By KEITH LAING –THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Oct. 14, 2010……….The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should extend the period for finalizing numeric limits of pollution in state inland waters beyond the 30 days the federal agency agreed to last month, several former Department of Environmental Protection secretaries said Thursday.
In a letter to the EPA, Virginia Wetherell, Coleen Castille and Jake Varn, who headed the department in the late 1970s when it was known as Environmental Regulation, called for extending the delay for rules for rivers, lakes and streams until August 2012. That is the date to which the EPA pushed back rules for coastal waters and estuaries. The current EPA deadline for inland waters is Nov. 14.
The former DEP leaders said Thursday the controversial inland water rules deserve the same amount of review.
“The 30-day extension recently granted by the EPA does not provide enough time to do a thorough review,” the secretaries wrote.
The EPA has delayed finalizing criteria for Florida’s canals, coastal waters and estuaries until August 2012 to allow the agency’s Science Advisory Board to conduct a peer review of the EPA’s data and methodologies for deriving criteria for these waters.
“We believe the same level of analysis should be given to the EPA’s proposed rivers, lakes and streams rules, specifically including a review of the scientific validity of the EPA’s proposed criteria for these freshwaters,” they concluded. “We believe that the SAB peer review process is important and should be done for all the rules the EPA plans on imposing on Florida.”
Wetherell, who headed DEP under former Gov. Lawton Chiles from 1993-1999, and Castille, who ran the agency under former Gov. Jeb Bush from 2003-2007, first came out against the regulations last year. The duo joined a group called “Don’t Tax Florida,” which consisted of business associations like Associated Industries of Florida and government spending watchdog groups like Florida TaxWatch.
The EPA plan is the result of a lengthy legal fight between the state and environmentalists, who filed a federal lawsuit saying Florida failed to enforce the Clean Water Act.
Current DEP officials have questioned the science behind the EPA proposals, arguing that in some cases, particularly those involving streams, “narrative” standards, which are enforced on a case-by-case basis, would be more appropriate
“DEP remains committed to using the best science and an open public process to establish numeric nutrient criteria appropriate for Florida’s unique ecosystems,” DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller told the News Service Thursday.
In their letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, the former secretaries said they share their successor’s concerns.
“The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has expressed significant concerns regarding the scientific validity of the numeric nutrient criteria the EPA is set to impose on Florida,” they wrote. “We have questioned whether the standards proposed by the EPA are attainable or will even achieve environmental benefits.”
The EPA would not comment to the News Service of Florida Thursday.
In announcing last month the delay for finalizing the rules until Nov. 14, the EPA said it received 22,000 comments on the rule after holding 13 public hearings and having two open periods for submitting written comments.
“These comments represent essential input from many Floridians and a valuable range of information from numerous technical and scientific experts in the State,” the EPA said in a Sept. 29 statement.
EarthJustice attorney David Guest, who filed the lawsuit that lead to the nutrient standards, criticized the former DEP secretaries for opposing cleaning up water pollution he said “happened on these DEP secretaries’ watch.”
“It’s no surprise that now they want to try to save face,” Guest said. “They did such a bad job protecting public health that the federal government has had to intervene to get Florida to clean up water pollution. It’s unconscionable that these former officials are siding with polluters to block water cleanup instead of standing up for the public. It is an insult to ordinary Floridians.”
Guest added that the former DEP secretaries were “drastically at odds” with public opinion, saying that most of the comments sent to the EPA supported the numeric nutrient standards.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that it has received 22,000 public comments on the proposed new standards to control nutrient pollution, and 20,000 of those comments were in support of the standards,” he said. “
“Florida is rock bottom in the U.S. in terms of protecting its waters from pollution,” he continued. “If these former secretaries had been doing their jobs, this would not have happened.”
-END-