Linda Young: Weekly Clean Water Update – NNC

October 14, 2011

URGENT!!! ACTION ALERT - Please read!!!

Dear Friends of Florida waters:



As promised last week, here is the first of several action alerts that you will receive over the next six weeks.  They will be more frequent and more urgent than what we normally send to you, but this is an urgent matter. Please do all that you can to fully engage in our campaign to get protection from nutrients in Florida’s waters. 



This week we are directing your attention to the FL DEP. They need to know that thousands of Floridians want the toxic algal blooms, fish kills and sick waters to end. After two years of following the federal and state developments for numeric nutrient criteria (NNC), we believe that the most simple and most helpful change that could be made to these rules would be to require that the EPA/DEP nutrient criteria for nitrogen and phosphorus should be apply at the discharge point for every non-MS4 NPDES permit.  In simple language, that means that it would not apply at the end of municipal stormwater pipes. It would however be applied at the end of pipes from big polluting industrial facilities (paper mills, phosphate facilities, power plants, sewage plants, etc.).



Here is the message to send to Eric Shaw at DEP and his email address:



Dear Mr. Shaw:



In your draft at 62-302.530 it reads,  “ . . . Numeric interpretations of the narrative nutrient criterion in paragraph 62-302.530 (47)(b), F.A.C. shall be expressed as spatial averages and applied over a spatial area consistent with their derivation. . .”  



We suggest that this additional language be added to the paragraph above: 

 

“. . . except where non-MS4 point source discharges with NPDES permits enter a water body.  These NPDES permitted discharges will be required to meet advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) standards for nutrients (3 mg/l for nitrogen and 1 mg/l for phosphorus) or the numeric limits for approved nutrient TMDLs for that water body, whichever is lower and more protective of the water quality at the end of the discharge pipe or where the discharge enters waters of the state. In cases where an NPDES permit contains nutrient limits that are more protective than AWT standards, then the more protective limits shall apply.”

 

If this additional requirement is not added then you are granting an automatic nutrient mixing zone to every NPDES permit which discharges into waters of the state, and will thereby encompass the entire span of the water body (as delineated by the Department on a case by case basis). This violates Florida’s mixing zone rule Chapter 62-4.244, F.A.C. and the Clean Water Act.



Send your message to: Eric.Shaw@dep.state.fl.us 

The next CWN-FL comment letter on DEP’s draft Numeric Nutrient Criteria (NNC) rule is almost ready to be sent to each of you for you to either sign on or write your own.  That will be the next thing you receive from us.  The comments are due by Oct. 18th (next Tuesday) but if you can’t sign on by then, we’ll send our letter with the sign-ons that we have and then send the same comments with additional signatures a week later. The important thing is that the signatures are seen by DEP, the members of the Environmental Regulation Commission, EPA, and others.

Every week you will receive a new action alert and a request for your help.  Please take these alerts seriously and do everything possible to take action, even if it is delayed. The ERC will take up this matter on December 1st. DEP will brief them on the draft rule on November 3rd. If you can attend one or both of these meetings it will be very helpful.

Here’s the bottom line, again:

Neither the federal or state NNC rule are going to lead to less nutrients in our waters.  The proposed state rule is much worse than the federal rule, but because of the numerous loopholes in the federal NNC rule, it will be essentially impossible to require reductions in nutrient discharges. Remember that the rule does not apply at all to agricultural pollution or to stormwater discharges.  The numbers that have been adopted for Florida by EPA are based on an annual geometric mean of all the samples collected throughout the year and throughout the entire span of the waterbody.  In addition, there are numerous other loopholes in the rule (SSACs, variances, downgrading designated uses, 20-year compliance periods, etc) that are available to the state and polluters to avoid cleaning up their nutrient pollution.  So, while the state rule has even more loopholes and caveats in it, the federal rule is not substantively any better.  

If Florida would at least require NPDES/point sources to comply at the end of their pipes with advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) standards (3 mg/l for nitrogen and 1 mg/l for phosphorus) then we would start to see some improvement, with the state or federal nutrient criteria.

There are many, many more problems with the federal and state NNC rules, which I have outlined for you over and over again, so I won’t repeat them now.  Look back at previous Weekly Updates to find them or email me and I’ll send you the list of problems with EPA’s NNC rule.

Please watch for the sign-on letter. I may finish it this weekend but you will have it by Monday at the latest. Thank you in advance for your help and please call or email me with any questions, comments or suggestions.

For all of Florida’s waters,
Linda Young
Director