Editorial: Talk is cheap

Published: Friday, February 21, 2014 at 6:30 a.m. Last Modified: Thursday, February 20, 2014 at 10:36 p.m.

It was encouraging to see that at least 200 water advocates from around the state, including Ocala/Marion County, rallied Tuesday in Tallahassee. They need to keep up the pressure to prevent a much smaller group from weakening or killing legislation to protect our imperiled springs.

The Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee held a workshop Thursday on draft springs legislation. The measure would create protection areas around springs where homeowners would be required to upgrade septic tanks or hook up to sewer systems. The work would be funded with about $378 million per year from existing fees paid when real estate is sold.

A workshop last week on the legislation attracted about a dozen lobbyists, only one of them representing an environmental group. The group was dominated by representatives of utilities and business interests, some of who questioned the need for any springs legislation.

You don't have to reinvent this wheel, said Doug Mann, representing Associated Industries of Florida. The toolkit's out there. It's putting the money towards that toolkit and setting some parameters.

Rhetoric about the state already having enough regulatory tools to protect its water resources has become a popular excuse for inaction. It's disingenuous for groups seeking to weaken regulations to claim that the state has all the regulations it needs.

The Legislature passed minimum flows and levels for springs and rivers more than 30 years ago. Now that regulators are finally setting them, special interests are trying to chip away at those protections.

Mandates to develop basin management action plans to clean up polluted water bodies passed about 15 years ago. The first of those cleanup plans for springs was not established until 2012. Plans will be developed for another 140 or more springs this year, the DEP says.

This is dramatic, said Herschel Vinyard, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. And we did it with the tools we have in our toolbox today.

Yet tools also have been taken out of that toolbox. Legislation passed in 2010 would have required Florida's 2.7 million septic tanks to undergo inspections to ensure they are properly working. Special interest and tea party pressure led to the bill's repeal just two years later.

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Editorial: Talk is cheap