Florida lawmakers pressure EPA about water quality standards

WASHINGTON -- Florida congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle have waded deeper into the high-stakes and murky debate over water quality standards that federal environmental regulators are imposing on the state.

In hearings and letters this week, two key lawmakers stepped up the pressure on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to scrap or revise rules that a powerful coalition of critics call expensive overkill but environmental groups argue are critical to improving the health of streams, rivers and lakes fouled by pollution from sewage, manure and fertilizers.

Rep. Tom Rooney, a Palm Beach County Republican pushing a provision that would effectively block the rules by stripping the EPA of money to enforce them, urged the agency’s boss to consider a compromise.

“I want to be the environmental congressman for my district,” Rooney told EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on Thursday. “But I also represent a lot of farmers. I just want to get us to a point where the farmers, the chamber of commerce, and (environmental groups) can all sit down and try to come to a number that’s not just EPA’s number.”

The same day, Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat with solid support from environmentalists but facing a tough reelection campaign in 2012, sent a letter to Jackson, pressing for EPA to “expeditiously” order up an independent review of the agency’s proposed hard caps on two key nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorous, that are largely responsible for triggering foul, fish-killing algae blooms that have stained waters from the St. Johns River to Florida Bay.

There is “intense debate” over the costs of complying with the new pollution standards, wrote Nelson, who had earlier pushed for a 15-month implementation delay the EPA agreed to in November.

Their concerns -- also expressed by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who dubbed the regulations a “job-destroying mandate” and proposed a measure similar to Rooney’s -- echo critics’ talking points.

With nutrients flowing in from multiple sources -- fertilized lawns to sewage plants to cattle ranches to vegetable farms -- the regulations have broad potential impacts. That explains the political clout lined up to fight them -- including Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Farm Bureau, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Stormwater Association and 60 other organizations and companies. The groups have bankrolled a lobbying blitz against what they brand an unprecedented and unneeded assault on state’s rights and a threat to Florida’s unstable economy.

David Childs, a Tallahassee attorney who represents sewage and electrical utilities fighting the rules, argued progress had been made under state oversight and the EPA’s regional regulations were unsound and would impose budget-busting costs on companies and communities.

“EPA should not have done this in the first place,” said Childs. “The best solution would be for them to realize they got it wrong.”

The EPA first ordered states to set numeric nutrient limits in 1998, and then issued a warning in 2004 that it would step in. But it took a 2009 lawsuit by environmentalists to force the federal agency to do so.

David Guest, an Earthjustice attorney who filed the lawsuit, said the state’s vague “narrative” standards gave industrial interests wiggle room in pollution discharges that had left an increasing expanse of state water sick. The state’s own assessments show 16 percent of rivers, 36 percent of lakes and 25 percent of estuaries are “impaired” by pollution.

While Guest understands financial concerns, he accuses opponents of mounting a “massive, brain-washing campaign” on political leaders and of wildly exaggerating the cost of reducing the flow of nutrients.

Price estimates have been widely disparate. Opponents produced an initial report in 2009 contending the new standards would cost the state $50 billion overall, an estimate produced before EPA had completed its standards. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which filed suit against the standards last year, puts the estimate at $1.6 billion annually.

The EPA pegs the cost at relative pittance, somewhere between $135 million and $206 million annually.

The maneuvers in Washington echo similar efforts by state lawmaker and agencies. Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers, has filed a bill that Florida should set its own water quality standards. Last year, the state sued to prevent the EPA from imposing the new criteria -- a challenge endorsed by the administration of Gov. Rick Scott as well. Some backers of the measures say they believe the nutrient dispute has been swept into a broader attack on federal regulations by industry and newly-in-charge Republicans.

Arguing on the House floor in opposition to Rooney’s effort to cut funding, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said the “polluters who claim that this rule will bankrupt Florida are simply wrong. What will bankrupt Florida is if all our tourists decide our state is too polluted and go somewhere else.”

For now, Rooney has acknowledged his effort to undercut EPA funding remains “in limbo.” It’s attached to a House spending bill the Senate has refused to take up.

But Rooney, whose district includes Palm Beach and Martin counties and farmland near Lake Okeechobee, said he’ll continue pressing the EPA for an independent scientific review of the standards, as is Nelson, as well as a separate economic analysis. Rooney said Friday he was encouraged by Jackson, who agreed at the hearing that the standards needed improvement.

The EPA was continuing to work with state regulators, she said, adding, “I would like nothing better than to find a solution that works for everyone.”

But she also underlined that the state’s way had not worked.

“There is severe water quality degradation in Florida from nutrients,” she said.

This story was originally published March 13, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Florida lawmakers pressure EPA about water quality standards."