November 2, 2011 - Today, EPA unveiled that it has released a letter granting preliminary approval of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) proposed flowing water, estuary, and coastal numeric nutrient criteria. This news comes in spite of the fact that Florida's internal process to develop the criteria is not yet complete. EPA made this decision without ensuring that the state conducted adequate public outreach on the issue and without the benefit of reviewing the public comments that were submitted by Florida residents, local governments, impacted businesses, and the environmental community.

"EPA has bought industry's story hook, line, and sinker. Special interests and politicians have repeated the mantra that Florida jobs are at risk if we have water quality standards that keep toxics out of our waterways. This is simply untrue, and unfortunately the EPA has bought into their false argument." said Kathy Aterno, Florida Director of Clean Water Action.

Political pressure fast-tracked rulemaking for the creation of these important water quality criteria. The process DEP is operating under discounts sound-science, common sense, and regard for Florida's economic future. The public can connect the dots and understands that clean and safe water is vital to the economic survival of our tourism and fishing economies, as well as the continued supply of drinking water for our residents. This is business as usual -- special interests are the puppeteers pulling the politicians' purse strings.

EPA and DEP are supposed to protect public health and the environment. "Implementation of DEP's weak proposed criteria would mean giving a blank check to polluters on the checkbook of the public and local governments" said Aterno.

The environmental community has expressed numerous concerns over DEP's proposed criteria for lakes and flowing waters. Prominent among them is the lack of protection for downstream waters, which often bear the burden of numerous upstream pollution sources and cannot be ecologically or economically viable without appropriate upstream protections. There is also concern over changes to the already lengthy Impaired Waters Listing Process. A new step now included in the rulemaking would require that all waters that fail a biological health assessment be placed on a "study list" to determine whether nutrient overload is causing unhealth. Waters on these lists could remain there indefinitely as there is no timeline addressing how long a water body could stay on the list while awaiting impaired status, and no resources have been devoted to conduct any studies.

There are severe concerns over DEP's estuarine and coastal criteria, as well; central among these is the fact that the rulemaking has been fast-tracked and public input not fully considered. The short two-week public comment period on estuary and coastal waters closed on October 18th, which means EPA has preliminarily approved criteria before DEP staff has had a chance to incorporate the concerns of stakeholders or issue a revised document that addresses those concerns. The new criteria have not yet been presented to the Environmental Regulatory Commission (ERC) and must still be approved by the Florida Legislature in the upcoming 2012 session. It is clear that internal processes are still ongoing, and thus EPA's preliminary approval is particularly premature.

"Florida's residents and our economy will pay the price. Until our waters are better protected, the state's commercial and recreational fishing, tourism, and waterfront real estate markets will all suffer" said Aterno.