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Florida lawmakers pressure EPA about water quality standards

Bradenton Herald – March 13, 2011

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.”

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