Florida
Fights EPA on Clean Water Rules
Posted July 08, 2015 09:45 am
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Service
TALLAHASSEE, FL - Florida's State Attorney General Pam Bondi is getting the state involved in clean water lawsuits lately and conservation groups contend she's on the wrong side of the issues.
On
Tuesday, a federal judge rejected a case by the American
Farm Bureau Federation, that Bondi joined as a friend of
the court, that would have stopped restoration of
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
David
Guest, managing attorney with the environmental law firm
Earthjustice, calls Bondi's involvement "hypocritical."
"It's a tragedy that Florida, with problems that are really worse than the Chesapeake Bay, and our Attorney General is joining with the factory farm corporations to try to get off the hook and prevent this problem from being solved," says Guest.
Last week Bondi, joined six other states in suing the
Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA over whether smaller
tributaries are covered under the "Waters of the United
States" rule, which governs implementation of the Clean
Water Act.
Bondi claims it's a state's rights issue, saying,
"Florida is better suited than the federal government to
establish the regulatory rules necessary to protect our
unique waterways."
Kathy
Aterno, Florida director of the nonprofit group
Cleanwater Action, says the state of Florida is doing a
terrible job protecting its waters, so she's OK with the
EPA taking the lead.
"They could have a stronger standard on fertilizer use,
for instance, on residential communities and even for
agriculture," says Aterno. "So there's lots of things
they can do to protect our waters that Florida is not
currently doing."
She says the issue is particularly relevant in Florida,
which is second only to Alaska in numbers of acres of
wetlands.
Photos/graphics; links; added and updated by the Observer
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