Environmentalists are sounding the alarm as a commission weighs the state’s plan for updating surface water pollution standards.
At a time when South Florida beaches are coated in a slimy toxic algae bloom, water pollution standards are even more of a lightning rod than usual. But the update is required by the federal Clean Water Act.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection deputy secretary Drew Bartlett says the proposal reflects the latest federal standards and covers more chemicals than ever before.
“We’re taking those, applying them to Florida, adjusting our numbers up and down, but adding an additional 39 limits that currently don’t have limits for different chemicals.”
That would nearly double the chemicals and compounds the state regulates, officials say.
Buy it’s the strength of the regulations that have critics concerned. Tallahassee emergency room physician Lonnie Draper is president of the Florida chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
“So, any time that you add extra pollution to the environment, and especially if those pollutants are carcinogens, or highly toxic, or teratogenic, meaning that they create birth defects, we have a greater amount of concern.”
But Bartlett says new health studies justify the proposal. The numbers may change, but the bottom line remains the same, Bartlett says.
“So there is absolutely no change in risk to the Floridian from these new numbers.”
Critics say they’re worried the state is using a different method than the federal government, or any other state, to determine the risk. Bartlett says the technique is more thorough and takes into account more human variables.
It will be up to Governor Rick Scott’s Environmental Regulation Commission, to decide. The commission considers the proposal at a meeting Tuesday in Tallahassee.
