By KEITH LAING – THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Sept. 29, 2010…….While environmental officials in Florida discussed coming federal water pollution standards Wednesday, the federal agency that wrote them agreed to delay their implementation by a month and a U.S. Senator said he’d try to block the new rules altogether.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency agreed on Wednesday to move the deadline for finalizing new numeric limits on the amount of pollution in state bodies of water from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, at the urging of the state’s congressional delegation. The delegation’s request came after 36 CEOs of Florida businesses called for a partial review of the new standards.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who supported the delay, said the extra time will be used to collect more feedback on the standards, which follow a long legal fight between the state and environmentalists.
“I support new water standards but many Florida residents, municipalities, businesses and farmers have expressed concern about the potential cost of these standards and the validity of the science,” Nelson said in a statement.
But Nelson’s counterpart in the Senate, George LeMieux, a Republican, moved independently to altogether block the new regulations, which would allow different nutrient levels in different water bodies.
“This rule will hurt Florida’s families. It will cost our state billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and drive up water bills,” LeMieux said Wednesday. “This is lawsuit-driven regulation without a sound scientific basis and the result will be unnecessarily catastrophic for Florida. The EPA’s actions threaten Florida’s economy and (are) unlikely to provide little, if any biological benefit.”
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which held a hearing on the standards Wednesday, has questioned the science behind the EPA proposals. DEP has argued that in some cases, particularly those involving streams, “narrative” standards, which are enforced on a case-by-case basis, would be more appropriate.
Wednesday in Tallahassee, a DEP advisory committee formed to deal with the standards discussed a proposal the department plans to submit to the EPA about the more controversial parts of the regulations, dealing with lakes, streams and estuaries. The DEP plan, which seeks to maintain flexibility, includes four possible approaches for setting the standard.
The approaches are based on healthy existing conditions, historical conditions, comparisons to similar areas or limits based on interactions between elements of the bodies of water and chemicals known as Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL).
The DEP plan was praised by Drew Bartlett, DEP’s Deputy Director of Environmental Assessment and Restoration and a member of the advisory panel. Bartlett said he did not know if the federal regulators would accept the proposals from DEP, but that they should shape the discussions.
“I don’t think it’s productive to think about what EPA expects, because there’s a lot that’s going to happen between now and then,” he said. “Let’s think about how to get to the right answer, not what the boundaries are with EPA. Let’s figure out what’s right for these estuaries …and go from there.”
Another attendee at Wednesday’s meeting, David Tomasko, manager of Tampa consulting firm PBS&J’s watershed science and assessment program, touted the flexibility of DEP’s approach.
“Whether it’s environmentalists or industry, they don’t want the criteria to be determined by section 670 whatever (of federal law),” he said. “They want the criteria to be determined by science.”
Tomasko added that the science behind the standards was especially important to local municipal officials, who provide a lot of the data DEP uses to monitor water in the state.
“They’re going to stop collecting data if the data they collect cannot be applied scientifically,” he said.
But a vocal critic of DEP’s water approach, Linda Young of the Clean Water Network, told the panel Wednesday they were already using faulty data collected during the legal fight between environmentalists and the department.
“You keep saying the same thing over and over again like it’s true, and it’s not,” Young told the panel. “Any sort of criteria that is set on those years has no credibility,”
Young, who has argued that DEP has exaggerated threats about increased costs associated with the EPA proposal, said she would keep the pressure on the department as it finalizes its own plan.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m never going to shut up about it,” she said. “You’re going to hear from me, because it is unacceptable.”
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9/29/10
Detailed context on Florida environmental issues is available on the NSF Environment Backgrounder at http://www.newsserviceflorida.com/ environment/environment.htm
http://www.newsserviceflorida.com