Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two pieces of environmental legislation Tuesday aimed at protecting Florida’s water quality.
At a press conference at Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, DeSantis discussed one bill that looked to tackle four sources for potential pollutants: wastewater, septic systems, stormwater and agriculture; and a second bill that increased penalties for environmental offenders.
Its primary target is wastewater discharges because of poorly maintained systems that have fallen into disrepair, DeSantis said.
“As a result of this, even relatively moderate rain events can cause the system to be flooded, forcing a discharge of raw sewage into waterways and estuaries,” he said, adding that the state since 2017 has endured hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage discharges.
The bill requires utilities to develop inspection, maintenance and replacement plans for their wastewater systems, and allows the Department of Environmental Protection to get ahead of the problem, as opposed to reacting after an incident, DeSantis said.
Another provision transfers the responsibility of inspecting the state’s 2.6 million septic tanks from the Department of Health to the DEP.
The bill also directs the DEP to update the state’s stormwater systems to use the latest science and consider environmental harm. And the final aspect addresses damage from agricultural nutrient runoff by supporting the Department of Agriculture’s continued on-site verification of farms every two years to ensure they’re adhering to environmental best practices.
“All of these changes are a really strong step forward for Florida’s environment, certainly one of the most significant substantive pieces of legislation in quite some time,” DeSantis said.
The second bill DeSantis signed increases civil and administration penalties for sanitary sewer overflows by 100% and all other environmental violation penalties by 50%. It also allows the DEP to assess daily penalties until the violation is addressed.
“We needed a bill that had penalties for violating environmental laws that actually do what they’re supposed to do, serve as a meaningful deterrent against bad actions,” DeSantis said. “If you have penalties that are too low, that just becomes the cost of doing business.”
DeSantis has tackled several environment issues since taking office in 2018, and part of that was the formation of a Blue-Green Algae Task Force, from which both of these bills stemmed.
In attendance was DEP Secretary Noah Valenstein.
“Two years in, we have a full-fledged environmental movement in Florida, which I think the nation is starting to pay attention to,” Valenstein said.
