Proposed water quality criteria could be costly

MANATEE — If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed water quality standards are implemented without any changes, it could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

That is the position local and state agencies are taking with the new numeric water nutrient criteria the EPA has told them they have to meet.

Rob Brown, the manager of the environmental protection division for the Manatee County Natural Resources Department, told county commissioners last week the EPA standards were not based on local data and would be expensive for the county to readjust.

“We don’t want criteria that causes citizens to spend a lot of money that will need to be corrected in the future,” Brown said. “We want good criteria based on science.”

He said the problem with the standards the federal agency set was that they did not take into consideration the local geology and natural condition of area waterways and lakes.

The EPA established the new numeric standards for nutrients after state environmental groups filed a lawsuit in 2008 claiming the federal agency was not enforcing the 1998 Clean Water Act.

EarthJustice filed the lawsuit after years of seeing many of Florida’s lakes, streams and estuaries continue to be degraded, said Monica Reimer, an attorney with the nonprofit public interest law firm.

One of the environmental organizations, Florida Wildlife Federation, issued a report, “It’s Time to End the Slime,” outlining the failure of the state rules that led it and the other groups to file the lawsuit.

According to the report, “1,000 miles of the state’s rivers and streams, 350,000 acres of Florida’s lakes and 900 square miles of its estuaries were contaminated by sewage, fertilizer or manure pollution.”

These polluted waters are a danger to the public health and deny swimmers and other recreational users access to clean water, the report stated.

Reimer said before a judge ruled on the lawsuit, the EPA reached a consent agreement with the plaintiffs that outlined the new water nutrient standards.

“We obtained everything through the consent agreement that we could have won with a judgment,” she said.

But it is those new standards that could create havoc for local guardians of water quality.

Brown said some of the problems are that Manatee County is in the Bone Valley Region watershed, which produces a high concentration of phosphorus in the waterways because of the natural presence of phosphate in the ground. He wants the EPA to allow for this higher concentration and set site-specific standards.

The federal agency also was not taking into consideration the success the county has had, working with surrounding counties and municipalities, with the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, Brown said.

Because the water from the counties’ lakes and streams end up in Sarasota Bay, it is only reasonable to conclude that the water quality of those waterways meet an acceptable standard.