By KEITH LAING – THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Sept. 28, 2010…As the Florida Department of Environmental Protection prepares to discuss proposed water pollution standards that are opposed by businesses and farmers, Florida’s two United States Senators – who don’t often agree – both think federal officials should back off.
The DEP has asked for – and received – a delay until 2011 for portions of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s numeric limits on the amount of pollution in state bodies of water containing the chemicals phosphorous and nitrogen, related to streams.
But other parts of the plan are scheduled to take effect this fall, which U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and George LeMieux, a Republican, both do not want to see happen.
“Last year, the Obama administration and EPA entered into a legally binding agreement with environmental advocates seeking to impose stricter limits for phosphorus and nitrogen in Florida’s waterways,” LeMieux wrote in an opinion piece in the Orlando Sentinel Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the standards and timelines have little scientific foundation. Worse yet, these mandates will increase the cost of doing business in our state and the cost of living for Floridians.”
“I share the concerns many Florida residents, municipalities, businesses and farmers have about the potential cost of compliance with these standards and the validity of the science,” Nelson agreed in a Sept. 16 letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “I believe you made the right decision to submit the portions of the rule related to downstream values, canals, coastal and estuarine waters to the EPA Science Advisory Board for peer review and delay finalizing those rules until August 2012.
“However, I’m concerned that the rule for lakes, streams, and springs is still set to be finalized on October 15, 2010,” Nelson continued.
At issue is an EPA plan to allow different nutrient levels in different water bodies, the result of a lengthy legal fight between the state and environmentalists. The state has argued that the standards would be unfair because they would only be applied to Florida and too expensive to comply with. However, environmentalists sued state regulators for failing to enforce the federal Clean Water Act.
DEP has also questioned the science behind the EPA rules, so much so that the agency has pledged to bring in a third party arbiter to navigate the differences between their scientific analysis and Florida’s, which will be discussed Wednesday at a scheduled hearing of the DEP Marine Numeric Nutrient Criteria Technical Advisory Committee. The department will issue a report to the EPA Science Advisory Board to be used in that panel’s review.
Linda Young of the Clean Water Network, who has argued that threats about increased costs associated with the EPA proposal have been exaggerated, said earlier this month that efforts to delay the EPA standards were the results of “polluters” who do not like the standards and are trying to stall them. Young, who plans to address the advisory committee on Wednesday, told the News Service last week that the enactment of the standards have already been slowed down significantly.
“A lot of concessions have been made as a result of all this whining and crying going on by polluters and their friends and the state,” Young said.
The committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 9 a.m. at DEP’s Tallahassee headquarters
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9/28/10
Detailed context on Florida environmental issues is available on the NSF Environment Backgrounder at http://www.newsserviceflorida.com/ environment/environment.htm
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