ST.PETERSBURG TIMES
February 3, 2007

Okeechobee polluters don't deserve any slack

By David Guest

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/03/Opinion/Okeechobee_polluters_.shtml

South Florida 's water pollution problems will not be solved until state, regional and federal officials stop trying to create exemptions for polluters and start honestly enforcing the law.

The South Florida Water Management District is using your tax dollars to argue that it is outside the reach of the Clean Water Act, one of the most effective and popular environmental laws in the nation. Big Sugar supports this claim. In a recent Associated Press article, the water management district argues that if it has to get permits to regulate the contaminants in the water it pumps into Lake Okeechobee , every flood-control system in the United States would have to shut down and the entire Everglades Restoration Project would be jeopardized. Big Sugar also made this inflammatory claim.

The water management district and U.S. Sugar are in denial. They presented identical stories to a federal judge in Miami in a three-month trial. The federal court found that none of these stories were true. Instead, the court found that permits under the Clean Water Act are a practical and flexible tool for solving water pollution problems while still providing for flood control and adequate water supplies. The court also found that the Everglades Restoration Project would not be impeded by requiring pollution permits for Lake Okeechobee pumps. Indeed, the restoration project would not be needed at all if the district and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had complied with pollution laws over the past 30 years.

The water management district's executive director claims that the district pumps shouldn't need permits because the district does not create the pollutants those pumps send into Lake Okeechobee . Apparently the executive director has not been informed that her legal staff lost this precise argument in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision less than three years ago. Just because the district doesn't like the law doesn't mean it doesn't have to comply.

The district, U.S. Sugar and the EPA claim that they need a rule or an amendment to the Clean Water Act to "eliminate confusion" about whether pumping dirty water into clean lakes or rivers requires a permit. This "confusion" exists only in the minds of those who disagree with the federal courts that have consistently rejected claims that water managers should be exempt from water pollution laws. Big Sugar claims that as proof of the "chaos" that would result from Clean Water Act compliance, environmental attorneys recently forced a $5-million settlement out of the city of New York . In fact, there was no settlement - the city was fined $5-million for illegally delaying a pollution reduction system and the fine went to the federal government.

There are good reasons not to exempt water managers from the Clean Water Act. Pumping of polluted water by the district and other Clean Water Act violations have left the lake so contaminated that cities that depend on it for drinking water are seeking $54-million to get drinking water from underground aquifers rather than from Lake Okeechobee . And that's cheap. In California , a water management district is in the process of spending $856-million to deal with fertilizers, animal wastes and toxic algae that were pumped into a huge drinking water reservoir system that serves Southern California.

Rather than follow the law, EPA has decided that a better approach would be to create some new exemptions for water managers at the expense of everyone who lives near, drinks from, or recreates on waters like Lake Okeechobee . That's not what this country intended when it passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, and it's not what your tax dollars ought to be used for.

David Guest is an attorney for Earthjustice.