Urban Fertilizer Continues In News

When Gov. Ron DeS­antis signed the Flor­ida budget in June, he called it “the strongest envir­on­mental budget we’ve ever had.” But the budget bans local gov­ern­ments from enact­ing new fer­til­izer ordin­ances or mak­ing exist­ing ones stricter to pro­tect their water­ways for one year.

Envir­on­ment­al­ists worry the state even­tu­ally will replace city and county ordin­ances with its weaker reg­u­la­tions.

The state will eval­u­ate the effect­ive­ness of local ordin­ances that ban fer­til­izer use in the sum­mer rainy sea­son, when it can wash off into water­ways and feed algae blooms. The Legis­lature paid the Uni­versity of Flor­ida’s Insti­tute of Food and Agri­cul­tural Sci­ences (IFAS) $250,000 to study the issue and pro­duce a report by Dec. 31.

The Tru­Green lawn care com­pany hired lob­by­ist and former House Speaker Steve Crisafulli to push the morator­ium, accord­ing to non­profit news site Flor­ida Phoenix.

The Legis­lature added it to the pro­posed budget on a Sunday night before the last week of the March-May ses­sion and gave no notice or chance for pub­lic input, said Friends of the Ever­glades Exec­ut­ive Dir­ector Eve Samples. In a May 11 let­ter to DeS­antis, 55 envir­on­mental organ­iz­a­tions implored him to veto the “sneak attack.”

“There will be pres­sure from the fer­til­izer industry,” Samples said. “That [IFAS] study will be used to try to unravel some of the exist­ing fer­til­izer ordin­ances.”

Among the 35 counties that have fer­til­izer ordin­ances, 18 have sum­mer bans, includ­ing the five counties con­tain­ing the Indian River Lagoon: Mar­tin, St. Lucie, Indian River, Brevard and Volusia. Most of the 32 counties that don’t have ordin­ances are in the Pan­handle, North Flor­ida and around Lake Okeecho­bee, 33% of which is covered in a toxic algae bloom that will pol­lute the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon if excess water is released east.

DeS­antis should have vetoed the morator­ium, said Sierra Club spokes­per­son Cris Cos­tello, who has been work­ing with the Flor­ida Springs Coun­cil to get more North Flor­ida counties to enact fer­til­izer ordin­ances.

Jim Moir, the Indian River­keeper exec­ut­ive dir­ector, uses his com­post while giv­ing a tour of his fer­til­izer-free yard July 20 in the Rocky Point com­munity of Port Salerno. “I chose not to pol­lute my com­munity, I chose not to pol­lute my back­yard, I chose not to pol­lute the place that I love.”

“If he has any chance of claim­ing that he is for water qual­ity, he blew it by not doing that because that’s the one thing around the state that is not par­tisan,” Cos­tello said.

Sen­ate Envir­on­ment and Nat­ural Resources Chair Sen. Jason Brodeur, RSan­ford, defen­ded the morator­ium. He is fun­ded by Crisafulli and U.S. Sugar Corp., TCPalm found.

“This simply says that let’s rely on sci­ence,” Brodeur said in a Sen­ate ses­sion. “It’s only one year wait­ing for that study to be pub­lished.”

IFAS will study fer­til­izer ordin­ances

Envir­on­ment­al­ists are con­cerned IFAS is con­duct­ing the study, and that pre­vi­ous fer­til­izer stud­ies are con­tra­dict­ory. Sci­ent­ists don’t agree on how much fer­til­izers and sep­tic tanks affect water­ways, and which is worse — or if that mat­ters. Some aren’t sure they can even meas­ure that accur­ately….

An IFAS study says lakes have less pol­lu­tion thanks to fer­til­izer ordin­ances, but a Flor­ida Atlantic Uni­versity study says they aren’t enough to reduce pol­lu­tion and algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon. FAU researcher Brian Lapointe blames sep­tic tanks as the main cul­prit, but in a 2016 TCPalm art­icle, he acknow­ledged fer­til­izer run­off causes Lake O algae blooms that pol­lute the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon.

“There are some dis­ap­point­ing fea­tures to both the FAU and UF-IFAS stud­ies that seem to be serving a pur­pose bey­ond straight research,” said Indian River­keeper Jim Moir. “They seek to dis­credit pro­pos­als that reduce agri­cul­tural respons­ib­il­ity for fer­til­izer-based nutri­ent inputs, rather than attempt­ing to reduce all sur­plus nutri­ent inputs.”

IFAS lob­by­ist Mary Ann Hooks dis­missed crit­ics’ con­cerns about the reli­ab­il­ity of a study con­duc­ted by research­ers fun­ded by the fer­til­izer and turf­grass indus­tries.

“The source of money doesn’t change the samples,” Hooks said. “We’re Switzer­land. We’re not to answer the ques­tions for the envir­on­ment­al­ists or the homeowner or agri­cul­ture. Essen­tially, the num­bers are the num­bers.”

Local gov­ern­ments want home rule over fer­til­izer ordin­ances

DEP’s ordin­ance is “worth­less,” Cos­tello said, cit­ing its lack of a sum­mer ban. It only pro­hib­its fer­til­izer use 24 hours before 2 inches of rain­fall are fore­cast.

“The back­bone of all urban fer­til­izer man­age­ment is the rainy sea­son black­out period,” she said. “It is the cheapest, easi­est way to stop urban pol­lu­tion at the source.”

Mar­tin County opposes a “one-size­fits-all” statewide ordin­ance, said Eco­sys­tems Res­tor­a­tion Man­ager John Maehl. Mar­tin is among the counties that ban fer­til­izer within 25 feet of a water­way. DEP’s buf­fer is only 10 feet.

“My con­cern would be that when this is over, that they would have pre­served some flex­ib­il­ity for local gov­ern­ments to deal with acute recom­mend­a­tions,” Maehl said. “We believe that the local (elec­ted offi­cials) are best poised to make good decisions for the con­stitu­ents with easy access to them.”

In 2010, Sewall’s Point was the first Flor­ida east-coast gov­ern­ment to enact a fer­til­izer ordin­ance. It’s still among the strict­est, with a six-month sum­mer ban that starts June 1 and ends Nov. 30, instead of the more com­mon four-month ban that ends Sept. 30. Stu­art soon fol­lowed suit.

The state should be curb­ing fer­til­izer use, not ordin­ances, said Jac­qui Thur­low-Lip­pisch, a former South Flor­ida Water Man­age­ment Dis­trict board mem­ber and former Sewall’s Point mayor who fought for the town’s ordin­ance.

Only the Legis­lature can ban sum­mer fer­til­izer sales and force farms to use best man­age­ment prac­tices, she said.

“It seems like the page (the state) wants us to be on is the page where there are fewer restric­tions, and fer­til­izer ordin­ances don’t work,” she said. “If they’re not work­ing, it’s because the state is not help­ing us.”

Katie Delk is an envir­on­mental reporter for TCPalm. Con­tact her at katie .delk@tcpalm.com or 772-408-5301.