Post, Clemens is quoted as saying he would not support the water plant’s ocean discharge if it would harm the reef.

“I don’t want to look back 20 years from now and see that we killed the reef,” Clemens was quoted as saying.

“These attacks are just flat out lies,” Clemens said in a statement. “I voted to protect the coral reefs, and we closed the outfall while I was mayor of Lake Worth.”

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection denied the city’s permit for the ocean discharge of the reverse osmois concentrate. Clemens and the commissionvoted against hiring a lobbyist to push for approval of the permit.

The city has since built a reverse-osmosis water plant, which uses a deep injection well instead of an ocean outfall to dispose of its byproduct.

The Public Service Commission’s inspector general won’t investigate Commissioner Nancy Argenziano, turning down a request from a business group backing Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike.

PSC Inspector General Steven Stolting told Associated Industries of Florida lawyer Tamela Perdue in a letter that he won’t investigate allegations of impropriety and impartiality revealed in BlackBerry PIN messages exchanged between Argenziano and former aide Larry Harris.

AIF should file an ethics complaint instead, Stolting advised.

Stolting’s office is restricted to “conduct oversight activities within the Commission,” he wrote.

Argenziano called AIF’s accusations “baseless” and “stupid.”

Read here about FPL’s connection to AIF’s press release demanding the investigation.

Here’s the latest installment in the seemingly perpetual Public Service Commission drama.

Sen. Mike Fasano today shot back at Associated Industries of Florida president Barney Bishop who yesterday publicly accused Fasano of interfering in the utility regulators’ business as the PSC considers three cases that could collectively cost Floridians up to $3 billion a year in extra energy costs.

Fasano yesterday asked Commissioner Lisa Edgar to resign because of an ethics complaint about her communicating with an FPL executive during a hearing. The ethics commission found no probable cause that Edgar, reappointed by Gov. Charlie Crist to the PSC last year, did anything wrong.

AIF supports Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike, and yesterday evening Bishop called out Fasano by name for trying to influence the outcome of that case and a proposed $500 million Progress Energy Florida rate increase.

“Any attempt by anyone to influence “due process”, whether they are an elected official or not, is inappropriate,” Bishop said in a statement.

That got to Fasano, who issued a statement demanding his own due process.

“Barney Bishop is a highly paid representative for utility companies throughout Florida. Mr. Bishop states that I am interfering in the due process that Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light are entitled to as the Florida Public Service Commission considers billion dollar rate increase requests. As anyone versed in the most elemental aspects of law should know, due process entitles one to face his or her accuser. Since Mr. Bishop, and Associated Industries of Florida, has stated that my involvement in this case is inappropriate, I challenge Mr. Bishop to publicly debate me on this issue,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, wrote.
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