VIERA, Fla. – Once again, Brevard County will let voters decide if they want to pay for cleaning the beautiful, yet infamously polluted Indian River Lagoon.
On Tuesday, county commissioners approved sending a renewal of the 10-year half-penny sales tax back to the ballot this November.
One local that Viera Community Correspondent, James Sparvero, met at the meeting, who plans to vote yes, was Captain Blair Wiggins, a fishing guide and host of his own TV show.
In the last 10 years, Wiggins also started planting tens of millions of clams, which the county said, along with more than 130 cleanup projects in the last decade, have helped make the lagoon clearer, and now there are fewer algae blooms and fish kills.
“Could you imagine what the water would look like if it stayed looking like it did in 2015?” Wiggins asked. “It literally stayed black for two years.”
[WATCH: What you need to know about the Indian River Lagoon]
One of the criticisms of the tax is that while the county has spent more than a $100 million on those helpful projects, there is four or five times that amount collected in total.
“We have about $500 million worth of projects that are underway,” natural resources director Virginia Barker explained. “They’re either in design, permitting, construction. Those projects are moving along.”
Almost two/thirds of voters overwhelmingly approved the tax in 2016, and the county said it has cost the average person about $400 a year.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
[WATCH: Seagrass is coming back to the Indian River Lagoon. Here’s what the data shows]