Opinion: Making And Breaking The Rules Of Nutrient Management
January 29, 2012 
In a Nov. 2, 2011 letter to Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) Secretary Herschel Vinyard, EPA declared that it would preliminarily approve a state alternative to the Numeric Nutrient Criteria imposed on Florida last December. The EPA’s decision follows a number of efforts by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in cooperation with FDEP to ensure the criteria, which would have a devastating impact on Florida’s economy, are not implemented.
The EPA’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria could potentially cost Florida between $900 million and $1.6 billion annually, and could result in the loss of 14,000 jobs. Virtually no sector of Florida agriculture can comply with the final EPA criteria without implementing costly edge-of-farm water detention and treatment. Furthermore, implementation would greatly inhibit our state’s ability to grow and expand in the private sector — also limiting job creation.
Setting The Standard
The EPA has previously credited Florida with developing and implementing some of the most progressive nutrient management strategies in the nation. The EPA also has acknowledged that Florida has placed substantial emphasis on the monitoring and assessment of its waters and, as a result, has collected significantly more water quality data than any other state. Furthermore, our agricultural Best Management Practices program is firmly rooted in state law, backed by sound science, and is a critical component of Florida’s overall water resource management programs.
The question being addressed is whether the federal government is justified in hand-selecting one state in the nation on which to impose federal regulations that impart costs on all households. Florida, like all other states, faces many challenges in addressing nutrient management in our waterways. Florida knows how best to manage those challenges and is prepared to adopt rules based on the very best science available. The methods used by EPA to construct its rules are inconsistent with EPA’s own guidance documents and the advice of EPA’s Science Advisory Board.
The best nutrient reduction strategies should focus on measurable environmental improvement, while optimizing the use of public dollars and avoiding costs that have no environmental benefit. It is important to recognize that nitrogen and phosphorous are naturally occurring and are necessary for the normal biological productivity of water bodies. Determining when too much human-induced nitrogen or phosphorous is present is difficult. Therefore, it is very important to link numeric criteria with an assessment of the biological health of a water body before requiring the implementation of costly nutrient-reduction strategies.
The Right Direction
Recently, the FDEP completed the development of the most comprehensive Numeric Nutrient Rules proposed by any state in the nation. These Rules address all of the shortcomings of EPA’s rule, avoid unnecessary cost impositions, and complete the task the state originally set out to accomplish before federal intrusion. On Dec. 8, 2011, the Florida Environmental Regulation Commission approved and adopted the new rules proposed by FDEP. These rules have now been sent to the Florida legislature for ratification. Following ratification by the legislature, the rules will be sent to EPA for approval.
All Floridians benefit if the EPA approves the Florida rules in their entirety, agrees to cease federal rulemaking, and withdraws the federal rules they finalized in December 2010. Successful completion of this series of events will allow Florida to assume its right to exercise the authority envisioned by the Clean Water Act to develop its own water quality standards, and implement them through an EPA-approved and predictable process governed by existing state law and accountable to the taxpayers.