From The News Service of Florida:
Florida environmental and voting-rights organizations want Attorney General Pam Bondi to withdraw the state’s backing of an effort by agriculture and development interests to block a federally approved plan to restore water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. However, the attorney general’s office isn’t showing signs of backing away from the case.
“The Environmental Protection Agency only has the authority granted to it by Congress, and this case is about whether the EPA has exceeded its authority,” Bondi spokeswoman Jennifer Meale said in an email Thursday. “A coalition of 21 state attorneys general joined a friend-of-the-court brief led by Kansas defending individual states’ authority from federal overreach.”
The critics wrote to Bondi this week and questioned her decision to join in filing an appeals-court brief Feb. 3 that supports the American Farm Bureau Federation’s effort to overturn a lower-court ruling that upheld the legality of the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint.
“This cannot be credibly portrayed as a state’s rights issue, as the Chesapeake Bay states signed and supported the cleanup plan,” the letter from the various Florida organizations said. “The legal challenge also cannot be portrayed as protecting Floridians’ interests; the demise of the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint would actually set a negative precedent for the development and implementation of effective cleanup plans for Florida’s waters.”
Among the groups signing the letter were the St. Johns Riverkeeper, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Sierra Club Florida, the Gulf Restoration Network, 1000 Friends of Florida and the League of Women Voters of Florida.