Veto SB 712

The Florida Legislature has passed CS/CS/SB 712, known as the “Clean Waterways Act,” which will soon be sent to your desk.  This bill is an endorsement of the status quo which has led to our current water quality crisis. It does nothing to reduce nutrient pollution to Florida’s springs. Florida’s waters are polluted because our regulatory system is broken and those in charge of protecting our waters are unduly influenced by polluters and their lobbyists. Far from fixing these problems, CS/CS/SB 712 is a symptom of them.

CS/CS/SB 712 relies on an ineffective water quality restoration program called Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs). BMAPs for Outstanding Florida Springs have already been shown to be unable to achieve water quality goals.  The Florida Springs Council and several springs advocacy groups are in active litigation against the Florida Department of Environmental Protect over these failed plans.  As passed, CS/CS/SB 712 is based on a program that is designed to fail at achieving water quality goals.

CS/CS/SB 712 does nothing to prevent even one pound of agricultural pollution, the predominant source of nutrient pollution to Outstanding Florida Springs, from reaching our groundwater.  It requires DACS to confirm that producers are implementing current best management practices, even though the Department of Environmental Protection has acknowledged in a court filing that current best management practices are not useful for achieving water quality goals.  By law, as long as agricultural producers implement these ineffective practices, they are automatically assumed in compliance with water quality standards. CS/CS/SB 712 does not require the adoption or implementation of improved best management practices for agricultural producers, even though the need for such practices is almost universally recognized and many of Florida’s impaired waters cannot recover without them.

CS/CS/SB 712 continues to allow foul sewage sludge from South Florida to be transported north and dumped into areas where it pollutes the headwaters of the St. Johns River and other important waterways.  It weakens efforts to regulate sewage sludge application and includes loopholes which will delay stronger protections indefinitely.

Ironically, while CS/CS/SB 712 relies exclusively on a broken and failed regulatory system to protect water quality, it preempts local governments from filling the vacuum left by a lack of leadership at the state level and addressing environmental issues in their own jurisdictions.

The shortcomings of CS/CS/SB 712 are many and various.  We have provided specific recommendations for amendments and explanations of the need for these amendments to legislators, Secretary Valenstein, and Chief Science Officer Frazer to no avail.

Because this bill does literally nothing to protect or restore Florida’s springs we ask you to veto CS/CS/SB 712 and demand that the Legislature return next year to pass bold effective water quality legislation before it is too late. If signed into law, CS/CS/SB 712 will only make our water quality problems worse in the long run. It provides political cover for a Legislature that refuses to make the tough choices necessary to address this crisis.  And it guarantees another half-decade, or more, of inaction towards meaningful and effective water quality laws.

No one will remember what bills were signed, or how much money was proposed, when Florida’s waters are more polluted in five years than they are today.  Instead, the legacy left by CS/CS/SB 712 and those who championed it as a solution to our water quality crisis will be another generation of polluted waters.

Sincerely,