FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 12, 2020
**PRESS RELEASE**
CLEAN WATER GROUPS RESPOND TO FL CHIEF
SCIENCE OFFICER
Letter sets
record straight on flawed “Clean Waterways Act”
TALLAHASSEE—Florida Springs Council, Florida
Waterkeepers, and Sierra Club today responded to remarks by Florida’s Chief
Science Officer, Thomas K. Frazer, Ph.D., regarding Senator Mayfield’s Senate Bill 712
(SB 712). The three organizations sent a twelve-page letter to Dr. Frazer, copied to Senator Mayfield, Secretary of the Department
of Environmental Protection Noah Valenstein, Governor Ron DeSantis, and members
of the Blue-Green Algae and HAB-Red Tide Task Forces detailing multiple
failures of the bill to meaningfully address Florida’s water pollution crisis..
The letter exposes the flaws in statutory language and agency policy serving polluters
and the failure of SB 712 to correct those defects with the result that the
Clean Waterways Act will not achieve water quality goals and calls on Dr.
Frazer to reconsider his public remarks.
The letter starts with:
“Dr. Frazer:
We write to you today regarding the
following quote, as reported in the Herald-Tribune on February 4, 2020. “Frazer
called SB
712 ‘One of the most environmentally
progressive pieces of legislation that we’ve seen in over a decade. As a
scientist that’s pretty rewarding to me.’”
The Florida Springs Council, Sierra
Club Florida, and Waterkeepers Florida are concerned about the accuracy of this
statement. As Florida’s first Chief Science Officer, it is essential that your
statements to the public reflect the best understanding of environmental
policy, especially when your credentials as a scientist are being used to
bolster such remarks. Floridians must have faith that their Chief Science
Officer is above politics and partisanship. Otherwise, we risk sacrificing the
credibility of the important position with which you have been entrusted.
Our goal is to illustrate two
issues of vital importance to Florida’s waters in the hope that you will
correct the public record. First, the provisions in SB 712 are not capable of
achieving the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) water quality goals for the vast
majority of Florida’s impaired waters. Second, within just the last year, not
to mention decade, we have seen many pieces of legislation that are objectively
more “environmentally progressive” than SB 712.”
The letter includes an explanation of why SB 712 is
designed to fail, highlighting fundamental
flaws in Florida’s Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) program and the reliance on unverified and ineffective best
management practices to address agricultural nutrient pollution. As the
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently admitted in a court
filing “the record reflects that it is not unreasonable to question the utility
of existing agricultural BMPs [Best Management Practices] as a means to achieve
TMDL compliance in the spring basins.”
“SB 712 attempts
to address the single greatest threat to Florida’s waters by inspections of
practices that are already proven to fail, research projects that may or may
not be funded from year to year, and requiring state agencies to cooperate
(which they should have been doing all along). It is the policy equivalent of
slapping a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. It may not hurt, but it won’t really
help. Without taking immediate and
consequential action to address agricultural pollution, it is a very real
possibility that the state will spend millions, or even billions, of taxpayer
dollars on water quality projects without any significant benefit to water
quality in many basins.”
The three water quality advocacy organizations,
representing concerned citizens from the Panhandle to Florida Bay, conclude the
letter with:
“While SB 712 may be well-intentioned, it is a deeply flawed piece of legislation, based on a
broken Basin Management Action Plan program, which largely ignores the dominant
source of pollution in many watersheds. It falls far short of the standard set
by SB 1758 as filed last year and is less protective than the BMAPs for
Outstanding Florida Springs which have already been shown to fail.
Dr. Frazer, we greatly
appreciate your taking the time to consider this letter and the supporting
documentation, which will be shared with the press. We would be happy to meet
with you in the future for an in-depth discussion of Florida water policy. In
the meantime, we await your public response to the concerns raised in this
letter.”
On Monday, February 3, the Florida Springs Council,
Florida Waterkeepers, and Sierra Club sent a letter to Senator Mayfield and
other legislators asking for 18 amendments to SB 712 that would address the
most serious flaws in the bill.
Attachments to today’s letter to the Chief Science Officer
included a copy of the February 3 letter and amendments, a side-by-side
comparison of the 2020 “Clean Waterways Act” SB712 and the 2019 “Clean Waterways Act” SB 1758, and the
Proposed Recommended Orders filed by DEP and Florida Springs Council members,
respectively, from the recent administrative challenge of Outstanding Florida
Springs BMAPs.
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