--Floridas
rule and stringent standard approved after federal review--
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In a letter to the
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP),
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week gave
Florida s
rule to limit phosphorus levels in Americas
Everglades final approval. The science-based rule
establishes a phosphorus standard of 10 parts per
billion (ppb) for the entire freshwater area of the
Everglades Protection Area along with a process for
improving water quality and restoring the natural system
in the famed River of Grass.
Florida
is investing in the latest science and using the best
available technologies to remove phosphorus from water
entering the Everglades,
said DEP Secretary
Colleen M. Castille. The
federal governments
approval of Floridas
rule is an endorsement that we are on the right track
for improving water quality, achieving further
phosphorus reductions and restoring the Everglades to
its natural condition.
As part of its intensive
schedule to improve water quality in America s
Everglades, the State is operating more than 36,000
acres of constructed wetlands that use plants to
naturally remove nutrients from water flowing into the
marsh. The State is on schedule to construct an
additional 5,000 acres of treatment marsh by 2006 and
another 15,000 acres by 2009.
Together with improved
farming practices, manmade wetlands have prevented
nearly 1,700 tons of phosphorus from entering the
Everglades over the last ten years - cutting loads by
more than 60 percent. The storm water treatment areas
are cleaning water from the 170 ppb phosphorus levels of
a decade ago to as low as 12 ppb today.
The rule requires the use
of best available phosphorus reduction technology to |
ultimately achieve the water quality standard. More than
half a billion dollars will be invested over the
next decade to implement an enforceable, long-term plan
to ensure continued water quality improvements and
protection of Americas
Everglades.
In July 2003, the
Environmental Regulation Commission approved the rule
proposed by the Department of Environmental Protection
as a part of the Everglades Forever Act. In June 2004,
Judge David Maloney issued a Final Order formally
upholding the Department s
rule. Judge Maloney s findings were affirmed by the
First District Court of Appeals just a few weeks ago.
My
Turn, by Linda Fudala-Tucker
While it all sounds well
and good, the fact remains that thousands of acres of
central Florida in the Peace River Basin, are up for
phosphate mining permits. The strip mining process
creates huge phosphogypsum stacks and clay holding ponds
in the processing of the ore to create fertilizer. Today, most of the fertilizer
goes to China.
According to information compiled
by the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research: "The
ponds where the waste clays are dumped after they are separated
from the ore cover more than 100,000 acres in Florida's
mining regions and it can take three to five years for a full
settling area to crust into a land form that can be used - and
even then its use is limited since the clay is the consistency
of pudding below the crust. This area of research is of
particular interest as phosphate companies try to get new mining
sites permitted and face community opposition. One concern is
that up to 40 percent of the land that has been mined is being
left in clay settling areas." |
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Clay pond dams
break
In December 1971 water from a
(clay holding pond) dam burst near Fort Meade made its way into
the Peace River and killed river fish as far south as the Gulf
of Mexico, according to the
FIPR, but what wasn 't
told on the FIPR's
website was that it took over 10 years for the river to recover.
New regulations for the earthen dams have been devised since
then, and so far, no dams have given way.
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