Silver Springs choked w/slime and Marion Co. fertilizer ordinance is on the chopping block |
For the seventh legislative session in a row the urban fertilizer preemption threat is back.
A floor amendment (Raburn) has been filed to HB 999 which will be voted on tomorrow, April 24, on the House Floor.
It will then be filed to SB 1684 (Altman) if it passes the House.
Call your Representative now before it is too late - tell them:
Vote “NO” on the Raburn amendment to HB 999. Vote "NO" on any amendment that would stop or hinder the local regulation of urban fertilizers.
It will then be filed to SB 1684 (Altman) if it passes the House.
Call your Representative now before it is too late - tell them:
Vote “NO” on the Raburn amendment to HB 999. Vote "NO" on any amendment that would stop or hinder the local regulation of urban fertilizers.
Click HERE for all Representatives' contact info.
Below find the background information on the proposed legislation.
Below find the background information on the proposed legislation.
Fertilizer
Floor Amendment
The “Florida Fertilizer Regulatory Review Council” amendment
preempts duly elected local governments, is biased in favor of a
one-size-fits-all model; prevents the consideration of the costs of
inappropriate use of urban turf fertilizer, and packs the ‘Council’ with
pro-fertilizer members.
Preemption:
This is a
preemption amendment. It preempts
localities from adopting new fertilizer ordinances for three years in (7)(a)
and retrospectively preempts Rockledge in Brevard Count from enforcing the
strong ordinance adopted on March 20, 2013 by their duly elected officials in
(7)(b).
This amendment grandfathers strong ordinances
adopted before March 5 of this year, but only for three years. And if the industry-related members have their
way, the Council’s recommendation will be to eliminate all local ordinances
permanently.
Subsection (2)(a) 5 calls for the Council to
identify additional research needs. You
can bet they’ll identify some issue that needs to be studied and in three years
the language of this section will be amended to extend the prohibition on new
ordinances until the research is done… and it will never be funded. (This is a time-honored strategy.) In two steps they will have achieved their
goal of preemption of any new ordinances.
[N.B. Subsection (2)(g) also requires the Council to identify additional
research that may inform future state policies.]
Preemption is absolutely unnecessary for the
“Regulatory Review Council” to perform its job.
Local communities adopting new strong ordinances to deal with the toxic
algae problem in places like Indian River Lagoon, Southwest Florida, or the
springsheds in Central and North Florida pose absolutely no obstacle to
investigating the relation of urban turf fertilizer to negative water quality
impacts, and of the different management strategies in use around the
state. All they have to do is add “as of
the effective date of this bill” to the Council’s charge to do a comprehensive
review of all local ordinances in this state regulating nonagricultural
fertilizer or its use.
The preemption piece is a pure gift to the
fertilizer and pest control industry.
They get what they want for three years for no other reason than it was
written into the bill. The call for more
“research” sets up future extension and expansion of preemption. And because the amendment preempts any new
strong ordinances it implies they are to be avoided and that the weak “model
ordinance” is to be embraced.
One-size-fits-all bias: Pro fertilizer industry
bias disguised as uniformity or consistency with the Urban Turf Rule that
covers the application of lawn fertilizer is evident throughout the language of
the amendment. EXAMPLES:
Legislative
finding (1)(b): “Varying state and local regulations govern the regulation of
nonagricultural fertilizer or its use, and inconsistencies resulting from
varying regulations may affect commerce and impact water quality in this state”
implies that differences between regulations are a problem for both commerce
and water quality. The only problem they
pose for water quality is when they are too weak, water quality suffers.
Legislative
finding (1)(c): “It is advisable to identify practices or a combination of
practices, which, based on field testing, expert review, and scientific
information, individually or cumulatively protect the quality of waters in this
state” precludes identifying combinations of practices, and limits, by
implication at least, the identification of a combination of practices to a
one-size-fits-all choice.
(2)(b) calls
for the Council to do a comprehensive review of the Urban Turf Rule but does
not call for recommendations for modifications to that rule. The rule currently sabotages the use of slow
release fertilizers and exempts all “weed and feed” products from regulation
for water quality because they contain pesticides. Therefore, any fertilizer with even a small
amount of pesticide is not subject to water quality regulations under the
“Model Ordinance.” (All pesticide
regulation in Florida is preempted to DACS.)
