BATTLE OVER FLORIDA'S WATERS RAGES ON

Dear friends of Florida’s waters:

February has been a busy month for water issues, as many of you know. The US EPA held three public meetings last week in Tallahassee, Orlando and W. Palm Beach to brief the public on its proposed new rule that will hopefully offer better protection to Florida waters from red tides, toxic algal blooms, fish kills and sea-grass die-offs. EPA officials were met by largely hostile crowds of industry polluters and their spokespeople as well as agricultural interests (everything from fern growers, to good ol’ boy hog farmers, to big sugar and big dairies– you name it). There were also many pro-clean water voices there speaking primarily in favor of EPA taking over the job of setting standards for nutrient pollution. EPA was sued by several Florida environmental groups and has no choice but to set some kind of numeric limits on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that can be dumped in our waters. The lawsuit does not get into the question of what the correct amount of pollution should be and that is now the controversy.

In our opinion, the numbers that EPA is proposing are not unreasonable nor are they perfect or overly protective. The biggest problem with EPA’s proposal is that it also includes numerous confusing and convoluted ways for Florida to avoid implementing the numbers, even if they were signed into law. So, the debate continues. CWN-FL is working on getting one or more scientists and attorneys to help us draft comments that would make it possible to sue EPA over the final numbers if they are ridiculously unhelpful. You will have an opportunity to sign on to our comment letter before it is submitted in late March.

DESIGNATED USES – Florida continues to move forward with its proposed new category of waters that would be unswimmable and barely fishable. This new category would be used for waters that are currently polluted and need to be put on a pollution diet (TMDL). The pollution diet could be avoided and DEP could continue to issue new permits for more and more pollution if the water was officially down-graded to this new category of unswimmable/barely fishable. This strategy by DEP and its polluter friends is designed to avoid the Clean Water Act and dove-tails with EPA’s proposed numeric nutrient criteria. This is obviously very troubling. There are too many problems with it to elaborate here, but one big problem that you may want to think about until we get you a complete analysis, is that you would not know what waters would get this new “non-swimmable/barely fishable” designation until an unknown time in the future. DEP or anyone with some money, could decide to take a water body through the process of down-grading it with a Use Attainability Analysis (UAA) and with one or more Site Specific Alternative Criteria (SSACs). You would also not know what the pollution limits would be until they finished their monkey-business. The opportunity to challenge a down-grade would be essentially non-existent. Technically, you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to challenge the down-grade but your efforts would take you to an administrative hearing at DOAH and that is a totally unachievable (to your success) route. Please don’t waste your time or money. We will continue to update you on this disturbing effort being undertaken with your tax dollars by your state agency . . . The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (Don’t Expect Protection).

BAY COUNTY AIRPORT: We continue to monitor and watch (by air) the destruction of West Bay and its tributaries in Bay County, by the new Bay County airport. We met with the DEP in Pensacola on February 17th and learned that DEP Secretary Mike Sole signed a secret letter to the Bay County Airport Authority on February 3rd that authorized the airport and its contractors to dump millions of gallons of polluted water into the creeks that lead to West Bay. Of course they have already been doing this for the past several years as the construction struggles forward. Each small rain, compounds the site’s disintegration. We are told by on-site engineers (confidentially of course or they would be fired) that mold is already overtaking the baggage handling area, one wall of the terminal is sinking and cracking, the tower has cracks and the pavement outside the terminal is cracking and sinking into the soggy ground beneath. Remember that your state and federal tax dollars are paying for the construction of this completely unneeded new airport. There is no point in writing Governor Crist or anyone on the federal level. They hear from me on a regular basis with dozens of aerial photos to document the destruction that is on-going. They absolutely do not care about anything but subsidizing the St. Joe development company which is depending on the new airport for infrastructure and a building block to the new city they plan to construct on the surrounding 70,000 acres which are heavily populated with creeks, wetlands and cypress swamps. The photo below was taken on Feb. 8, 2010.





IMPAIRED WATERS RULE – Our attorney continues to work on our Impaired Waters Rule case against the US EPA. It will be many months before there is anything more to report, but we will keep you posted if anything noteworthy happens.

NEW WEBSITE – Our new website is getting REALLY close to becoming a reality. We are working on moving content from our current website over to the new site and adding exciting new features and information. We are hoping to have it available for you to see, explore, participate in very soon, so stay right there on the edge of your seat and you will be the first to know when it is ready for “prime-time”.

Thank you to everyone who attended the EPA meetings (discussed above) and for all the other critical work that you do to protect Florida’s waters.

Also a very special thank you to everyone who sends in their membership contributions and donations. These monies are critical to our work and are very appreciated.

For all of Florida’s waters,

Linda Young, Director