An Everglades love-fest turned nasty Tuesday afternoon when Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and Everglades Foundation Chairman Paul Tudor Jones sniped about whether the agriculture industry is meeting its obligation to pay for restoring the “River of Grass.”

Everglades Summit moderator Chuck Todd, MSNBC’s national correspondent, launched the dust-up by asking a panel including Gov. Rick Scott, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Putnam and Jones about a constitutional amendment approved by voters more than 15 years ago requiring polluters to pay for the primary costs of Everglades cleanup.

Putnam praised the agriculture industry, including sugar growers, for cutting back on the amount of nutrients flowing into the Everglades by half, more than double what the law calls for.

“We are seeing a much better conversation between agriculture and the environmental community because all of us have watched in the last 10 years watching as development just explodes,” Putnam said.

But Jones wasn’t satisfied, and responded with an off-the-wall reference to a “Saturday Night Live” skit lampooning “60 Minutes” co-hosts Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick.

“Shana, you bitch,” Jones said to Putnam.

Caught off guard until Jones explained his joke, Putnam responded: “Well at least I didn’t say, ‘Jane, you ignorant…”

Turning serious, Jones said the agriculture industry contributes up to 87 percent of the pollution in the Everglades but picks up only about 13 percent of the clean-up costs.

“Really the question is what is fair. What should be the actual cost that they’re going to pay?” Jones said. “When it comes to enforcing the will of the people of the state and the constitution what kind of leadership are we going to get from the executive department?”

Read the rest of the story here.

Gov. Rick Scott supports U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar‘s ban on the importation of Burmese pythons and three other non-native constrictive snakes, the governor said this afternoon.

MSNBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd asked Scott and Salazar about the snake ban at an Everglades Summit in Tallahassee this afternoon.

“People laugh about this but…it’s crazy,” said Todd, a Miami native. “This issue of my idiot old neighbors in South Florida. They import these pets then get scared of them and dump them in the Everglades.”

The pythons are “injurious and they are dangerous,” Salazar said.

Salazar said the python ban is part of a comprehensive approach to cleaning up the Everglades.

“We need to make sure the investments that we’re making…that they’re not for naught,” he said.

The invasive snakes are killing native habitat and wildlife, Salazar said.

“We need to make sure that what we are doing is comprehensive,” he said. “We need to look at the Everglades as an entire ecosystem.”

Critics said Salazar’s ban doesn’t go far enough because he only targeted four of nine dangerous snakes.

“We tailored our regulation to go after the present danger that we have in the Everglades and right now it’s the Burmese python, which is making up habitat with tens of thousands of Burmese pythons that are out there,” Salazar said after the meeting.

Salazar said his agency his “going after those species that present the greatest threat right now” and that five other species are being scrutinized scientifically and for the economic implications of banning those as well.

“But these four are the first step and we have the other five under consideration,” he said.

Scott said he supports the new federal rule, especially because Congress has failed for three years to pass U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s legislation that would have outlawed pythons.

Nelson praised Salazar and blasted critics for trying to “delay and obstruct” the new rule.

“These giant constrictor snakes do not belong in the Everglades and they do not belong in people’s back yards. Not only are they upsetting the ecological balance because they’re at the top of the food chain. They even attack alligators and consume them,” Nelson said.

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Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham cautioned lawmakers and environmentalists this morning that “privatizing” state waters would cause “considerable damage” to the Everglades and cause Floridians to lose control of thousands of acres of wetlands.

“There’s no project in Florida that would be more adversely affected,” said Graham, who was a member of the legislature more than four decades ago and then governor when some of the state’s water and conservation policies were first created.

Graham was in town as environmentalists, government officials – including U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Gov. Rick Scott – and others gathered nearby for a day-long Everglades Water Supply Summit.

Speaking to the Florida Legislative Everglades Caucus, Graham called on them to reject two water measures he called “not just the camel’s nose but the camel’s neck and shoulders under the tent of privatization of water.

The first (HB 639) would allow utilities to have permanent ownership of water they have used and treated. The other (HB 1103) would change the definition of the “high water line” that determines where private property ends and state-owned waters begin. Critics, including Graham, say the measure would cause the state to lose hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands after years of litigation determining what the water line means.

“When we privatize ownership of Florida’s water resources, it takes water away from the Everglades. It’s just pure and simple. You can spend a bunch of money trying to get water into the Everglades but if somebody owns it, you’ll never get it there,” said Audubon of Florida executive director Eric Draper.

Graham also urged lawmakers to undo a move that gave the legislature more control over the state’s five water management districts, to boost money to the state’s land conservation program Florida Forever.

But the biggest threat to the River of Grass would be an end to the cooperation between state and federal officials to restore the state’s ecological treasure, the former governor advised. The protracted Everglades restoration projects have caused fear that the effort is unraveling.

“The thing that would be the most fatal to Everglades restoration is if this marriage between the state of Florida and the federal government were to be broken. Neither partner alone either has the financial or legal capabilities of carrying this off,” Graham said.

A poll released this morning found that 64 percent of voters surveyed favored increased spending on Everglades restoration, up from 51 percent who supported increased funding in a February 2011 survey.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is asking federal officials for a posse.

A python posse, that is.

Nelson sent a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking him to approve a python-kill because the slithering beasts are taking over the River of Grass.

Nelson earlier this year introduced a bill to ban imports of Burmese pythons and classifying them as “injurious animals.”

Two weeks ago, a pet python strangled to death a two-year-old Florida girl, creating an uproar about the invasive predators.

Officials “need to get a grip on pythons invading America’s Everglades,” Nelson wrote.

“They are threatening endangered wildlife there – and, Lord forbid, a visitor in the Everglades ever encounters one,” he wrote.

Nelson’s proposing an organized hunt to diminish the ever-growing python population in the ‘Glades. The posse could consist of park rangers or deputies and volunteers, Nelson suggested.

Read Nelson’s letter after the jump.

Fatal python attack

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