(2)(f) calls
for the Council to recommend amendments to the “Model Ordinance” after
considering consistency with the Urban Turf Rule which can only be the rule
that is currently in place including its inadequate provisions for water quality
as mentioned above.
The goal of the “Florida Fertilizer Regulatory
Review Council” is not improved water quality.
Subsection (2)(d) makes clear that it is to recommend strategies “that
promote consistency in state and local regulation of nonagricultural fertilizer
or its use where possible while balancing the need to accommodate reasonable
regional and local differences necessary to meet state water quality
standards.”
The amendment’s primary concern is
“consistency in state and local regulation” - the one-size-fits-all model which
has always been the goal of the industry but is contrary to the
watershed-by-watershed approach that is promoted by FDEP and the state’s
National Estuary Programs.
If the goal of the amendment were to improve
water quality, water quality would come first, not as something to be
“balanced.” In fact, if water quality
were the goal, the entire thrust of the “regulatory review council” would be to
determine if existing regulations were up to the job. But the goal here is obviously to undercut
the ability to regulate, even if doing so means the public will suffer the
health and economic impacts of dirty water and have to pick up the tab.
Cost: There is no mandate to consider the
costs of cleaning up water bodies polluted by fertilizer. Subsection (2)(a) directs the Council to
perform a comprehensive review of nutrients and their impact on water bodies,
but no baseline is to be established for the costs borne by communities caused
by polluted water. Since it is not an
expressed requirement, it will not be done.
This is statute, and therefore legal rules of
interpretation apply. The relevant
concept here is Expressio unius est exclusio alterius ("the express
mention of one thing excludes all others"). In the context of this amendment the purposes
of the Council are enumerated and this explicit enumeration prevents the
Council from addressing anything not listed.
This means the assessment of “technically and
economically feasible” strategies will exist without a basis for
comparison. (2)(a)5 will assess the
costs to the industry of implementing management strategies, but the costs of
not implementing those strategies will not be considered.
Composition of the Council - “Fair and
Balanced”?: If the purpose of the Council is to investigate the relationship
between water quality and urban turf fertilizer, there should be a connection
between the members of the Council and those subjects.
Private sector members of the Council that can
be presumed to favor strong ordinances are the representatives of the
environment, the League of Cities, the Association of Counties, the Florida
Stormwater Association, and a water quality scientist for a total of five.
Private sector members that can be presumed to
favor a one-size-fits-all approach are the representatives of the fertilizer,
pest control, lawn and landscape, golf course, and retail industries for a
total of five.
The remaining members are representatives of
DEP which is responsible for protecting water quality; DACS, whose
representatives have consistently denounced ordinances stronger than the FDEP
Model;, the UF Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences whose
administrators have repeatedly come down against local strong ordinances, and
representatives of the UF Water Institute and a Water Management District,
neither of which have weighed in on the issue in the past five years.
All in all, the “balance” looks like six for
strong ordinances, seven for one-size-fits-all, and two unknown.
Why are there representatives of the Golf
Course Superintendents Assoc. and the retail industry? Golf courses are not covered by the Urban
Turf Rule or local ordinances, and only a small fraction the retail industry
deals with fertilizer. There’s little
chance that a food store or fabric store owner will be the retail
representative. Golf courses and
retailers have no direct connection to either water quality or local ordinances
and are only there to stack the deck.
And the deck is stacked. There is a false equality in the composition
of the Council as well as in its charge.
The representatives of most of the population of the state: cities and
counties (and the stormwater entities that serve them) have no more weight than
the representatives of an industry that makes up only a small percentage of the
population and whose product causes a significant percentage of the water
quality problem in Florida.
Conclusion: Lawn fertilizer’s impact on water
quality varies from locality to locality – watershed to watershed. Urbanized areas with lots of impermeable surfaces speed runoff to local water bodies and coastal waters
because water runs downhill. If
fertilizer nutrients are allowed to get into that runoff, impaired water quality
can be the only result.
Florida’s communities
need to be able to adopt strong ordinances to prevent fertilizer pollution
because they’re on the hook for the clean up if it gets into their water.
Prevention is always better than cure.
Pushing for a state-wide weak fertilizer
ordinance is bad policy that favors one industry, fertilizer, over all the
others in the state that depend on water quality. And it favors the fertilizer industry over
citizens whose health, quality of life, and property values are diminished by
the inappropriate use of this “legal product.”