State whittles down its list of polluted waters

The list determines which waterways may be protected. A critic calls the new list a ruse to overlook dirty water.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 30, 2002

The state's top environmental regulator signed off Thursday on an updated list of polluted waterways in need of cleanup that removes some sections of Tampa Bay from consideration.

David Struhs, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, hailed the new "impaired waters" list as "a workable, common-sense environmental plan." Lots of other states have studied Florida's process and may emulate it, he said.

That scares Linda Young of the Clean Water Network.

"If Florida gets away with what they're doing, a lot of other states are going to do it too," Young said. "Florida is leading the way in undermining the Clean Water Act in this country."

The list, which now goes to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approval, will determine which waterways may be protected by pollution discharge limits. Once the state has a list, it must begin setting the maximum load of new pollution that each waterway can handle.

The latest version of the impaired waters list is only a partial update of the original, written in 1998. It covers Tampa Bay and some smaller waterways that feed into it, for instance, but not major tributaries such as the Alafia River. Those sections will be reviewed later, DEP officials say.

One waterway being dropped from the state's 1998 list is Brooker Creek in northern Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. The old list said it was polluted by fecal coliform bacteria and nutrients. The new list says the creek is clean.

Many Tampa Bay segments have been taken off the list for one pollutant but left on for others. Old Tampa Bay, for instance, is no longer listed for fecal coliform and nutrients, but remains on the list for mercury contamination because of warnings about shellfish.

DEP spokesman Bob Sparks said 45 new segments were added to the list for Tampa Bay, but he was unable to provide examples.

All 50 states were supposed to prepare such lists 30 years ago but the EPA did not require them until it was sued by environmentalists. So in 1998, DEP came up with 712 polluted rivers and lakes.

A year later, though, when it came time to start setting limits on new pollution in those waterways, the DEP proposed taking 200 off the list, half because they were clean and half because the pollution data were outdated.

Hundreds protested. A Pensacola grand jury said Struhs' action gave "the illusion that area water quality is improving, contrary even to the findings of DEP biologists." Struhs backed away from that initial effort, but his department then pursued stricter requirements for the data.

Environmentalists filed a legal challenge, but power, paper and chemical companies supported the change. An administrative judge approved DEP's new rules.

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