Clean Water In the News

Below, from the southern tip of the peninsula to its northern border and beyond (the only border not demarcated by water), lies one of the world's grandest aquifers, the Floridan.

Water is the principal source of life. In Florida, that source runs from aquifer to kitchen tap. Water is also in itself the places where Floridians love to fish, boat and swim.

But should we dare?

In 2007 alone, industrial facilities dumped 1.16 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Florida's waterways. Growth-minded lobbyists and compliant policymakers in the last decade have made significant progress in their long-enduring campaign to give polluters the green light to dump waste where Floridians live and recreate, making Florida a polluted paradise.

Preserving the biological integrity of rivers, lakes and wetlands, which feed the life-sustaining aquifer, has depended primarily on the federal Clean Water Act. Passed in 1972, during a time when America's rivers were so befouled that one, Ohio's Cuyahoga River, caught on fire, the Clean Water Act helped guide the country away from additional watery infernos by setting minimum water-quality standards.

It was a miracle cure for Florida's numerous dying bays and estuaries, those cradles of life on earth. Anyone who knew Florida intimately in the 1970s has witnessed a wondrous transformation in clearer water, cleaner shores and expanded waterbird populations. This is to say nothing of the improved odds for the lucky fisherman.

Enforcement since the act's adoption has been spotty, to say the least, but Floridians had a decent legal defense against uncaring polluters. No more.

In the so-called SWANCC case of 2001, a divided Supreme Court ruled that use by migratory birds of isolated, non-navigable waters does not alone warrant federal protection of those waters.

Taking the decision a step further, the Bush administration moved quickly to weaken the Clean Water Act by ordering the EPA to withdraw protection from isolated water bodies, even those sustaining endangered species and commercial fishing and recreation.

Up to 30 percent of the nation's water once protected now lies at grave risk of pollution and development. The Florida percentage is approximately the same. More alarming, the risk extends to the precious Floridan Aquifer.

But help could be around the bend.

The U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, on which Florida Rep. Corrine Brown sits, is set to take up the proposed Clean Water Restoration Act. The new legislation seeks to reassert protection to non-navigable water and to tidal shores.

Opposition groups backed by growth merchants maintain that Floridians do not need the EPA snooping around their backyard swimming pools and bird baths with water-testing vials, that industry can properly regulate itself and care for the people.

But it was not the EPA who drained away or paved over half of Florida's freshwater sources, brought Lake Apopka and Lake Okeechobee to the brink of biological death, created a 10-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Fenholloway River, or located a utility-pole manufacturer in Gainesville whose chemical compounds threaten the groundwater and human health. The list of corporate irresponsibility goes on and on.

Fifty years ago, a citizens' group that organized to save an endangered Biscayne Bay called industrial pollution private property displaced—to wit, litter. Ethically and legally we do not allow someone to throw a hamburger wrapper out a car window. Why then do public officials allow industry to discharge toxic litter that kills?

Stopping polluters and wetland developers brings immeasurable dividends.

Conversely, building desalinization plants or piping water across regions to solve resource problems burdens taxpayers. No state will benefit more from the Clean Water Restoration Act than the Water State.

Jack E. Davis is associate professor of history at the University of Florida and Sarah Bucci is federal field associate with Environment Florida.