Coming just days after Scott was heckled at a campaign stop by protesters who dubbed him “Red Tide Rick,” the new action plan drew criticism from the Sierra Club, which called the proposed center “nothing more than a self-serving publicity stunt.”
Resorting to clay to treat the algae is not new. Prior experiments with it in Florida ran into strong public opposition, according to a Don Anderson, a senior scientist with Woods Hole who was involved in those studies 15 years ago.