Florida’s incredible resources are silently slipping away. Pollution from development, agriculture, and industry is killing reefs and seagrass beds and fouling once-clear springs. And even though Florida remains a top destination for anglers, many fish are now too contaminated to eat. The crisis of our polluted waters demands leadership: Florida needs to enforce and strengthen clean water rules to serve as an example to other states. The health of the ecosystems must be a priority over continued damaging industrial pollution and overdevelopment.
Ocean Outfall Legislation
Florida Coastal & Ocean Coalition
PRESERVING THE SANDY AND SALTIER SIDES OF FLORIDA’S ENVIRONMENT
OCEAN OUTFALL ELIMINATION DELAYED
SEWAGE INSTEAD TO GO INTO SHALLOW DRINKING WATER AQUIFERS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Paul Johnson 850-294-8654
Ericka Canales 772-924-4144
Gary Appelson 352-317-2870
Lindsey Pickel 813-846-1827
April 14, 2011
Tallahassee – Today the Florida House considered legislation that would significantly compromise Florida’s water quality over the next few years. The proposal, House Bill 613 by Rep. Carlos Trujillo (R-Miami), allows for a five-year delay in phasing out disposal of sewage off Florida’s southeast coast, less treatment of wastewater, and an increase in the amount of inadequately treated sewage being discharged directly into South Florida’s Biscayne and Upper Floridian Aquifers — shallow drinking water supplies for South Florida and the Keys that also connect with nearby coastal and marine waters.
Florida’s tremendous growth over the past decade has raised critical concern in the Legislature over how we manage our water, not only for drinking but also for waste disposal. Communities throughout Florida have seen the benefits of embracing readily available and proven technology for advanced wastewater treatment and re-use, with some communities reaching upwards of 80 percent efficiency. Unfortunately, this legislation would reverse these trends and detrimentally impact the treatment and reuse of water of the largest municipalities in our state, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
“Communities throughout the state have harnessed technology that has provided them with the two-fold benefit of the conservation of their drinking water supply and preserving their coastal and surface waters,” said Paul Johnson with Reef Relief. “Unfortunately this legislation would be a significant step backwards.”
House Bill 613 delays the requirements that counties comply with a state mandate to eliminate ocean outfall, improve wastewater treatment and beneficially reuse a portion of that wastewater within five years. It also allows these counties to achieve 100 percent reuse by redefining reuse as the recharge of sewage into the Biscayne and Upper Floridian Aquifers, shallow drinking water aquifers that connect underground and release into Biscayne Bay.
“Biscayne Bay is a state aquatic preserve, national Marine Park, outstanding Florida water and a recreational playground for millions of South Florida citizens and visitors,” said Ericka Canales, Southeast Regional Director of the Surfrider Foundation. “This legislation threatens to destroy the coastal and aquatic ecosystems enjoyed by surfers, divers, fisherman, wildlife enthusiasts and beachgoers living in and visiting South Florida.”
The Florida Coastal & Ocean Coalition has significant concerns about how the provisions of the legislation will detrimentally impact Florida’s ecosystem and natural resources.
“We already have problems in our state with water quality as we’re seeing increased nutrients and contaminants in our estuaries and near-shore waters in South Florida,” said Gary Appelson with Florida’s Seaturtle Conservancy. “This will further erode our precious natural resources and threaten the viability of the wildlife, like sea turtles, that depend on the quality of those ecosystems by giving facilities a pass to inject poorly treated sewage into these already fragile systems”
In addition to compromising Florida’s precious natural resources, the legislation lowers water quality standards and treatment requirements, allowing water treatment facilities to treat less and further compromising Florida’s already limited water supplies by injecting them with poorly treated sewage.
“In 2008, the Legislature wisely implemented these higher quality standards – Advanced Waste Treatment, recognizing that South Florida communities had to begin aggressively planning for new treatment and reuse facilities in an effort to phase-out ocean outfalls, conserve precious drinking water in the region and decrease dependency on water sources that other regions need,” Johnson said.
“It is no secret that changes of this magnitude are costly and take years to implement, however, while delaying those changes, as this legislation proposes, could save a few dollars now, the costs will be immeasurable if poorly treated sewage unknowingly contaminates our drinking water supply and recreational marine waters.”
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