polluters’ political pressure threatens florida’s water quality and economic health

Pollution from Florida’s sewage and wastewater plants and from agriculture is causing overloads of nutrient pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus. The pollution causes dangerous algae blooms in estuaries, lakes, streams and canals throughout the state. These blooms kill fish, close swimming and fishing areas, and harm Florida’s tourism economy. They can also cause serious illness in people and animals exposed to the water and its fumes.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) response has been “severely inadequate,” according to Clean Water Action. New DEP water quality standards that fall far short of the mark have nevertheless received preliminary approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The fast-track process for creating these water quality criteria for estuaries and coastal waters discounted sound science and common sense, and disregarded impacts on Florida’s economic future, Clean Water Action and others have charged. DEP’s rules were released on September 28, only five days before the only public workshop held on them, and EPA did not consider any of the concerns or questions raised during the too-brief two-week comment period before issuing its preliminary approval.

Clean Water Action and other environmental groups have raised serious concerns with other recent DEP actions:

• The agency’s water quality standards for “lakes and flow-ing waters” fail to protect downstream waters. Without strong upstream pollution controls, the ecological and economic viability for many resources may be permanently lost.
• DEP is also changing the “Impaired Waters Listing Process” through which the most polluted waters are supposed to receive priority attention. Now a new step would create a “study list” where a polluted water body could remain indefinitely without any cleanup action being taken.

Unfortunately, DEP has sided with polluting industries instead of standing up for the protection of Florida’s waters, and EPA seems to following the state agency’s lead. Polluters claim that compliance with strict pollution standards will be costly and stifle business, and Florida’s DEP has bought into this false argument.

Clean Water Action continues to make the case to both agen-cies that the cost of cleaning up water that is already contami-nated dwarfs that of preventing the pollution in the first place — not even counting the damage to commercial and recre-ational fishing, tourism and waterfront real estate markets once water quality is lost.