Editorial: Don’t preempt local water protections

With state lawmakers failing to protect rivers, springs and other parts of Florida’s environment, communities across the state are considering laws to recognize the rights of nature.

In Alachua County, signatures are being collected to put an initiative called the Santa Fe River Bill of Rights (SAFEBOR) on the November ballot. The charter amendment would recognize the legal rights of the Santa Fe River, its springs and tributaries, and the Floridan Aquifer within the county.

The effort is part of a growing “rights of nature” movement to allow people to sue polluters on behalf of the environment. Last February, more than 60% of voters in Toledo, Ohio, passed a Lake Erie Bill of Rights initiative in response to algae blooms fueled by agricultural runoff and other problems with the water body.

But an amendment was later passed in Ohio's state budget that invalidated the initiative. Now it appears Florida lawmakers are seeking to pass something similar here, which in this case would stop rights-of-nature laws before they are even approved.

House Bill 1199 — sponsored by Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, and ironically named the Environmental Protection Act — would prohibit local laws that grant legal rights to any part of the natural environment.

A similar measure is contained in Senate Bill 1382 — sponsored by Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula. But the legislation goes further in adding more programs that make taxpayers continue footing the bill for cleaning up agricultural pollution.

State laws that preempt local governments and citizens from protecting their communities are nothing new for the Legislature. A total of 119 bills that contain some form of state preemption of local governments were filed from 2017 to 2019, according to a recent report from the nonpartisan group Integrity Florida.

While Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed legislation last year that would have preempted local governments from banning plastic straws, he signed other preemption measures including one that prohibits local governments from regulating sewage sludge being spread over land.

In his State of the State speech Tuesday, DeSantis said he would continue a “bold approach to protecting our natural resources.” DeSantis deserves credit for doing more to protect the environment than his predecessor, Rick Scott, but Scott was completely negligent in the job.

DeSantis could do much better. The Sierra Club gave the governor a “D” grade for 2019 in an environmental report card released this week, giving him the lowest marks for decisions such as signing legislation authorizing three new toll roads in rural Florida and having ineffective water quality plans for the state’s rivers and springs.

Initiatives such as SAFEBOR are simply a reaction to the state’s failure to fulfill such basic duties as preventing the groundwater that provides our drinking water supply and flows through springs from being pumped beyond a sustainable level and polluted.

If DeSantis and the Legislature won’t do their job in protecting Florida’s natural environment, they shouldn’t stand in the way of local citizens seeking to do it for them.