Bills to cut water pollution from sludge moving in Florida Legislature

Legislation to control use of partly treated sewer sludge on farmland – which has been blamed for algae problems at the start of the St. Johns River – is advancing in Florida’s Legislature.

A Senate subcommittee signed off this week on a bill that bans spreading sludge on land where it would get into the water table, and requires the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to write rules for safe use elsewhere.

“We have an issue with our biosolids,” Sen. Debbie Mayfield, R-Rockledge, told lawmakers, using a euphemism for sludge.

“We’re taking it from one area, we’re putting it somewhere else and we’re not really solving the problem that we have in our waterways with the biosolids and the runoff,” she told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government.

Commissioners in Indian River County, which Mayfield represents, put a temporary moratorium on sludge use in their country last year after thick green algae covered parts of Blue Cypress Lake, the headwaters of the St. Johns that the sate normally considers clean enough to drink untreated.

The lake’s trouble paled in comparison to algae and red tide outbreaks that closed waterfronts across South Florida last year.

But it drew attention for reasons including the near-pristine image of the lake – a haven for birders and kayakers – and suspicions that the problem started because South Florida sludge began being trucked there after fields around Lake Okeechobee were closed in the 2000s to help Everglades restoration.

“There was some statutory provision that really made the application of biosolids unfeasible in that area [Okeechobee], which pushed the application … to other areas around the state,” a state environmental administrator, Thomas Frick, told audiences for a Florida Stormwater Association webinar in February. “… There’s certainly correlation in the Blue Cypress Lake area.”

By last year, Blue Cypress Lake's levels of phosphorus – an algae-feeding chemical found in sludge – had roughly doubled from 2007, when state law closed land around Okeechobee to sludge dumping and its use near Blue Cypress began increasing.

The fact that the change happened in the river’s headwaters meant that the water being affected could eventually flow hundreds of miles, reaching Jacksonville and areas where millions of dollars had already been spent cutting down pollution that feeds algae.

St. Johns advocates would have liked to simply copy the protections around Okeechobee, but worried doing so could have sparked fierce resistance from lawmakers, said St. Johns Riverkeeper Lisa Rinaman.

Instead, bills in both chambers of the Legislature emphasize acting on recommendations of a state technical committee that met from September to January.

The bills would not affect the most completely treated type of sludge, called Class AA, which is sold as fertilizer.

Besides barring use of biosolids in areas where they can mix with the water table, the bills require the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to begin setting rules by Aug. 1 so biosolids can be used outside the water table in ways that prevent harm to water quality.

The new rules are supposed to include steps for using site-specific information like soil characteristics and nearness to creeks or ponds; set standards for use in low-, medium- and high-risk sites; and site-specific rates that soil and specific plants can absorb nutrients.

Minor differences still have to be resolved for the House and Senate bills to have a chance to become law, but Rinaman said she’s hopeful.

Although sparked by concerns about Blue Cypress, the bills would affect sludge sites around the state. Every county in Northeast Florida has at least one place permitted to place biosolids on their land.

Rinaman said the legislation highlights a need for Florida to develop holistic ways to manage the state's waste streams. The bills should matter to environmentalists, she said, and also to people who don’t want clean-water projects that Northeast Florida communities have already been paid to be undermined by pollution beginning upstream.

Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263