Mr. Waymer exaggerates: we did not have any good years for the environment with DeSantis.
And the Florida DEP is responsible for the slow death of our springs and rivers. They are pussyfooting and dancing and being very careful that the billions they are spending do not offend the polluters.
The Gainesville Sun does not provide a link to this article.
The nonprofit has again blasted Florida’s environmental enforcement
Jim Waymer
Florida Today | USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA
After a promising first few years under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida is right back to its dirty old ways of going soft on environmental violators, a nonprofit watchdog group says.
Anti-pollution enforcement sharply declined in 2022, according to a new analysis by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. PEER found Florida Department of Environmental Protection enforcement actions were 59% below 2010 figures — the watershed year when enforcement peaked before former Gov. Rick Scott drastically cut environmental enforcement, after taking office in 2011. And despite an initial increase under DeSantis, DEP enforcement actions remained well below long-term averages, PEER’s report shows.
“By all measures, the pollution burden placed on Florida’s lands and waters continues to grow,” said PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, a former senior enforcement attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But DEP says they’ve heard it all before from PEER and for almost two decades the group “has perpetuated an inaccurate characterization” of the agency’s enforcement, “based on information that has either been misinterpreted or misrepresented.”
Officials say the agency has long had a philosophy of helping to bring polluters into compliance, rather than focusing on punishing them with fines.
In 2022, DEP’s statewide compliance rate — the percentage of facilities inspectors consider in compliance with environmental rules — was 91%, including compliance rates of 91% for drinking water facilities and 91.3% for wastewater facilities, agency officials said. And that was in a year in which hurricanes Ian and Nicole severely impacted the state.
DEP continued an approach started under Rick Scott, of taking enforcement action only in the worst cases, PEER says. That brings more facilities into compliance because the agency works with them to show them how to comply.
But PEER says that’s just an excuse to look the other way on routine enforcement, which can result in bigger environmental problems down the road. “We are uncertain how they arrive at their compliance rates for regulated entities and the significance of that figure,” Whitehouse said.
What PEER’S report says
The decline in Florida’s environmental enforcement in 2022 happened the same year as significant sewage overflows, two powerful hurricanes (Ian and Nicole), toxic algal blooms and mass dieoffs of manatees in the
Indian River Lagoon:
h FDEP assessed 617 penalties totaling $11.8 million in 2022 and collected 698 penalties totaling $3 million. (Fines aren’t always collected the same year they’re assessed).
h By comparison, in 2010, the year before Rick Scott took office, DEP assessed 1,318 cases for a total of $13 million in penalties, a $2.2 million (20%) increase over 2009 and reversing a 3-year trend of decreasing civil penalties. The agency collected $7 million in fines that year.
h Enforcement actions related to wetlands dropped from 125 in 2020 to only 82 in 2022, less than half the average of 175 actions from 2005 to 2010. That was while this year’s watershed Supreme Court ruling that limited what wetlands can be regulated was pending.
h After winning extensive new authority during the Trump administration for wetlands protections, dredge and fill enforcement actions plummeted by almost 40% from 2021. In late 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted Florida approval to implement a Clean Water Act program that regulates dredge-fill activities in U.S. waters and wetlands. That transferred permitting and enforcement authority from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“There’s very, very little enforcement,” Whitehouse said. “The (Rick) Scott administration literally gutted the enforcement programs.”
And the DeSantis’ administration has yet to do enough to bring enforcement back to the level of an effective deterrent, PEER says.
What is PEER?
PEER describes itself as “an alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and other professionals dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values.” The group long has criticized DEP’s use of “short-form” enforcement orders, which almost doubled in 2020 in both numbers and percentage of all enforcement actions. Violators resolve those by paying a fine but there’s little oversight to ensure the problem has been fixed, PEER has issued similar annual reports about Florida’s environmental enforcement every year since 2004….
“Gov. Ron DeSantis has made very clear his expectations that Florida’s environmental laws are enforced, and DEP is committed to carrying out this directive,” Brian Miller, a DEP spokesman, wrote in an email.
Miller pointed to De-Santis’ 2019 executive order transferring the state’s Environmental Crimes Unit from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to DEP. That aligned environmental protection resources, DEP officials said, and ensured strong enforcement. Since moving to DEP, the Environmental Crimes Unit through Dec. 31, 2022, has criminally charged environmental violators with 136 felonies and 554 misdemeanors, agency officials said.
DEP also points to a 2020 law that doubled fines for sewage spills and increased all other environmental fines by 50%.
Among the most prominent victims of the state’s deteriorating water quality are Florida manatees, PEER notes. In 2021 and 2022, almost 2,000 manatees died – almost 20% of the known population – mostly from starvation due to the loss of their main food source, seagrass. Another 355 manatees have died just between January and mid-July of this year.
Since 2010, Florida’s population has grown by 20% while enforcement levels have dropped by more than half, PEER notes. “Facing the challenges of climate change, toxic algae blooms, and a growing population, the priority placed on environmental enforcement should be growing, not shrinking,” said PEER Board Member Alexandra Bueno, a resident of Saint Petersburg.
What were the highest fines assessed in Brevard in 2022?
According to DEP documents:
h $24,359 — Brevard County Utilities had 127,000 gallons of overflows from the South Central regional sewer plant in Viera: 60,000 gallons of raw sewage on Dec. 29, 2021; 30,000 gallons of partially treated sewage on Jan. 29, 2022; and 37,000 gallons of raw sewage on Aug. 23, 2022. The county partially offset the civil penalty by making $16,396 in improvements to the plant’s disinfection process that will lead to a yearly savings of $98,343 in reduction of sodum hypochlorite consumption at the plant.
h $24,080 — Designers Choice Cabinetry in Rockledge failed to determine if used rags and four 55-gallon drums with unknown contents at the Facility were hazardous wastes and several other violations. .
h $21,360 — PCM Products in Titusville for several violations that included an open 55-gallon drum of hazardous waste and unlabeled containers of hazardous waste. PCM performs precision machining, photo etching or lamination and electroplating on parts.
What were the highest fines in Florida?
The highest fine DEP collected last year was $293,000 Envirofocus Technologies in Tampa for hazardous waste violations.
The highest fine DEP assessed in 2022 was $1 million against the city of Gulf Breeze for the crossconnection that contaminated drinking water at about 340 homes in Gulf Breeze’s Soundside Drive neighborhood in late 2021. An employee with Brown Construction mistakenly connected a sewer line with a water main at a new house at 5000 Soundside Drive on April 1. The cross-connection went unnoticed until utility service was turned on to the house in late September 2021. The city opted to pursue an in-kind penalty project that spends about $1.5 million to convert homes from septic tanks to a central sewage system instead of paying the proposed penalty.
“Money alone won’t solve the problem,” Whitehouse said. “There needs to be a culture of compliance in Florida and we’re not sure that exists now.”
Jim Waymer is an environment reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Waymer at 321-261-5903 or jwaymer@floridatoday. com. Or find him on X: @JWayEnviro or on Facebook: www.facebook. com/jim.waymer
