A Win for the Good Guys

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By Jim DeFede
CBS4.com

On Thursday, after the Florida House followed the Senate's lead by voting unanimously to stop the practice of pumping billions of gallons of minimally treated sewage into the waters off of South Florida every year, Dan Clark, an environmentalist and the founder of the group, Cry of the Water, summed up his feelings nicely: "Chalk one up for the good guys for a change."

Just when you think the Florida Legislature is a useless – even dangerous – body, they turn around and surprise you by doing something right.

I first reported on the sewage dumping last November. Every day more than 300 million gallons of wastewater were being pumped through six pipes in Miami Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties. One of the pipes is less than three-quarters of a mile off the beach in Pompano.

It's a practice that has been going on for close to 60 years and is widely believed to be responsible for killing large sections of Florida's reef.

The sewage spewing out of these pipes is filled with ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorous. It acts like fertilizer, creating giant algae blooms, smothering the reefs, blocking the sunlight, and slowly causing them to die.

"Most people don't see it, most people don't realize that sewage is being dumped into the ocean," says Ed Tichenor, founder of Reef Rescue and one of the environmentalists who first took me on a tour of outfall pipes last Fall. "And when they find out there is a coral reef off the State of Florida and that we are dumping sewage [onto it], they are shocked to find this out. Most people think that this practice was discontinued years ago."

And soon it will be.

Under a plan negotiated for months between environmentalists and state officials, the six outfall pipes will have to be closed by 2025. But more importantly, the counties and municipalities that operate the pipes must dramatically improve before 2025 their treatment of the sewage.

For instance, within ten years, 80 to 90 percent of the nitrogen now being allowed to pass through these pipes will have to be removed.

"I think we are going to see an improvement in the health of the reef," Tichenor told me Thursday. "We're very happy. We've been going back and forth to Tallahassee on this issue since September."

Local governments, especially Broward County, "fought like hell," to block this legislation from passing, according to Tichenor, but in the end the Legislature sided with the environmentalists and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which pushed for the pipes to be closed.

Paul Johnson, president of Reef Relief in Key West, led the lobbying drive in Tallahassee. Johnson said for months he has felt confident that their plan would be approved in the Florida Senate, where they had the support of key lawmakers, including Sen. Burt Saunders, a Republican from Naples who is running for Congress.

But he was concerned about how the Florida House would receive the proposal, especially since the Speaker of the House, Marco Rubio, and many of his top lieutenants come from South Florida. The biggest argument against closing the pipes and adding additional treatment precautions is the cost.

In the next 10 to 20 years, the average water bill will increase anywhere from $20 to $50 a month.

Johnson, said the key moment for him, however, came when he was testifying before a House committee earlier this year and he asked the members present, how many of their districts already require the treatment and reforms that Dade, Broward and Palm Beach would be required to enact if this bill passed. Every member from outside of South Florida raised his or her hands.

In other words, it became clear that every other city and county in the state had already dealt with this issue and absorbed the cost. Even South Florida lawmakers became somewhat embarrassed and realized there was no reason to protect their three counties at the expense of the environment.

"That was the deciding moment," Johnson said.

A few pictures didn't hurt either.

During the hearings, the environmentalists showed members of the House and Senate pictures from the outfall pipes.

"Some of the committee members just cringed," Clark recalled. "I thought a few of them were going to get sick, especially when they saw the chunks coming out of the pipes. They were getting kind of squeamish."

Clark also noted the state had little choice. If they didn't come up with a plan to deal with the pipes, they would have certainly faced a lawsuit by the federal government to stop them from dumping sewage in the ocean.

"We kind of had them backed into the corner," he said.

In addition to protecting the reef – which is a vital part of Florida's economy – the new requirements make sense given the growing water shortage South Florida is facing.

Rather than pump wastewater into the ocean, it will now be treated and reused. The newly treated water can be used in agriculture to irrigate fields and by homeowners to water lawns. FPL can use it cool its power plants.

"There are lots of people that need this water in South Florida," Johnson said, adding that when the treated water is reused, it will lower demand for "clean water" from the aquifer during the ongoing drought.

"This is a win, win, win, situation," he said. "And most importantly, it was the right thing to do."